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

katsabas

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stiver said:
I don't give a shit about Blizzard.

I do however give a shit about people like you and all the other whiney self-entitled jackasses. What's wrong with the game industry? people like YOU.
Classy. You should look up the definition of whining since you like using it so much.

stiver said:
The ones who will buy the exact same thing they decide to have a moral uprising over. You don't like the always online DRM? Don't fucking buy the game. You weren't cheated, you made the informed choice to play a game that was always online.
After 2 installmens that had both offline and online gameplay, after so much fandom appeal and wait for D3, people woke up to a game that required them to be online 24/7. Wasn't cheated ? Do a bit of digging to see how many gamers actually have a connection. Not even a good one. Just a connection.

stiver said:
If asshole kids like you didn't exist, companies like EA and Activision wouldn't exist, because no one would buy their products. No, you feel like you can just purchase all the games you want anyways, and then spend your time complaining on the internet. No one cares what you think, because you have no conviction. You just buy the game and expect everyone to bend to your wishes. DRM isn't the quality control, self sacrafice is. You didn't have to buy it, but you did. You don't have the right to complain, and only get that right back when you get a refund.
One of the reasons one should complain after buying a title is criticism. If one can't take that, he shouldn't be in the business. That's one you don't get. Solid reasons for which a game doesn't live up to your expectations (some people say the rune system is a bit...meh) or technical difficultes you come across and hinder your game after you buy it, are criticisms if presented correctly.

Since Blizzard commited to a full online game, one should expect that they have nailed down the connections. For every good comment I read, there are 2 that complain about lag. And it makes sense. Especially in Europe.

If my money was spent on something I expected more from but I was led to believe otherwise, it's my goddamn right to complain.

stiver said:
And as an aside: You're full of shit too. The RMAH exists specificly because of all the real-money transactions that exited in Diablo II (most of which are scams). The market existed with or without the RMAH, Blizzard just made their own system.
Nobody asked for the RMAH. People's gameplay is getting the shaft cause of something NOBODY asked for in the first place. You think I am the one who is full of shit ? Blizzard decided to lag everybody's game in order to protect their wallets.

P.S. You assume too much. I haven't bought the game. What I have done though is report you.
 

stiver

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Classy. You should look up the definition of whining since you like using it so much.
I'm well aware of what it means

After 2 installmens that had both offline and online gameplay, after so much fandom appeal and wait for D3, people woke up to a game that required them to be online 24/7. Wasn't cheated ? Do a bit of digging to see how many gamers actually have a connection. Not even a good one. Just a connection.
World of Warcraft was the exact same way, and they always made that very clear. If you don't like it, don't buy or play it.


One of the reasons one should complain after buying a title is criticism. If one can't take that, he shouldn't be in the business. That's one you don't get. Solid reasons for which a game doesn't live up to your expectations (some people say the rune system is a bit...meh) or technical difficultes you come across and hinder your game after you buy it, are criticisms if presented correctly.

Since Blizzard commited to a full online game, one should expect that they have nailed down the connections. For every good comment I read, there are 2 that complain about lag. And it makes sense. Especially in Europe.

If my money was spent on something I expected more from but I was led to believe otherwise, it's my goddamn right to complain.
Once again, those are YOUR expectations. This isn't the story or late game/hidden mechanics that can be criticzed, this is basic stuff. You don't get to complain because Starcraft is a RTS when you wanted it to be a turn based strategy. You don't get to complain when there aren't skill points, only runes. Just because you thought the game would work one way, counter to how they sold it, doesn't give you any rights. That is how it is, that is how it was designed, and THAT is how they advertised it.

Nobody asked for the RMAH. People's gameplay is getting the shaft cause of something NOBODY asked for in the first place. You think I am the one who is full of shit ? Blizzard decided to lag everybody's game in order to protect their wallets.
That is a straight out lie, and the thousands of websites selling characters, items and gold is proof enough. Just because the market exists, doesn't mean you are allowed to stick your head in the sand. It is going to happen, without the RMAH, and it is in the safest method to just integrate it into battle.net anyways.

P.S. You assume too much. I haven't bought the game.
I assume nothing, I am replying to you, but talking to everyone on the internet.

What I have done though is report you.
Go for it, I used big mean words.
 

Titanium Dragon

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Ah, nerd rage. Deep and abiding nerd rage.

