Blizzard CEO Responds to Diablo III Controversy

[Durgiun]

The only reason blizz gets away with it is because they have some of the most stupidly devoted fans around.

Skinner box is a hell of a drug.

 

[vezon]

"the auction house isn't about making extra cash for Blizzard". LOL what a HUGE LIE.
If they only care about players security the trasaction fee would have been much much smaller or even free. Ofc the idea born after they saw and fighted heavily the black market in WoW. They saw how much money people spent on items, so voila, a new Diablo, a game which empathize loot.
The MAIN reason that Diablo is only-online to make auction house more secure. (much more)
The second excuses "Blizzard simply wasn't prepared for the enormous demand for the game". How the f...k they have the nerve to say such a crap. They had experience with WoW, did they top that number and was not enough? Dont make me laugh. They had a bad design, which can't be fixed with money and a few hundreds servers plus. Thats why even after 2 moths they still got issues.

 

[beniki]

Well, I'm sure your investors and share holders were happy to read that open letter.

Games developers are getting good at corporate speak these days though. A far cry from when the world's best designers thought that putting in random easter eggs was good marketing.

But please... please...

It's 'problem'. Not 'challenge'. Can't help but think of those positive thinking nuts when someone says "No challenge buddy."

 

[Me55enger]

Unless you're in academia, having to explain yourself is usually the first sign that you've done something wrong.

Truer words have never been spoken.

The release of D3 has been, and still is, a total farce.

Leaders of one of the biggest online games producers should not have underestimated the size of the release of an always online game.

 

[Skeleon]

I think my favorite response in all of this comes from Median XL, the best mod for Diablo 2 (remember that Blizzard? MODS. You know, stuff that increases the longevity of your game!). Their response:

"We would like to thank Diablo 3 for reminding players how much they missed Diablo 2"

Hehe, yeah. Also currently on their website:

"Diablo III is imbalanced, lacks replay value and feels like a cheap money grab. This might be a very good time to download Median XL again and cleanse the taint from your memories. Welcome back."

Median hat me coming back to D2 for years and it might actually do that again at some point in the future.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Snippity
EDIT: A guy posted a translation of the letter, and it's bloody funny.

Dear Money,

Now that we've ignored your feedback for two months and we aren't making as much money on the RMAH as we hoped, I would like to take a step back and discuss how we can molest your wallets more effectively.

We've had an enormous amount of complaints since the launch. I speak for everyone at Blizzard when I say that you are loud and annoying and we hate you. We truly believe "Every Dollar Matters," so I want to thank you for sharing your experiences in an effort to help us figure out how to be more subtle in our gouging. Your money makes it possible for us to continue developing Brother Kotick's vision of a micro transaction utopia, and we never take that for granted.

The launch week of Diablo III was obviously a debacle. The positive was that we made nine-hundred trillion dollars, the not so positive is that you couldn't play the game. We were thrilled that Diablo III made all of the money ever (topping even our most recent debacle). We've been so floored by the response that we all took three week vacations in small island countries and bought BMWs with toilets built into the seats. Frank Little in accounting bought a lifetime subscription to Cherry Trees Weekly. Guy's weird.

The launch had many challenges, chief among those being our insistence on always-online, our inability to properly gauge demand, our logistical incompetence in meeting demand and our unwillingness to spend the money necessary to ensure that we only "double it" when it comes to untested game mechanics, never to hardware infrastructure. However, I do not wish to apologize for the misstep--after all, it wasn't us who crashed our servers for three days straight. You did that. We will do our absolute minimum to conquer this for future releases if we feel like it.

In response to the immediate and overwhelming demand for a faithful followup to Diablo II, the team did everything they should have done a month previous to allow players to play the game they paid for. Despite these efforts, you keep crashing our servers by your insistence on playing the game. Rather than address this directly, I'll just say that even as we work to drive you away from the game and into the less-hardware-intensive Auction Houses, it's a sure bet your hardcore characters will die from lag spikes and server outages. We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we're committed to keeping you paying for anything we make, no matter how rotten and cynical it actually is. Have faith and you will be rewarded. With $5.

We are not satisfied with only making nine-hundred trillion dollars; we want people to continue paying for Blizzard games for a very long time. The Diablo III team has made a passable, lukewarm and aesthetically pleasing experience. As such, our teams are working hard to fill in the gaps with all sorts of ancillary stuff. Kind of like how the frog DNA in Jurassic Park filled in the gaps in the dinosaur DNA and caused the dinosaurs to spontaneously change sexes. This is why Diablo is a woman. Because of the frogs.

