Diablo 3 "Always Online" Requirement Helps Fight Hackers, Says Blizzard

[zentario]

hey, guess why torchlight 2 is getting more popular with each passing day.....

TL2 is only _singleplayer_ in OFFLINE-Mode: http://www.torchlight2game.com/about

I think we should be fair and not claim things that other don't deliver either,
like "multiplayer in local network" or other stuff claimed in this thread.

there is no system without flaws. i mean, for some time mmo's were meant to be the ultimate protection measure. you cant play without access to server. what happened? private servers.....

What you do with your friends is your business. The problem with the WoW-Cloners was,
that they asked for money to run the servers for traffic cost - which is simply a No-No.

The true problem for Blizzard: everybody thought battle.net stinked in the later
stages with D2. And as a company, I wouldn't like that people think its
"inevitable" that it will stink again. Their huge money printing machine WoW
seems to run quite fine. It seems they know what they are doing.

I wonder: if there is this *HUGE* market for making a Diablo 2 follow-up the last
ten years - where are the other companies? Torchlight is quite late to the game.

Maybe because millions downloaded Diablo2 off the net and played with their
friends, making ZILCH money for Blizzard? I have problems when people claim
"its like picking up gold bars that fell from the sky!" It's not that easy.

Blizzard simply thinks, that they can redefine *their* players. And I find that ok.
Everything WoW didn't do created a flood of other MMPORGS with varying content.
If someone things that TL2 is more their ilk, that's fine. That the type of competition
people like and want.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Ahh... No. That isn't fair, making items for your offline character I'd say is fine. Hero Editor for Diablo II was a great way for skipping to a particular point for LAN play and making sure everyone was geared up.

 

[OMGIllithan]

Snip.

I feel like the best way to debate this is to share my thoughts on how DRM should function. I believe that a developer has a right to attempt to protect people from illegally downloading their games. I do, however, believe that a developer has an obligation to make whatever form of DRM they choose to be as unintrusive as possible.

Now with that said, I don't believe battle.net is an attempt to slap DRM onto games. It was created with the purpose of linking all blizzard games together. It also comes with the benefit of being able to download your games anywhere at any time from a browser. You can also communicate with friends across games. In short, it makes the playing experience better for everything that has been released from Blizzard since its release so far. Now the reason why they require an always on connection is because they decided not to have a separate single and multi player account, which I think is the heart of this issue, but they did give reasons why they made this decision. My point is that battle.net was not created with the purpose of being DRM, but that happened to be a secondary side effect. And I'm ok with that because its presented with so many positives along with it. This part, I'm sure some people will disagree with.

As far as you feeling like you're being charged an 'anti-piracy subscription fee', I'm not quite sure I understand that viewpoint. You're not being charged any extra to play the game at all, unless for some reason you were neglecting purchasing an internet connection until this game comes out.

Last, as far as balance and cheating goes, you're right that there will always be people trying to hack and cheat. However if we use wow for comparison, cheating is handled rather efficiently in wow (and even SC2), and I'm sure Blizzard has learned at this point techniques on how to track the people who are cheating so they are banned quickly. I am not a fan of the "Don't stop them because they'll do it anyways" argument. It only holds any weight because of the anonymity of the internet because people are afraid to stand up to those who want to watch the world burn.

P.S. Thanks for reading that post I made, I put a lot of time and effort into it hoping to persuade people to think more positively.

For sure. busters made the astute obrservation on another D3 thread that Blizzard's (marketing) approach seems markedly similar to that of an MMO. If they're looking to build a game that relies heavily on a regulated, well-monitored online community for its continued popularity then, yes, they should be looking at successes such as Starcraft and WoW as their frame of reference. But to build that community forcibly by making the game's community exclusively online is not something I can agree with, especially when the previous, successful, Diablo games at least gave the option of offline play. An 'option' that, for some of us, was the reason we purchased the game in the first place.