Here's reality: servers going down sucks.

Here's another reality: servers are going to go down sometimes unless you are Google or Microsoft.

Here's a third reality: always being online, and all characters having to be multiplayer characters, is a good thing for the publisher, the game, and the end consumer.

Put these three together, and we see reality: sometimes, making a game better will have some negative side effects that are outweighed by the good.

The truth is that your nerd rage is misplaced. Is it right to whine about the Diablo III servers being down? Sure.

Is it right to whine about having no single player in Diablo III? No.

Why is this so? The answer is very simple: the fact that all characters are automatically multiplayer has large positive consequences. It makes playing multiplayer much easier, and it prevents a lot of computer-side hacking (or at least, greatly complicates it). In many games, you could just have single and multiplayer be basically the same thing, but in Diablo type games, you can't. The reason is that the game is ultimately about farming items and nothing else. People will cheat this system in single player, which is fine, but if you then bring a cheaty single player character into a multiplayer environment everything goes to shit.

People hate cheaters more than they hate everything else, and cheaters ruin game experiences like these. It also ruins the in-game economy and overall makes the game worse.

Likewise, people being unable to play the character they've been working on for so long by themselves with their friends later on down the line is also terrible, and can make people quit playing the game.

Thus, ultimately, you are put in the situation where the optimal solution is the always-on multiplayer of Diablo III. It has the downside of the servers going down means the game is unplayable, but it has the upside of people being able to more easily play the game with their friends. Ultimately, from both the standpoint of Blizzard and the vast majority of consumers, the cost (the servers going down, which will presumably be quite rare) is greatly outweighed by the benefits (less cheating, people always being able to play with their friends).

I have not had issues with lag, either in release week or otherwise. Are you running other things, like steam downloading games, while you're playing? Because frankly, the only time I've even seen a little bit of lag was when I was downloading all the Thief games simultaneously on Steam.

Being angry about bad things is alright, but being angry about good things - good things you are unable to understand - is bad, and makes them think (well, know really) that most people are just incurable nerd ragaholics who are utterly unable to try and think beyond the immediate.

Servers being down sucks, and I agree that it is bad, especially on launch day (which, not coincidentally, is when it is most likely to happen) but the idea that the always online thing is some sort of evil devil out to shove shit down your throat is just an example of why companies cannot take most of their customers seriously - because they don't know the first thing about what they're talking about.

Maybe it would be better to stand back, take a deep breath, and consider WHY they're doing something (and not try to come up with nefarious conspiracies, but why real people would do it - people who are not drooling morons) rather than creating a ranty video or raging online. If, after careful and through consideration, you think that it is still wrong, then yeah, post about it. But it is clear that most of you, including the maker of this video, did not do so.
 

starslasher

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Titanium Dragon said:
Is it right to whine about having no single player in Diablo III? No.

Why is this so? The answer is very simple: the fact that all characters are automatically multiplayer has large positive consequences. It makes playing multiplayer much easier, and it prevents a lot of computer-side hacking (or at least, greatly complicates it). In many games, you could just have single and multiplayer be basically the same thing, but in Diablo type games, you can't. The reason is that the game is ultimately about farming items and nothing else. People will cheat this system in single player, which is fine, but if you then bring a cheaty single player character into a multiplayer environment everything goes to shit.

People hate cheaters more than they hate everything else, and cheaters ruin game experiences like these. It also ruins the in-game economy and overall makes the game worse.

Likewise, people being unable to play the character they've been working on for so long by themselves with their friends later on down the line is also terrible, and can make people quit playing the game.
Here's the thing, I, and many, many other I know, did not buy D3 for the multiplayer. I wanted the single player, just as I did in D2. And to many people, making single player mode online seems to be a step back.

The optimal solution to me would be to allow an offline single player mode, which cannot be transferred online, in conjunction with the online single player mode.
 

Titanium Dragon

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starslasher said:
Titanium Dragon said:
Is it right to whine about having no single player in Diablo III? No.

Why is this so? The answer is very simple: the fact that all characters are automatically multiplayer has large positive consequences. It makes playing multiplayer much easier, and it prevents a lot of computer-side hacking (or at least, greatly complicates it). In many games, you could just have single and multiplayer be basically the same thing, but in Diablo type games, you can't. The reason is that the game is ultimately about farming items and nothing else. People will cheat this system in single player, which is fine, but if you then bring a cheaty single player character into a multiplayer environment everything goes to shit.