You've seen some of that work already in patch 1.0.3, and you'll see additional "improvements" with patch 1.0.4. On the game balance front, this update will contain changes designed to further treat this game like WoW. We know that the "2 trillion builds" we touted before launch was perhaps a bit optimistic, but we would realistically like to get that number up to five. Maybe six. Per class. Another topic we?ve seen actively discussed is the fact that better, more distinct Legendary items are needed. We agree. I have no explanation whatsoever for why legendary items have been useless for two whole months, but Patch 1.0.4 will include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably (hopefully) won?t be expecting, like extra frost damage or reflects damage back at attacker.

We're also working on a number of features that already exist, such as chatting with your friends, joining their games and seeing their achievements. In addition, we will be constantly improving the auction house since we know that's like super duper important to you all. This is how your money is being used. Thought you should know.

Regarding the real-money auction house, our primary goal for including this in the game was to provide convenience and peace of mind for those players who might otherwise turn to third-party services to buy items. Unfortunately that goal got lost when the guy in charge of itemization, Ned, had a stroke and the part of his brain that makes game design decisions leaked out his ears and into his cereal. Also, Ned has a hard time eating cereal anymore because the brains made him sick. Pray for Ned, please.

Anyway, the RMAH was created to protect you. We needed to keep you safe from the big, scary black market sites that all of you would, of course, be going to for items you couldn't find in-game because of Ned and his bad choices. It was never our intention for you to feel like the auction house is mandatory, so stop feeling like that. What are you, an idiot? We did it for your own good! Now you understand and we can all move on together.

One other common topic we?ve seen in the forums is the always-connected experience, and the perception that the online requirement is nothing but an ineffective form of copy protection that has already been cracked. While we?ve never said that this requirement guarantees that there will be no cheating or game cracks, we did strongly imply it was necessary because of all the cheating and cracks in Diablo II. Seeing that cheating and cracks still exist, we would like to divert your attention to this cute bunny: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3XBUPZtl2hk/TkzFiB6HxgI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/z4rxNi333T0/s1600/cute+bunny+011.jpg.

Diablo III's always-connected requirement is necessary for, like, the integrity of the experience. If someone knows what that means, please email us. It's also necessary for us to support you playing with your friends (even if you don't have any), because we don't want you doing that yourself via a LAN. LANs are scary. A LAN once ate my friend. It's true. Look it up.

I know many of you are also looking forward to patch 1.1, our PvP update, which will come out in maybe 6 more months. We wouldn't want to just flip the switch and let people just attack each other. That would be a disaster! Instead, the PvP we're providing will provide a wonderful, controlled and constrained arena combat experience which will satisfy WoW players, which seems to be our primary demographic for some weird reason.

We're also doing some other things and stuff. It's going to be awesome. We can't give out any specifics but get excited!

As always, we pretend to care about your feedback and do whatever we want regardless. Just think of us as Congress. The Congress of Fun?, and Jay Wilson is Joe Biden. Suck on that!

Always yours my sweet, sugary doves,

Mike Morhaime

Link - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6146724759

EDIT 2 : Electric Boogaloo - Thread got deleted, since funny and legitimate criticism is obviously lies and propaganda put about by Communist Nazis to encourage the murder of baby pandas.

Glad I saved a copy, though. Hey, Blizzard Censorship Department (population 115,657), Come At Me Bros!

Come at me, too, Blizz. If you can't take the criticisms, don't bother to make the speeches. And games designed to try and make you more money.

Seriously, that was a funny read - and dead on the money, so to speak. This is something that should not be allowed to be erased or forgotten easily. The only thing I enjoy out of Blizzard is StarCraft 2 at the moment, and they're only getting my money IF Heart of the Swarm turns out to be rather decent.

For the record, I once pre-ordered the Collector's Edition of D3 until I heard the news regarding the RMAH and the "always on-line" requirement. I cancelled it and pre-ordered the Ultimate Vault Hunter's Edition of Borderlands 2.

And I'm still singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", by the way.

Ah wimoweh, ah wimoweh, ah wimoweh, ah wimoweh... ^^

 

[Dogstile]

I'm aware of that. My question is, why do they need to have an isolated single player campaign? Why not have it exactly like it is now, except only have the login prompt come up if you try to use any of the features that require Battle.net (RMAH, Chat, Friends list etc.). Or have a button on the character select screen that says "Login to Battle.net"

They would have to isolate "offline" characters from "online" characters, just as they did with Diablo II, to prevent character tampering, item modding, gold spawning, etc. from working its way into the online ecosystem.

