So started trying to log on 53 minutes ago and haven't even managed to get to the character creation screen. Oh and the login server has crashed. Twice.

So, it didn't work when you started trying to log in the instant one of the most-anticipated games in history went live across a major chunk of the planet? It's working this morning, anyway.

Go ahead, equip that shield on the Templar.

What irked me was that they hadn't instituted queue's so it was a mad password spam session.

Is there an option for offline single-player?

No.

That sucks.

I think they're official response was "Can't log in? Play a different game"

Its sad, I remember when they treated their consumers with a little bit of respect

And that's why I went with the drug addicted, alcoholic ex-cop.

And that's why I won't play it.

Wow, irony so thick you can cut it with a chainsaw. "You say you're unable to use our product, which you paid for? Why, go use one of our competitors' products, you silly ninny!" I would commend them for their honesty, but I don't think this message is quite what they intended.

*shrug* I have internet access, so I can play it. I'm not about to cut off my nose to spite my face. You guys enjoy your principles.

I don't care that it requires internet access; I have plenty of games already that do. My issues are 1)that Blizzard should have anticipated the massive load on the log-in servers and taken steps to ensure that their paying customers would be able to access the product they had paid for, yet somehow failed to do so; and 2) the arrogance and stupidity of Blizzard's response to entirely justified complaints from said paying customers.

Honestly, I think Blizzard have been on top too long. They need one of their products to fail, miserably and publicly, to make them humble again.

Hehe. I understand the various concerns… but I'd rather have a good, fun game. I'm selfish like that. I also feel like launch day pains are pretty excusable, whoever you are. It's to be expected and handled like an adult.

It's a fairly established trend that game launches experience much more pressure than the game will later on. Allocating a ton of extra servers to handle the load of the first week will mean a lot of money spent on something that probably won't be needed later on (and if it is needed later, it will be at more controllable speeds, so they can gradually increase server space)

I'm glad that I didn't stay up after hearing about all the problems.

However, I called the witch doctor and this is what he said: oh eee oo ah ah bing bang walla walla bing bang

I played Diablo 1 but not two. I was wondering if three is like the first one in terms of gameplay. You know an isolinear perspective mindless monster mash broken up by town bits?

Basically but 2 and 3 are basically the same game except 3 went from 8 player multi player to 4 player even though there are 5 classes.......

Exactly. I guess what they could do would be to rent a few extra servers for the launch but I don't know how hard it would be to downsize the servers after the high.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy to have an immunity to all Blizzard's game (at best, they tend to bore me after 2 or 3 hours, at worst I'm not even remotely interested in them) and to be able to go on with my life.

What do they need those servers for in the first place? The "online auction house" gimmick is not something absolutely necessary - they could have tweaked the drop rates ingame instead (I played the beta as a DH and finding decent one-handed crossbows was a pain). The only use of it is PR "added value" bullshit used to justify the retarded-ass DRM.
When will they understand that piracy is a service problem, and oppressive DRM only aggravates it? To say nothing of the insane price tag?

My my, haters. $60 is pretty standard for any major game, and they need the servers because they chose to have multiplayer based on them; a choice, but unstoppably the one *they* made (and many years ago). It's an extremely fun game that millions of people have been eagerly awaiting for years.

The DRM is not ideal, but it's also nothing you can do anything about, with any developer. It's hardly the worst DRM we've seen. In what sense is video game piracy 'a service problem', and how does DRM aggravate it? That argument only makes sense for movies and music.

And there are 1h xbows everywhere.

First: the normal price for games here is $40. $20 to $30 if they're localized, since then they can't be exported to countries where they cost $60 (not many people speak Absurdistanian). That and people earning $500 a month could barely afford a $60 game. That's one.

Second: the DRM is not "not ideal", it's oppressive and exactly like the widely criticized Ubisoft DRM. I don't want nor need playing online with some random fucktards. I want to play single-player, probably even somewhere with no Internet available. But I can't, due to the retarded-ass DRM! There's your service problem. When you add the fact that DRM may break the game or impact its performance (see: Witcher 2, available with or without DRM, the version without DRM ran 50% faster), that's another one. Oh, and one more thing: one-time activation keys that work like "you install a game once, the key is spent, you cannot use it to re-install the game" (I've seen things like this, examples are Brain Training and Spore). If that's not a service problem, and a serious one at that, then I have no idea what is.

Also: the game doesn't sell? There are three main reasons for that:
1. It's shit.
2. Your marketing guys pulled the predicted sales figures out of their asses.
3. Some idiot decided to "protect" it with useless DRM nobody wants (spyware, "always online" requirement, remote colonoscopy...) and then had the undoubtedly great idea to tout it publicly as the greatest thing since powdered milk. Or, worse yet, put some bullshit clause in small print in the EULA that, of course, was read by an user who proceeded to kick up a righteous shitstorm.

