Dude, not cool. With words like that, I expect to the link to go to a video of an actual wildebeest careening over a cliff. Color me disappointed.Grey Carter said:
Blizzard Apologizes for Diablo III Launch Troubles
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
Perhaps if you had bought HL2 digitally you might have been stuck in that position (I honestly can't remember now) but anyone who bought a physical copy was able to install and play the single player even without being able to authenticate with Valve's servers right away. I was playing the game for hours on release day without it ever getting through to the servers.Abedeus said:
Plus, as someone pointed out, it was the first time a game had really done something like that. But it's 8 years later and one of the biggest companies in the business releasing one of the biggest titles of the year doesn't have a sweet clue how many servers and bandwidth they need on day 1? That's pretty pathetic to be honest. If anything, they should be temporarily renting more than they think they need because spending a bit more money than necessary is always preferable to this kind of bad press. People shouldn't have to wait more than a day to be able to play their game because they didn't want to overspend on servers.
EYE NO, RITE?Genixma said:
The finer points of this can be put up for debate ad nauseam, it won't change the fact that things happened more or less as Blizzard expected they would. They handled the situation as they expected they'd need to, and things have pretty much calmed down, now.
What really bothers me is when people drop "This isn't a single-player game!" as a justification for always-online authentication. It doesn't work that easily, folks. Consider that until I click "Open Game to Public", I'm effectively on my lonesome in a corner of some server dedicated to North American players. Until I make that mouse click or choose to join someone else's game, I'm effectively "offline", in terms of overall functionality. The only online components remaining are the server-side drop resources and the data for whatever bits of randomized events still remain. I'm virtually letting Blizzard suck my bandwidth just so it can confirm I'm not a nasty, filthy pirate.
Honestly, the only good side I can find in all this is essentially allowing for an easier experience in Internet cafés. You have to give up your current station? Fine, log out and go log in somewhere else. Your Demon Hunter's going to be sitting there, waiting for you.
If that's the case, then there's probably an alternate universe out there where a genius at Activision went "Hey, you know what? Let's ask Valve to host our game on Steam! They've got a DRM solution all patched up and generally tolerated by their consumer base - folks will love us for allowing us to add D3 to their Steam accounts!"
But, yeah. It obviously seemed simpler to just throw money at an independent server-based authentication method, because they probably got scared by how easy it is to take a downloaded Steam game's folder and crack the executable and the steam_api.dll file.
Repackage the whole deal in a commercially available installer, post this up on a torrent site, and you're done. Yeah, I can see them rejecting Steam based on that.
They dug their own grave on this one with the always on DRM. But of course they couldn't learn from other people's mistakes (Ubisoft) and realize always on DRM is both unnecessary and cruel to your paying customers. I won't publicly endorse piracy but I can guarantee the guys who stole this game don't even know what any of these problems are.
Handfull of people didn't have any log-in problems so the issue is overblown and pointless. Everyone, EVERYONE i know who bought it day one were having problems most of yesterday too, but it was reported england was one of the worst hit areas.
Long story short, if you got on, lucky you but it doesn't invalidate anyone elses grievences. Stay classy Escapist users, i'm going back to 4chan. It's nicer.
Long story short, if you got on, lucky you but it doesn't invalidate anyone elses grievences. Stay classy Escapist users, i'm going back to 4chan. It's nicer.
I knew there would be problems at launch. I had trouble getting in for maybe the first hour and a half, but ever since I got on a couple of days ago I've had no problems getting back on at all and once in the game I've had no latency problems and have never been kicked from the game.
Although I did manage to kick my friend from the game. He finally got on after hours of trying, I invited him to a party and my invite kicked him and he couldn't get back in again. I thought it was hilarious. He didn't.
Although I did manage to kick my friend from the game. He finally got on after hours of trying, I invited him to a party and my invite kicked him and he couldn't get back in again. I thought it was hilarious. He didn't.
I love how the argument here is this:
Person A says, "I got screwed the the majority of other players trying to simply play this game, this is horrible customer service"
Person B says, "I played the game with ease so Blizzard obviously did nothing wrong and everyone who's complaining needs to shut up."
Person B's argument is laughable.
Person A says, "I got screwed the the majority of other players trying to simply play this game, this is horrible customer service"
Person B says, "I played the game with ease so Blizzard obviously did nothing wrong and everyone who's complaining needs to shut up."
Person B's argument is laughable.
All this stems from the online always requirement. There really is no excuse for not having a character stored on your computer and one stored on their servers. Like has been previously said, if people could play there wouldn't be an issue. Even if an emulator gives a slightly inferior product it still gives the player the option to play at a time and place of their choosing. I never was big into piracy and having already paid for a legit copy I plan to install the crack when it happens. That way I'll have the options that should have been included day one.
Not the best example considering the assets were remade at least 3 times over the years, subsequently dropped, then picked up by another company, slapped together and recoded again in just a few months.oplinger said:
Agreed, this seems to be an all too common logic when defending a company fucking up. I remember when I pointed out that everyone I know who owns a 360, including myself, has had to replace it at least once, I was met with a deluge of replies saying 'nuh uh mine works fine it's obviously your problem!'AzrealMaximillion said:
If the number of people experiencing a problem is great enough to make it newsworthy, then it's the manufacturer that has dropped the ball, not the user.
The online only isn't to fight pirates in this case, it's to secure the RMAH, their new revenue source.
And in order for that business model to work, they can't allow any off-line play, not even play separate from the AH, because then a large group of people would forgo using the AH and thus reducing Blizzards potential revenue.
If the RMAH works, expect to see A LOT more of it in other games.
And in order for that business model to work, they can't allow any off-line play, not even play separate from the AH, because then a large group of people would forgo using the AH and thus reducing Blizzards potential revenue.
If the RMAH works, expect to see A LOT more of it in other games.
It's really some sad for of Buyer's Remorse where people who weren't affected are shielding Blizzard like they were part of some "rapture".rob_simple said:
They shouldn't have had this IN game if it was going to require such drastically inconvenient measures.Ickabod said:
