Be Excellent To Each Other

Is this a victory for me in some roundabout way? I'm taking it regardless!

Meh.

There's nothing worse in the world than admitting you were wrong. On the internet.

Wonderful.

Over 6.3 million people are praying their net connection doesn't go down and cost them some phat loot!

6.3 million excuses for all the other publishers to now rush and stuff shitty DRM into their games; all the while pointing as Diablo III as a justification.

If I ever win the lottery, and if the next Xbox/Playstation comes with some kind of shite 'always on' DRM, I'm going to fritter the money away tracking down as many of the people who bought Diablo 3 as I can and kicking them right in the fucking nuts for setting such a goddamned stupid precedent.

I quite like the connection thing to be honest. I never need to find the game disc much like steam and I always have my saved game files where ever I am.

For me I don't mind living with the drawbacks. However I understand the some peoples will not like them and find them overly restrictive.

Neither of those things require an always-on internet connection.

Always being able to carry where you left off, on any computer (that can load the client) at any time does though.

But you said it doesn't do that. It does checkpoints. So all it needs is an internet connection when you pass a checkpoint. And if it can't make an internet connection at that point, save it locally and sync when a connection is available.

Hell, it could save everything locally and sync when it has a connection.

But what of the real money auction house? What of hackers? What of being able to leave your game open so passing 14 year olds can jump in, run in circles and call you a "gay fag nooblar"?

You don't realize it but you actually want these things.

I'd like to jump into someone's game and pretend to be an NPC giving out quests for rewards that I'd made up, so people would ask about them on forums. Oh, teh LOLZ that could be had.

Hasn't that already been hacked?

@MaliA - That would be awesome.

Noooooo! Their DRM wasn't restrictive enough, that is the only possible explanation for it!

OR! Pretend to be Rufus.

*Grows handlebar moustache*

Blizzard must be doing a hell of a propoganda job if they've got people believing that any of these things are a benefit of their DRM. Hats offs to them.

I'd have loads of players in plate armour go to a castle and stand in a hallway, against the walls. And then world owning player would come in and would be "there's people in my game, but where are they?" and then everyone would jump out and shout "Happy St Swithans Day!" and there'd be cake and shit like that. And a disco. I'd make the best MMORPG event stuff.

I didn't say that at all, I said you come back to your last checkpoint when you re-login. However that is your checkpoint for progress in the environment, not to do with your character. Your gear, gold, skills, achievements, xp etc... are all constantly saved. The only reason there are checkpoints is that the world is randomly generated every time you start a new session. The checkpoints just give a hook to load into so you don't have to re-explore the map to find where you need to go to continue the quest you are on.

Ah - OK. Still nothing to stop you having an offline save that's constantly synced whenever a connection is available, though.

True, but if it isn't synced, then you have problems in having a character on the server which isn't synced to a local client. You play on a new machine and then have two local characters that are at different points, which one syncs back to the master on the server?

Don't get me wrong, there should be a completely offline mode for people to play, but a hybrid online/offline mode has a lot of problems that are easily overcome by making it online only, so I can understand why that choice was made.

The solution to the above problem that they've gone for, though, is to NOT LET YOU PLAY THE GAME AT ALL.

My solution is better, and if you think otherwise, you're a mug

Your solution is ill thought out and short-sighted

Ill-thought out and short-sighted? Sounds like Craster to me.

Hey, I've had my eyes fixed!

Ha! I suppose so. But it doesn't seem so bad from where I'm sitting, honest guv. I've had no problems and have no problems and if anything this actually benefits me.


EDIT: Might also help with me actually liking the game.

Yay!



Yay!



No.

If you're talking about stuff like cloud based save games and not needing a CD to install then, as had been said, you can have those benefits without needing a constant net connection though (Steam does this for example) so it's not the 'always-on' nature of Diablo 3 that's actually providing you with those positives. If Blizzard are managing to convince people that they can only have those benefits along with this exact kind of DRM then, as I say, their propoganda machine's a complete success! Which sets a very bad precedent in my opinion...



How's that then?

I would play it if i could have this setup

Nah, there's no back support.

He could have got that screen size and clarity without the god awful bezels in the middle too, amateur.

