Jimquisition: You Should Be Mad at Diablo III's Always Online DRM

[Aglynugga]

So diablo 3 isn't a single player game.
You want to know another game that isn't single player? Dark Souls.
Both games have constant online aspects. If you play Dark Souls, you are constantly reminded of this by messages, ghosts, phantoms, vagrants, bells ringing, and fires kindling.
In Diablo 3 you are constantly reminded of this by...uh...hmmm. Well...uh...wait. Hmmm. I guess the auction house and up to three more players in your world.
In Dark Souls, if your connection is bad, or you are a coward, you can always start in offline mode, and stay there. You don't get any of the cool online stuff, but you can still play the game.
In Diablo 3 if your connection is bad...you can stare at the box cover art and wish you could rain fire down on Blizzard's head.
2 games. Both have consistant online features. Only one of them has online features that actually make the game cooler. The other is a money-grabbing shelf-sitter.

 

[chadachada123]

I am a huge fan of Diablo II.

And I will not buy a game that forces me to be online all of the time, and doesn't even offer a LAN mode.

That's exactly why I played Diablo II to begin with: The ability to play alone OR with friends. Battle.net was just a plus.

Edit: This hits it pretty damn hard on the head:

So diablo 3 isn't a single player game.
You want to know another game that isn't single player? Dark Souls.
Both games have constant online aspects. If you play Dark Souls, you are constantly reminded of this by messages, ghosts, phantoms, vagrants, bells ringing, and fires kindling.
In Diablo 3 you are constantly reminded of this by...uh...hmmm. Well...uh...wait. Hmmm. I guess the auction house and up to three more players in your world.
In Dark Souls, if your connection is bad, or you are a coward, you can always start in offline mode, and stay there. You don't get any of the cool online stuff, but you can still play the game.
In Diablo 3 if your connection is bad...you can stare at the box cover art and wish you could rain fire down on Blizzard's head.
2 games. Both have consistant online features. Only one of them has online features that actually make the game cooler. The other is a money-grabbing shelf-sitter.

 

[StrixMaxima]

Just posting to say that I agree on every level, with all arguments presented in the video.

Nothing else needs to be said.

 

[F4LL3N]

The gay porn and poo made this one of your best episodes to date. Thoroughly appitizing. I was thinking you could make a spin-off series based on these two subjects. Perhaps wear a mankini. Would you like that?

 

[Moromillas]

YES! Thank FUCK someone finally said, and so eloquently. Thank FUCK there's discussion and criticism about it. And thank GOD for jim sterling. Maybe he IS a god. Anyone ever thought of that?

I see so many times the infantile justifications on the SWTOR forums, fanboys that bash anyone that doesn't fucking praise the game. "LOLOL gobak 2 WOW!!1" they will say, with their grimy little fingers pounding away at the keyboard. YES, Diablo 3 has some experimental stuff in it. YES, it was bound to have lots of problems. Not a surprise at all that it did have problems really. Should they then be immune to criticism? Fuck no. If the release was shit, people should say "It had a shitty release," by no means does that mean the entire game is shit, it means that the release was shit.

 

[keinechance]

I did not buy the game because of the always online DRM.

And I must admit that I do not feel as much sympathy as I should for my fellow gamers who bought the game for a lot of money and could not play it.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Can't people go back to moaning about Mass Effect 3?

 

[Spud of Doom]

Good stuff as usual, Jim.
It's a particular pain for us in the Pacific who have to deal with both the increased load on the US servers and the inherent latency of living so far away. getting a ping below 200 is like a dream for me. I'm stuck with 300-800, and endless hit delays, sync errors and rubber-banding. This should not be happening in a single player game.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

There's already a ton of replies, but I also think that anyone complaining about the "always online" feature deserves to have the game not work. You knew this was coming ages ago, and yet you bought it anyway. I refuse to buy anything that requires a constant net connection to even enjoy my single player mode.

 

[saintdane05]

Guess what? I'm not angry at all! Ha ha, na na na poo poo!

I really am mature, aren't' I?

