Diablo III Released 594
Almost 12 years after the launch of its predecessor, Diablo III has now been released. The game went live last night with over 8,000 midnight launch parties across the world. 2,000,000 players showed up for the beta test prior to launch, including 300,000 concurrently during an open beta weekend, but even so, the login servers struggled for the first few hours after launch. Diablo III had been in the works for quite some time — another example of Blizzard's notoriously long development cycle — and game director Jay Wilson said it was in "polish mode" for the past two years. "One of our sayings internally is 'polish as you go.' We have a belief that when you put a feature in, you should prototype, but then after you prototype you should do the real thing, and you should polish it to shipping quality." For those of you who are familiar with this type of game, there's an official game guide in which you can browse class skills, items, and other game information. There are also YouTube videos showing how each of the classes work.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's anecdotal for a single company, you can still play Diablo and Diablo 2 on Battle.net, not just on single player. As long as Blizzard exists you'll probably be able to play Diablo 3. It's not perfect, but at least it's not as bad as some companies (EA, Ubi).
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I will not be playing this one. Even pirated. Torchlight II will get my money, time, and affection. Blizzard can FOAD.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
Except under the DMCA cracking the game would still be illegal.
At this time we have no legal recourse to play a game if the DRM servers are taken down. Even in 15 years, they can still come after you for pirating the game if they wanted to.
Re:Release Failure (Score:5, Insightful)
And to add insult to injury they didn't even have the nice idea of implementing queues like most similar systems do..
Why should anyone ever have to queue to play a single player game?
Poor sampling method (Score:2, Insightful)
Only the people with problems are here to post their complaints. Anyone who it's working fine for is too busy playing/enjoying it.
Except the bastards who have to work, like me, that is.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
So, yes, I'd prefer it if there was an offline single player mode with modding possible, but I understand why they don't have one and that there are benefits to doing it that way.
Internet connection for single player mode? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh look, here's another game I'm not going to buy. I don't care how good your game is, if you pull bullshit DRM stunts like this, it's off my radar now and forever.
Maybe I'll download the pirated version and play that, just out of spite.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because then I'd be supporting a company that supports DRM. Instead, I'll just not buy the game at all.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't realized that U.S. law applies everywhere now, you certainly will when the FBI asks your country to extradite you and they comply.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:3, Insightful)
\internet-toughguy-mode
Re:Whats the fun? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I'm much more a fan of character creation and item discovery than the actual hack-and-slash or story parts, but it's all pretty fun for me.
Then I've got a game for you, and it's 100% less expensive than Diablo III.
Behold: http://www.nethack.org/ [nethack.org]
Is This Progress vs Tradition? (Score:1, Insightful)
I've viewed this "controversy" with curiosity and it somewhat mimics progress vs tradition arguments. I'm not trolling but honestly looking for insight:
- Day after day we have people happy to play single player games in online systems without complaint from consoles to phones to even Facebook. Why is this game different? The explanations so far lacking because the most compelling one is that "Diablo 2" used to do it. That doesn't mean I don't think an offline mode would have been impossible but that it isn't required.
- Do we operate under the illusion that all PC games are portable? I remember trying to play "Diablo 2" which has an offline mode, on vacation and on airplanes and other places and it was a miserable experience. "Diablo 3" is not meant to be portable or played in an environment with spotty power or spotty connectivity. Why do people insist on this mode when it seems more like an environment and usability issue instead of a missing feature? I suspect people believe that if "Diablo 3" had an offline mode they could play it anywhere but experience has showed me with "Diablo 2" that never happens nor is worth it.
- Are we denying the advantages this tech brings just to enhance the argument of what it takes away? I like the idea of storing characters "on their systems" instead of my computer since I've lost "Diablo 2" saves when machines and hard drives die. I like validation of characters, items, hosted environments because I've also lost a ton of characters to just joining the wrong games. It is not impossible to support both a completely validated system and offline but I would always lean in supporting the validated system when it comes to active support.