Of course some bigwigs from publishing companies may blabber about used copies, piracy and other bullshit like that, but when you make a game that has a linear single-player story and nothing else (Heavy Rain - Scott Shelby is the Origami Killer, there, saved you the money), is bugged beyond belief (Russian games are like that and the lazy sods aren't too keen on patching them), massively overhyped (too common - the most disastrous example was All Points Bulletin, the MMO GTA-styled shooter that tanked two months after release) or just plain shitty (Spark Unlimited did two of these, Turning Point and Legendary, and now some moron at Crapcom hired them to make Lost Planet 3), you have only yourself to blame.

$60 is the normal price here, which is the place that matters (by which I mean they're a US company). I'm sorry if it's not right for your local standards, but that's how it goes.

Who said the game doesn't sell? What are you even talking about? This is about D3, not Witcher, Heavy Rain, one-time keys, 50% performance hits, or any of the other random things you mentioned. I never said DRM was good in general, or even any specific. Now, you claimed that 'piracy is a service problem', which DRM *aggravates*. Yet your examples are only talking about DRM being the *source* of this 'service problem'. So… where did piracy come from in the first place, then?

It's valid for media: pirated movies and music files are more convenient and more functional than legit ones. This is not the case for Diablo 3. The easiest source for it is direct paid download, and there is no additional functionality from a pirated version (i.e., if they allowed offline play—like D1 and D2—, the pirate version of that would have no benefit). You can also buy physical copies from basically everywhere, and there's no question of 'format shifting', 'sharing', FBI-warnings, menu-locking, or any of the issues with DRM-as-service-issue WRT to *media*. It's simply not like pirated media. AFAIK, the copies aren't even 'region-locked' like DVDs (you can use the Europe servers from the Americas, supposedly).

As I said, no offline single player is not ideal. I agree. I can't call it 'oppressive' with a straight face, though. #fwp? Internet access is common enough that this basically never affects me. When I was playing D2, offline SP was a huge deal, because internet access wasn't as common. Times change.

So, if you read what I actually said: this is hardly the worst DRM we've seen. In fact, it is quite manageable. Obviously, no DRM is best, from the consumer POV. That seems at best an unreasonable expectation, and at worst, totally counter to the reality that we have.

True, the DRM isn't killing computers like Sony's Rootkit, I'll warrant that.

Still rocking Max Payne 3 instead of Diablo III.

Yet another service problem: the producers don't give half a shit if someone in Absurdistan wants to play the game, because AMERICA FUCK YEAH. Somehow, other global publishers have deals with local ones, allowing for prices adjusted to people's earnings. Valve understood that (at least partially...), and they don't pull any dickery to "stop piracy". Blizzard on the other hand drew the ire of local gamers back when they released Starcraft 2 for $70 here. Now they're doing exactly the same with Diablo 3. And all that after a string of reasonably priced games (WOW Cataclysm costs around $25 here, so it's not impossible for them to do). So, some companies can lower their prices to a sensible level, and Blizzard can't. Service issue (ignoring the customer base) breeds pricing issue, pricing issue breeds piracy. Fats Newell claimed the same in an interview a few months ago.

Not when I'm in some end-of-the-world shithole of an Absurdistanian village where you need to climb a ladder to even have mobile coverage, water flows upwards, dogs bark with their dicks and drink water with their asses. My parents live in one of those, they're forced to use some shitty mobile modem connected to an old TV antenna on a long pole and they can't even open two websites at the same time. 150 feet from their house there's a fiber-optic landline belonging to the national telecom. No, it can't be extended to reach their house and allow a decent connection. Why? Because fuck you, that's why (traditional Absurdistanian excuse). And this is supposed to be an EU country! Host to European football games!

ACTUALLY - $60 is standard for a new release PS3 or X360 game. Standard PC release is $50. I worked at a Gamestop for a while, I can assure you of this fact. Even more so for digital release which costs them less money and most companies pass that savings on by having slightly cheaper digital releases. I'm not sure if I should blame Blizzard or Activision for this nonsense.

Seriously Mike, that seriously sounds like a personal problem. Not having internet access isn't their issue, any more than system requirements are their issue (like, how dare they make me have a graphics card). Regional pricing is not a service problem, and the numbers you presented initially were claiming that the US prices were *higher*, not lower.

Close enough, X-Calibur. Piracy is not the result of them charging an extra $10 to come even with console prices. He cited '$20-40'.

I'm not crazy: I like paying less money as much as anyone does, and I like the idea of not needing to be online (… even though I literally wouldn't be, 99.99% of the time). It's just a little much to say that $60 is too much for Diablo III (or any AAA title, not Torchlight or something), and it's a little much to call their system 'oppressive'. People who don't like Diablo don't have to play it, and people who make an overwhelming principled stance on these issues don't either. We all have our choices.

Blame the Hype!

Bye
Thanee

So... how is the game? Does anyone actually play it yet?

