Except for the fact that DRM actually hurts their sales more in the long run. Pirates are going to pirate a game regardless of DRM. But people who would normally pay full price for a game are more likely to turn to pirating it simply to get a version without restrictive DRM. Starforce (wasn't that the name?) was known to be as bad and worse than many viruses as just one example. Or the games that only allow so many installs off of a CD Key before going inactive. Hell, don't you all remember the annoying passphrases and code wheels of the 80s and early 90s? Those were pretty unanimously hated.

I could also point out how badly Nintendo fell behind in the console wars due to their reluctance to switch to a CD format for fear of piracy. Hence why the N64 was still cartridge based (which really screwed them, teams hated developing for it because compared to a CD, you had a much more limited space) and then switched to those silly little discs for the Gamecube. Shot themselves in the foot just to "prevent piracy".

Yet I'm sure we could all find evidence that "piracy" actually improves sales most of the time anyway. I'll use music as a prime example. Mostly because the people who still bother to pirate the music - weren't going to buy it in the first place. But say my friend burns me a copy of a CD and I like it? I'm more inclined to go and buy myself a copy rather than listen to the burn. Lots of people are like that. Remember how they swore cassette tapes would ruin the recording industry because people could record music off the radio? Yeah, I don't seem to recall that happening the way they predicted it either.

In pretty much any case, DRM is only hurting the paying customer and not stopping the piracy and in fact, quite the opposite, encourages it.

For next week's rant I'll talk about how places like Gamestop are a huge cause of day 1 [console] DLC (aka "on disc DLC") as a compensation of game companies not making any money off of used titles.

People swore that radio would kill live music, because there would be one version recorded for all time, and nobody would have to play it again.

Mass accessibility to books would also kill new authors, because people would just buy cheaper books by old authors.

Basically, the claim that new technology would kill X industry has generally failed to come true.

Not sure if you're responding to my post on accident, or you misunderstand that I totally agree with you </Fry-meme>

I'm just thinking that the majority of people are not so technically inclined / technically "cared" about stuff like this, and so this is how DRM will keep getting more and more invasive. Ah, the 80's were so innocent with their codewords hidden in the game manual...


Videocassettes were another one - the famous Jack Valenti quote that I can't remember verbatim, but paraphrased, something about the Boston Strangler blarga blarga

My point is that, even though it's invasive, most people still don't care. That is, it literally doesn't affect their use cases, and *is* the best of the alternatives *available* to them. So their (limited) choice is easy, and it supports the state of affairs, no matter if it's 'wrong' in the long run or in idealized terms. They're making a rational decision based on their own situation. Dynamic systems, economics, game theory are just full of these 'locally good, globally bad' phenomena. The way to 'fix' them is often to exert some top-down influence (like regulation, or mass cultural shift, maybe).

I don't see much evidence that anti-piracy measures are destroying game and media companies, though. They might be better off in the alternate-future with no DRM, but they're doing pretty well right now. Because they're doing pretty well, they don't care; because it all works pretty well, the majority of consumers don't care, either. So if your choice is to ineffectually whine about it, or just play the game, you might as well play. I fear this may indeed be the choice.

With a few weird exceptions (such as being able to purchase Assassin's Creed 2 on steam yet still having to go through Ubisofts AWFUL online only DRM, and obviously online only titles) any title you can purchase through them can also be played offline. If you have to have DRM, one time authentication online is the most anyone should accept. The days of requiring a disc be in the drive and be checked, in some cases as often as every 5 seconds, are over. This is why I buy so much from GOG, no muss, no fuss. Also why I donated more than I should have to kickstaters. I want my Wasteland 2 DRM free, and I shall have it and it will be glorious.

I can only hope that the overreaching grasp of EA and Activision will cause them to lose their sustainability as developers, because I'm tired of both the trash they put out and the trash they oversee for production that in most cases is ruining an otherwise good dev team. RIP Bioware and Blizzard. (Also, I'd sell my left nut to get a new Rock N' Roll Racing from Blizzard).