And I make no apology that this view is really born of my own experiences of Diablo and the nature of my interactions with the games. Whilst I never played online with strangers I had many a long session either on single-player offline or over LAN with all my mates crammed into my room at university. That's what the Diablo experience was for me; without the need for, or cost of, any Internet access (unless we were looking up builds!). The 'anti-piracy subscription fee' was a remark as to the cost of using the Internet over a period where I wouldn't normally be online (e.g. when playing Diablo), this can be both financial and qualitative, especially for ISPs who drop speeds after you've passed a certain threshold (which, in gaming/video-streaming households, is often reached.....sooner than expected). Granted Blizzard isn't making money directly from this (though you are spending more time on their 'shop-floor', as it were) but more money is still going out of the household finances at the end of the month.

I accept that DRM, either as intentional or circumstantial, is not going to go away, for, as you quite rightly point out, it has the potential to do much good - I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. But in its current format and utility by Blizzard, on this occasion I feel its doing more harm than good by clunking all its buyers over the head.

Though I admire Blizzard for at least testing the water (even if they did use such a beloved franchise as the sacrificial lamb). In a few years, I hope we'll have a sleek DRM system molded by user feedback and suited to user purpose rather than the draconian bulldozer it currently is, and D3, for better or worse, will have been a stepping stone in its evolution. Till then, "I do not agree with what Blizzard has to say, but I'll defend to the death their right to say it".

P.S. It was hard to find a post where you'd laid all your cards on the table on this matter as most of them seemed to be responses to other posters. And yeah, you didn't disappoint; plenty of heart in that post.

I've had similar experiences at lans with friends as well, so I totally understand where you're coming from. However I did play online a lot as well so I guess thats where we differ. The way Diablo 2 online worked was that you never HAD to interact with other people, you could create your own game, put a password on it, then play by yourself if you wanted to. From that perspective there was just the option to play in other's games if you wanted to.

Now I'm only guessing based on my experiences but I think the thing that probably affects your more is the fact that you can only have one person playing the game per copy. I know with my family we used to burn the discs so 4-5 of us could all play on one copy (on a dial up connection at that). Personally, I think the thing that hurt lans with my family more was the fact that we couldn't use one copy to get 5 of us all playing together. Thats probably the only reason that I haven't done many SC2 lans since it came out.

I can understand how you're skeptical, and it's certainly more difficult for you to see the benefit since you didn't get to experience the hacking and scams firsthand. All I can say is that it'll probably be much better than most people are making it out to be. Worst case, you bought a game thats only pretty good and will put 30 hours into it instead of 300.

 

[Odlus]

It's a single player game

No it's not. Blizzard has called it a co-op game since the beginning.

I mean, have you people even been reading these articles? How many times has Blizzard said that part of the reason they're not offering off-line play is because they WANT people to play together? That's what they view their game as, an online, co-op game.

It may technically not be a "MMO" but neither is Heroes of Newarth either. Just because it's not a MMO doesn't mean it MUST offer an offline mode.

I should be able to play a single player game any way I want without paying more money after purchase to get access to all of it

You don't have to pay extra to get access to all of it. It's an auction house.

and forcing online-only to prevent cheating on an optional service that isn't part of the game itself IS forcing customers to put up with it.

There are more ways cheating impacts the game than just the AH, it's just that the existence of the AH makes keeping the game cheat free all the more important. As noted in the article, hacks and exploits were a huge complaint fans had about D2 and was something that was commonly requested to be improved in D3.

And of course it's a scheme to make money, they wouldn't go through all this trouble if nickle and diming customers if it wasn't going to make them a lot more money.

You should read up on how it works.

 

[Odlus]

A lot of Free-to-play MMOs use the same model

No they don't. The F2P MMOs you're talking about feature loot that is sold directly by the developers. The Auction House is between players only, with Blizzard only charging to use the service (they don't get a cut of the winning bid). And if players don't want to bring real money into the fold then they can still use the ingame gold auction house from which Blizzard gets nothing.

With this in mind, there's no incentive for Blizzard to rack up any grind (although complaining about "grind" in a Diablo game seems a bit silly. Farming mass numbers of enemies is pretty much all you do in those games).

