'Always online' will affect you whether or not you have a good connection.

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Genocidicles

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"It doesn't affect me at all! I'm always connected and my internet never goes down!"

There's always someone saying something to that effect in any thread discussing DRM, whether it's for Diablo 3, Sim City or the Xbone. I'd just like to say that it will affect you, even if you do have super internet that never ever goes down ever.

The first reason being that although your internet connection may be amazing, the servers you're connecting to sure aren't. Diablo 3 failed at launch, Sim City failed at launch (and is still holding back features to be able work properly) and chances are that if enough people buy one the Xbone will fail at launch too. Along with that are the times when the servers are taken down for maintenance, or hackers bring them down and there are plenty of times you'll be unable to connect regardless of your amazing internet.

The second reason is that the servers you're connecting to wont be online for ever. What happens when the inevitable Diablo 4, or the next Sim City or Xbox two are released, and most people migrate over to them? There'll not be enough people on the old versions for them to justify spending money on the servers forever, so they'll shut them off (probably as a way to force people to get the newer version too) after a few years.

So when the server is shut off, no more Diablo 3, Sim City or Xbone for you. Not even the singleplayer parts of the games. That money you spent on them wasted. And if you don't think the servers will inevitably go off then know that EA regularly turns off the multiplayer servers for their old games (only this time they'll be able to turn off the singleplayer too), and Microsoft turned off the xbox live servers for the original xbox back in 2010.

If you think they'll patch in a way to play offline before they take their servers down then I have to point out this is Microsoft and EA we're talking about. I can maybe see Blizzard doing this, and even then I'd still be surprised. It'll be a cold day in hell before Microsoft or EA do something like that.

I can still install one of the old Diablo or Sim city games and play them whenever I want, just as I can still whip out my old consoles and play my old games on them whenever I want. I doubt that'll be the case with Diablo 3, Sim City 5 or the Xbone.
 

DoPo

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Jan 30, 2012
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For what it's worth, I doubt the new Xbox servers would go down due to load. Since they are going to be using cloud technology, my guess would be that they'll virtualise the servers too which in turn means that it's incredibly easy to scale them up and down depending on load - if an extra 10k people join that you can't handle, spin up several machines and you're down;traffic goes back to normal, spin them down. Done. This is not what SimCity or Diablo 3 did, as they just couldn't overprovide for peak loads as easily.

At least that's what I think sane people would do, and Microsoft are...erm, sane enough (or "not as insane" to a sufficient degree?) to realise and implement it.

Not that it makes the online requirement any better in general, though. I still don't think it's necessary or even desirable for single player games. Brings in too much complexity and potential faults, even assuming your internet connection is OK (which...is not an assumption that can be made for everybody ever). Moreover, it's extra cost on the developer/publisher/whoever is in charge of it. Quite an extra cost. They could just be getting more profit by not doing that and using the extra proffit and workforce (those severs ain't gonna maintain themselves) for other stuff like...making other games. Or whatever.
 

Genocidicles

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DoPo said:
For what it's worth, I doubt the new Xbox servers would go down due to load. Since they are going to be using cloud technology, my guess would be that they'll virtualise the servers too which in turn means that it's incredibly easy to scale them up and down depending on load - if an extra 10k people join that you can't handle, spin up several machines and you're down;traffic goes back to normal, spin them down. Done. This is not what SimCity or Diablo 3 did, as they just couldn't overprovide for peak loads as easily.
That's true I suppose. I do remember reading that they'll have something like 50,000 servers for the xbone's online. Of course they'll still likely fall to maintenance and hackers every now and again.

Not that it makes the online requirement any better in general, though. I still don't think it's necessary or even desirable for single player games. Brings in too much complexity and potential faults, even assuming your internet connection is OK (which...is not an assumption that can be made for everybody ever). Moreover, it's extra cost on the developer/publisher/whoever is in charge of it. Quite an extra cost. They could just be getting more profit by not doing that and using the extra proffit and workforce (those severs ain't gonna maintain themselves) for other stuff like...making other games. Or whatever.
That completely missed my mind too. Of course I think tons of publishers are jumping with joy at the prospect of an always online platform that they can't be blamed for.
 

shrekfan246

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Isn't Blizzard still providing support for Diablo II servers? I know it had a new small patch just within the last year or two.