So. I knew the real money AH was an idiotic concept. I also knew there would be suckers who would blow money on it so there's no reason to not take advantage of them.

I made $211 yesterday off a weapon I got while farming Act I Inferno....

… Doesn't that make it a good idea, then? I don't understand: you got what you wanted, they got what they wanted.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

The basis of economics is that both sides think they're getting the better deal… and they are, because they have different desires. I would never, ever pay money for game items, but it seems silly to call anyone who has different values 'suckers', 'idiotic'.

You must've found something pretty nice for $200, though!

Yes different desires but often no appreciation of value or circumstances. We live in a world where people would choose not to pay a car loan bill to keep their phone activated. Depreciation is a horrible issue with the RMAH, in my opinion. Let's say the guy who bought the weapon gets a better one. He can sell it at $250 like I sold it, however the nature of random drops indicates that there should be MORE and the price he could get should come down. Regardless, if he sold it at $250 like I did, he would get the $210 back and end up with what was essentially a $40 rental fee. Chances are he could flip it after using it for closer to $200-$225 which means the cost for using it will have gone up.

There's also some pretty bad risk out there. Let's say your account gets hacked the day after you bought the item. Blizzard hasn't yet done their weekly backup of characters. You're SoL $250 of stuff.

Now, there is something to be said if you're investing money into buying gear strictly to farm stuff that you can sell for RM but I doubt that most people are using the RMAH for that purpose.



A 700dps one hander with about 150 strength, 150 vitality, 850 life on hit, a socket, and some other things. I'm pretty sure it was mostly the life on hit and not bad attribute spread. Based on how quickly it sold (<6 hours). I'm thinking I might have been able to get $300 for it and end up with around $240-250. Regardless, I'm probably not going to cash out. I'll use it to buy some crap on there at some point.

Oh, yeah, people love that LoH even after the IAS nerf.

I'm just saying that there are alternative concerns. If he derives $200 of pleasure from having that item, that's all that matters. It's not necessarily an investment or anything. He might be rich and have all his loans and bills paid, or not. I happen to agree with your position, but not everyone has to. People buy expensive cars, foods, clothes, and they're not necessarily getting that investment back in resale or use-quality, right?

In which case it's fairly frivolous spending and I'm still right.

No, it's frivolous *to you*. That's the whole point. You're right… under your own rules!

I played this game thorgh with the witch doctor. told my self I'd play the other professiosn as well, but i just can't motivate myself.

I've come to realise that I think I go for the more linear games sans the achievements and such. It was awefully short and for some odd reasons I expected it to be as fun and interesting as warcraft 3...

skyrim was good, but the open world of that just had me meh....bleh

Heh. It's hard to get more linear than D3, though. The Witch Doctor is still so weird. I don't understand the primary skill options: normal boring arrow attack, crazy spiders, weird frogs, and rubber fire skulls. Even if they weren't kooky, they're just mechanically odd.

maybe i should played to monk like i originally wanted to?

i played the witch doctor cause his voice reponses to people are more aligned to what i think a hero would say.

The way I've always looked at people dumping real money into digital items (gold/credits/foozles in whatever MMO, RMAH) is that a person has a certain value that they assign to their time, and if they feel they can get more value from spending a few dollars than utilizing said time for playing boring parts of the game (farming items to sell for gold, etc) then more power to them. If, back in Wow 1.0 days, it took you a month to farm 10k gold and you could purchase said 10k for $100, at $7.25/hr (current federal minimum wage) two day's worth of work == 1 month of boring gameplay. I can see the appeal there, especially for folks that only have maybe an hour a night to play the game.

I really like the monk, yeah, but you can have 10 characters after all. I don't dislike the WD, I just think his powers are odd, mechanically.

