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

Sir Shockwave

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So Jim, where would I stand with this? I hate always online DRM, and was intending to get Torchlight II instead. *However*, it was a friend of mine who gave me my copy of Diablo III. And yes, I've been playing it and to an extent enjoying it (Demon Hunter + Micheal Jackson's Thriller playing in the Background = Win).
 

RaikuFA

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DVS BSTrD said:
Soviet Heavy said:
I kept expecting the Facehugger to play into all that somehow.
I think the Facehugger is supposed to represent the concept of DRM.
Nah, the guy who gave him the Gurella Alien from an earlier episode demanded Jim put the plush on his Amazomn Wishlist so he could buy it for him.

OT: I'm hoping the dabate goes in favor of people who want games localized.
 

Callate

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Diablo 3 is not online because it's essential to the game's core function that it be online; Diablo 3 is online because it enables features no one was asking for and allows Blizzard to maintain a greater degree of control over the way their product is used (including, yes, ways that amount to Digital Rights Management.)

I think Jim is spot-on in his assessment.
 

DJjaffacake

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Gekidami said:
draythefingerless said:
Gekidami said:
You know what else is sh!t publishers think we'll just eat right up?: Games that are broken on release.

You know what game Jim loved and had nothing bad to say about?: Skyrim.

You know where this is going?: Yeah.
No i dont. please continue. im anxious to see where its going. my money is on a strawman argument. but please. fascinate me.
Just sayin', Jim isnt immune to a 'chocolate' moustache. Seems he's willing to call out some BS, but ignore others.

This deserved to get called out just as much as (if not even more than) online DMR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeU3DvW5-o

Yet it got nothing but praise.
Believe it or not, I've had even worse lag than that. It got to the point where it was running at about 5 seconds per frame when I was doing the fort battles. As for getting nothing but praise, I know at least one of the magazines owned by future games, who the guy in the video is in charge of, called them out on it, and gave the game a 7/10.
 

Formica Archonis

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Nov 13, 2009
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Over the past few months people told me - repeatedly - that by skipping Diablo 3 I'd be hurting myself because I'm depriving myself of a fun experience. I don't know what they're talking about, I've been playing a game without any online-only DRM retardation since before Diablo 3 came out and I've been having fun straight through. Unlike them.

So not only am I having fun, I'm having smug fun. It's goddamn delicious.
 

Jimothy Sterling

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draythefingerless said:
Gekidami said:
draythefingerless said:
Gekidami said:
You know what else is sh!t publishers think we'll just eat right up?: Games that are broken on release.

You know what game Jim loved and had nothing bad to say about?: Skyrim.

You know where this is going?: Yeah.
No i dont. please continue. im anxious to see where its going. my money is on a strawman argument. but please. fascinate me.
Just sayin', Jim isnt immune to a 'chocolate' moustache. Seems he's willing to call out some BS, but ignore others.

This deserved to get called out just as much as (if not even more than) online DMR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeU3DvW5-o

Yet it got nothing but praise.
Because the game is praisable. and so is diablo 3. But you see, the part where you say this should be called out just as much or more is where i have a problem. Bugs and glitches are not on purpose. The game makers dont want them to exist, they are accidents and actually Skyrim wasnt that bad in terms of bugs n glitches, given how HUGE the game is. The online Diablo was purposeful, it had greedy intentions, and is downright bad decision on part of Blizzard. So no, the bugs n glitches of Skyrim are not as bad as this is. You are exageratting its importance.

However, i do agree that they should be called out, and that people should criticize bethesda to run more thorough testing. But dont compare accidental game breaking bugs to purposeful online DRM wich they KNEW would stop people from playing their game.
The game was pretty much unplayable on PS3 and Bethesda took their sweet time releasing the patch, deciding that rather than put it out on PS3 urgently, they'd rather stick it in an average patch along side all of the other fixes, released on all platforms at the same time. They also did everything they could to hide the PS3 version, never demoing it and not sending out PS3 review copies.