People hate cheaters more than they hate everything else, and cheaters ruin game experiences like these. It also ruins the in-game economy and overall makes the game worse.

Likewise, people being unable to play the character they've been working on for so long by themselves with their friends later on down the line is also terrible, and can make people quit playing the game.
Here's the thing, I, and many, many other I know, did not buy D3 for the multiplayer. I wanted the single player, just as I did in D2. And to many people, making single player mode online seems to be a step back.

The optimal solution to me would be to allow an offline single player mode, which cannot be transferred online, in conjunction with the online single player mode.
This is not the optimal solution, for exactly the reasons I outlined in my post - the fact of the matter is, the game is ultimately focused on multiplayer, not single player, and they don't want to put people in the situation where the character they've played with for a long time in single player, brought up in level, ect. becomes a liability if someone wants to play multiplayer. Let's say you find out a friend at school or at work has Diablo III in a month and you want to play together online. Sure, you can do that! IF you don't seperate out single and multiplayer characters.

You are not looking at the bigger picture. The above situation is a great discouragement to play multiplayer, and that is bad. Blizzard wants people playing multiplayer, and they want to make it as easy as possible for people to switch from single player to multiplayer, without compromising the integrity of multiplayer.

Being always online is really the only realistic way to ensure that this can occur.

You do not understand it; this is fine. But then you'll just have to trust those more knowledgeable when they say that this is, in fact, a good idea from the standpoint of both most players and the developers, and your loss is pretty negligible - the only real loss is if the servers go down or you have a very crappy internet connection. You know what?

That's too bad for you. Its a much better experience for the vast majority of players, and the change will make it much more likely that you will transition into playing Diablo III multiplayer (as, let's face it, you bought it already, and multiplayer is just a click away!) and thus play for longer and encourage others to play more, and likely encourage more people to buy into the game.

Its not some evil feature designed to make your experience crappier; it is designed to make your experience better. This is in contrast to most DRM, which is all downside, there -is- actual upside here for the end user experience. I don't even think of it as DRM, I think of it as a necessity to play the game.

Other games (like Assassin's Creed) where the single player and multiplayer experience are totally separate have no such excuses, but with Diablo III, it makes sense to do it this way.
 

CapitalistPig

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as with everything you ever buy.....don't be the first :). People are forgetting the first Ipad's wifi didn't work until it was patched or something along those lines (another gizmo I didn't buy). Nevertheless the problem existed and was handled. Don't buy things when they first come out its the consumer handbook's first rule. Of course their having hardware issues. Their fucking idiots and you paid them $60 of your hard earned money for their crap and you actually expected it to work. We live in a world where you can buy something from walmart broken in the box when you get home and your surprised when the crap you buy is in fact crap? I will not subscribe to this psychology. Is anyone really surprised anymore when gaming companies fail to deliver?
On that note I agree with Jim completely; complain for the money you wasted until they fix the problem because it is ridiculous. In the future keep it in your pants until after the first 6 months of release.

*EDIT*

on the topic of disdaining the always online aspect because its "their" problem. This is fundamentally the wrong outlook. It is all our problem because we live in a world that is not so technologically or philosophically advanced that we can root out all problems with our software from the comfort of our homes. Hence the concept of GM's. Without them hackers win and we all lose. This is in fact the most effective solution to the problem given the scale and shear willpower directed at subverting the honest process. If you can offer an actual solution that is cost effective and isn't always online why are you here and not pitching it to every game publisher on earth?
 

Titanium Dragon

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The problem is already fixed, and was, frankly, never a big deal. I am not Jabba the Hutt; I can move from in front of my computer (or, you know, play another fun game instead) if the servers are down, and I have never (not even once) had a problem with the servers since release. Period.

People who are whining about constant outages or making it out like it has been unplayable are, frankly, not living in the same reality I am and are probably torrenting or something while they're playing. I hear that there were connectivity problems on launch day, but by when I got it (two days post launch; I had preordered from Amazon but it took a while to arrive) I had 0 problems with it, and have had none.

Idiots, however, will scream loudly and make it out as if the entire universe is collapsing. It is Chicken Little all over again.