Necro, but...to answer why the two Lords of Hell (Diablo aside, don't know what to say about him) were so whiny:

Belial and Azmodan (especially Azmodan) knew the score. The intro for Act 3 where he talks to Leah? He wasn't talking to Leah, or the PC. He was talking to Diablo, whom he knew was up to something via Leah. It wasn't directly stated that he knew what was up, but there were hints in his dialogue. Remember his specific words in the dream:

"You thought you were so clever, that you had outwitted us all. One by one, our brethren fell into your trap. But not me...I defy you."

He'd never say that to a mortal girl (just look at his personality), but he saw it as 'Azmodan and his minions vs Diablo and his minions - which includes the nephalem'. All his blustering as you destroyed his plans was because he was basically getting shown up in front of a superior he was trying to outsmart - he never really had anything more than contempt for the PC.

Yes, but honestly those weren't the parts I meant. Sad.

They do get pretty annoying. I began just walking away from it after awhile and ignoring them.

I am currently downloading the 15.1GB of the Diablo III "Starter Edition." Weird name for a demo, but whatever.

So, I've played all the way through the demo (up to killing the Skeleton King) with a wizard, and restarted with a witch doctor. It's definitely Diablo. The graphics are very pretty, but it's still the same clickfest. I'll probably end up buying it at some point, but it won't be soon.

*Sigh* I'm having one of those days.
I'm going to stand by this game and it depressing how much bile Blizzard had to endure for this game.
It has/had some genuine issues and ... let's call it "questionable" management.
But! In no way has it deserved the complete and utter onslaught it suffered, something highlighted by the reveal of D3 for PS3/4.
I'll explain my mindset and where I think people went wrong.

First, Diablo to me has always been a game between games for me, something I play when I need 30 minutes of mindless fun, people approached it as their next main game (which is not odd in a climate of monogamers) and then cried foul when it couldn't support their full week gaming schedule...
Why? It's not an competitive game, it's not an MMO why did you expect that kind of longevity?
Now, people point to Diablo 2 and it's 10 year lifespan.
There's two false assumptions there though, first the vast majority didn't keep playing after their first playthrough and Diablo 2 had years of patching and an expansion before it was any good!

Incidently that leads to my next point. Blizzard releases good games, they tune them and nurture them until they become great.
Pick any Blizzard game look at it at patch 1.0 and see how good it is, most of the time you will find the answer to be "Good but not the most amazing thing I've seen". That's the thing about Blizzard though, they don't stop there, they give years upon years of support until it is the most amazing thing you ever seen.
Take a look at the updates (free of charge mind you) Diablo 3 received during the last year, you'd be amazed how much have changed and this isn't just a desperate cry for attention and loving. Brood war had a patching cycle of 12 years! Diablo 2 had it's last patch in March of last year, Starcraft 2 have had ton of content added since it's launch.
This is what Blizzard do and while Diablo 3 took some missteps on the way, it was still a good game when it launched and is on it's way to become a great game.

Going back to my earlier point, most people quit on Diablo 2 after their first playthrough.
Say this with me not every game is for everyone, here's something for you... I never played Skyrim, I love the lore and the aesthetic but how it plays is not for me. It's a bloody great game, but it's not for me.
I talked about monogaming culture couple that with absolute ludicrous sales and you're bound to have tons of people that find out it's not their cup of tea. Unfortunately it seems like there's no grey in todays market you're either for or against something... Which lead to lots and lots of bile.

Genuine issues and perceived ones.
To this day! there's only one thing with Diablo 3 I call genuine bullshit on and that's going back to the drawing board with PvP, I mean come on!
Let's start with the elephant in the room the auction house, while the intention was good I think todays gamers have been drilled by MMOs into a gear thinking that simply isn't feasible in a RNG loot system, some people argue the difficulty curve was deliberately skewed to push people to the auction house. Bollocks people asked for soul destroyingly crushingly hard and Blizz set it to "Where we couldn't beat it in house then we doubled it", their expectation was for Inferno to last ages!
Again not feasible to the expectation of progression people have today.
I do approve of the changes they've done to offer variety in difficulty and given up on the notion of unbeatable, but from the start it wasn't greed as much as naivety.
The mechanics changes, I don't know I think the old school hardcore Diablo fans were just gluttons for punishment, personally I hated having to reroll to try a new build, skillpoints that only affected your numbers and stats that gave the illusion of choice.
Main attributes could have seen better implementation with how important they were but I far prefer that to only looking for 1 stat (+ all skill, I played necro and sorc go figure)
Mechanically Diablo 3 was the game I had been waiting for, it's a matter of taste really and I always prefer trying cool shit to grinding 40 levels before I can be awesome.