Basically I'm unconvinced that an offline mode is valuable let alone an effective workaround. Even if "Diablo 3" had an offline mode, we'd still have an article on /. complaining about how Blizzard/Activision/Blizzard-Activition/Satan is evil and can't handle it. Blizzard needs to address connectivity issues and delivery on the features they said they were supporting.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure everyone remembers what a mess dupers and hackers made of Diablo II
What could dupers and hackers possibly have to do with single player or LAN play? Dupers and hackers are only a problem on internet matches. The solution to that problem should only apply to internet matches.
Those who would sacrifice essential functionality for temporary security deserve neither.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:4, Insightful)
At 7.76GB installed, that's one helluva a "dumb" MMO client. You are right of course, I'm just throwing that out there for everyone ponder. Video and music take up space, sure. But is there really that much texture data?
Executable code is tiny by comparison. All that data is textures, models, animation, and audio (sound effects, voice, and music). So, no, there's nothing to ponder, really.
Re:Long term support, removal of security, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
'actively maintaining' is an overstatement. Usually Blizzard promises some patch 'soon' and 2years later it is still nowhere in sight. I don't know if WC3 players got their promised last patch ever. In case of SC1 few patches fixing meaningless shit nobody cared about, botched the community antihack and few other useful features for no benefit whatsoever and the community had to fix the shit again instead of waiting for some blizzard intern to change 3 lines of code and get approval for release which could take months.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:2, Insightful)
"It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection."
Well, IF they do that, then I'll consider picking up a copy. Until then, they can go fuck themselves.
Re:Is This Progress vs Tradition? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trolling but honestly looking for insight
Here's the insight: The server for the US zone are offline for "emergency maintenance [battle.net]." This means people who purchased Diablo III cannot play the game in any way shape or form, including launching a single player campaign.
I will repeat that again - On launch day, nobody in the US can play the game because of the DRM.
If you can't see the problem with that, I don't think you will ever see it.
Re:Release Failure (Score:4, Insightful)
No, a queue is a fix for a manufactured problem.
Similar problem solving:
Because your friend keeps stabbing you in the leg with a sharp knife, we've hired a paramedic to follow you around.
Proper solution:
Because your friend keeps stabbing you, we arrested him. As a result you will not get stabbed by him again.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who doesn't play online, I'm not terribly sympathetic. Why should that be my problem, and why shouldn't I just buy another game if Blizzard insists on making that my problem?
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop whining (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop whining about needing an internet connection.
I'd say it's a valid criticism.
You see, different people value different things. Some people value being free from DRM, and others do not. The fact that you don't agree with their criticism doesn't make them wrong.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck Blizzard for requiring always-on DRM, and then cheaping out on enough servers to meet demand. Fuck em right up the arse.
You shoulda said that before you got down on your knees and sucked their cock by paying for D3 and its abusive internet-based DRM.
Re:Is This Progress vs Tradition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except even at it's best it doesn't come close to being an MMO. Games are limited to a player cap of what, 4? That's a Multi-player Online, although not massive in anyway except price and hype.
I had beta access since some time in November. I played it on and off a good bit. I frankly prefered the older skill swapping system although the skill system as a whole leaves a lot to be desired. One of my complaints about Torchlight was that the skills were so limited and 66% of the skill trees were identical between character classes. And now Diablo 3 has come along and taken a page from their book and gone with a dumbed down skill system.
And they completely nuked the idea of having individualized characters. With skill swaping the way it is everyone is practically speaking identical. That would be great if this were a Team Fortress style game, but it's in the Diablo franchise, character building was a large part of the fun.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rant from a console player of D1 + Diablo-clone (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, the N64 version of StarCraft was fucking awful - and I've played it. Controls and horrible and hard to use, the interface was terrible, and the game was laggy as shit.
And health orbs? Really? You're claiming that that's from Marvel Ultimate Alliance when games from the bloody 80's had that (on PC no less, not console)?Sounds like the lazy elitist might be you.