 

[zentario]

No. They're only claiming that it's better because it's online-only.
Which is provably false.

They claim that they didn't want to release the server code to the public
to make cheating/hacking harder. Which is not a false claim - there are two
main ways to design a game like Diablo:

a) you write a serverclient out
as single player/local server solution
b) you write a server<->client system and then scrap that, and write a
complete integrated local-only single player system - e.g. two different games

It much easier to hack the system if they give you the server code
in single player. It is unbeatable in online mode? No. But much harder,
especially when they change the protocol/randomize commands here and there.
Just ask the banking industry how they do it :^x

You can argue, that a billion dollar company could go b) "just because", but
the argument stands. You can see it at work in all that other crappy written
MMPORGS. Everywhere there is a offline mode to allow temporal local
farming/grinding, the cheating, duping and other stuff is *rampant*.

 

[Odlus]

I'm not quite ready to pull out the torches and pitchforks yet, but only if I can ignore the auction house entirely and lock down my game so only people I invite can play with me so I can effectively play a single player game.....I'll be willing to give it a go.

But if I have to resort to the auction house (in-game gold or real money, doesn't matter to me) to get some important item, or have strangers drop into my game then I won't bother. I've found that to enjoy the story, singeplayer is the way to go. Coop is all about killing stuff, I've never had the time to stop and read stuff or listen to a story when playing with my buddies, otherwise I miss out on all the XP.

It won't be any different from playing Diablo 2 over battle.net. You can play on your own if you want, and you never have to trade with other players if you don't want to, but it might take you awhile if you're trying to get a specific item. The ingame gold AH is just taking the place of trade games, since ingame gold is supposed to actually be worth something this time around.

 

[Atmos Duality]

a) you write a serverclient out
as single player/local server solution
b) you write a server<->client system and then scrap that, and write a
complete integrated local-only single player system - e.g. two different games

It much easier to hack the system if they give you the server code
in single player. It is unbeatable in online mode? No. But much harder,
especially when they change the protocol/randomize commands here and there.

If b) is just a) minus the server code, then you contradict your own argument for cutting single player. The player still can play the game offline, but they don't have that code that will allegedly let hackers break into Diablo 3 (a situation on its own that Begs the Question given the relationship Blizzard has with those who run illegal WoW servers).

You can argue, that a billion dollar company could go b) "just because", but
the argument stands. You can see it at work in all that other crappy written
MMPORGS. Everywhere there is a offline mode to allow temporal local
farming/grinding, the cheating, duping and other stuff is *rampant*.

1) Except those systems with hacking/cheating/cheating aren't part of the game economy Blizzard wants to protect. They are isolated and not contributing to the hacking/duping BECAUSE THEY AREN'T ON BNET 2.0.

No they don't. The F2P MMOs you're talking about feature loot that is sold directly by the developers. The Auction House is between players only, with Blizzard only charging to use the service (they don't get a cut of the winning bid). And if players don't want to bring real money into the fold then they can still use the ingame gold auction house from which Blizzard gets nothing.

Taking a cut of all real-world item transactions isn't an incentive?
The only reason people will use the Real Currency AH is to make money; which means the items must have a real-life value.
Since players will be able to buy and sell sums of Gold for real money, that means even Gold will have a real-world value; so both Auction Houses are linked there.

Simply put: The more grind, the longer each item will retain its value, which means more transactions. Yes, Blizzard has an incentive to do that.

 

[Alar]

The last sentence has way more meaning in it than I think was intended. Blizzard, at the end of the day, is NOT dictating how people play the game in the strictest sense of the word. They are forcing those who are playing to also be connected, but this is quite a far cry from dictating how the game is to be played by people who purchase it. Misleading by virtue of its broadness, that sentence would be struck down were it offered as an argument in a court.