Anyway, yes, Diablo III failed at launch. And since about two days after launch, their servers have been perfect. At least whenever I've played over here on the US East Coast. A few hours per week down for maintenance? Oh no, call the press!

Considering that one of the patches quite a few updates ago started caching objects, monsters, items, etc. on the player's PC and with the information that the console versions won't be always-online, it may be a fool's hope but I hope all the same that they'll eventually patch out the internet requirement for D3. But as it stands right now, my internet is the only thing that ever hinders me playing, and that's because another person on the same internet likes to download/stream from Netflix, and while doing that my own connection slows to a crawl.

Perhaps I'm not the correct person to speak with about this, though, as having a recurring WoW subscription meant that I got Diablo III for free anyway.

EDIT: I really am less apathetic about this subject than it appears. I wouldn't buy a game with always-online DRM. The only reason I play D3 is because I got it for free from Blizzard's promotion, otherwise it would've been another title that I just ignored. But it's a pretty fun game, and while I agree that the internet requirement for solo play is enough to justify people avoiding the game, I don't think it's enough to generate as much bile and vitriol as gets slung toward the game on a practically daily basis. At most you should just give passing indifference, "Oh, always-online? Whatever, guess I'm not playing it" instead of "BLIZZARD KILLED MY KITTEN, RAPED MY FAMILY, AND BURNED MY HOUSE DOWN WITH COMBUSTIBLE LEMONS! RAAAARGH!" :END EDIT

Not to be rude, but what's the point of this thread, though? Making this thread on this website is preaching to the choir. Apart from maybe one or two people playing the devil's advocate and a few outliers who say the exact same thing you're trying to decry, the overwhelming majority of people who respond to this thread are most likely just going to agree with you or hate on everything remotely related to always-online DRM.
 

lacktheknack

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I don't think "It'll be gone forever!" is accurate.

Assassin's Creed II, the first of the always-on brigade, got an offline patch after a couple more games came out and people weren't playing it as much.

Otherwise... what Shrekfan said. Why bother making this thread?
 

CriticalMiss

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If they did take servers down for maintenance I doubt they would take down every server at the same time. So you might get shittier service during that period but you'll still be able to get some kind of connection. Chances are they will be doing it during off-peak hours too, which will minimise the impact.

But the point about hackers and obsolescence over time is valid. I wouldn't be shocked to hear about Anonymous taking out a server or two around launch, but apparently there are going to be 300,000 (might be wrong) servers dedicated to XBL when the Xbone launches. Surely that would take one hell of an effort to take down all at once? And perhaps the developers and publishers will patch out the online requirement of their games for single player when they decide to shut off their servers?

I still think the online requirement is stupid, mind you.
 

EtherealBeaver

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shrekfan246 said:
Anyway, yes, Diablo III failed at launch. And since about two days after launch, their servers have been perfect. At least whenever I've played over here on the US East Coast. A few hours per week down for maintenance? Oh no, call the press!
If your new car or your new tshirt wasnt available for a few hours when you really needed them just because the company who made them were fixing something which didnt bother you in the first place, Im pretty sure you´d feel very different. Publishers unfortunately succeeded in making it a culture where not only are many people oblivious to the implications of them removing access to the product you bought to a degree where they will actively redicule anyone who stands up for themselves as a consumer but they also made people think they were awesome for doing it - or at least not caring - and all because of the medium.

It doesnt matter that it doesnt affect you personally. If a product doesnt work, its a very serious issue even if only 30% of the people who bought it experienced it. And in this day and age when many people have rather little time to play in the first place between jobs, family and what not, allowing a company to withdraw what precious little time you actually have to play the game is a catastrophe for the consumer.
 

shrekfan246

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EtherealBeaver said:
shrekfan246 said:
Anyway, yes, Diablo III failed at launch. And since about two days after launch, their servers have been perfect. At least whenever I've played over here on the US East Coast. A few hours per week down for maintenance? Oh no, call the press!
If your new car or your new tshirt wasnt available for a few hours when you really needed them just because the company who made them were fixing something which didnt bother you in the first place, Im pretty sure you´d feel very different. Publishers unfortunately succeeded in making it a culture where not only are many people oblivious to the implications of them removing access to the product you bought to a degree where they will actively redicule anyone who stands up for themselves as a consumer but they also made people think they were awesome for doing it - or at least not caring - and all because of the medium.

