id Software Praises "Always On" in Diablo 3

[mordar]

Bonus: Piracy is impossible. Pirates will have to either buy the game or create a server emulator. And those are terrible.

it didn't worked for WoW since it was a huge, big (more than 20 and still counting gigs) sized world with so much scripted events and npcs that actually doing the whole reverse engineering it's the task of at least several trained people

Diablo 3?, if it is to be believed, has chapters, an ending and a limited world, with a limited set of scripted events and npc's, it's not massive by any extension of the world and the loot is randomly generated from a pool of possible items, did you play MU online? it's exactly the same and MU has been proven not difficult to emulate (by the sheer size of "private" servers and how well developed and updated they are in comparison to the real deal)

Diablo 3 and by proxy all the games that preceded it, love or hate it it's a glorified Grindfest (albeit extremely fun) game with ramdonly generated loot and plettora of critters to destroy, they aren't smart, they don't sudenly have scripted events, they don't suddenly have huge inmense raids with bosses that have more than 10 scripted tactics, they are just there to kill you, period

so I doubt pirates will find it difficult to emulate and pirate Diablo 3 as opposed to WoW, one is massive by the scope of the items, the later is massive by the scope of....well....each and Every single thing

 

[thahat]

As a european with about a second of "downtime" every minute or so(which still kicks me from ubidrm infected games every time), I have this to say:

Fuck that bullshit.

luckally we all know, there wil ALLWAYS be an alternative. always on my bum. drm like this is still like shooting yourself in the foot, even for blizzard.

 

[Warachia]

I was more or less trying to convey that it is a very common practice. Even Steam doesn't guarantee you access to your games. If the Steam server went down, and you can't play your games, then you really can't complain, since you said that was fine whenever you use Steam. It's a non-issue, since every time you play a game (not just ass creed) and agree to those TOSs and such, you are saying "yeah, that's fine," hence is why I said it is a non-issue. It's a very, VERY common practice. You really should read a TOS or EULA for a game sometime... some of the stuff in it might surprise you.

THAT'S WHY STEAM HAS AN OFFLINE MODE. Even if they didn't, it's really easy to open the games without steam as they games you install are on your computer, just create a second shortcut linking directly to them, and of course you could complain if the steam servers went down, why wouldn't you?

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's depressing that this "Always On" DRM will inevitably become popular. I can see it being forced down our throats.

Of course Mr. Willits has every right to love it; it's a system that benefits him exclusively. He doesn't ever have to worry about getting fucked over by the corporate black hole that is "tech support", or being excluded from a special club that can't play the game for no reason other than total corporate supremacy.

And I find it hilarious that he thinks people will one day embrace that as a GOOD thing.
Perhaps with a lengthy campaign of nonsense, but such endeavors are already shockingly effective in other fields (most notably politics and advertisement)

When people accept that, then gaming will die only to be reborn as something worse: An eternity-service riddled with overpriced in-game DLC and grind designed to monopolize their time to keep them in the marketplace longer (because once these assclowns establish the standard of video gaming as a service, they must compete each other as services; exclusivity is the surest path to massive profits).

*sigh*
Why can't games just be games again? Oh right, money.
Even when you're the biggest, most financially successful company in the history of gaming, it's never enough. Cripes, I feel like fucking Ortega y Gasset here, and instead of a self-serving bloated government, it's self-serving bloated publishers.

 

[Coldie]

so I doubt pirates will find it difficult to emulate and pirate Diablo 3 as opposed to WoW, one is massive by the scope of the items, the later is massive by the scope of....well....each and Every single thing

The point stands - an emulator is not an exact replica of the game's server. Combat might be the easiest to sync, but random loot, maps, mob spawns will all be different from the Real Thing. The emulator will also be far behind patches and expansions. Some might play it, but most are probably going to pirate something that isn't server-based, like Torchlight 2.

 

[Kalith]

That Tim Willits guy sounds like a right cock. I don't like being forced to do anything, so I'll be avoiding D3.