Thats some pretty reprehensible behaviour. The bugs may have been unwanted, but Bethesda still decided to dissimulate the problems they were obviously aware of and dick their customers around.
I'd expect a series famous for calling out BS in the industry to do so rather than drink the kool-aid.

Ignoring the problems and simply praising the game is letting devs get away with this 'We'll patch it later' mentality, just like telling people to get over Diablo 3's connection problems is letting publishers get away with useless online DRM. And theres where i think Jim is picking his battles.

DJjaffacake said:
Gekidami said:
draythefingerless said:
Gekidami said:
You know what else is sh!t publishers think we'll just eat right up?: Games that are broken on release.

You know what game Jim loved and had nothing bad to say about?: Skyrim.

You know where this is going?: Yeah.
No i dont. please continue. im anxious to see where its going. my money is on a strawman argument. but please. fascinate me.
Just sayin', Jim isnt immune to a 'chocolate' moustache. Seems he's willing to call out some BS, but ignore others.

This deserved to get called out just as much as (if not even more than) online DMR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeU3DvW5-o

Yet it got nothing but praise.
Believe it or not, I've had even worse lag than that. It got to the point where it was running at about 5 seconds per frame when I was doing the fort battles. As for getting nothing but praise, I know at least one of the magazines owned by future games, who the guy in the video is in charge of, called them out on it, and gave the game a 7/10.
I'm sure the connection quality to Blizzards servers will become better a lot quicker than it took Bethesda to patch the PS3 version of Skyrim. And if i understand correctly Skyrim still has framerate problems to this day.
 

OverEZ

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The greatest trick Diablo ever pulled was convincing the world adequate servers didn't exist.
 

munkyforce

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First off, yes I do think that consumers have a right to be disappointed and to voice their disappointment.
It's just that I don't think that it's ever really going to achieve anything. Jim's anti-corporate positions are fine but he fails to understand what motivates corporate decisions i.e. profit, and that that isn't going to change. Jim claims that protecting Blizzard's RMAH is their problem, well the DRM is their way of solving this problem. Is it the most consumer friendly way to solve that problem? Probably not. Is it the most cost effective? Yeah it probably is, and that's why they've chosen it.

It's all about sending the right signals to a profit motivated firm. Is the aggregated result of the complaints going to result in a greater loss than the loss in not using an anti-consumer form of protection? I don't think it is (though I freely admit I may be wrong), in which case don't expect change anytime soon.

I guess what I'm getting at here is if you want change in the industry, you need to be aware of the motives of the various stakeholders, so that pressure can be better applied to affect that change.
 

Revnak_v1legacy

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Mar 28, 2010
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Jim, I agree with you on just about everything you said, but I do take issue with one thing. The auction house does not only benefit Blizzard and stopping cheaters is not only Blizzard's problem. The auction house is a very nice function in the game which could easily become one of the game's main draws and could add significantly to the game's lifespan. For this reason cheating is everybody's problem as it means their goods in the marketplace will be swamped out by those produced by cheaters. In fact, I would even be willing to claim that the cheating really doesn't hurt Blizzard in the slightest as even the most limited degree of cheating prevention would be enough to stop cheating from becoming popular enough to make people not use the auction house. In the end it is a very nice feature of the game.
 

PuckFuppet

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Jan 10, 2009
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Valid points made but it is a matter of opinion. Its an opinion that the "always-online" function constitutes DRM, regardless of whether or not its classified as such, and similarly any defence of the "always online" feature is similarly opinionated. This is true despite whatever evidence may be presented by either side.

That said the perceived entitlement issue is, and I bring this up due to the video making a point to get across how absurd that viewpoint is, just an opinion. Both valid and invalid depending on your perspective. It is amusing to note that many of the people who are now bemoaning Blizzard's handling of the release, continuing issues with the achievement system etc. are the same people that (in my experience, from my perspective) spent a great deal of their time scoffing at the whole ME3 mess.

I'm not personally invested in either but when people are so blindly hypocritical I just can't help but make note of it.
 

Charli

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Hehe not going to go on a rant, I agree with most of it...