It doesnt matter that it doesnt affect you personally. If a product doesnt work, its a very serious issue even if only 30% of the people who bought it experienced it. And in this day and age when many people have rather little time to play in the first place between jobs, family and what not, allowing a company to withdraw what precious little time you actually have to play the game is a catastrophe for the consumer.



As much as people love drawing parallels between the video game industry and the automobile industry, games aren't cars.

Point the First: You don't "need" games. If a game is down because the servers are down, you find something else to do. Is it disappointing and/or infuriating that you couldn't play the game when you really wanted to? Yes, but actually getting angry over it is practically the embodied definition of 'First-World Problems'.

Point the Second: I won't call EA, Microsoft, or Blizzard "awesome" for their online DRM. As I stated in my edit, the only reason I even play Diablo III in the first place is because I got it for free off of a World of Warcraft subscription promotion. I won't buy games (or consoles, for that matter) with always-online DRM, because I don't support the practice. You could argue that by simply playing the game, I'm encouraging them, but they still didn't get money from me.

As far as Blizzard specifically is concerned, they always mention far in advance when the games will be down for maintenance and what the projected times for coming back up are. Short of patches that break something new, they almost never have unexpected downtime and the games are almost never going to randomly go down while you're playing. There are notable exceptions, as always, but that is the average way things are handled with Blizzard's online games. Considering that the vast majority of the time the game will be up when you want to play it, complaining about a few hours of maintenance time (without which, by the way, many issues would arise that probably bring down the game for a few weeks at a time) is a bit like complaining that you need to wash dishes, or vacuum carpets.
 

SecondPrize

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shrekfan246 said:
Isn't Blizzard still providing support for Diablo II servers? I know it had a new small patch just within the last year or two.

Anyway, yes, Diablo III failed at launch. And since about two days after launch, their servers have been perfect. At least whenever I've played over here on the US East Coast. A few hours per week down for maintenance? Oh no, call the press!

Considering that one of the patches quite a few updates ago started caching objects, monsters, items, etc. on the player's PC and with the information that the console versions won't be always-online, it may be a fool's hope but I hope all the same that they'll eventually patch out the internet requirement for D3. But as it stands right now, my internet is the only thing that ever hinders me playing, and that's because another person on the same internet likes to download/stream from Netflix, and while doing that my own connection slows to a crawl.

Perhaps I'm not the correct person to speak with about this, though, as having a recurring WoW subscription meant that I got Diablo III for free anyway.

EDIT: I really am less apathetic about this subject than it appears. I wouldn't buy a game with always-online DRM. The only reason I play D3 is because I got it for free from Blizzard's promotion, otherwise it would've been another title that I just ignored. But it's a pretty fun game, and while I agree that the internet requirement for solo play is enough to justify people avoiding the game, I don't think it's enough to generate as much bile and vitriol as gets slung toward the game on a practically daily basis. At most you should just give passing indifference, "Oh, always-online? Whatever, guess I'm not playing it" instead of "BLIZZARD KILLED MY KITTEN, RAPED MY FAMILY, AND BURNED MY HOUSE DOWN WITH COMBUSTIBLE LEMONS! RAAAARGH!" :END EDIT

Not to be rude, but what's the point of this thread, though? Making this thread on this website is preaching to the choir. Apart from maybe one or two people playing the devil's advocate and a few outliers who say the exact same thing you're trying to decry, the overwhelming majority of people who respond to this thread are most likely just going to agree with you or hate on everything remotely related to always-online DRM.
I bought D3 at least a week after launch and had a lot of trouble playing. Error thirtywhatever was done by that point but some days I simply wasn't able to play due to being constantly dumped out of the game. Their troubles didn't last forever, but they were around longer than 2 days, in my experience.
 

uchytjes

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The only thing I don't understand about the whole "servers suck" problem is this: How many copies does a company have to sell to make a profit? Wouldn't that be a good estimate for how many people to expect on the servers (or, at least a fraction of it?) I can understand server problems if your game is a runaway hit and sold 4x as many copies than what was expected, but most of these games have very large sales goals that predict sales in the MILLIONS sometimes. Why wouldn't they take that into account and say "We need to sell 1m copies of this game, so we need to prepare for at least 75% of that the first week."

