Server Issues Mar Diablo III's Launch

[Alumatine]

Eh, blizzard is allowed to do what it wants to do with it's DRM. Personally I like having battle.net connected and having my friends list available in game, having my game always up to date automatically and having more hacking prevention that would be available otherwise. Good and bad always come together.

I played through to act 3 and now I'm sitting while the rest of my party plays because I got disconnected and the authentication servers are being upgraded.

Yes it sucks, yes I'm kinda angry but it's really not going to reverse one hell of a game (and yes it is fantastic) or the last 2 decades of awesome that came before it.

It's 1 night... yes you have a valid expectation of release day but seriously, don't think it's going to "Mar blizzard for life" or "take the shine off a (questionable? wtf?) game".

 

[Innegativeion]

Server shit-storms on a Blizzard launch day? Big effin' surprise, there.

And once again we have proven without a shadow of a doubt that mandatory web-access for single player gameplay was the

BEST IDEA ANY COMPANY HAS HAS HAD EVER.

Personally I like having battle.net connected and having my friends list available in game, having my game always up to date automatically and having more hacking prevention that would be available otherwise.

All of these things could be easily accomplished with a "connect to battlenet on startup" checkbox in the options menu, and are in no way a reflection of Blizzar'ds backwards DRM policy. With something like a RL cash auction house, good hackers will find a way regardless. Not that the tax Blizzard has on the transactions will give blizzard an incentive to stop them...

 

[_alter_ego]

Also, thank you Escapist for being one of the only name news website to have Diablo 3 issues on the front page; this is far more helpful than featuring non-news content like Diablo 3 Marathons.

 

[GiantRaven]

For those mentioning blizzard taking down the D3 servers eventually. They still have the Diablo 2 and StarCraft servers up and those games are ancient. I wouldn't expect them to pull the plug on these servers for another 10-20 years.

And what about in, say, 50-60 years time?

 

[Amnestic]

'cept it didn't. You could play SC2 in offline mode.

You could? I thought Battlenet 2.0 made that impossible. Oh well.
As I said, I haven't played any of the Blizzard games after Frozen Throne, so my understanding is only second-hand.

You could most definitely play it in offline mode and, contrary to what PercyBoleyn said, you could do so on your account and not need a guest account. I have done so when my internet was down.

 

[Parnage]

Seems to be working well for everyone I am talking to. I do admit that several folks ended up having to slam the keyboard on passwords and login screens to play at Hour Zero/Hour one of the game but considering a good section of the world was doing the same it's not unbelievable.


Also the Real money auction house has been discussed to death, we get it you don't want to buy the game you think it's evil. Why are you still telling us about it in the comments of an article talking about the game you don't have any interest in and won't be playing anyway who's topic is about day 1/2 server issues!?

For the record, yes everyone is playing(if they can) rather then complaining. It's kinda a big deal you know.

In a week this won't be a problem, as is true of all online releases they are often a tad rocky.

 

[theultimateend]

Breaking News: Popular game is popular.

And wow, we're about 9 posts in and already the stuck-up anti-DRM cretins have crawled out of the woodwork to whine.

disappointing isn't it, you'd think they'd have something better to do.

Was that supposed to be a joke?

Cause it was SUPER funny. I mean that unironically nor sarcastically.

 

[Jaeke]

Won't really matter since itll be fixed by 4:00-4:30 EST and most people are at work.

Besides I can't get past that damn Black King!!!

 

[Zer_]

'cept it didn't. You could play SC2 in offline mode.

You could? I thought Battlenet 2.0 made that impossible. Oh well.
As I said, I haven't played any of the Blizzard games after Frozen Throne, so my understanding is only second-hand.

You could most definitely play it in offline mode and, contrary to what PercyBoleyn said, you could do so on your account and not need a guest account. I have done so when my internet was down.

Yep. You didn't get achievements or anything of the like, but who cares. At least the functionality was there.

