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

[Lord_Jaroh]

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.

I can see this multi-player aspect being a good idea in theory, but as you can see, on paper doesn't really work in practice. With all of the downsides to this online-only aren't outweighed by your one bonus.

As well, for those that don't play multiplayer, your "bonus" is non-existent. Considering how long D2's community stayed around with its multiple options of play seems to counteract your argument of games will last longer with online only, especially considering the game can be "shut off" at any time that Blizzard wishes, and then you'll have no game...

 

[btd101]

There's an all out fucking rebellion on Blizzard's Diablo 3 forums right now for numerous reasons. I've had it with Blizzard/Activision! The customers have spoken and Blizzard/Activision as a company who had no problem taking our money spanning numerous countries should act accordingly to meet the demands of the consumers especially when the consumers gripes are consistently the same. They've been blowing us off like we're lowly subjects and they're royalty or something. Its blatantly bad business and I don't know how much longer Blizzard's customers are going to take it.This was a awesome video and I 150% agree. This is a little war cry for Diablo fans who have been betrayed.

 

[Henrik Stavenes]

I have owned Diablo 3 for less than 36 hours and I have not been able to play for 5 hours yet. this is a problem, this is a problem that should get people fired. I don't care if that makes me sound like I'm a whiny spoiled brat. I have tried more times than I care to count to log in all across the time I've owned the game and I was able to log in TWICE, and one time I was kicked out because there were too many people on the server. If some people are doing their job this poorly, they deserve to be fired.

 

[starslasher]

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.

I don't like the idea that I am to be pressured into going multiplayer. Why go through the facade of having a single player mode is this game is so focused on multiplayer as you say? Why not just plain out say that D3 should be an MMO?

And having an offline mode shouldn't be a discouragement against multiplayer, since you would have multiplayer mode anyways, and if you were set on going online, you would have made your character online anyways.

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.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this has just happened to me. One of my characters, my highest leveled one, has been cleaned out of his equipment, and am now left with just 2,000 gold. Critic Kitten is right that this doesn't seem like a fair trade off for an online experience.

 

[Do4600]

The only reason I play Diablo 2 and 3 is for multiplayer. I don't even have any single player characters in Diablo 2 even though it's probably my most played game ever, so it's pointless for me to be mad because I need to be online to play multiplayer anyway, I would have self imposed the online restriction because I enjoy multiplayer about eight times as much as singleplayer in Diablo. We should be annoyed the servers were not stable the first day, but I have no complaints about service after the first couple days, although I hear the Europeon servers are still in shit, be angry about that.

 

[Do4600]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this has just happened to me. One of my characters, my highest leveled one, has been cleaned out of his equipment, and am now left with just 2,000 gold. Critic Kitten is right that this doesn't seem like a fair trade off for an online experience.

I'm sorry to hear that, but they offer higher security measures, it's not their fault you didn't take advantage of them. Not only that but you can set up a ticket with Blizzard and they will role back your account and retrieve your stuff.

 

[Anqwa]

Just cause I want to spew my opinion to, especially now way after lunch and this videos relevance. I would not have bought this game if it where not for the always-online part. And While I have had no problems with it. (Bless, us in Europe), Always-online NEEDS to be always-online... I totally get it, but **** all of you who want it to be an offline Single player game.