*sigh* the story, the twist was bullshit. The Tyrael thing I don't mind, the Act 2 cutscene is powerful!
Now despite what people say, Blizz ain't that great story tellers. They build amazing involving worlds, they make cool as shit characters. But they can't tell an original story to save their life. I would hate the plot of Diablo 3, but just like with MoP or SC2 just all the developments they hint at, I can't help but to feel that they're building something up.
I want to see more of Sanctuary! I want to know more about Inarius and Lilith, about Malthael, I want to... I want to know more about Rathma, Trangoul and the twin dragons.
I want to know more about the horadrim, especially Kulle...
That if anything is indicative of how intriguing the world is.

As for the game, once you got past the initial rush of overpopulation. It runs like grease lightning never even stuttering when you got the screen full of enemies, It's pure visceral fun where every move actually feel like it got impact and I giggle like a little girl being able to destroy absolutely all the doodads.
The classes are distinctly different from eachother and feel powerful, the attention to detail is peerless.
The variety (and cheapness) of enemies is solid and as with any good hack'n'slash you feel like you always got a fighting chance.
Diablo 3 was the game I had been waiting for and I can't wait to see what the expansion(s) will bring, especially if they stop being afraid of screwing up

Yes and no.

I'll admit, the other day, I saw how cheap Gold was on the RMAH. I dropped ten bucks into my Blizzard balance, and grabbed myself about 39M gold. I'd spent twenty-five of it gearing my Wizard (currently level 58) and my g/f's Barbarian (level 57) with some really sweet legendaries.

Pre-RMAHing, her DPS was about 2K, and mine was just shy of 4K. We struggled against Elite packs, especially if there was a gold/yellow "miniboss" mob in the spawn. Multiple deaths, especially on my (glass cannon-y) part, were common.

Post-RMAH, her DPS is 12K, and mine has skyrocketed to thirty-eight thousand; she had a 500% improvement, whereas I enjoyed a 900% boost (and I've already got a L60 Changodo's set, waiting for me to ding twice, and jack that DPS up even higher!). And now ... we cut through ALL spawns so fast we sometimes have to stop and look at the bodies to even know what we just killed. This is on Hell difficulty, mind you. This morning we burned through Belial so fast, we both got "Good Eye" simply because he didn't LIVE long enough to drop any meteors at all!

That degree of difference is just ... holy CRAP, man.

So yes, I think the game was and is balanced toward where either you farm the ever-loving shit out of the game, and/or, you go to the AH and even RMAH.



I tried Hardcore in D3, actually. It was fun ... right up until the day before yesterday, when my L32 Hardcore Wizard got raped by a surprise, from-behind ambush by a pack of Champion demons, Act IV Normal. Onc ehte butthurt from that fades, I'm liable to try again. I just won't take my hardcore character very seriously, is all.

I was refering to the Diablo 2 purists that fought tooth and nail for the old skill system where you put points in where you either needed to reroll or beat the game to respecc, that means to the extent that if you missclicked the point was locked (meaning you had three total before reroll) the skill system also forced you to put 20 ranks in skills and their synergy skills to be any good, even then resistances could make your build useless in Hell.
Also you put out attribute points which had very much right and wrong ways of doing it.
Hardcore as a mode takes a certain kind of crazy, my wizard was killed at lvl 56 in act 3 hell. My heart sank and I started again, because it's just the way of hardcore.