Does it suck you had problems, personally? Yes.

Does that mean the entire universe had problems? No.

And do people exaggerate, especially people like Jim? Of course they do.

Nerd rage is nerd rage, and it is easy to filter out reality from it if you know how to listen properly. The truth is that Diablo III does what it needs to do and works just fine. Whining about the problems on launch day isn't really going to fix anything now.
 

CapitalistPig

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Titanium Dragon said:
The problem is already fixed, and was, frankly, never a big deal. I am not Jabba the Hutt; I can move from in front of my computer (or, you know, play another fun game instead) if the servers are down, and I have never (not even once) had a problem with the servers since release. Period.

People who are whining about constant outages or making it out like it has been unplayable are, frankly, not living in the same reality I am and are probably torrenting or something while they're playing. I hear that there were connectivity problems on launch day, but by when I got it (two days post launch; I had preordered from Amazon but it took a while to arrive) I had 0 problems with it, and have had none.

Idiots, however, will scream loudly and make it out as if the entire universe is collapsing. It is Chicken Little all over again.

Does it suck you had problems, personally? Yes.

Does that mean the entire universe had problems? No.

And do people exaggerate, especially people like Jim? Of course they do.

Nerd rage is nerd rage, and it is easy to filter out reality from it if you know how to listen properly. The truth is that Diablo III does what it needs to do and works just fine. Whining about the problems on launch day isn't really going to fix anything now.

Agreed. My favorite game went down recently for 18 hours :O. "But why?" you may ask with foam at the corner of nerd frenzied mouth (not you obviously but hulk nerds.) To add a new server to cut down on lag. Then for the next 4 days they had bugs, then they gave us free stuff and everyone moved on with their lives. I don't get it either but apparently some people really don't want to leave their basements... or play other games.
 

katsabas

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stiver said:
World of Warcraft was the exact same way, and they always made that very clear. If you don't like it, don't buy or play it.
In the case of Warcraft III and WOW, there wasn't a 10 year gap.


stiver said:
Once again, those are YOUR expectations. This isn't the story or late game/hidden mechanics that can be criticzed, this is basic stuff. You don't get to complain because Starcraft is a RTS when you wanted it to be a turn based strategy. You don't get to complain when there aren't skill points, only runes. Just because you thought the game would work one way, counter to how they sold it, doesn't give you any rights. That is how it is, that is how it was designed, and THAT is how they advertised it.
Seriously ? You think out of all the people on this planet, only I had the expection for the game to be playable while it's always online ? I also have a right to criticise what I think doesn't work in a game after handing out real money and not going through the process of pirating it over the net. That's in the list of everybody's rights after they have bought the game. Since the second option is preferably easier and a lot more affordable, people that invest in something like this deserve some courtesy. Which again, is something I am 100% sure that not only me asked for.


stiver said:
That is a straight out lie, and the thousands of websites selling characters, items and gold is proof enough. Just because the market exists, doesn't mean you are allowed to stick your head in the sand. It is going to happen, without the RMAH, and it is in the safest method to just integrate it into battle.net anyways.
Is it, now ? The stores you mentioned are something that Blizz decided that it wants the lion's share from. Nobody asked for Blizzard to create an auction house, for the simple reason everybody here has pointed out. For a game that depends so much on equipment and random factor, the RMAH is going to eliminate that. It will break the game about 5 months in.

stiver said:
I assume nothing, I am replying to you, but talking to everyone on the internet.
You rave about me buying buying the game when I haven't. I'd say that's assuming enough.

stiver said:
Go for it, I used big mean words.
You sure did. Go over the rules.
 

Titanium Dragon

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Seriously ? You think out of all the people on this planet, only I had the expection for the game to be playable while it's always online ? I also have a right to criticise what I think doesn't work in a game after handing out real money and not going through the process of pirating it over the net. That's in the list of everybody's rights after they have bought the game. Since the second option is preferably easier and a lot more affordable, people that invest in something like this deserve some courtesy. Which again, is something I am 100% sure that not only me asked for.
Thing is, its just not that big of a deal. It had some problems on launch day. So what? It happens sometimes. In fact, it happens oftentimes. It sucks, but its the way things are. If you wait two days, then things will usually be fixed by then. That's why I don't rush for launch day on most products like this.

