Blizzard Surprised by Reaction to Online-Only Diablo 3

[AlternatePFG]

online only, no single player = guildwars

quests are done in parties, otherwise you don't meet players in quests that are not part of your team = guildwars

characters saved onto servers = guildwars

able to re-asign skills = guildwars

game level data stored on HDD, server handles network connections + updates only = guildwars

it even does the same business model of one time retail boxed product payment

It couldn't be more the same if it tried

What are you trying to get at here? You aren't making any sense. Guild Wars is an MMO. It makes sense that you'd have to be online for it work, because it's a fucking MMO. Diablo 3 is not an MMO. It is not advertised as an MMO, Diablo 1/2 were not primarily mutliplayer games, which is why there is such an outcry.

 

[samsonguy920]

I'm surprised whenever I see "Game CEO is shocked at negative response from gamers". It's like, HELLO, have you been on the internet, like, EVER!?

Yea, what rock did he crawl out from...oh right, he works at Blizzard.

The rock in this case may be a very large pile of money.

Most people with really large piles of money are completely out of touch.

You basically just summed up Congress and the White House. Oh, and Ubisoft, too.

 

[Tickolas]

Well then, that does seal the deal. As in me not paying for this hunk of DRM =)

Seriously, was bad enough when Diablo 2 decided to crash AND save my game when I was sorting out my inventory and chest after beating the end boss, losing me just about every piece of loot I had.

 

[jamesworkshop]

battlenet 2.0 a single profile cross-title xbox live style system for blizzard titles much like the single account that hold your characters in an mmo

no starcraft is not an mmo but thats fatuous when the comparision i made was with guildwars which diablo 3 clearly is 99% the same

i'm still baffled why people are soo confused by greater online intergration in an industry moving towards non-local machine rendering (cloud) from one of the most online focused developers on the planet.

No one seems willing to take me up on this point because their simply is no difference between diablo 3 and guildwars 2 which a ton of people are hyped for.

Uhh, there is a big difference. First of, Guild Wars 2 openly advertises itself as a MMO with a persistent world. A lot of the content itself comes from player interaction, and there can be hundreds of people in the same area at the same time. You need a group of players to accomplish certain tasks.

Diablo, on the other hand, has never been an MMO. It's a dungeon crawler in which you can have, at maximum, eight players in a single game. They haven't designed the Diablo games in such a way that you NEED other players to accomplish anything. Therefore, a lot of people don't want to have to deal with other people online when they don't have to. And understandably so, as many people can be dicks.

Not to mention that this is a game most would have probably liked to have with them when they travel. But unless you're paying upwards of $50 a month for 3G in addition to whatever you pay for high-speed internet at home, doesn't look like this will be possible, either.

openly advertised or not it makes no difference you are still interacting in fundamental the same way, can you play guildwars offline? or on the train without 3G?

diablo 2 is 10 years old they have clearly remade it in a way that has taken obvious cues from warcraft

the only player interaction you have is in the same party quest instances, random players don't interfer in the way they might do in Wow

 

[Alrocsmash]

Do people still not get it, it's not intended to be a single player game, the comparison with AC2 is false.

It's always online for the same reason guild wars 1 and 2 will be when it arrives, same as world of warcraft or the upcomming star wars the old republic.

If you avoid this game then i must insist that you avoid all thoses others because they are no different.

Yes, because Diablo 3 is an MMO.

yes that is exactly what they have made, people are thinking that diablo 3 was just some graphical update/remake of diablo 2 which clearly is not the case.

everything about this game screams guild wars, mmo, instanced player groups, single one time payment and subscription free.

soloing a mmo is not the same thing as a single player game

Its actually called Blizzard trying to shoe-horn their "Battlenet 2.0" into everything they are making now. That's why you have to always be online to play Starcraft 2, that's why you can only have ONE account per CD-key for it. That definitely ain't an MMO though.

Diablo 3 is about as much of an MMO as Diablo 1 or 2 was. You're just confusing unnecessary bullshit with "features".

battlenet 2.0 a single profile cross-title xbox live style system for blizzard titles much like the single account that hold your characters in an mmo

no starcraft is not an mmo but thats fatuous when the comparision i made was with guildwars which diablo 3 clearly is 99% the same

i'm still baffled why people are soo confused by greater online intergration in an industry moving towards non-local machine rendering (cloud) from one of the most online focused developers on the planet.

No one seems willing to take me up on this point because their simply is no difference between diablo 3 and guildwars 2 which a ton of people are hyped for.

This man knows what he is talking about. D3 is an MMO, only not an open world MMO. Its a cloud based fully instanced world. That, by definition, is an MMO. People are morons buddy. That is why they are not taking your point.

 

[Strixvaliano]

No one seems willing to take me up on this point because their simply is no difference between diablo 3 and guildwars 2 which a ton of people are hyped for.

Great logic you have working there. There is no difference between Diablo 3 (action / hack &
slash role-playing game) and Guild Wars 2 (A massively multiplayer online role-playing game.) I'll be damned, my Magic: DOTP 2012 supports up to 4 players so there must not be a difference between them either.

I don't think anyone needs to take you up on the point because there is nothing to your argument that there is "no difference."

Just because Blizzard can shoehorn in a Real Money auction house and Persistent online does not make them the same or even similar.

------------------------------------
Back on topic:

People are rightfully pissed because the previous iterations of the series have had offline and LAN play.

As for others mentioning that offline toons would ruin the economy via importing offline characters go back and play Diablo 2, they have/had an open and closed battle.net. Open was rampant with cheaters while closed only allows players to play with a character created on the
multiplayer aspect only.

I've always played Diablo and Diablo 2 offline because I don't like playing with others unless I personally know them. So this game is going to be a definite no buy for me.