Additionally, what other methods would you suggest? Server mods? Then people would cry WoW. There is no winning. There is, however, a lot of whining to be had here. I think the always on has more to do with legal stuff of their online auction house. Keeping in mind that Diablo 2 had a third party auction house, I'm totally fine with the inclusion of an in-game one. Less duping, less cheating, less griefing. I don't know if you remember or not, but Diablo 2 was kind of a cesspool of assholes at times.

I'm still scarred from being scammed (the youngling I was) by a teleporting barbarian. That. Bastard.

Yeah, I hear ya. Of all the things people are complaining about, the in-game auction house makes the least sense to me. It was going to happen anyways, so why not let Blizzard do it and make the entire process safer and easier for the consumers?

How does it help fight hackers? Last time I checked, Single Player and Multiplayer were two different things that did not in any way interact with each other. The same goes with LAN. This is just Blizzard spewing out more bullshit.

Because of how Diablo 2's single-player mode interacted with the multi-player mode. You could take your character that was in single-player and USE IT online, taking those items with you, or bringing new items into the game.

Could they have just removed that sort of access completely? Sure, probably. I'm not sure how it would be done, in technical terms, but it probably could have been.

But, as the rep said, giving the hackers access to an 'offline server' would make it easier for them to hack the actual servers, and start duping and cheating all over again. It's a lose-lose situation for Blizzard.

 

[Odlus]

No they don't. The F2P MMOs you're talking about feature loot that is sold directly by the developers. The Auction House is between players only, with Blizzard only charging to use the service (they don't get a cut of the winning bid). And if players don't want to bring real money into the fold then they can still use the ingame gold auction house from which Blizzard gets nothing.

Taking a cut of all real-world item transactions isn't an incentive?
The only reason people will use the Real Currency AH is to make money; which means the items must have a real-life value.
Since players will be able to buy and sell sums of Gold for real money, that means even Gold will have a real-world value; so both Auction Houses are linked there.

Simply put: The more grind, the longer each item will retain its value, which means more transactions. Yes, Blizzard has an incentive to do that.

Could you link to me where Blizzard will be allowing players to buy gold with money? I don't recall reading that part on the FAQ, but I could have missed it.

Blizzard only benefits from the "real world value" of those items if they're traded through the real money auction house. It doesn't matter how much gold or an item is worth in dollars, if an item is bought through the ingame gold auction house then Blizzard doesn't get any cut from it.

I mean, really, only the best of the best loot will end up being bought on the real money AH. For anyone else people are just going to figure "why spend real money when I can use ingame gold?"

 

[Raddra]

Blizzard still trying to spin and defend their anti consumer heavyhanded profit seeking business practices huh?

I have a compromise.

Have both offline single player and online.

Have buying form the cash shop available to both, with the proviso offline can only buy with real cash, not in game gold.

Restrict selling to the online server vault characters only.

 

[alinos]

Okay then how about saying that right once we are hacked and their is a rebuild server side out there for hackers to take advantage of.

We will release an offline patch.

instead it's F you so we can stave off the inevitably for 6 months.

 

[Vault101]

Everything that blizzard has done with Diablo 3, I like. I just don't know why people get so mad at blizzard for releasing what looks to be a very good, high quality game. The always-on online connection will only enhance the experience. It's obviously not DRM, it's just to protect against hackers and allow seamless co-operative play. And the added functionality from the Real money auction house is gonna be great.

yeah it definetly enhances the game experience when it drops out

or EVEN better when I cant play it because its eaten all my internet

good game or not there are other good games out there, and many of us have made it clear we dont like this

 

[alinos]

I guess the only answer I can think of is to make a seperate single player mode that can be played offline, but you cannot take that character online. However, that may involve investment of time and money that may not be worth the small percent of players who wish to play single player and offline.

Also, you can guarantee that if they announced that, there'd be an army of people, probably mainly made up of people who play COD and just like bashing the guys who made WOW, saying how it's a terrible idea and it's restricting player freedom and we should boycott not only D3, but WOW and anything made by Blizzard or any other company beginning with B.

Yeah they'll be people who are all like it's splitting the playerbase.