The end with the twitchy finger just made me laugh out loud (you know it's geniune when no abbreviation of that term is used) even now I can feel the twinges of my index finger six pack developing.

Dear god...
 

Voltano

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Crono1973 said:
The RMAH was created to put more money into Blizzards pocket and the DRM is forced on us to protect the RMAH.
Yes, and how should Blizzard make sure people who do use the RMAH (i.e. Real Money Auction House) has their information secure? You don't want malicious users to steal credit card information or identities stolen, otherwise you'll have a mob of angry customers at your door for poor security service and the government to investigate your company for the damages done. This is dangerously close to the situation that happened to Sony last year where all those customers got hacked when Sony's servers were opened at that time. Considering Diablo III is meant to be a global game launch, I don't blame Blizzard at all for including this kind of intrusive security feature.

But to create this kind of security they would have to stick to something like an MMORPG business plan where players have to play on a server, even ones that do prefer playing offline like introverted humans (myself included). Its hard to really say there is "DRM," for me, when the game has features more familiar with an MMORPG. But whether its DRM or not the damage is visible, as Jim Sterling's video points out.
 

Mark B

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I was looking forward to this until I heard about the always on-line DRM.

That stopped my from buying it, and if its as good as people say then that's a shame since I would buy a good game from blizzard if they hadn't broke it on purpose.
 

Gigano

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Oct 15, 2009
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Well, if you knew there were going to be always online DRM when you choose to put down $60 for the game, then I don't see how you can reasonably complain about the game featuring it.

You can however very much reasonably complain when the always on DRM isn't working. It's Blizard's responsibility to provide constant and consistent functionality, and when they fail to do so, criticism is in order.

Of course, nobody will really care about your opinion when you've already thrown down the money. If you want to efficiently curtail the practise of always online DRM, simply don't buy the games that come with it. Voting with your wallet is the only way to be heard, and not getting to play Diablo III a survivable sacrifice.

Time to dust off Diablo II.
 

DoomyMcDoom

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Walter Byers said:
The Human Torch said:
But Diablo 3 is not an MMO. WoW is an MMO, Diablo is not an MMO. No matter if you define Diablo 3 as singleplayer or multiplayer, it is not an MMO. So Diablo 3 runs on DRM. Same as Steam and Origin are glorified DRM systems.
D3 is an online multiplayer game. Jumping to the conclusion that its DRM is bad reasoning. I'm just pointing it out.
Except for the fact that it's a direct sequel to 2 other games that have always had a singleplayer and lan option to them, and battlenet stuff was separate, in other words, if their auction house doohicky had been made specific to online stuff, and they had left a singleplayer component in it along with an open multiplayer thing for lan and such nobody would have any complaints.

Sure THIS diablo game is online only, but as a fan of the first two I see this step as a travesty, it's a goddamn step backwards, it's easy to prevent cheaters online if you have all character data stored serverside, like they did in diablo 2 anyhow, so why the fuck would we need it to be always online for singleplayer, who the fuck cares if someone cheats in singleplayer, or in a lan game with friends, who may also be cheating? NOBODY... except blizzard apparently.

So yeah the complaints come from people who don't like to have their singleplayer experience(which shouldn't affect anyone else ever anyway) get castrated simply because blizzard was too damn lazy to separate the two, also too lazy to install adequate servers.

So tell me, how is this a good thing?
 

Realitycrash

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trollpwner said:
Walter Byers said:
D3 doesn't have anymore DRM than WoW. Calling it DRM is either dishonest or ignorant on your part.
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?
I love you.
 

dagens24

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Walter Byers said:
D3 doesn't have anymore DRM than WoW. Calling it DRM is either dishonest or ignorant on your part.
... Did you watch the video or just see it? WoW is an MMORPG aka multiplayer only. Diablo 3 is not an MMORPG, in fact it's largely expected that a huge portion of people will be playing solo. If the game doesn't require you to play with other people and you're perfectly able to play alone then why make it online only? Because it's DRM; it's designed to prevent piracy and item dupping/hacking. It's easier for Blizzard to inconvinience millions of people than have to deal with the problem themselves.