Is it, now ? The stores you mentioned are something that Blizz decided that it wants the lion's share from. Nobody asked for Blizzard to create an auction house, for the simple reason everybody here has pointed out. For a game that depends so much on equipment and random factor, the RMAH is going to eliminate that. It will break the game about 5 months in.
Ah I see the tears rolling down your cheeks already.

How is it going to break the game? Answer is: It won't. This already happens in numerous other games without ill effect. You don't need to engage with the RMAH at all to enjoy the game, and the fact that other people do engage in it shouldn't bother you as it isn't a competitive game. Buying your way to victory is only an issue if the game is competitive in nature, but Diablo III is a grind game, not a competitive game, so its fine.

Don't think anyone denied these things, so don't know who you're arguing at. In fact I'm fairly certain that most people have acknowledged this and are using it as a proof of why Always-On games are actually a bad thing: because servers do go down sometimes, and that means they can't play their Always-On games. They can still play their offline games with no trouble, though. This seems to suggest that one of the two methods is flawed. When an Always-On experience can provide zero downtime (no crashes and no lag) for a game it is intended to support, then fair enough, it's possible that such a hypothetical game would be a vast improvement over an offline game. But no such game yet exists, and until one does, do not expect this issue to stop being brought up.
But here's the problem: if the game is up pretty much all the time, then its fine. I've played games which had weekly downtimes (for upgrades) and no one raged. If weekly downtimes are fine, then far less often than weekly downtimes are certainly not unreasonable, especially for the advantages they offer.

3) Because it makes your experience more fluid and reduces your risk of being hacked (which has generally been precisely the opposite of reality, as the use of servers leads to lag in single player games and your account is wide open for hacks from outside parties).
I hate it when people use the word "hacked" in this context. The correct term is "compromised". Virtually all compromised accounts in games (99%+) are NOT the result of hacking, but rather the result of social engineering or people making stupid mistakes like saving their passwords on public machines. Hacking (actually compromising the game itself, or the servers thereof) is actually incredibly rare, but social engineering occurs constantly. I was getting social engineering emails about Diablo III before it even came out.

I'm still waiting on a game which can be pointed to as an example of how Always-On games are improving my gaming experience. I'd appreciate it if you could provide some examples of games where Always-On play has truly improved the experience.
Diablo III. Most MMOs.

When developers back in 2008 were quoted as promising that the game will have offline single player, I'd say this is most certainly a point that I would contend does, indeed, merit complaints from potential buyers.
This is completely, totally, and utterly irrelevant. Things changed between 2008 and 2012. Whining about something that was said four years ago, during development, is the height of mouth-frothing nerd rage.

Hundreds of players have complained about their accounts being hacked using an exploit that allows hackers to skip merrily around the authenticators and other security of Blizzard by grabbing hold of their last online activity information, then using it to hack and bleed that character's inventory dry. This is why some users have reported that they had one particular character hacked, and it wasn't always their highest leveled one....rather, it was their.
The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this occurred, and the fact that you believed this indicates a great level of gullibility. We've got Blizzard denying it, and mouth breathers who claim that of course they are retards who respond to social engineering emails!

Yeah, sorry, without evidence, I am going to have to say that, chances are, this didn't actually happen, and there is no evidence that it did. Just because retards claim that it did happen to them doesn't make it true, and indeed, the actually detailed instances I've read about appear to be social engineering, NOT any sort of clever session hijacking.

Remember, believing retards on the internet is always dangerous, especially when they have good reason to lie - namely, not wanting to look like idiots who don't know how to keep their account information secure. People will lie about this all the time, both to save face and to avoid the company possibly not caring about them because they didn't do their part in keeping their account secure.

Then I presume you agree that Blizzard's severe hacking problems of late are a far more troubling experience than the concerns of pirates "ruining everything"? Because I'm fairly certain that Blizzard's decision to pretend that the hacks weren't as a result of a flaw in their own security is far more likely to frustrate players out of the game than a few pirates or item dupers will.
I'm sorry, "severe hacking problems"? There are no severe hacking problems. There are a few hundred compromised accounts, and people yelling loudly about them, jiggling about as they flail and rage at Blizzard. A few hundred accounts is not a severe hacking problem, and it doesn't even show that hacking is occurring, as I stated above.

