Diablo 3 no offline reasoning summarized by Penny Arcade

[TsunamiWombat]

What I find most amusing is your taking a quote from that comic out of context. Here's the actual comic in question.

I'll just leave this here.

D3 no, Torchlight 2 yes

Or... OR... D3: probably, Torchlight 2: No, Sacred 3: Most definitely

Sacred 3?! You just made my day.

I guess it is being made by a different company, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_3
http://www.sacred3.org/

But... yessssss. Sacred 3.

Really? because I tried Sacred 2 and it was AWEFUL

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Personally, I feel this is Blizzards way of coming out with their hatred of soldiers and gamers in the military in general. Brave men in women overseas who want to unwind in their downtime with video games, who will not be able to enjoy this game, which they may have been looking forward too, because where they are their internet simply isn't reliable. It was subtle Blizzard, but I see. At least you're being honest though, which I can appreciate, even if I despise your opinion.

Amazing satire, I wonder if anyone else will get it :|

 

[Poster1234]

I'm growing VERY tired of Bliz's general attitude.
With Starcraft 2, I swallowed my pride and bought it because I'd been expecting it for so long, had spent years on SC and because it could be argued that the game was fairly multiplayer-oriented.
This time... no. I am sorry, but unless there's been some major changes, hack&slash is more the kind of game you play on your own. Yeah, I guess I had a few short multiplayer sessions of D2 with friends, but never really considered it a major addition to the game.
I think that if it turns out to be really great (and I do mean the stuff of legends, for I hope Bliz stil knows to make those, although I found SC2 whas a bit too hollywood-ish), I'll probably buy a legit copy and then put on a crack or something to get rid of the always-on, the store and the no-mods features.

 

[TheDooD]

By their own admission, Diablo isn?t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you?re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, ?cheating? as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? Fuck him, who cares.

Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn?t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.

There, now don?t you feel better?

And there it is. Blizzard didn't include offline mode because they can't sell you shit if you do that.

D3 no, Torchlight 2 yes

Don't you people make enough fucking money? You're like one of the most successful companies in the industry. I'm glad I washed my hands of you. Blizzard, you're the worst damned thing for the industry. The love of money is the root of all evil, so you must be right up there with Satan's cat.

You do know that Blizzard isn't forcing you to spend anymore money after you buy your copy of the game right? I feel the need to remind you of that. In fact, Blizzard is even allowing a method through the auction house for YOU to make money and all they will take out of it is maybe $0.05 usd. Also, shame on you for calling Blizzard the worst company for trying to make money by selling their product. What company doesn't try to make money? Do you even realize that Blizzard needs money to make the games we enjoy? I must say, you sound like the only reason you hate Blizzard is because of jealousy and pride. Sins in and of themselves. Again, I will remind you that Blizzard is not forcing anyone to spend anymore money after they buy the game. Some people get a $300 allowance from their parents every week and want to spend extra money on a game to get a little ahead. Why shouldn't Blizzard allow people to spend more money if they want to? Because you would call them evil for taking money in exchange for their product?

Greed and gluttony are sins too dood. People are seeing the lack of offline is a way to force all players to be under their veil so they might be tempted to use AH. Plus the fact that PVP is basically pointless unless you buy items so non buying players are gonna have a hard time. finally Blizzard has cash yet they take forever to make sequels so I understand why people are pissed off. Why they can't play a game they loved and wish to pay for like they want to because of BS about piracy. When its just so they can nickle and dime players for everything they do and basically make a killing off their hard work.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Reasons why I won't buy the game without lan multiplayer and offline single player:

1. unlimited character slots
2. I hate being tracked
3. I hate being marketed to
4. I can use whatever names I want for my toons including "offensive ones"
5. I want to "cheat" if I'm so inclined and in the future I can use mods to extend gameplay
6. this isn't a "service" like world of warcraft, I hate the whole concept companies turning one time purchases into "relationships"

I'm sure I'm in the minority, so be it. The blizzard pr chump said it best when asked about people who want to play on the move. "they can play some other game".

------------

Btw I pointed out similar flaws when Hellgate announced there wasn't going to be any lan multiplayer. At least that cruddy game still allowed offline single player.

 

[darkcommanderq]

Torchlight will not hold a candle to D3.

Get over it, its NOT that big of a deal. Who played D2 offline ne way.... NO ONE.