Also, why can't they move servers around and dedicate more at launch and slowly take then and put them to work elsewhere as server population decreases?
 

rob_simple

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shrekfan246 said:
You don't "need" games. If a game is down because the servers are down, you find something else to do. Is it disappointing and/or infuriating that you couldn't play the game when you really wanted to? Yes, but actually getting angry over it is practically the embodied definition of 'First-World Problems'.
And so what? I live in a first-world country, and this is a problem.

You're right, I don't need games, but I do pay for them; if I am giving money for access to a product I expect to be able to access it whenever I want to, not when the publisher decides I'm allowed to.

It's true that this isn't a huge deal, comparatively speaking, but what concerns me is that the more we let these guys get away with, the more they'll chance their arm. Of course, you can say just don't buy the games if you don't like the practices, but I want to play the games, I just don't want all the unnecessary bullshit it comes saddled with.

Companies like Microsoft and EA are abusing their position in the market and it is despicable, and while, in a sense, gamers only have themselves to blame, it shouldn't be us that have to boycott or complain to get rid of practices that should never have existed in the first place.
 

EtherealBeaver

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shrekfan246 said:
As much as people love drawing parallels between the video game industry and the automobile industry, games aren't cars.

Point the First: You don't "need" games. If a game is down because the servers are down, you find something else to do. Is it disappointing and/or infuriating that you couldn't play the game when you really wanted to? Yes, but actually getting angry over it is practically the embodied definition of 'First-World Problems'.

Point the Second: I won't call EA, Microsoft, or Blizzard "awesome" for their online DRM. As I stated in my edit, the only reason I even play Diablo III in the first place is because I got it for free off of a World of Warcraft subscription promotion. I won't buy games (or consoles, for that matter) with always-online DRM, because I don't support the practice. You could argue that by simply playing the game, I'm encouraging them, but they still didn't get money from me.

As far as Blizzard specifically is concerned, they always mention far in advance when the games will be down for maintenance and what the projected times for coming back up are. Short of patches that break something new, they almost never have unexpected downtime and the games are almost never going to randomly go down while you're playing. There are notable exceptions, as always, but that is the average way things are handled with Blizzard's online games. Considering that the vast majority of the time the game will be up when you want to play it, complaining about a few hours of maintenance time (without which, by the way, many issues would arise that probably bring down the game for a few weeks at a time) is a bit like complaining that you need to wash dishes, or vacuum carpets.
If you have legs, you dont "need" a car either just like you dont "need" fruit or a tshirt either because this is the first world and we probably have something else to eat/wear. Whether we "need" it is irrelevant to the argument. We bought it and therefore the company selling it have no more right to prevent us using it than they have preventing us from using a tshirt or a car we bought - regardless of their excuses. If there is a health hazard then that is something completely different, but preventing customers from using the product they paid for because you feel like you dont make quite enough money from what is already in your game is not a valid reason.

If you personally play diablo 3 or not is also irrelevant because it is a matter of a company selling a product which clearly doesnt work for many people. That you personally did not have problems with it, does not mean that others did not and that it is therefore a reasonable business practice. The problems were there in Sim City 5 and in Diablo 3 and they will be in any forthcoming product requiring online DRM because regardless of how perfect your personal ISP is, the publishers ISP will never be - and even if they were, there will always be peak periods which overwhelm the servers which in turn force you to not be able to use the product you paid for.

An analogy could be that the bicycle you wanted to use to drive a trip with your friends suddenly didnt work because the producers of the bike decided to make some ajustments to it which you didnt even want in the first place. Sure you dont NEED to take a trip with your friends but since this is your bike and your spare time, what right does the people who made your bike have to prevent you from using it? As you said, you dont NEED the bike because you dont NEED to take a trip with your mates, but Im betting you´d be pretty angry about it
 