There is zero (zero!) evidence to suggest that ANY compromised account was the result of actual hacking of the blizzard servers, and a great deal of evidence to suggest that the compromised accounts were the result of social engineering - I've seen the phishing schemes for months now, no one has actually demonstrated a method of session hijacking, and Blizzard has claimed that many of the people claiming to have compromised accounts were socially engineered.

Remember, you are trusting people who have every reason to lie about their accounts being compromised not through their own stupidity but by blaming the big bad company, because otherwise, they will just look like idiots and no one will care about them. The attempts at harnessing nerd rage are obvious.

You are part of the problem with the internet believing these people without evidence of their suggestions. So quit posting without knowing what is going on.

No one I personally know has had any sort of issue with the game or their accounts being hijacked, and no one they know has either. These are people who know about social engineering and who are not vulnerable to it, and not one of them has had an issue. That's not proof that it isn't some sort of server side hack, but, as per Occam's razor, the simplest solution is usually the correct one.

Is it more likely that people would be socially engineered, and then either lie about it or not even realize that they'd been socially engineered and then whine about "hacks", or is it more likely that Blizzard, a company that has been running battlenet since 1995, which has run Diablo I, Diablo II, WoW, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Starcraft II successfully without such hijacking incidents occuring, would suddenly have major sesion hijacking problems with their latest game, despite the fact that this could have occured with any of their other games historically and hasn't?

Now, it is possible that Blizzard screwed up, but you have to admit, idiots whining is a much likelier scenario.
 

Arkynomicon

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I agree with Jim.

Consumers should not be fine with being treated like suckers. If I bought a car that is required to be online and it stopped when I went trough a tunnel I would be pretty damn pissed.

Forcing online status on a game mode that is single player is just bullshit and piracy is going to find a loophole anyway.
 

katsabas

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Titanium Dragon said:
Thing is, its just not that big of a deal. It had some problems on launch day. So what? It happens sometimes. In fact, it happens oftentimes. It sucks, but its the way things are. If you wait two days, then things will usually be fixed by then. That's why I don't rush for launch day on most products like this.
I didn't rush either. Not cause of the expected lag but cause of what happened with the accounts a few days after. I just waited for some videos to hit the web and then went down to my store to catch a glimpse and try. It was sluggish but since then, I have been away from the subject. Studies and stuff. So, how is it coming ?
 

Lord_Jaroh

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Titanium Dragon said:
I'm still waiting on a game which can be pointed to as an example of how Always-On games are improving my gaming experience. I'd appreciate it if you could provide some examples of games where Always-On play has truly improved the experience.
Diablo III. Most MMOs.
If I may ask, how? How is an online only experience better for my gameplay? Explain how an always online connection improves my experience? How are Battle.net 2.0's features so good that players would not even want to play offline?
 

Titanium Dragon

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Lord_Jaroh said:
Titanium Dragon said:
I'm still waiting on a game which can be pointed to as an example of how Always-On games are improving my gaming experience. I'd appreciate it if you could provide some examples of games where Always-On play has truly improved the experience.
Diablo III. Most MMOs.
If I may ask, how? How is an online only experience better for my gameplay? Explain how an always online connection improves my experience? How are Battle.net 2.0's features so good that players would not even want to play offline?
Did you not read my earlier post?

The long, the short, and the middle answer is that every single character is playable online. If you have separate online and offline modes, this is not the case. By combining the two, such that all characters are online characters, it lowers the barrier to multiplayer play, encouraging more people to try it out, and as that is the funnest way to play the game, it both raises player enjoyment and makes them more likely to play longer, which leads to a better community, meaning more players stick around and more players encourage their friends to buy in.

Good for the developer, good for the player.

It has to be this way because Diablo III is a gear-based game (it is a grindfest), so the ability to store your character locally and manipulate their stats/items would be cheating. In a game where this is irrelevant, then there would be no such rationale for no offline mode.
 

porous_shield

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Titanium Dragon said:
Lord_Jaroh said:
Titanium Dragon said:
I'm still waiting on a game which can be pointed to as an example of how Always-On games are improving my gaming experience. I'd appreciate it if you could provide some examples of games where Always-On play has truly improved the experience.
Diablo III. Most MMOs.
If I may ask, how? How is an online only experience better for my gameplay? Explain how an always online connection improves my experience? How are Battle.net 2.0's features so good that players would not even want to play offline?
Did you not read my earlier post?

