Diablo III Has Single Player Online

[Blackbird71]

Lets add a point here.

Diablo 3 costs a finite ammount of money. Running online servers so that I can play my game for the rest of time costs an infinite amount of money. You don't need to be a math genius to see how that is going to work out.

The moment it stops being profitable is the moment they shaft everyone who bought the game and start shutting down servers.

Fixed it for ya.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

Also this is an interesting article about the deeper reasoning why they are doing this, albeit somewhat long: http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-one

Damn you! I just lost many, many hours of my life reading that article and others that the author pointed to within it. Stupid wikipedia syndrome...

Great articles, and a lot more insight in them then I was expecting. Thanks for pointing the site out.

It's funny what happens when you connect all of the dots...

 

[Geosurface]

So, as a Diablo fan since the original game and someone who is/was looking forward to Diablo 3 greatly... and as a submariner in the US Navy who deploys without internet for months at a time, how exactly am I supposed to play the campaign while underway on my laptop?

 

[cefm]

Sounds like a steaming pile of bullsh*t to me. Each of these features impedes GAME PLAY and frustrates the player - and all are caused by Blizz having issues that have nothing to do with game play itself. They have their priorities seriously screwed up.

 

[cefm]

Also this is an interesting article about the deeper reasoning why they are doing this, albeit somewhat long: http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-one

Everyone should read this article. No really people. Read it and read it good. Although Blizzard is the focus, it highlights what the big video game companies are aiming for right now.

Dear God that is the best historical analysis of the video games industry and the advent of online play and multiplayer online I've ever read. Everyone who has played a video game and particularly used an online service in the last 20 years needs to read that thing start to finish - I don't care how long it is!

 

[trlkly]

Thing is, even with online play, there's no reason for a lot of these restrictions. Pausing? Why does it matter? The reason you can't do it in multiplayer is that you don't want to pause the game for everyone else. There's no reason in single player. You already mentioned how stupid logging in is. And I can't believe there's actually lag--there's no reason for that. Download pieces of the game. Oh noes, someone cheats a bit because the game is on their computer--so what? It's SINGLE PLAYER. I'm not cheating anyone but myself.

The only good thing I can see about this, BTW, is that maybe they'll realize that piracy is not driving down their sales. People who pirate aren't going to pay for this game anyways.