It's pretty great. I've only had a few hours free, so I've got a level 20-some monk. I wish I had something stronger than my laptop to run it on, but it's pretty regardless. It's fast-paced and spectacular, and there's a steady flow of novel gear, skills, and monsters. The plot is hokey, but that's in keeping with D1/2. Replay is rewarded with funny little sidequests. Overall, everything is faster and simpler (inventory, gear, crafting, skills). The skill/rune system provides lots of variety and flexibility, without (for me) encouraging 'builds'.

… No Legendary items ('Uniques') yet.

I'm also in the 'can't/won't' category on this one I enjoyed Diablo II, but the DRM literally bricked Starcraft II for me (it got stuck in a weird forced update/fail loop). I actually had to download a pirated copy in order to pay the game I paid for. But by that time, I was so sick of waiting 5-10 minutes for it to download and install updates because I only played once a month (and only the single player campaign), so it was a good move.

However, I have been enjoying both Tropico 3 and Stronghold lately. I love just putting the disc in and playing in ten minutes. I just don't have the stress tolerance for Blizzard any more.

I for one remember the massive hack problems from Diablo 1 and 2.

If nothing else, maintaining all essential data on the Blizzard servers will certainly cut down on that.

"Never put anything on the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never ever ever forget this."



-k

That's the attitude that leads to invasive DRM. I never understood why hacking was a problem that Blizzard needed to solve. If you don't want to play with hackers, then don't. Create a community of non-hackers; if you play with someone who hacks the game, publish their name so others in your group know to not play with that person. Game hacking is only a developer issue in MMOs.

Whatever the reason, it *was* an issue in those games that players cared about. They said, 'Blizzard, solve this problem for us'… so Blizzard did. They tried Realms and Ladder, and now they're trying secure (hosted) games.

Personally, I only ever played Open characters (and with LAN/IP-hosting coop). I don't care about PvP or anything, and I enjoyed (after dozens of characters and hundreds of play-throughs) goofing around with simple char-file-duping.

Half of why I enjoyed Diablo II was so I could hack it! I got frustrated finishing the game and only exploring a third of the tree for one character type. Hacking is how I as a player get longevity out of my game (or find a way to care whatsoever about the longevity built in). It's why I love Civilization as hard as I do. I can understand hacking being an issue for multi-player games, but there are other ways around that (for example, storing MULTIPLAYER CHARACTERS on the server, and leaving my single-player experience alone!)

Yes, that was the Realms/Ladder solution; apparently it was inadequate? I really don't know. I never cared about 'hacking', but I did use more polished mods (shared stash, skill respec, etc.), so I know what you mean.

However, D3 has a shared stash and instant respec…

I vastly prefer, if I can just play with random folks and chances are good, that they don't hack. In D1 and D2, that was completely impossible.



It takes a lot of effort to do that. Much better, if Blizzard prevents the problem at the source.

If this means DRM (in the way that I have to be online to play), I can live with that. And I surely am no friend of DRM.

Bye
Thanee

I just gave up on multiplayer years ago. The worst part about hackers, immature players, etc. was just how SAD they were. Here were people who invested so much of their self-worth into an online game. It made me feel sad and sick to watch them go on the way they did.

That's what they did in D2. It didn't work. I do not know the details of how the hacks and methods of duping items worked, but I know that they kept popping up.

I can't believe D3 runs as well as it does on my crappy work laptop with NVS 3100M. Everything is on low, but it seems to not chug with 20ish baddies on the screen.

Well, Blizzard is pretty good about supporting low-spec computers. World of Warcraft still runs very well on my crap 6 year old laptop with the gimpy Intel integrated graphics.




-k

It just hangs while trying to update the installer. None too happy.

... as long as you can maintain a high-bandwidth Internet connection for 30 minutes or more at a time. Like I said, my gaming computer hiccups with the Internet regularly, and it completed broke Starcraft II just before the last mission.

IF I ever decide to play Diablo III, I'll be pirating it, because it's the only way I'll be able to get it to work.

Yarr! Software off the starboard bow!!!

We of the Crimson Binome will be plundering yer files!!!

@Canray: Arent you one of the dinosaurs? You know how to work the magical box of light with the super light weight typewriter correct? Here I was assuming you were a great dragon that had finally had trodes created that were draco-sapient compatible.

I'm a certified (And possibly certifiable) computer tech by training, amongst other things.

I'm having a lot of disconnection issues, particularly while using he Enchantress companion for some reason. However when I'm not DCed it is an incredibly fun game. And since I bought the WoW annual pass it didn't cost me a dime, so I feel OK excusing some launch day and connectivity issues. The game is freakin fun.

I love that I get this reference.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/vie...ways-Online-DRM
In a nutshell:

• You paid good money for a game.
• You are entitled to be able to play that game.
• Hackers, dupers, et al. are Blizzard's problem, not yours.

And you know what? He's absolutely, one hundred percent, dead-bang-on-the-money correct on every single point.

With you on that one. Even Steam has an Offline mode. There's outages when you want to play something because you don't have an Internet Connection. There's people who don't live in High-Speed Internet areas. There's lots of reasons this is a BAD IDEA™.