 

[mordar]

so I doubt pirates will find it difficult to emulate and pirate Diablo 3 as opposed to WoW, one is massive by the scope of the items, the later is massive by the scope of....well....each and Every single thing

The point stands - an emulator is not an exact replica of the game's server. Combat might be the easiest to sync, but random loot, maps, mob spawns will all be different from the Real Thing. The emulator will also be far behind patches and expansions. Some might play it, but most are probably going to pirate something that isn't server-based, like Torchlight 2.

again, have you played MU online? it works as well as Diablo 2 and the staple of "diablo-like" games did only in a "mmorpg" scenario and was extremely well emulated, it had everything that defined Diablo, random loot, random maps, random mob spawns, huge sized scripted mobs, small wave of critters, etc etc etc and it was so well emulated that most private servers are even more stabled and updated than the real thing

like I said before, unless it's as big or bigger than WoW (which I doubt it will since it will have the things I've cited before) it can be easily emulated as opposed to wow where half the continent of kalimdor it's twice as big and scripted as any Diablo game put together, and even with that it's being "decently" emulated to a point nowadays

the main problem when doing reverse engineering is the scripted events and NPC's, you know that big boss fights in the raids, where they have different bosses doing different abilities and activating them at different intervals that not only have to take in account the boss itself but also the raid composition, just scripting the whole Icecrown citadel raid it's twice as hard as scripting Random stuff, because well....they aren't random as opposed to a pool of stuff that can be used at different intervals

 

[Atmos Duality]

Not only is that comic entirely on point (No one practical cares about the occasional server outage) but Penny Arcade is hilarious.

I'm not buying Diablo 3 because of its impracticality, so...yeah.
Contradiction.

Sorry, I put up with the impracticality of Starcraft 2 dropping to the point where I just didn't have the patience to deal with it anymore.

Penny Arcade isn't entirely on point here. But what do I know?

 

[The Coop]

As someone who has a less than stable Internet connection half the time, the idea of a game I've been really looking forward to being on-line only for the single player game is disheartening. The last thing I want to be seeing is the game stopping and giving me a message saying I can't continue playing because my connection vanished... or that I can't save because I'm no longer on-line.

But, with a game this big, I'm sure the players will make a patch that removes or bypasses this "feature," allowing me to enjoy my game whenever I choose to. After all, if players did it for Darksiders and Splinter Cell: Conviction, you can put money on them doing it for Diablo III... probably within a week.

 

[evilneko]

If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome.

What a fucking asshole.

My internet's not all that reliable, and you know what one of the things I like to do when it's down is? Play my games! When the internet's up I'm usually on it, most of the time not gaming but posting on forums, online roleplay and such.. but when it's off... yeah, it's either anime or games... and now some companies are trying to take that choice away.

It's offensive.

 

[Halvhir]

But it's also hard to argue that Willits isn't right. If Blizzard can make people stop worrying and learn to love the bomb - and if any company can pull that off, it's Blizzard - then you can be sure there will be plenty of other studios and publishers following closely behind. Like it or lump it, this is the future.

Yes, this is the eventual future. That future is also still something like 20-30 years down the road. Forcing it on people early is a dick move, plain and simple.

 

[Count UberBlau]

Living in Australia I can honsetly say that this may stop me buying it. Having capped internet at 20 gigs at one house and satellite internet at the other, a constant connection is bloody hard to get for me, meaning I wont actually be able to play it a large part of the time.

 

[Buccura]

Guess who won't be buying Rage. id, what happened to you? I miss the id from the 90s

 

[DefiningReality]

So far what Blizzard is doing brilliantly is controlling the conversation. So far it has been very neatly centered around whether or not a sufficiently large biomass can be assumed to have internet and whether it is moral or not to exclude biomass that does not have constant internet.

