Diablo 3 will require a persistent Internet connection to play

[RupeeClock]

Ubisoft already had an enormous backlash from this method of DRM and have not dared to use it since, for multiple reasons.

First off is that the method is extremely inconvenient. If the user lacks internet access for any reason (laptop travels, outage, no internet at home), then they cannot play the game. Suppose they bought the game on a disc, they STILL couldn't play it.
Secondly, if there is a short moment of outage, it can interrupt and even halt gameplay, possibly losing progress.
Thirdly, the game will only be as active as the DRM server. If hackers target the DRM server with a DDOS attack and take it offline, then paying customers are not allowed to play the game, whilst pirates will continue to play uninhibited. And this HAS happened to Ubisoft.

This DRM literally does nothing but hurt the consumer and encourage piracy, and to actually chose this method of DRM after the Ubisoft fiasco is utterly absurd and demonstrates a lack of good decision making.

 

[Rydian]

I don't get it. Why do people complain about this? You're playing the game on your PC, so why wouldn't you have a persistent internet connection?"Well it's like this FOR ME so it must be like this for everybody else!" as usual, Wintrale?

Maybe not every place on the planet has a persistent internet connection available for a reasonable fee... or at all. You know those places you sometimes go that are out in the middle of nowhere and have shitty or not internet? People live there too! You know, the places with nothing but wide fields... like farms? You know, people that live in rural farm areas? They often have nothing but dialup because many ISPs simply do not offer proper broadband in most of the US. There's also people that live in the mountains and blah blah blah.

http://www.broadband.gov/maps/availability.htm
Click "view data" and then scroll down. You'll notice that many areas have less than 40% availability (and poor Alaska has 0% in some sections).

QUOTE(Wabsta @ Aug 1 2011, 07:08 AM) Why are people so upset about this? You are going to want to play this multiplayer anyway, for which you have to buy it.

No duh you need internet for internet multiplayer, but not everybody has constant internet, and it requiring internet for single-player is the issue. Myself, I've never played Diablo 2 online, just offline. Different people play games different ways and it's not right to restrict everybody to certain requirements that may not even be available in their area.

 

[deathking]

and they are selling items in game for cash
they might as well make the game free to play

 

[redact]

DRM of any kind in any game on any console is stupid and should just stay way.

Steam DRM is the best DRM.

100% agreed. steam isn't a pain unlike some other online stores... *stares at EA*

 

[IBNobody]

It doesn't bother me one bit. D2 is best played online, on a closed server. (Even single-player - just play a private instance solo.) I suspect D3 will be the same. How else are you going to collect an armor set if you don't have the ability to buy pieces from another player?

(The only thing I don't like Blizzard's new stance is that you can't play local multiplayer.)

And for those of you complaining about not having a persistent internet connection...

1. If you're under 18 and/or still living with your parents, it sucks to be you. Move out when you can.

2. If you're not in that group, move to someplace that has Internet. Don't be afraid to ditch your Podunk town for something more metropolitan. Larger cities have better amenities.

3. Or if you're in my group (living at the very edge of the service area), wait a few more years until the network coverage expands. Diablo 3 should be out then, right? Maybe?

 

[Nujui]

It doesn't bother me one bit. D2 is best played online, on a closed server. (Even single-player - just play a private instance solo.) I suspect D3 will be the same. How else are you going to collect an armor set if you don't have the ability to buy pieces from another player?

(The only thing I don't like Blizzard's new stance is that you can't play local multiplayer.)

And for those of you complaining about not having a persistent internet connection...

1. If you're under 18 and/or still living with your parents, it sucks to be you. Move out when you can.
What does that have to do with anything involving this topic? I live with my family and I even have good internet.

2. If you're not in that group, move to someplace that has Internet. Don't be afraid to ditch your Podunk town for something more metropolitan. Larger cities have better amenities.
Some people can't afford better internet let alone afford moving.

3. Or if you're in my group (living at the very edge of the service area), wait a few more years until the network coverage expands. Diablo 3 should be out then, right? Maybe?

Read bold parts.

 

[Shoat]

and they are selling items in game for cash
they might as well make the game free to play

They aren't.
It's an auction house.
You got something wrong: Players are selling items in game to each other for cash.

We have been guaranteed that Blizzard themselves will never put any items in there, ever. Everything in the cash auction house will be sold by players and players only.



Also that whole thing is nothing but a measure to prevent scams from shady third party sites.
During Diablo 2's era, people where buying things for real money.
Half of the time they got scammed and their stuff was sold to others.
Half of the time they got their super OP items for real money and were then able to use those items against others without restrictions (bad for hardcore players who got killed by such people).

