16 replies to this topic

[IMG News]

At a recent press event Blizzard Entertainment allowed participants to try out a demo version of the upcoming Diablo III action RPG. In addition to the demo experience the company released some new information about the upcoming title. Among other things Diablo III will require an always on internet connection, will not allow offline play or local characters, and will introduce an auction house for the sale or purchase of in-game items for either real world money or in-game coin.

Don’t Need It? Put It Up For Auction!
Nearly everything found in the game, including gold, can be exchanged with other players directly or through the auction house system. So say you’re a witch doctor and you’ve just found an incredibly rare, incredibly powerful axe that only barbarians can use. In the previous Diablo games your best option might have been to sell the axe to an in-game vendor, but in Diablo III, you now have the ability to list that axe in the auction house for your fellow barbarian players to bid on. And you know another player will probably appreciate the true value of that axe more than some heartless vendor who’ll likely just melt it down for scrap…

Will I need to be connected to the Internet to play Diablo III?
Yes, players must be online in order to play Diablo III. Diablo III was built from the ground up to take full advantage of the new version of Blizzard’s powerful Battle.net platform.

Players will have access to several features through Battle.net, including an advanced achievement system as well as the Diablo III banner system; a powerful co-op and PvP matchmaking system; comprehensive stat-tracking; persistent characters that will not expire and are accessible from any computer that has Diablo III installed; a persistent Real ID friends list across multiple Blizzard games, along with cross-game chat; a shared stash accessible by all Diablo III characters on the Battle.net account; and the ability to have friends seamlessly jump in and join you at any time during your quest against the Burning Hells. Together with the security-related benefits that Battle.net provides, these Battle.net-based features are integral to the Diablo III game experience.

Check out the Blizzplanet page linked below for more information about the latest Diablo III information.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[clocknova]

"Will I need to be connected to the Internet to play Diablo III?"
"Yes, players must be online in order to play Diablo III."

At least, for the first week or so.

Personally, I'm skipping this one.

[Jude]

Quote

Among other things Diablo III will require an always on internet connection, will not allow offline play or local characters

Well, that kills it for me.

It would have been bad enough to have call home registration to activate the game.  Good thing I'm still addicted to Diablo II with my hundreds of characters.  And although Blizzard's older games do not work on the new Mac OS, they work fine on my old dual-boot G4.

[Diablofett]

I have no issues with logging on once to register and confirm the legitimacy of my copy. But this whole "always online" thing is really ridiculous and punishes the legitimate users more than pirates. If someone wants to pirate a game they will find a way to do it no matter what. With the online connection requirement I will definitely not be purchasing this game.

[G-News]

It's a pity. The good thing about time-sink games is that you can kill time when you need to. That is usually exactly when you do not have a permanent internet connection. Then again, after SC2, this was to be expected.

[Jude]

Diablofett, on 02 August 2011 - 09:31 AM, said:

I have no issues with logging on once to register and confirm the legitimacy of my copy.

I do, because if the company quits supporting it or goes out of business, and/or you get a new computer or upgrade your old one and the company only allows one registration, you will no longer be able to register the game, and therefore, your game  --- that you bought --- cannot be played and is worthless.

[ikir]

I can understand someone is pissed by this... but i don't think it is a big problem. You mostly play online, Blizzard will last forever probably so don't worry if you think they will close servers, i have no issue about this on SC2.

[Diablofett]

I hardly played Diablo II online. I preferred playing by myself in order to avoid playing with Battle.net people. Yes, Battle.net people.  

*Random Paladin Logs in*
Paladin: give item give item give item give item
*Paladin is now hostile towards you*

ikir, on 02 August 2011 - 01:05 PM, said:

I can understand someone is pissed by this... but i don't think it is a big problem. You mostly play online, Blizzard will last forever probably so don't worry if you think they will close servers, i have no issue about this on SC2.

[badger2d]

Diablofett, on 02 August 2011 - 01:13 PM, said:

I hardly played Diablo II online. I preferred playing by myself in order to avoid playing with Battle.net people. Yes, Battle.net people.  

*Random Paladin Logs in*
Paladin: give item give item give item give item
*Paladin is now hostile towards you*

I play by myself is well, but the ability to do that won't change. It's not as though D3 is going to force you to play open public games and endure random internet jerkwads whether you want to or not.

I don't see it personally affecting me at all, I don't game on the go. Still, permanent internet requirement in a game that more people enjoy single-player than not is a dick move by Blizzard, and the PR-spin excuses they've offered are extremely lame. One interview I read, the Blizzard rep said, (paraphrasing by me, obviously) "Well what if Joe Blow buys the game, plays until level 40, then thinks he'd like to try playing online and discovers he has to make a whole new character! Wouldn't he be so pissed about that and aren't we so great for saving him from that terrible fate!!"