DoPo

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shrekfan246 said:
Isn't Blizzard still providing support for Diablo II servers? I know it had a new small patch just within the last year or two.
Well...there are several things to note here
1. Diablo 2 still has singleplayer and LAN available even if they stop the servers (more on that later, though).
2. Even then (again, more on it later), there are, like, a bajillion places to still play it online. Try as they might, Blizzard cannot remove all private bnetd servers. And the bnetd actually works pretty well - I played on on of those servers and the only major difference is the population.
3. It's Blizzard. That's most of what I have to say about the later parts. Well, I guess I'll elaborate - Blizzard are both the scariest and one of the better companies out there. Other companies considered "evil" should take note from them. Because Blizzard are amoral. Like, utterly. They are the embodiment of Lawful Neutral when it comes to gaming companies - they can do wrong stuff, lots of wrong stuff (DRM, online passes, shutting down competition, etc), and yet, you know that it's not out of malice or similar. They would not abuse their power outside of what is necessary for their goals. And their goal is making money. That's all they do, pretty much every decision they take is tailored towards that end and they still don't come across as corrupt. Because in the end it's against the code they follow. Even though the threat of "the servers closing" is there, it's just something Blizzard won't do. Well, won't do easily anyway.

Sadly, not a lot of companies are Blizzard. Not all have either the means or the mindset needed.
 

MagunBFP

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EtherealBeaver said:
If your new car or your new tshirt wasnt available for a few hours when you really needed them just because the company who made them were fixing something which didnt bother you in the first place, Im pretty sure you´d feel very different. Publishers unfortunately succeeded in making it a culture where not only are many people oblivious to the implications of them removing access to the product you bought to a degree where they will actively redicule anyone who stands up for themselves as a consumer but they also made people think they were awesome for doing it - or at least not caring - and all because of the medium.

It doesnt matter that it doesnt affect you personally. If a product doesnt work, its a very serious issue even if only 30% of the people who bought it experienced it. And in this day and age when many people have rather little time to play in the first place between jobs, family and what not, allowing a company to withdraw what precious little time you actually have to play the game is a catastrophe for the consumer.
Whenever I take my car in for a service/registration/repairs its quite literally not available due to maintenance, whenever I put my t-shirt in the wash its not available for a while... should I go raging to the car manufacturer or the clothes shop that "OMG I can't use the car/tshirt 24/7/365 so it's a terrible product"? At least when hackers take down the servers we get them back eventually... that's not really the case when your car gets stolen and taken for a joy ride.

Since when has not being able to play a game been a catastrophe? I agree that a faulty product is a bad thing and we need to make sure that publishers know that D3 and Sim City fiascos will not be tolerated but I'm also thinking that perhaps you might be a little over-dramatic with the "The world is ending because I can't play Halo/Gear/COD/whatever in my tiny window of opportunity"
 

MoltenSilver

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shrekfan246 said:
As much as people love drawing parallels between the video game industry and the automobile industry, games aren't cars.

Point the First: You don't "need" games. If a game is down because the servers are down, you find something else to do. Is it disappointing and/or infuriating that you couldn't play the game when you really wanted to? Yes, but actually getting angry over it is practically the embodied definition of 'First-World Problems'.
First-world problems are still problems. I don't care how trivial my problems seem to other people, they're the things that bother me and I'm going to despise whoever is responsible for them. I don't know about other people, but I'm fully capable of caring about multiple problems at the same time.

How so are cars different? They are items, which were sold to me. The only difference at all is the number of people who buy cars vs buy video games left to make an outrage, the amount of laws restricting the properties and sales of cars, and the competition for sales. I have to service my car to keep it working, and online games have to maintain their servers, fair enough, but the diablo/simcity/many other soon-to-be examples difference is that's like a newly-purchased car stalling the first time I try to drive it off the lot, and being told I have to 'wait a week' for it to work because the manufacturer couldn't be bothered to finish it before I paid for it.

Why should I have to find something else to do? I paid money to play that game right now. If they're determined to market games as a 'service' (more BS that shouldn't be tolerated) then you bet I'm going to cry fraud when I don't receive the service I paid for.

Maybe if more people got angry when they were disappointed by something, we wouldn't have these problems in the first place.
 

chozo_hybrid

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Dexter111 said:
MagunBFP said:
Whenever I take my car in for a service/registration/repairs its quite literally not available due to maintenance, whenever I put my t-shirt in the wash its not available for a while... should I go raging to the car manufacturer or the clothes shop that "OMG I can't use the car/tshirt 24/7/365 so it's a terrible product"? At least when hackers take down the servers we get them back eventually... that's not really the case when your car gets stolen and taken for a joy ride.
Are you seriously comparing repairing your car and washing your clothes with publisher-imposed DRM which has no place being there in the first place and its ONLY reason to exist is to control you and the usage scenario e.g. take away rights from you, among them:
- being able to play at all times
- being able to play how you want
- being able to play after they drop support
- being able to resell
- being able to lend/rent
- being able to datamine you and possibly deliver better targeted Ads
etc.
That's why I don't understand why people keep justifying it, because all it is, is a method of controlling the customer base on what they do.