Since I'm fairly certain all that stuff happens anyway, I have to ask "Why?"

Your character? Not stored on your computer. Blizzard has that character on a server, and you can't touch it except by logging in through their system.

And again, how difficult would it be to change that?

I'll save you his response. Not much, all they have to do is change where the file saves to. They wanted to do this on purpose, you don't program a game this big from a company that big without meticulously planning it out.

Goddammit blizzard i'm onto you.

That still doesn't address my central question, that being how difficult would it be for them to change it now considering all the negative backlash?

Now? Now it'll probably be a bit harder. I'm pretty sure they developed it so the server they run does everything (damage, loot drops, etc) rather than your end of the game client. It would be harder to change now that they've made the game.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Be nice to have a semblance of choice. Nothing like being forced into something against their will.

The lack of choice is y i haven't played the game since beating normal. When you spend more time window shopping than you do actually playing the game. I think something has gone wrong <.<

 

[Azuaron]

I'm aware of that. My question is, why do they need to have an isolated single player campaign? Why not have it exactly like it is now, except only have the login prompt come up if you try to use any of the features that require Battle.net (RMAH, Chat, Friends list etc.). Or have a button on the character select screen that says "Login to Battle.net"

They would have to isolate "offline" characters from "online" characters, just as they did with Diablo II, to prevent character tampering, item modding, gold spawning, etc. from working its way into the online ecosystem.

Since I'm fairly certain all that stuff happens anyway, I have to ask "Why?"

Your character? Not stored on your computer. Blizzard has that character on a server, and you can't touch it except by logging in through their system.

And again, how difficult would it be to change that?

All that stuff barely happens, and Blizzard quickly bans anyone they catch doing it (including Linux users because using WINE to play Diablo III is apparently cheating). They can only catch people cheating because all the information is on their servers.

How difficult is it to change? Very.

With an online-only game, surprisingly little is actually on the player's computer. Basically, all the PC has to do is:

* Graphically display the world and GUI and play the appropriate sounds
* Receive player inputs and send those inputs to the server

While the server:

* Keeps track of everyone's location (monsters and players)
* Builds the maps
* Keeps track of hits, hit areas, attacks, defenses, timings, potions, everything
* Tracks stats of everything (monsters and players)

The hack way to make a single-player campaign would be to, essentially, run a "server" instance on the player's computer that the player then "connects" to for single-player, and just disable everything needing a network. But Blizzard isn't going to use a hack solution for their largest game ever, so they have to go through the process of completely redefining how the entire core system of the game works: when a player presses a button, it must move the character, instead of asking the server to move the character and receive the latest location. And they have to do it without completely breaking the game.

 

[Zulnam]

"The launch week of Diablo III was memorable for many reasons -- some positive, and some not so positive (read "negative")," Morhaime wrote. "We were thrilled that Diablo III had the biggest PC-game launch ever, surpassing the lifetime sales of [World of Warcraft: Cataclysm] (the previous record holder for biggest PC-game launch) in a matter of weeks. We've been floored by the response. However, the launch had many challenges (read "problems") as well."

I hate PR speeches. They always try to keep a positive tone and highlight the good parts, even when they're talking about a screw up.

 

[beniki]

I'm aware of that. My question is, why do they need to have an isolated single player campaign? Why not have it exactly like it is now, except only have the login prompt come up if you try to use any of the features that require Battle.net (RMAH, Chat, Friends list etc.). Or have a button on the character select screen that says "Login to Battle.net"

They would have to isolate "offline" characters from "online" characters, just as they did with Diablo II, to prevent character tampering, item modding, gold spawning, etc. from working its way into the online ecosystem.

Since I'm fairly certain all that stuff happens anyway, I have to ask "Why?"

Your character? Not stored on your computer. Blizzard has that character on a server, and you can't touch it except by logging in through their system.

And again, how difficult would it be to change that?

All that stuff barely happens, and Blizzard quickly bans anyone they catch doing it (including Linux users because using WINE to play Diablo III is apparently cheating). They can only catch people cheating because all the information is on their servers.

How difficult is it to change? Very.