And how is it in WoW?
Players go and buy ingame gold for real money on shady third party sites.
Half the time they get scammed and their account is then used for farming more gold by a chinese child slave.
Half the time they get the ingame gold and then use it in the ingame auction house. (Now in D3, they would take their real life money and buy ingame gold from another player ingame, with the guarantee that it is at least safe, and can then spend that ingame gold in the ingame gold auction house. The money from this trade goes to another player instead of supporting child slavery)

Now those shady third party sites are fucked. Nobody is going to go to them with the chance of getting scammed when they can buy stuff legally and safely off of other players in the ingame auction house.
Additionally, Hardcore characters are completely seperated from that, so they can't be killed by people with bought gear, and they cannot ever get their hands on bought gear.

It's actually a good idea to prevent the same D2 curse from happening again.



Also, players can, if I understood correctly, sell their ingame loot to other players for cash and then either cash out and be like "ka-ching" or use the money directly from their bnet account to buy things from the blizzard store (for example a sparkly sky pony for their WoW account, maybe it will even allow you to buy other blizzard games).







Anyway, back to topic.
Like I said already:

1. No surprise. I could see something like this coming.

2. Can be avoided in singleplayer because it is guaranteed to have a singleplayer-only offline hacked version available right after launch just like SC2 had.
Some people will Pirate the game instead of buying it because they're pissed.
Some people will buy and Pirate the game because they want to play singleplayer in peace and cannot (or don't want to) trust their internet connection.

Maybe they will even reconsider and end up making a "skip logging in and just let me play singleplayer offline" button with seperate, locally saved, characters that cannot access any of the auction house or multiplayer modes of the game.

3. The vast majority of people will play it for multiplayer anyway.
Most of the D2 community played exclusively multiplayer.
Most of the WoW Arena PvPers will probably swap over.


So the only people who are actually screwed over by this in the end are people who want to play it on LAN.
And that's only from how it is right now. For all we know, maybe blizzard adds a LAN play mode later or a genius modder finds a way to make it work.







And finally, at the IBNobody guy further above who suggest that people who live in an area with bad internet should "just move to a bigger city":
Really? You cannot be serious.
You expect people to move away from their current place to a far away big city, which is guaranteed to make them lose their current job* (and finding jobs in a big city is extremely difficult, at least here), just so they can have a better internet connection so they can play Diablo 3 singleplayer?
You apparently have no idea how big of a deal moving is. Even Pirating an offline version of it is more sensible in every possible way.


*Why would that happen you wonder? "Hey Mr. Boss Sir, I'm going to move to the next big City so I have better internet. I'll have a 5 hour train ride every morning and evening from now on, so you won't mind if i'm 3 hours late every day, right?"

 

[doyama]

For people who are comparing this to AC2 need to get off their I HATE DRM horse because you're not looking at it in the correct way.

My thinking has always been DRM is 'acceptable' if in return you provide me with some kind of benefit that I feel is worth while. AC2 DRM was simply a crappy DRM only, and didn't give the player anything in return for this inconvenience.

From my perspective there are a few DRM strategies that are 'ok'

* "Day Zero" DRM. Valve falls under this for a certain extent, as did Dragon Age 2 and non-GOG Witcher2. The idea is to prevent pre-release leaks of the game. Thus when you buy the game it requires an initial authentication and then sends you on your merry way. I feel this is pretty reasonable, though can be 'flaky' (Witcher2 launch was kinda rocky)

* Steam. Again the give and take of DRM you get some features. I find the auto-patching to be very compelling, since I don't really have the time to be keeping up with every single patch on every game I have.

* Origins. Though even myself I'm not a huge fan, it seems to be at least beyond a 'really crappy downloader program'. I give them credit for at least looking at Steam and thinking "we need to at least 'try' to give something like that". I mostly dislike the fragmentation, but not the implementation.

So then we come to D3. If you really look at it the main reason why a persistent internet connection is required is because of the Auction House. The entire infrastructure is based around this model. Having server-side persistent characters, is essentially to ensure item integrity in the auction house. Thus whether you feel the always on DRM is bad/good should be related to whether you feel the Auction House experience is critical for you. A secondary reason is PVP. For PVP to be viable all items must be 'real'. PVP will lose it's credibility if every player can come on with some ungodly set of equipment.

Thus considering all this, I must say that I don't like this. I realize WHY they did it, unlike most of the DRM haters here who simply just hate DRM for the sake of it. If the Auction House is really important to you then an always on connection is critical to maintain item integrity within the economy. If PVP is critical then again item integrity is paramount. Unfortunately these things aren't very compelling to me. I played D1-2 only with my friends online, so the whole 'cheating' of item duping or whatever was just between us and didn't impact anyone. I'll never be playing with strangers with D3, nor going on PVP where my 40 year old reflexes will surely get trampled (if my League of Legends experience is anything to say it's going to be BOTS AND ONLY BOTS FOREVER!) So to me the trade off of always on isn't compelling since the corresponding benefits are miniscule to me.