The long, the short, and the middle answer is that every single character is playable online. If you have separate online and offline modes, this is not the case. By combining the two, such that all characters are online characters, it lowers the barrier to multiplayer play, encouraging more people to try it out, and as that is the funnest way to play the game, it both raises player enjoyment and makes them more likely to play longer, which leads to a better community, meaning more players stick around and more players encourage their friends to buy in.

Good for the developer, good for the player.

It has to be this way because Diablo III is a gear-based game (it is a grindfest), so the ability to store your character locally and manipulate their stats/items would be cheating. In a game where this is irrelevant,then there would be no such rationale for no offline mode.
What gives you the authority to say that the "funnest" way to play the game is online and that it increases enjoyment. I, personally, have rarely found multiplayer games to be more fun than single player and the rare time that they are I managed to play either split screen, lan, or TCP/IP. I've proven your point wrong with just my example.

I have beaten both Diablo I and II and have never treated the game as a grindfest. I did the missions and never once killed monsters for the sole purpose of trying to get gear. Not everyone treats the games as you do and for the people that are like myself, always on DRM provides no benefits what so ever; it actually provides only detriments in the form of laggy play and connection problems.
 

Mailman

New member
Jan 25, 2010
153
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If I wanted to complain to Blizzard about this how would I go about doing that? The "Contact Us" section on their homepage doesn't have a "Comments and Feedback" option. I'd love to play this with my brother but I'd like the option to play single player whenever I wanted without some old friend from WoW deciding to tag along for the ride.
 

girzwald

New member
Nov 16, 2011
218
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People won't stop posting this video on the D3 forums. They get deleted in short order. But it cannot be posted enough. I hope blizzard posts a "Do not post links to anything related to Escapist, Destructiod or Jim Sterling" sticky post.

I call this video a win.
 

Daddy-0

New member
May 29, 2012
1
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I reckon that today's latest piece of incompetent server administration will ensure blizzard/battlenet/activision takes the achievement for lamest re-launch of antique game in 2012.
They have decided to patch the game well and good I suppose except that their amerikan server just threw everyone off it about 12 hours ago mid game and wouldn't let ya back.

After trying to get onto it for some time I went back to risen 2 - hit the pit and set off this morning to make some money. get back to find my diablo 3 p.o.s. was stuck in an update loop where it wouldn't let you log on unless you had updated but you had to log on to update! What derp thought up that piece if circuitous logic (rivals the "it's an online single player game cause it's an online single player game" logic touted here by the blizzasskissers)

Anyway now the game has finally patched the server won't allow anyone to play. I have several hours before I have to go and repair a particularly badly constructed active directory for a law firm who only let me work on their system AH so I thought I'd zone out on D3 for a while. no such luck now that the game is patched not only can I not get on the repeatedly broken amerikan servers, the european and asian servers no longer let me on them anymore as one of the 'features' of the 1.02 patch appears to be to tie players to one server region.
The region where I live has no server so blizzard flooged off this garbage with the default server set to amerika.

I could uninstall the whole mess then re-install update and play on a europe server but that seems like a bad choice since the last install took forever and knowing blizzard the game would only be running by the time I hafta go and fix this other incompetence.
Plus my character is just how I want it to be on the US server and as you know blizzard doesn't permit the swapping of games between servers, so if I play on Europe or Asia I will hafta rip it all out to pick up where I left off on the main game.

One last thing - I for one have noticed that the vast majority of the blizzasskisslamers who are so eager to try and bully legitimate concerns about this mess posted on the 'official' d3 boards claim all sorts of senior positions in blizzass 'clans' (do they still call a groups of social incompetents who can only interact with other humans if it is via a remote game server, a clan? I dunno I have no interest in such interactions - for me the only advantage of MMO style gaming is that you will game and chat with peeps you don't know and therefore gain a better understanding of the human condition or whatever, but each to their own I spose)
Anyway check out these apologists for the indefensible and you will find most of em run sites, boards, or whatever whose reason for existence is to promote blizzass games.
In other words these callous palmed creepoids aren't harassing legitimate posters because of some deep & unrequited love for this hackneyed hack n slash, they are behaving like retarded bully boys because they need to protect their 'income stream'.