Diablo III Launch May Get Messy

[Hitchmeister]

Misleading title. Diablo IIIs launch will almost certainly be messy. Anything of that size would be. Blizzard realizes this and is proactively trying to minimize the mess.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

My interest dropped to 0 when I found out the always online requirement.

Binding of Isaac expansion at the end of the month, time to drop another 80 hours into that one. I still have Dungeons of Dredmor to finish post-expansion. Legend of Grimrock has at least 40 hours in it. Torchlight 2 will be out soon enough.

Plenty of other stuff to do and plenty places to spend money that don't contribute to Bobby Kotick's hooker and blow fund.

 

[zombieshark6666]

Just know, that by buying this game you're supporting Always-Online DRM without an Offline Mode, No LAN, Real Money Auction House / Pay2Win, No Mods, Dumbification by removal of Skills/Stats and you're directly feeding your money to this guy if you do that...

If other games "learn" from Diablo III and move even more towards that way, if you see increasing Always-On DRM or Auction House Ripoffs know that YOU, YES YOU are responsible.

But it's DIABLO 3! DIE-AH-BLOW-SREE! You dun gettit. PrINcIplS doNT no foR DIabl01

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I think I'll give it a week before I even buy this game, I'm not paying £45 just to be told to come back later, I'll wait until the this risk lowers a bit.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Guess who won't have a log-in problem?

 

[mfeff]

My interest dropped to 0 when I found out the always online requirement.

Binding of Isaac expansion at the end of the month, time to drop another 80 hours into that one. I still have Dungeons of Dredmor to finish post-expansion. Legend of Grimrock has at least 40 hours in it. Torchlight 2 will be out soon enough.

Plenty of other stuff to do and plenty places to spend money that don't contribute to Bobby Kotick's hooker and blow fund.

QFT

To avoid another ding for low post content? (I mean really... someone has time to do that?)

Could not agree more with the current sentiment... but it is already in effect... let's just take a look at Simcity... same story... there does seem to be a growing sense of disenfranchisement with the consumer concerning lease-ware. Ahh EA daring to be different... and by that, exactly the same. Fun times.

 

[Marudas]

Side note about the article and grabbing your battletag:

Battletags are Non-exclusive, in the sense that as many people as there are players can have the same battletag. Its like Starcraft 2 ids, you get your name, and then you have a hidden Character Code (Like, Yourname.425, where Yourname is all thats visible and 425 is the hidden character code.)

So there's no rush to get your battletag, except that if you try to do it on launch day, there may be quite a bit of traffic all over blizzards various servers that might make it harder for you to get going.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Yeah, I'm not totally against the always online thing, as when you're playing a co-op game, it's good to be able to report offensive and griefing players, and should they get banned, well, online just got a tiny bit better.

However, could they not have made the first part of the game available offline? Sure it may have been pirated (and it WILL be fully pirated, and running on pirate servers, if it's not already out there!), but offering the first part means people have somewhere to learn the game, something to do if there's queues, etc.

For instance, if it's set up like D2, offer normal mode offline, and Nightmare and Hell have to played online, where a moment's lag can murder your hardcore character permanently

 

[happy_turtle]

My interest dropped to 0 when I found out the always online requirement.

Torchlight 2 will be out soon enough.

Totally agree, However I for one will be helping Blizzard's server issues by not buying their game, therefore not clogging their systems. As will the rest of my co workers, friends, family and vaguely close acquaintances. I'm predicting the Torchlight devs have blizzard beat on the release plans, by releasing 30 days after D3 they will scoop up all the dissatisfied players in one fell swoop.

 

[snowfi6916]

Ditto. I was excited about Diablo 3 until I heard about the online DRM can't play unless your online bullshit.

I'll just do LOL.

 

[kouriichi]

<---- Not getting it anywhere near launch for this reason.

While i want to play D3, the DRM and server problems have already turned me off from it. Im not going to say "its gunna ruin the game", but its an annoyance i dont feel like paying 60$ for. I'll wait a month or two, let all the dust settle and then decide if i want it or not.