Your ruining it by seperating the onlines and offlines

newsflash the people who want the offline singleplayer are already seperated because They generally can't bloody play.
And I'm talking more the people who genuinely don't have the sort of conditions that others have where they have a constant 20mbs+ internet connection that apparently alot of people seem to think everyone in the world has.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

snip

I just want to say, that was extremely well said; and kudos to you for pointing out the dichotomy whereby developers feel entitled to tell gamers to take their business elsewhere if they don't like their design decisions, but simultaneously refuse to accept that sales figures lower than expected are a result of this attitude, instead milking the piracy scapegoat for all it's worth.

OT: The thing that gets me in this debate is the way certain advocates of this system argue 'Diablo is an online game, get used to it'. I wish that wasn't true. The success of the Diablo formula, as the number of clones demonstrate, is the variety of character builds and the random loot and environment generation. If you play singleplayer, a lot of drops are useless to you, but they make the 'second best' items important and the few uber drops that are useful to you feel all the sweeter. In multiplayer, the trading and drive for maximum efficiency for high end content/pvp quickly eliminates second best items from use, and the best items are quickly proliferated and characters become homogenised in gear.

As seen with Diablo II, Blizzard eventually balances the difficulty of content to stop people steamrolling through with uber items and keep challenge and interest in the game. Doing so though is at the expense of singleplayer, where people don't have access to complete sets of uber gear - UNLESS they turn to hacking or duping. Patch 1.10 personally made my singleplayer experience unplayable past normal difficulty, unless I downloaded a few sets to twink out my characters.

I don't believe the game should be focused and balanced around online, because it deflates the core experience of the game and makes it all about a rush to endgame. Look no further than WoW if you need examples: so many dungeons, raids, item sets, quests etc get abandoned because everyone has to be top-tier. Personalised characters with strange builds and odd gear pieces aren't valued, you get kicked out for not having X gearscore. I wish this wasn't the case with Diablo III, but Blizzard are forcing everyone to play online and facilitating the trading system via the twin auction house model, so that over time everything will be balanced under the presumption that everyone has access to the best gear available. It's for this reason primarily that I won't be buying Diablo III, because I value RPG experiences where you don't feel like you're being punished for using one of the three to four classifications of gear quality below whatever is the best.

 

[Rouzeki]

You know, I keep saying this will be my last word, but since blizzard is so shooting for me to feel utter contempt for them... here goes. Torrasque, you get the post dissection.

The only argument I hear against D3's "always online" policy, is "my internet is shitty".
Well, get better internet then.
If you lag in a game and can't enjoy multiplayer, get better internet.
If you constantly disconnect and can't play a full match, get better internet.
If you drop from a game lobby because your connection is choppy, get better internet.

Im going to do and say this once more. I wish i could do it in big red letters, but inside voices...

"get better internet" is the weakest kickback excuse I've ever seen in this whole situation. you and Wilson-boy here think its just that simple? let me quickly go over why thats quite often NOT POSSIBLE.

Unreliable ISP, cost of using the ISPs in your area, some have outright limitations, or the one that most fits situations that im aware of is simply the area in which people live is not considered "money making" for the service providers in question.

one town an hour from here can't get an internet signal stronger then dial up because of the last reason. never mind the people who constantly travel and use to use diablo II as a way to kill time, as I did.

"Get better internet"? no. people who've waited so long for this game shouldn't have to move because of blizzards acti-level greed over this situation.

oh, and because the game is always online expect any flag in your connection or blizzards server to wreck your dungeon crawl. also expect Tuesday morning maintenance on the game, because ALL of blizzards servers go down then for tweaking.

It applies for every single online multiplayer game ever, so I don't see what the big problem is when Blizzard does it.

Except Diablo II's ilk were viable to play in single player offline just as well as online. never mind there's a precedent here of forcing a genre style (a hack and slash) into an always online model. hack and slashes are supposed to be FLEXABLE affairs. this is about as inflexible as it gets while tossing up a big concrete wall in front of prospective first-day buyers. Namely when prequel fans are now waiting outside the wall, waving sticks and swords because they are not lucky enough to have broadband 24/7.