I hope they'll get buried far deeper than they ever could have conceived of in a firestorm of well-deserved QQing from their fan base, and change their minds.

[UniversalWolf]

Yeah, I'm out.  I would have bought it, but I don't love Diablo nearly enough to put up with that level of nonsense.

[Diablofett]

badger2d, on 02 August 2011 - 05:38 PM, said:

I play by myself is well, but the ability to do that won't change. It's not as though D3 is going to force you to play open public games and endure random internet jerkwads whether you want to or not.

Oh I merely wanted to make a reference to a funny occurrence from the old Diablo II days. I would not be surprised to see them start forcing players to play in open games only. Not that they are in this game, but I could see it happening in future titles perhaps. Maybe even charging for standard Battle.net as well.

[Frigidman]

With how many phishing emails i get for battle.net, I don't even wanna try to legitimately signup for a battel.net account. LOL. So I'm like, screw it. If I can't play the game without a cheesy for popsnizzle battle.net account, then I won't bother buying the game.

[Frost]

IMG News, on 02 August 2011 - 07:07 AM, said:

At a recent press event Blizzard Entertainment allowed participants to try out a demo version of the upcoming Diablo III action RPG. In addition to the demo experience the company released some new information about the upcoming title. Among other things Diablo III will require an always on internet connection, will not allow offline play or local characters, and will introduce an auction house for the sale or purchase of in-game items for either real world money or in-game coin.

oh wait, this was a real news post?

Blizzard has gotten too big for their britches, and this type of idiocy which would never see the light of day from a company that wasn't, has thusly made their products too popsnizzlety for my wallet.

Congratulations, Blizz, you're the only company to one-up UbiSoft on the DRM-WTFery meter. That took some effort, and some brass balls, and I know you won't care because your legions of WoW players and obsessive Diablo fans will buy millions of copies even if you informed them that play was 50¢ per minute. So enjoy your sycophants and say goodbye to yet another gamer who discovered Blizzard when they were nobodies publishing this simplistic but fun little game called Warcraft.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

I wonder how much of this comes from Activision, and how much comes from Blizzard..

While I can see some things being a requirement for the evolution of online games like this, some things are just WTF..

[Doc Savage]

This is an unfortunate trend in gaming.  I liked it better when you just bought the game, installed it and played it.  If the game manufacturer was paranoid, they'd make you leave the disc in.  I was fine with that.  Now you don't actually buy the game.  You buy the opportunity to play the game.  If you happen to be in a place that has a good internet connection, and if the manufacturers' servers are up, you get to play.  Otherwise...

The game makers try to make it sound like you'll reap some great benefit by staying connected too.  When I started playing Dragon Age: Origins, they kept advertising the ability to share your accomplishments with all of your on-line "friends."  Well, some of us just like to play the game, and leave our actual friends in real life, so none of that is of any value to me.  The first thing I did was go in and disable all of the "social" settings on my account.  In this brave new world of over-sharing, I suppose I'm more the exception than the rule, but I still like to think that there are others out there like me.

As for forced online registration, I did a ground up re-install of Lion (I was still carrying around some old frameworks from 2003), and reinstalled all of my applications.  When I reinstalled Wingnuts 2, I put in my registration code from a few years ago, and the game informed me that the code had expired.  I needed to contact Freeverse for a new code.  Well, it turned out that the Freeverse registration server was down.  For two days.  Granted, the Earth didn't spin off of it's axis because I couldn't play Wingnuts 2, but one of these days, I expect a process like that to just not be there anymore for one reason or another.

Some games are so good it doesn't matter how outdated they look, they're just fun.  I keep an old Quicksilver Power Mac with OS9 and Tiger around for just that reason. Every so often, I'm in the mood for a round of Tropico, or Future Cop, or Space Colony, or whatever.  Some day, 20 years from now, I may want to pull out my old 2008 Mac Pro, fire it up and play Diablo 3.  I wonder if the Blizzard servers will still be online?

I'll say it again.  I liked it better when you just bought the game.

[Frost]

The fact that Blizzard's response to the backlash over this in the past 36 hours has been to make a shaky effort at conflating online all the time requirements with having online play at all and then snow gamers with bullpopsnizzle about how great online play is, is really making them look like a dishonest bunch of twerps. I stopped feeling like I was reading gaming news and more like I was reading a loaded statement from a Congressman on CNN.

[Eric5h5]

I think I'll just stick with Torchlight 2.  (Runic Games should use this as a good marketing opportunity.)  I'm not so into Diablo that I can't live without Diablo III.  If Blizzard changes their minds later and makes an option for offline play, I'll reconsider.

--Eric