Blizzard Lifts Diablo III Level Restrictions

[Andy Chalk]

Blizzard Lifts Diablo III Level Restrictions

New Diablo III owners can now get past the game's first level but remain restricted in numerous other ways.

There was a bit of a ruckus last week when Blizzard released the 1.0.3 patch for Diablo III, which in what the company claimed was an effort to combat credit card fraud saw people who purchased the game digitally restricted to level 13 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118037-Diablo-III-Patch-Restricts-Access-for-New-Players] and the first act for up to 72 hours. That's three full days of not being able to move beyond the "Starter Edition" - which is to say, demo - content.

The good news is that with the release of the 1.0.3a patch, level and content restrictions for "unverified digital purchasers" is now removed. The bad news is that all other restrictions remain in place: no access to public games, no auction house, no trading, no chatting in public or game channels, no customized messages with friend requests and no Global Play until their payment information is verified.

"Again, we want to be perfectly clear that these are temporary restrictions (often lifted within a day and at most 72 hours) associated with digital purchases for the protection of players," Blizzard wrote [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5911721680#1]. "We appreciate player feedback and will continue to evaluate the best methods for ensuring a positive game experience for everyone."

It's not perfect, but it's definitely an improvement. Not being able to chat or trade may be occasionally frustrating, but being unable to access content beyond what I would assume to be a very easy-to-achieve level 13 (I haven't played Diablo III but if it's anything like the previous games, you should be able to hit that level before breakfast), particularly for those just doing the single-player thing, is absolutely inexcusable.


Permalink

 

[Fr]anc[is]

no access to public games, no auction house, no trading, no chatting in public or game channels, no customized messages with friend requests and no Global Play until their payment information is verified.

So... single player? Cool beans, you're almost there Blizz, just a little further.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

So, it's again punishment of the good costumer to unsuccessfully fight the "bad guys"?
Just a solution to the bad guys, but 1 extra game and activate it. When your old game is banned, play on the new one because 3 days already passed. And don't forget buying a new one so that you're not restricted by the 3 day rule.


Now lets look how the blind part of the blizz fanboys defend this idiotic decision.

Captcha: carry on

Yep, I agree, carry on.

 

[tmande2nd]

Good job Blizzard.
You have yet again made me glad to have not bought your game!

 

[drkchmst]

for the protection of the players...who says I want to be protected. I want to play the game locally on my computer alone! I am a stereotypical gamer I have no life and you can bet I don't want to play with these things I hear people calling "friends". rabble rabble rabble

 

[A.Balthazor]

This is like buying a video card but not being able to display certain resolutions until the manufacturer makes an arbitrary decision.

Or a speed governor on a car that unlocks once the manufacturer makes an arbitrary decision.

Or... use your imagination. This is just really bad.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Actually not being able to chat is a good thing! It's no surpise that some people out there think the chat message is a place to spam your ads to the players who just want to play it!

 

[Evil Smurf]

this is why pirates exist. *sigh* when will they learn?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Huh. People who complain about the online requirement due to poor internet connection won't be affected by this as they are unlikely to buy a digital copy due to the slow download speeds incurred by there previous noted connection woes. At least mad people won't get any angrier then right? right? ...hello...

This seems reasonable. Blizzard has a similar restriction on WOW for people who use online purchases for the game. Its to verify that the funds actually get transferred before lifting restrictions. Otherwise they'd have to lift them and then drop them again if a transfer didn't go through. I suppose avoiding that potential overlap time is there primary goal. Still I'd be nice if they actually noted that this is to protect them before it is protect customers.

 

[Doom972]

Alright Blizzard, the message is clear. You don't want people buying digital copies in your store so you can have all the money to yourself. You want people to go and buy a physical copy and give the majority of money to the store. Fair enough.

 

[Albino Boo]

this is why pirates exist. *sigh* when will they learn?

Yawn, pirates exits because they want something for nothing.

Alright Blizzard, the message is clear. You don't want people buying digital copies in your store so you can have all the money to yourself. You want people to go and buy a physical copy and give the majority of money to the store. Fair enough.

The retailer will only be getting about 10-20% of the cover price. Digital distribution makes cost savings largely by not having physically produce and ship media.

 

[Tamrin]

this is why pirates exist. *sigh* when will they learn?

Yawn, pirates exits because they want something for nothing.

Mostly, but not 100% true. Some people that buy games are thankful for pirates because they download the cracks that pirates use to enable offline gameplay when online restrictions just have no place in certain games/game settings.

 

[PingoBlack]

Here is a trick question for amazing news team at Escapist:
How long does it take on average between online CC authorization and actual monetary transaction? Possibly up to 72 hours?

Yeah, your beloved pirate friends are also credit card fraudsters. Thank them for this as much as you praise them for "protecting your consumer rights".

It's easy to blame Blizzard or Activision, but the world is just not black and white.

 

[Kross]

Blizzard auto deleting/locking accounts of scammers is easy for them. Blocking off all the communication channels is for the players (and secondarily, for their support that has to deal with spam reports).

In the space of an hour a couple weeks ago, I got 2 friend requests with a gold seller URL, and the brief time I was in general chat before I left, there were several different gold sellers spamming as well. Also, while it hasn't happened to me, you get similar chat spam if you join lower level public games (There was one game where I joined and a couple minutes later, some random person was trying to sell their items in chat, not sure if it was a typical spammer, but was enough to leave the game immediately). These people all get banned in under a day (if not almost immediately from reports - now that reports are actually doing something), but they just register a new account with fake/stolen payment info and spam again.

To the person who mentioned farmers buying copies in advance and letting the time run up, they do that as well, though most try to find ways to get accounts without spending any money (which gets the account disabled as soon as the CC auth fails). Gold selling has pretty slim margins, typically the only accounts that get bought are banks to hold their inventory or high level farming accounts (generally rare due to time investment and too many eggs in one basket - but more common when they can exploit to high levels quickly). And these accounts don't interact with players directly to minimize chances of getting caught.

This trick was better in the early days of online credit card payments where the processors would typically batch authorize on hour+ intervals (and before CVV numbers). I've seen online games where you could fake a CC number by taking an existing card and changing a few numbers using the Luhn checksum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm] to get a few free minutes where you could log in. And then just never log out for a free afternoon of gaming.

While I'm a fan of the Diablo series, I've also had to deal with the moderation/banning aspect of online games from the support end. It's not a small problem, and spammers are an issue that players get very vocally angry about having to deal with. The level restriction was a bit heavy handed, so it's nice to see it removed.

 

[Doom972]

this is why pirates exist. *sigh* when will they learn?

Yawn, pirates exits because they want something for nothing.

Alright Blizzard, the message is clear. You don't want people buying digital copies in your store so you can have all the money to yourself. You want people to go and buy a physical copy and give the majority of money to the store. Fair enough.

The retailer will only be getting about 10-20% of the cover price. Digital distribution makes cost savings largely by not having physically produce and ship media.

I won't argue with you about the exact cut the store gets. Even if it's only 10% they're still shooting themselves in the foot with this draconic policy.
They can just as easily disable an account after realizing that they won't get the money for it.

 

[sabitha14]

So... single player? Cool beans, you're almost there Blizz, just a little further.

 

[Royas]

How do we get them to NOT lift the restrictions, ever? No chat, no public games, no auction house... sound like the Diablo I wanted as opposed to the Diablo they made.