As much as people don't want to blame Activision it is hard to because that is about when Blizzard started making all of their really dumb ass decisions. Blizzard can say all they want that they have complete control over themselves but I believe it is just a PR stunt to take all the heat vision gets off of them.

 

[aba1]

Does anyone know exactly what these benefits of have an always on connection are? I can really think of any.

I was thinking the same thing the only thing I could think of is having a communitee and playing with your friends but thats only 2 things and not everyone even cares about either.

I just dont like the idea of a company telling me when I can and cannot play my game. If I own it I should be able to play it when ever I please but this is the same reason I dont touch MMO's

Well, it is only convenient for the corporations as they get more power over their customers and effectively just offer services if you have to be always online which denies you some rights you would have with 'real' copies.

its true and thats the same reason I think as time goes on I will likely stop playing as many vid games to be honest I just refuse to be paying money for somthing that isnt mine or can be taken away from me by the developers its the reason I wont play MMO's or online only games nor will I pay for xbox live.

 

[Sarah Frazier]

I think the problem with allowing people to play offline with the same char as the one you use online is that characters would have to be saved on the computer, and then they could be easily edited to give you all the good items and an infinite amount of gold.

One easy solution is to isolate the files. You can play offline, but you cannot copy the character to the online version the same way you cannot copy an online character to a single player mode.

OT: I don't understand why he'd even think that an offline mode would need a completely different design from an online mode.Yeah, there are few cases where solo and party modes don't pan out equally, but c'mon... It's the same story of the world being saved from some impending doom, but minus the chat options and forced expectations to cooperate with complete strangers. What makes it so hard to make a game with basic options for gameplay until you connect and get access to mcuh more?

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

Blizzard,

Do you guys even play video games anymore? Because that's the only reason you would be blindsided by the negative reaction to persistent online-play or lack of mod support. I mean, first you're caught off guard by trying to make people post with their real names, and now this. How detached do you guys have to be?

It's quite simple. When I want to be connected to the Internet while playing my game:

-Playing multiplayer
-Downloading a patch

Anything else is wrong.

 

[MyNameIsNowNotMyName]

Either he's trolling the world, or he's stupid. Hopefully it's the first one.

 

[jamesworkshop]

online only, no single player = guildwars

quests are done in parties, otherwise you don't meet players in quests that are not part of your team = guildwars

characters saved onto servers = guildwars

able to re-asign skills = guildwars

game level data stored on HDD, server handles network connections + updates only = guildwars

it even does the same business model of one time retail boxed product payment

It couldn't be more the same if it tried

What are you trying to get at here? You aren't making any sense. Guild Wars is an MMO. It makes sense that you'd have to be online for it work, because it's a fucking MMO. Diablo 3 is not an MMO. It is not advertised as an MMO, Diablo 1/2 were not primarily mutliplayer games, which is why there is such an outcry.

"Diablo 3 is not an MMO"

will you say world of warcraft is no longer an mmo or warcraft because it's not an rts like the old ones.

well it clearly now is, sorry blizzard didn't consult you about what type of game they were making

are people incapable of reading between the lines or does it need to be spelled out for them

 

[scw55]

Oh well, looks like I'll be playing my NINTENDO DS or SONY PSP when I'm in the enviroments of no internets, which is surprisingly common. Or, get Torchlight 2.

It's the lack of mod support what I'm *really* angry about. This HAVE to be connected to play it at all is just a huge pain in the arse instead of an awful mistake.

 

[razer17]

Has Blizzard never heard of Ubisoft and the backlash they got?

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Ha! Blatant lie...of course he knew.

When you pretend there's not a problem it makes it easier for others to do the same...or something.

 

[Imbechile]

Sigh......
Yet another Blizzard game I won't be buying.
Nice job Blizz, you really pay attention to important topics.
I almost feel sorry for this guy. He has to somehow justify this bullshit the company made.

 

[oldtaku]

Bobby assured us everyone would love it!

 

[Jodah]

Just like they were surprised about the whole real name on forums crap. Blizzard makes amazing games but they really have no clue what their customers actually want until the excrement hits the twirling blades.

 

[AugustFall]

How could you be surprised that people react negatively to thinly veiled anti piracy measures that punish people who purchase your game.
I understand it's also to combat modding but then there's the other problem: People love mods. If you hadn't introduced real currency into the game then there would be no problem but you did to combat gold farming. In a single player game. Seriously?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Just because Blizzard can shoehorn in a Real Money auction house and Persistent online does not make them the same or even similar.

Uh, the requirement of you connecting to their servers is analogous to every single MMORPG on the planet.

That's more than enough to prove the similarity there.

Sameness, now that's a different story...

 

[Firia]

He also claimed that the always-on requirement has absolutely nothing to do with DRM. "I don't think [DRM] ever came up when we talked about how we want connections to operate," he said. So why not just make an offline mode for people who want to play that way? "You're introducing a separate user flow, a separate path that players are going to go down," he explained. "And, at the end of the day, how many people are going to want to do that?"

So if it's not DRM, then why NOT introduce an offline mechanic? Because you're not sure how many people want to play offline? It's a path you're not sure people are going to want? I think the negetive backlash has told you that much.

The resistance to the idea tells me there's some integral part of online ability. Something in the final product may be using online connectivity in some way for gameplay purposes. But without that confirmation, it just sounds like pointless resistance.

I hate having to fight my games to get what I want out of them. I was looking forward to Diablo 3, but I count on being able to play my games should the power go out. Should I ever get run into poverty and not be able to afford an internet connection. Should the modern age ever collapse (but I keep my PC). This is my go to defense for game hacking (that I do not do)- not to integrate cheats or unfair advantage. But to remove otherwise crippling product choices from the providers.