Blizzard has no faith in their game, so they cut people off.
OR Blizzard's rumored console porting of this game will more than make up for it, and they can milk everyone for the RMAH.

either way you wanna cut it speaks volumes of the new Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard, as a fan since my youngest years of your games and this franchise, you've stomped on parts of my childhood by not just these decisions, but by how hamfisted your being about it. it bodes ill since if they can make this work, people who can't ALWAYS make a good game experience will follow suit.

Sure you can play campaign and firefight in Reach without an internet connection, but you can't get commendations and experience to rank up.
Sure you can play campaign and spec ops in MW2 without an internet connection, but multiplayer is where the real fun is.
Sure you can play TF2 against bots for the rest of your days, but you're kind of missing the point to playing it in the first place, if you don't play against humans.

yes, true, but one thing. those are ALL FPS GAMES. Those games have always needed as cutting an edge of internet connection as possible, along with the MOBA and MMO crowds, in order to keep the game type flowing properly. anyone looking to play an FPS would do well to have an internet connection, but those games aren't the lifeblood of everyone's gaming. They STILL give you more offline options then this game. and that blizzard seems to believe all those years of playing diablo offline was "not the right way" won't change the fact that they are limiting the range of ways to experience their game.

The real problem here, and why I'm not dismissing it is this. Blizzard has been a beacon to the industry, for ill or good, and this move, if it works, (which it will, see below) will end up artificially locking off people from being able to enjoy more experiences, by virtue of emulating blizzards attempt here to make an "always-online" set up that will increase the games long term revenue.

I stand by what Mr. Wilson said:
internet connections were hardly rare

http://broadbandmap.gov/technology

here. explore with the map, and switch on and off the buttons. get a feel for how many people have to resort to wii-fi signals for a connection better than dial up- and we all know how AMAZING wii-fi is for gaming that's always-online.

internet CONNECTIONS aren't rare now, but I can vouch for US broadband technology, short of mobile wireless signals, still being more uncommon then one would expect.

doesn't even matter to me.

This is why blizzard will win. People don't care anymore. Blizzard will win because so long as the restrictions aren't a direct inconvenient to THEM, they don't care. If the rumor of Blizzard making a D3 console port is true, there's more then enough people on console who wouldn't buy D3 before that will. and what doesn't get made up in sales figures will be kicked back in a few months over the RMAH.

Blizzard cheers, ID cheers, other companies follow suit, and how many more games will the people i mentioned above have to get blocked out of. all because of gamer complacency.

Here's where I'd continue with a diatribe about how "it's baffling to me that people defend blizzard on this..." but no.

I'm tired. even if the "wave of the future" occurs 5 years to early and causes everyone much bigger problems as a consequence, I'm sick of screaming off my Facebook and to the rooftops about this.

Blizzard has proven to me they are incompetent to the needs of the very original fans that helped them develop the big 3 franchises that made them the titans that they are today. not only are they incompetent, they are outright dismissive.

Thank you Jay Wilson. Your words succeeded in wringing whatever blizzard fan boy there was left in me, from Diablo 1 to WoW: cataclysm, and then finished stomping it into the mud.

Not only am I practically blocked from buying this game (I travel into said internet dead zone an hour from here often and stay in it.), now i'm avoiding it on sheer principle.

I would rather buy 20 more copies of ET for my Atari and play that each time instead then buy Diablo III now. it wouldn't scar my soul as bad, AND I get to light one on fire. I hope the game fails, pure and simple.

 

[MajorDolphin]

Once again, Blizz shows how out of touch they are. Comparing always-on to the setting of the game is insulting. Just like pirating, hacking will happen and they more or less guaranteed it by blaming this always-on nonsense on hackers. The last thing you want to do is challenge the hackers to hack you. Idiotic move Blizzard.

As for adding the server tech to the users system... perhaps they shouldn't have planned on chaining players to their servers like some type of slave driver. They already screw us with their "license agreements" which basically say we don't own the game we paid for. Now they want to leash us to them.