Frankly I can see no moral imperative on Blizzard's part to provide their product to people without a consistent internet connection (I say this as a person who is on a forum instead of playing TF2 because of the delights of rural internet). Blizzard is not morally obligated to let anyone access their created content. They could, theoretically, make the game so resource intensive that less than 1% of the population of even 1st world countries could play it and they would be violating no moral laws. They might, given the budget for a AAA title, fail to make a profit, but the point I'm making is that as long as they don't say "no Jews can play this game" or "no redheads" or "no *insert group*" then it is their property to do with as they see fit.

But the question is not what Blizzard should or shouldn't do. Should or shouldn't implies some standard beyond their actions, a standard in this case which is not part of the moral realm.

The question is whether we as gamers want to live in the garden they are walling in, and what we will do if we decide we do not.

Not buying the game will not be enough. Even if every person who has read this article decides not to buy D3 Blizzard will still sell millions of copies. (Though don't take that as an excuse to buy it yourself if you feel convicted).

I think rather we should hold our gaming journalists/commentators/comedians etc to task for shedding light on the real issue, if we as gamers want always on DRM, micro transactions for content, and a persistent and required connection to an off site server.

I in no way want two of these things, and I'll take micro transactions only if done right.

I hope Extra Credits will weigh in on this one.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

IF this is a piracy thing, I fear they've failed again.

If the numbers are even close, they've just chosen to eliminate 40% of their buying customers (those without a reliable net connection), to stop a mystery number of maybe customers who might be stopped from possibly getting it for free by pirating it, perhaps.

I'm sure I'll be corrected, but when was cutting off supply to actual customers a good move, even if it stops possible, potential piracy?

At the same time, the vast amount of gamers WILL be playing online, multiplayer.

IMO, the better option would have been release the game dirt cheap, then charge for an online pass (not like WOW, but a one off charge.)

That way it negates the need for a demo, as people can try the game cheaply, but then decide if they want to invest in the full, online game.

 

[Csae]

Another step in the direction of a rental industry.

I thought i owned these games? Thats cool though, but i'm not paying more then 10$/mo for d3 then, and i do mean that it should be free to download.

If you are gonna make me pay 60$ for a retail game, keep it retail. I like the fact that i could install d2 on my laptop and play a game while traveling.

Untill the day the world is covered in free wifi, theres no point to forcing us to being connected to the internet.

Its historically proven, that its better to reward positively then to punish and force negatively.

Give me updates, access to things online that i do not have SP, and i'll log on. Remember how in D2 if you had a party, the loot was better ? Yeah.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Yeah, I'm still not going to get it. Torchlight 2 will be both cheaper and a better game.

 

[PingoBlack]

This debate keeps spinning on two hinges ...

1) Ubisoft and Assasins Creed:
Not really comparable here in my opinion. Blizzard definitely offers more on line services in single player games compared to Ubisoft, which only made sure to store part of the game online to annoy pirates and users. Of course, being mandatory can be a problem for some people, but Blizzards always-on is not pure DRM, it includes social aspects and cross-games chat feature.

2) Trochlight 2:
Also known as Holy Grail ... or so it seems. Unreleased project people are adding info to as they see it fit argument. At the moment there are no payment details on as yet unreleased Torchlight 2, there are actually precious little details in general. Projecting desires onto something like this is not good ... And will hurt Torchlight 2 if the company doesn't manage all this overblown expectation thrown at them.

I'm sad to see how arguments are being overblown in this topic to the point of being ridiculous.
We, as gamers, have to learn to state our opinions and demands in a realistic, adult way ... If we ever want to be taken seriously.

I warmly suggest Podcast 11 here on Escapist as a good example of how to debate this better.

 

[Amaror]

I just don't get it. The game will be cracked on release day anyway, like all games were. So why piss some buying customers off, when it doesn't prevend illegal copies at all?

 

[kingmob]

To paraphrase: Some guy at ID also lost his fucking mind and thinks it is 'great' to force the consumer into something that has no advantage for them.