NEC do a nice set of bezel less screens.

Yes it doesn't gain you much and it gains blizzard far more but I don't really see it as a problem for most 'always connected' people. I don't think it's a bad thing from their point of view either to try and stop copying of the game in what is a blatant business decision. But I do like how they've worked with that decision in mind and added (yes for me) positive additions. Yes some could be done in other ways without this need for a constant online session, perhaps in a more XBOX Live style system where updates are submitted when online. Either way I like not having to worry about where my character progress is saved (even with the silly check point system), having easy drop in and out with friends, hacked characters and other cheating retards.

I'm not saying I'm happy with every game becoming like this but I don't find it offensive either.

It's never going to be an issue for consoles due to the limited access most people have on them and in most cases I would assume most current XBOX and PS3 consoles are already constantly connected.

As to enjoying the game, I've played D1,D2 to death and I'm happy with "more o'the same shit". Perhaps you have to play the game with a bit of nostalgia, anyone who didn't enjoy it then certainly will not now.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Diablo ... 15724.html

It's all been hacked basically! The real money auction house isn't online yet and the date for it coming online has been pushed back.

Current advice is to only play with friends or stay solo, public games are a no-no. Yay Blizzard!

lulz

I think that is what he is using in the pic?
http://www.shopping.com/NEC-MultiSync-X461UN/info

I've uninstalled the game, it's taking up space on my SSD I can use for other things.

A few of my chums have finished it now, only one of them can be arsed to make a start on Nightmare mode.

I've never once had "real name" be an actual security credential. I had no idea I'd be fact checked on it, and frankly I'd not like my real name associated with my Blizzard account.




Anyway: RE DIABLO III. They're already releasing mega-balancing patches, e.g. the Monk's part buff. Did they not play test this?

In all fairness it's only when they release their games out to literally millions of players that they realise some of the mad shit that people can come up with.

The same sort of thing happened in WoW (and still does, to an extent) - some seriously crazy dudes come up with all sorts of character builds that fundamentally went again the game design but managed to come up with insane builds where even Blizzard developers basically said 'Kudos guys no one ever came up with anything like that in the play testing or beta'.

They've simplified the WoW talent trees to remove the loony 'hybrid' builds that some folks came up with, like the Paladin healing build that was basically incapable of running out of mana chain-casting a powerful heal on a tank, due to maxing 'secondary' stats and using really specific gear sets and a weird set of talents from two trees - it's the sort of stuff that only falls out of the woodwork when millions of people get their hands on a game.

If you look at the beta cycles that Blizzard's games go through, they are very long and very thorough, and they generally get most of the worst stuff out long before release - and TBH you can't really blame them for some of this stuff getting to release, especially since they are very quick when it comes to getting it fixed.

I can understand some of the fixes -- they're obviously subtle things that aren't obvious. (i.e. the wizard guy's ability to take a maximum of some% damage, which means you can avoid being one shotted, and if your overall HP is tiny and your regen is higher, then you're essentially invincibile to mobs that rely on powerful alphas). But the monk's party shield is just using it exactly as intended. % buff to all members in party. No subtely about it! Maybe it was a last minute change?

Oh dear: forum thread with characters in Hardcore (ie. permadeath) mode killed by lag or outages. Quite a lot of them. I'd find that really very annoying indeed.

Indeed.

I'm back on WoW now, made the mistake of going back for a quick go inbetween difficulty levels and have never returned

we both knew that was going to happen

The clusterfuck around this game and its servers is an absolute fucking disgrace, I always knew that Blizzard were ruthless money-grabbing gougers, but at least believed they were competent money-grabbing gougers.

To lumber what is essentially a single-player game with so many myriad online problems is unforgivable, and they have well and truly lost my respect.

Lag, disconnects, servers down, hacking, characters lost, all met with a total wall of silence or platitudes - most of this is just to support the real money auction house and the ZOMG MILLIONS they had flashing in their eyes over that (by all accounts you can get gear to tackle the hardest skill levels the long way and grind, or shortcut it on the AH, and of course when (if!) the real money auction house comes along, Blizzard make a bucketful of cash).

Shocking stuff from a company with such deep pockets as Blizzard.