 

[Puregrrr]

I gave this a standing ovation when it ended, but now everyone is just staring at me blankly. I really hope by some miracle Blizzard changes this because I won't buy it unless they do, and I really do want to play it.

 

[crazyarms33]

O.K., what it has is magic pixie fairy dust. That makes the game unplayable at times. The game you bought. For $60. In the single-player mode that should require no internet connection whatsoever.

Wait, I'm sorry, what was your point again?

Creating a new game in D3 is the same as zoning into a dungeon by yourself in WoW. That is not DRM.

But WoW is an MMO. Arguably THE MMO. Diablo 3 is not. It's got an online multiplayer component in it, I will freely give you. But to say that zoning into a dungeon in WoW is the same as starting a new game in Diablo is silly because it overlooks the fundamental differences between the two games. If I want to play Diablo 3 single player(as I did with Diablo II) then I damned well better be able to do that any time I want because I shouldn't have to worry about server issues. The last thing I want to do is connect to a game ready for a 3 hour grind only to be kicked because the server shut down for some reason.

In short: WoW=MMO= Massive Multiplayer ONLINE
Diablo 3: Single player experience that you have to be online for no really good reason(that I have found anyway)

 

[The Human Torch]

So it's not necessarily singleplayer, but I do not think saying "it isn't an MMO either" goes far enough. Whatever happened to LAN parties? Must all multiplayer be exclusively over the internet? Even if your playmate is not even ten yards away?

D3 is an online multiplayer game. It's not an offline single player game. It's not a massively multiplayer game.

Personally I miss offline multiplayer games. RIP couch coop.

Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game with a multiplayer option. Just like Diablo 1 and 2. We done now? You keep posting your nonsense argument and no matter how many times you post it, it will never become the truth.

 

[an874]

Between this and the Dragon's Dogma review, you made my morning.

Thanks for the heads up on Dragon's Dogma.

OT: Couldn't agree more with you, Jim. Sometimes I feel like you're the only games journalist who still tries to be fair to us peasants.

 

[I.Muir]

I complained, they deleted my thread on their forums

 

[jehk]

So it's not necessarily singleplayer, but I do not think saying "it isn't an MMO either" goes far enough. Whatever happened to LAN parties? Must all multiplayer be exclusively over the internet? Even if your playmate is not even ten yards away?

D3 is an online multiplayer game. It's not an offline single player game. It's not a massively multiplayer game.

Personally I miss offline multiplayer games. RIP couch coop.

Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game with a multiplayer option. Just like Diablo 1 and 2. We done now? You keep posting your nonsense argument and no matter how many times you post it, it will never become the truth.

Have you even played the game?

Every time you start a quest (click that big red button on the character select screen that says resume game) you are starting a multiplayer game. You can chose to open up the game to the public, to invite specific friends or play alone. This works exactly like the multiplayer mode in Diablo 1 and 2.

You do not have the option to choose a single player mode like you did in Diable 1 and 2. Show me where I can create a character that cannot, under no circumstances, be merged with the multiplayer mode.

 

[GonzoGamer]

It's good to see that someone knows what "entitled" means. There's a lot of gamers that need to realize that buying a game does actually entitle you to something...a game you can play for one.

And Peter Gabriel is a lunatic, but that's why we love him.
And they say Lady Gaga is original.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I did everything I could about the problem by refusing to purchase Diablo 3.

Arguing with other people on the internet on whether or not they should not have or should not buy the game is ultimately pointless. Fact. Another fun fact is you just can't protect people from themselves.

I had to give away another hobby of mine, Warhammer 40K because the company making the game, Games Workshop, hikes prices on a yearly basis and in doing so drives more people out of that hobby while putting a greater financial burden on the players that remain. Stupid people will do stupid things with their money and the more disposable income they have available the stupider those decisions tend to become.

What should be making people angry I think is that assuming gaming industry doesn't collapse under the weight of it's own hubris like it did back in the eighties, people who start playing games now will play games with the expectation that online DRM comes as standard regardless of whether the game has a significant online portion or not. We should really know better, because we know how things should be but those that come after us will suffer the consequences of our utter lack of a backbone.