Even if they were to remove all this DRM I wouldn't trust them with a console again, since they considered doing it in the first place. I own a 360, it's my most used console, but Xbox One is not going to be owned by me, not ever.
 

Frezzato

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Genocidicles said:
I had already posted a rant this yesterday, but you bring up an excellent point.

Something's going to have to resolve the issues with 'cloud' purchases and content, and I prefer it sooner rather than later. There are several snags regarding content hosted in the cloud and said material's legal ownership. Apple solved theirs with iTunes; you can download and burn/convert them to however you want to store them. Either Apple really does trust their customers to do the right thing or they realized it was too much of a headache to crack down on IP theft. Either way, they let the content providers hunt down illegal downloaders. And that's even on relatively unsecure platforms like PC. Microsoft's online requirement is clearly an effort to curb users hacking their machines at home, which is ridiculous.

Personally, I can't wait till the X1 is released and smart folks start intercepting packets to find out what exactly Microsoft thinks is so important about what people are doing in their homes.

Beyond the mere content, I think we should come up with a proper definition for video game consoles; that is, standalone machines that can host interactive digital content. If the X1 really won't function offline, it had better be fucking labeled accordingly come the holidays.

Prove me wrong, Microsoft. I'll be waiting for E3.
 

Lovely Mixture

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MagunBFP said:
Whenever I take my car in for a service/registration/repairs its quite literally not available due to maintenance, whenever I put my t-shirt in the wash its not available for a while... should I go raging to the car manufacturer or the clothes shop that "OMG I can't use the car/tshirt 24/7/365 so it's a terrible product"?
Because you are making the choice when your car gets repaired or shirt gets washed. You don't have that option for an always-online game, the people on the other side make that choice.

When your computer breaks, you are in control.
When Diablo III, Simcity, or Xbone breaks, you have zero control.

MagunBFP said:
At least when hackers take down the servers we get them back eventually... that's not really the case when your car gets stolen and taken for a joy ride.
You could say it's just as bad. They created a system where your car can be shut down or hijacked with ease and you're left with nothing until it's returned. Sure it will be returned, but it's always going to vulnerable.


MagunBFP said:
Since when has not being able to play a game been a catastrophe? I agree that a faulty product is a bad thing and we need to make sure that publishers know that D3 and Sim City fiascos will not be tolerated but I'm also thinking that perhaps you might be a little over-dramatic with the "The world is ending because I can't play Halo/Gear/COD/whatever in my tiny window of opportunity"
Yes, the problem isn't as big as that, and that's not what he's saying. But it's what the situation means for consumers.

You pay money for a product, the product doesn't work. It works AS ADVERTISED (as part of an online network), but it doesn't make sense when you have a problem that can clearly be avoided.

Not everyone likes to play MMOs, not everyone likes playing with other people, not everyone wants to be part of "the community." For companies to force that onto people is what I would consider bad. To do that for games franchises that have NOT been subject to this before is bad

Imagine if Nintendo said: "We're adding an online component to the new Mario BUT since this the CORRECT way to play, we will only allow you to play the game when online."

That'd be retarded, that's almost worse than DRM because you're hiding behind a bullshit justification for your practices when there are clearly customers who will want to play otherwise. The phrase "customer is always right" is not to be taken literally, it's the principle, the customer is NOT always right, but if a company wants to make sales they LISTEN to the customer rather than say: "oh well, that's a lost sale"

Free-to-play games have avoided this issue, you don't pay for the game you pay to use features in the game (which are optional). MMOs have avoided this issue by being LABELED as MMOs when they make sense to be.


FizzyIzze said:
Microsoft's online requirement is clearly an effort to curb users hacking their machines at home, which is ridiculous.
I can see it now.

Xbox One release night - Hacker "Hmmmmm."

Three months later - Hacker "Hey guys, give me $20 and I'll make your Xbone play-able offline. Oh and don't worry about system updates, I got those covered as well."

One week after that - Hacker (rolling in an entire vault of money) "god bless you Microsoft."