Personally I would have liked to have seen an 'offline mode'. The way to ensure item integrity is that 'offline weapons' are tagged such that they cannot be used in PVP or traded in the auction house, or even used online (last one not too sure but just saying). So again, yes I can play in offline, but I lose specific benefits. If PVP and the auction house are not important to you then you can probably just play offline forever. Otherwise it might be a decent way to kill a few hours while understanding that the super artifiact you find in that mode won't be viewable by anyone.

This isn't going to stop me from buying D3 (unless the game itself is really bad for some reason...). My Steam is always online and having play D3 online isn't really that much of a stretch beyond that. Maybe I'll 'grind' solo every once and awhile but in general I'll be playing with friends so having to be online is kind of expected anyways. But I do wish the online requirement gave me more benefits that I could actually use.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

That is...stupid. I'll probably end up buying the game, than pirating it and play solo offline whenever. Haven't played a Diablo game in years so I'll need the practice!

 

[prowler]

Oh well, I won't buy it on launch then. Take that, Blizzard

Yeah! Buy it used and use a crack.
Then everyone is a winner (except for Blizzard)!

 

[doyama]

That is...stupid. I'll probably end up buying the game, than pirating it and play solo offline whenever. Haven't played a Diablo game in years so I'll need the practice!

Just buy Torchlight instead

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Already have it, I just couldn't really get into it. I don't know why, it just always seemed to bore me rather than entertain me.

 

[Eckin]

My connection has tons of hiccups during the day, it usually doesn't matter if I'm playing a SP game, but it looks like if I play D3 I won't enjoy it any bit. Going back to login screen every other hour because my connection crapped itself for 1 minute ON A SINGLE PLAYER GAME sounds annoying as fuck.

 

[clegion]

Depending on when the game come out, I have around 1 year to play this game.....Yeaahhhh

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Ubisoft already had an enormous backlash from this method of DRM and have not dared to use it since, for multiple reasons.

First off is that the method is extremely inconvenient. If the user lacks internet access for any reason (laptop travels, outage, no internet at home), then they cannot play the game. Suppose they bought the game on a disc, they STILL couldn't play it.
Secondly, if there is a short moment of outage, it can interrupt and even halt gameplay, possibly losing progress.
Thirdly, the game will only be as active as the DRM server. If hackers target the DRM server with a DDOS attack and take it offline, then paying customers are not allowed to play the game, whilst pirates will continue to play uninhibited. And this HAS happened to Ubisoft.

This DRM literally does nothing but hurt the consumer and encourage piracy, and to actually chose this method of DRM after the Ubisoft fiasco is utterly absurd and demonstrates a lack of good decision making.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm not into the Diablo franchise, but I really hope this doesn't become the norm for video games (And if Ubisoft is the prime example, it won't be).

 

[Celice]

None of those reasons even sound supportive of forcing me to always be connected to the Internet (though honestly, how many of us aren't while we game? A small, small amount (but I know how much it can be an inconvenience from first hand experience).

Maybe if the had some really legit and really awesome features that necessitated the connection, but right now, it doesn't seem any more powerful than what Steam does right out of the box (sans the obvious Diablo battlenet whatevers).

 

[Youkai]

Man that sucks I wanted to buy this on release oO

but seeing how much Settlers pissed me off with the DRM i need to think twice ...
I bought Settlers from Amazon and got it 1 day early still took me 1 whole week to finaly be able to play thanks to the server overload and than i got kicked after a few minutes in single player and had to wait another few days -.-V


Well i do not dislike the idea to have services in the game requiering online connection but when you just wanna play single player or lan its just stupid to have to deal with possible connection problems or whatever ... if D3 will be as much of a Hit as D2 (or even more) they might really get problems with their servers especially in the beginning

 

[Rydian]

though honestly, how many of us aren't while we game? A small, small amount

Vulpes Abnocto's on dialup.

Just because you have access to the internet at all doesn't mean you can have constant access, especially not when the internet's not actually being useful (seeing as dialup ties up the phone line, as does satellite with modem upstream).

 

[Celice]

(yeah, I was gonna mention dial-up as that was my only connection a couple years back for a good while, and that's why it sucked

)

But it's that argument that's gonna excuse such enforcing of a connection. Sadly

 

[Giga_Gaia]

though honestly, how many of us aren't while we game? A small, small amount

Vulpes Abnocto's on dialup.

Just because you have access to the internet at all doesn't mean you can have constant access, especially not when the internet's not actually being useful (seeing as dialup ties up the phone line, as does satellite with modem upstream).

I doubt they give a damn about people on dialup, since the amount of people still on it are minimal.

Also, these days, most games requires broadband to play the online portion of the game, so even if you didn't need to stay connected at all time, dialup users would probably denied due to not having broadband.