 

[Alumatine]

If you guys give this game anything but two stars I'm not even going to bother with your reviews anymore. I mean, I had my doubts. I recently saw the Dragon Age 2 review but hey, shit happens you know? That doesn't mean you can't reedem yourselves. Jew golds are fun and all but integrity is more important, right?

Are you threatening to boycot a website because you don't agree with an opinion? I just wanna make sure I'm getting this right. An entire website... with a huge amount of multi-subject media... with not direct connection to the game you are angry about...

Who are you and where do you buy your backwards logic?

 

[Woodsey]

What's the chances there will be a crack so you can play it without a internet connection by the end of this month?

Zero. All of the drops, and enemy spawns are server side. Without it there is no game.

We'll see.

I do wonder how much that's going to contribute towards hitting people's data caps in places like Australia and Canada though.

i remain unsurprised

since you know, this happens every time any thing 'online' launches

Breaking News: Popular game is popular.

And wow, we're about 9 posts in and already the stuck-up anti-DRM cretins have crawled out of the woodwork to whine.

disappointing isn't it, you'd think they'd have something better to do.

If that was a dastardly dig, we shall toast to it with cocktails. (Otherwise, I'll spit one out on you.)

 

[Torrasque]

A Blizzard product having server trouble when millions of players try playing at the exact same time?
SHOCK. AND. SURPRISE.

The same thing happens with every single Blizzard game.
They always say "our servers are fucking amazing" and such, but goddamnit they should be able to do better than this. Even right now, the servers are down for some quick maintenance to fix some weird lag that some players are having, making it impossible to even play the game.
I guess on the bright side, they are fixing it right away instead of having the lag go on and potentially get worse.

Either way, the server trouble is annoying, but it doesn't change the fact that I am having a fucking blast playing this game.

 

[templar1138a]

Blizzard's requirement that players always be connected to the internet [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112528-Diablo-3-Always-Online-Requirement-Helps-Fight-Hackers-Says-Blizzard], even for single player, has more than likely exacerbated the problem.

*in best condescending Carol Channing voice* Well maybe you shouldn't have made that a requirement!

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Not entirely unexpected. I unlocked my copy at 12:30 last night, and tried logging in sporadically for the next two hours. I was only able to log in at 11 o' clock this morning, and managed to play until 2:30.

I lost my connection with the server.

Honestly, I'm not surprised. StarCraft II had its own problems, and D3 is no exception. Either Activision realizes that always-online DRM is more of a nuisance to their own infrastructure than they'd like to admit, or they at least apologize for having poorly estimated the overall demand.

My guess is we'll be looking at one or two weeks of wibbly server activity before things get resolved.

 

[Dogstile]

Breaking News: Popular game is popular.

And wow, we're about 9 posts in and already the stuck-up anti-DRM cretins have crawled out of the woodwork to whine.

Why shouldn't I? Its a stupid move that would ruin me if I played the game as my internet dies on me a lot. Hell, I wasn't able to use the internet from home for a month, I ended up just doing it on my lunch breaks in university.

And as I've said before, I live in an area with a damn uni and these problems still exist. I don't see how companies want to continue to punish me for something I can do absolutely nothing about.

And the arsehole pirates continue on being able to play any game they want. Or at least they will when this gets cracked.

 

[doctorwhofan]

My husband did not buy this game for the reason of being always connected. As a member of the armed forces, it's really hard to connect in the middle of the ocean for 6+ months. As for the launch...I was wondering why Bree in LotRO suddenly became extremely crowded. This isn't Blizzard's first run at this, they know better. I call this an Epic Fail on their part.

 

[Sentox6]

Oh goody, another insane launch because they underestimate the demand. Just like TOR trying to limit how many people could play at launch and failing utterly.

I called it. I fucking called it. And does this really surprise anyone at all?

TOR has too many servers, actually.

The fact you effectively can't play this game without an internet connection makes me mad, though, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't derive some satisfaction from this.