With an online-only game, surprisingly little is actually on the player's computer. Basically, all the PC has to do is:

* Graphically display the world and GUI and play the appropriate sounds
* Receive player inputs and send those inputs to the server

While the server:

* Keeps track of everyone's location (monsters and players)
* Builds the maps
* Keeps track of hits, hit areas, attacks, defenses, timings, potions, everything
* Tracks stats of everything (monsters and players)

The hack way to make a single-player campaign would be to, essentially, run a "server" instance on the player's computer that the player then "connects" to for single-player, and just disable everything needing a network. But Blizzard isn't going to use a hack solution for their largest game ever, so they have to go through the process of completely redefining how the entire core system of the game works: when a player presses a button, it must move the character, instead of asking the server to move the character and receive the latest location. And they have to do it without completely breaking the game.

Forgive my ignorance, but couldn't Blizzard just copy the necessary functions from the server programs and input them into the player client?

Well actually I don't know... how big a folder is the actual number crunching of the mechanics compared to the texture packs and GUI players already have installed? Just ball park, I realise you don't work for the company Kind of curious how big a patch it would take to make it single player.

 

[Overusedname]

The only reason blizz gets away with it is because they have some of the most stupidly devoted fans around.

Valve fans.*

*(This statement was written by a stupidly devoted Valve fanboy.)

But I think you have a point. Diablo is not my cup of tea, but if it was I couldn't deal with the frustration. And this letter is a little...condescending.

To the CEO, just owe up to mistakes man. Respect is not overrated, so start earning it. Acknowledging your missteps can go a LONG way.

 

[Malisteen]

There may be good reasons for online-only play, but many people, myself included, don't have the internet connections for it. Oh, well. Really hope this doesn't become the new thing.

 

[Bostur]

Forgive my ignorance, but couldn't Blizzard just copy the necessary functions from the server programs and input them into the player client?

Well actually I don't know... how big a folder is the actual number crunching of the mechanics compared to the texture packs and GUI players already have installed? Just ball park, I realise you don't work for the company Kind of curious how big a patch it would take to make it single player.

The easiest way would probably be to distribute a server with the game that the client would connect to locally. It can be done completely transparently without the user needing to be aware of the infrastructure. And it wouldn't take up much room at all, the actual software of a game is usually a very small part of the install size, most room is taken up by textures, sound and 3D models.

There are a few issues with doing it of course. Offline characters would need to be isolated from the online gameplay and some players may later regret rolling an offline character. It would be much easier to 'crack' the game since everything needed for playing would be present on the user's computer, but according to Blizzard thats not an issue for them. Finally it would make it easier to reverse engineer the system to create bots and cheats for online mode.
My guess is that the real reason for not doing it, is that Blizzard wants to create a market where all gaming happens online giving much more direct control to the publisher, similar to the plans that most big publishers have. I think this is a long term strategy that isn't directly related to D3. SC2 uses a similar approach even though it technically can be played offline.

 

[Worgen]

The only reason blizz gets away with it is because they have some of the most stupidly devoted fans around.

Valve fans.*

*(This statement was written by a stupidly devoted Valve fanboy.)

But I think you have a point. Diablo is not my cup of tea, but if it was I couldn't deal with the frustration. And this letter is a little...condescending.

To the CEO, just owe up to mistakes man. Respect is not overrated, so start earning it. Acknowledging your missteps can go a LONG way.

Valve fans are pretty dedicated also but so far Valve haven't been abusing us like blizzard does to its fans.

 

[TallestGargoyle]

Yeah, so because all earlier Blizzard games, Borderlands, Dark Souls, even an online shooter like Team Fortress 2 for crying out loud has offline modes, Diablo 3 required online access to allow for persistent online characters?

Fuck off Blizzard. I'm glad I haven't bought any of your games since Diablo 1...

 

[lotanerve]

First, I want to state that I don't have a copy of Diablo 3. I'm not exactly believing the PR answers for the reasons requiring an always-online connection, even when playing single player.

For those that suspect the reason for the always-online requirement is because of the auction house feature, you are 100% correct. It's not a new assumption, it was predicted when it was first announced. Yes, Blizzard has a percentage of the transactions. But most of all, Blizzard is afraid of hackery, exploitation or the like that may be used during off-line play in order to obtain high-grade drops. By requiring the player to be online, they can monitor the methods players use to obtain loot, and the frequency it drops. You can imagine the cries and wrath of the players if there was a playable offline option, and certain unsavory players were using it to circumvent intended gameplay to their financial advantage. By requiring an always-online connection, Blizzard nips this potential problem in the bud.

While I'm not saying Diablo loyalist wanted an auction house, it was provided as a new feature. And with it, came the always-online requirement. If Blizzard ever decides to relax this requirement, expect the auction house to be suspended.