 

[Loop Stricken]

And whom exactly are you affecting by that? You're making your own game easier and... that's it.

They're entire game system is built around getting people to use the RMAH for equipment, they removed all the stats and skills so there won't be any "imba builds" they can't control and the only way your character can get "better" in the game is through better equipment.
Seeing as the hardest difficulty is with monsters starting above the max. character level that seems to be the most likely way to "progress" in the end-game.

The entire game is about getting better gear. That's Diablo in a nutshell. If you don't want to buy it, stack magic find and farm for whatever counts as legendaries.

And as far as PvP goes, so what? If the person beating you bought their gear, then so be it. It hasn't been generated out of the æther by real money; it's dropped for someone actually playing the game. If the guy currently showing you what your bowels look like from the inside wasn't using that weapon, maybe it'd be the guy who originally found it. Such a massive difference.

I find that the only people who really complain about entirely optional features are the ones who will crack under the pressure of being perceived as being worse than those who use it. Big effin' deal.

===

incidentally, for all the people who complain about the 'always-on DRM'; realistically, for how long in the past God-knows how many years have you actually been offline?

I've been playing WoW since release, so that's about seven years? if my Internet goes down, if I'm cut off from the net, WoW is not the first thing that comes to mind. Sheer terror grips my heart and my balls rise back into my body cold and inert as I realise I'm utterly cut off from the outside world unable to know what's happening, unable to call any of my geographically-disparate friends, unable to access knowledge at a whim and generally being cut off from anything I haven't already stored.

If I'm playing D3 and my net goes down, I have more serious shit to worry about than my online game.
Namely, my online life.

What, you think it sounds a tad hyperbolic? Think about how ubiquitous mobile phones are. never mind smartphones - I'm talking dumb bricks good only for voice communication. A few years ago, why would I want to be able to be contacted all the bloody day?
now? SHIT I LEFT MY PHONE AT HOME NOW I FEEL NAKED AND VULNERABLE WHAT IF PEOPLE NEED ME URGENTLY WHAT IF THERE'S AN EMERGENCY OH GOD.

Same deal with net access.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Oh goody, another insane launch because they underestimate the demand. Just like TOR trying to limit how many people could play at launch and failing utterly.

or like how Darkfall 'ran out' of digital 'copies' in the months leading up until it finally stabilized.

As odd as the terminology sounds, this is in fact possible, and it's happened to Blizzard's digital store products before. Essentially, the redemption codes are not automatically generated by the store, only retrieved from a cache. Once they're gone, someone has to manually generate a shit-tonne more.
... at least, that's my understanding of it.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Diablo has always been about you and your party finding great gear, either to bargain with or use. The way D3 has been configured, you will NEVER find the top pieces of gear in the game. They will be RMAH exclusive.

Citation needed.
Especially since everything on the RMAH will have to have dropped for a player in the first place. It's not Blizzard putting the items up there for sale.

In Diablo 2, out of about 170 legendary pieces of equipment, and about 90 rune words, only a handful of them are useful in the hardest difficulty. I can name all of them off the top of my head. Everything else is so much trash.

Okay?

My friends and I spent about 300 hours in Hell difficulty farming for items. Of that list, we found 2 items and 1 rune. THAT'S IT. And now the drops are being manipulated to drive up the value of the most important items because it's an easy way to sucker people like you into paying MONEY.

Stack magic find.

And as far as internet goes, my internet dies every hour or so, and I need to reset the router. Makes playing a game like D3 (which you usually play for hours straight) REALLY REALLY HARD.

That's unfortunate for you, truly. Have you thought about switching your ISP?
That sounds like a terrible inconvenience, online gaming or not.
__________
Edit: I have no intention of using the RMAH, just so we're clear.

 

[AntonMTL]

Stop complaining about the DRM and Online only issues. If there were't so many thieving douchebags around this would not be necessary. What do you expect? This is the future of PC games. Its not Blizzards fault. They do deserve to get payed for there work and if you are so dead set against it don't by it. Its a free country.

I have many other issues with D3, such as the cartoon art style and lack of skill tree, but the mild annoyance of online only to prevent cheaters and pirates I support.