Ok am annoyed with lack of LAN support, but they did this with starcraft2 and its not THAT big of a deal. I mean most of the people who you would want to play starcraft2 with anyway probably own the game. You need 2+ computers ANYWAY for a lan party. Most of these people own the game anyway, where is the problem exactly?

As for D3 you will probably still be able to put passwords on your games thus creating the illusion of LAN play for you and ur buddy you want a private game with.

Finally as to being 'marketed to', the cash shop is for player to player transactions to curb gold farming. Damned if they do Damned if they dont, am I the only one that appreciated companies for trying?

 

[TheDooD]

Reasons why I won't buy the game without lan multiplayer and offline single player:

1. unlimited character slots
2. I hate being tracked
3. I hate being marketed to
4. I can use whatever names I want for my toons including "offensive ones"
5. I want to "cheat" if I'm so inclined and in the future I can use mods to extend gameplay
6. this isn't a "service" like world of warcraft, I hate the whole concept companies turning one time purchases into "relationships"

I'm sure I'm in the minority, so be it. The blizzard pr chump said it best when asked about people who want to play on the move. "they can play some other game".

------------

Btw I pointed out similar flaws when Hellgate announced there wasn't going to be any lan multiplayer. At least that cruddy game still allowed offline single player.

You hit the nail on the head on why I'm not gonna deal with this bullshit. I feel sorry for the mooks that are gonna lay down and just allow Blizzard to take advantage of them. I'll gladly play a version of D3 that fell of the truck because I'm never giving them the satisfaction.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I feel that an appropriate compromise for this would be to make is so that an active Internet connection wouldn't necessarily be required to play the single player portion of the game, but in order to access their Auction House thing, which is part of the Single Player, but completely optional, you'd have to have an active Internet connection, which for High Speed Internet users, is on all the time anyway.

Edit: It'd kinda be like that online shop in Dragon Quest IX. You know the one that required access to the Nintendo Wi Fi connection.

 

[SixWingedAsura]

Torchlight will not hold a candle to D3.

Get over it, its NOT that big of a deal. Who played D2 offline ne way.... NO ONE.

Ok am annoyed with lack of LAN support, but they did this with starcraft2 and its not THAT big of a deal. I mean most of the people who you would want to play starcraft2 with anyway probably own the game. You need 2+ computers ANYWAY for a lan party. Most of these people own the game anyway, where is the problem exactly?

As for D3 you will probably still be able to put passwords on your games thus creating the illusion of LAN play for you and ur buddy you want a private game with.

Finally as to being 'marketed to', the cash shop is for player to player transactions to curb gold farming. Damned if they do Damned if they dont, am I the only one that appreciated companies for trying?

I am REALLY getting SICK and TIRED of this stupid argument! Just because YOU didn't play offline, maybe your FRIENDS didn't play offline doesn't mean EVERYONE PLAYED MULTIPLAYER! God, talk about egotistical! I'm sorry, but if you'd take your head out of your self-absorbed a**, you'd find that quite a number of people played offline.

If you're going to argue in favor of this horrendous design decision, then do us all a favor and stop acting like the world revolves around your opinions and experiences.

 

[cainx10a]

D3 no, Torchlight 2 yes

Or... OR... D3: probably, Torchlight 2: No, Sacred 3: Most definitely

Is the same team working on Sacred 3? Otherwise, I doubt they will reach the level of awesome S2/I&B was

Really? because I tried Sacred 2 and it was AWEFUL

Recently purchased the game (steam) along with its expansion (from deep silver's store - yeppers, the US steam version does work with the UK expansion), along with the community patch, the game is a blast to play, but still unstable sometimes, it did used to crash a lot unless you run the game with certain parameters like compatibility mode for Win X, and the like.

But the game does seem to start out "slowly" in the sense you ain't facing a large number of 'unique' (in looks and skill-set) foes, but I personally love the game.

 

[thisbymaster]

The problem I see right now is that they have put the cart before the horse. They should have focused on making a great game that is fun and easy to get into. Then add this stuff after wards.

 

[walrusaurus]

when they said it wasn't solely about piracy, I called bullshit. But now I see, they are just greedy bastards. In retrospect, actually, I should have seen that.

Well they are owned by Activision...

I get real tired of seeing this...

In order to merge with Blizzard, Activision had to surrender 52% of the resultant company's stock to Vivendi (the company that owned Blizzard previously).
So who sold out to who?

 

[ElNeroDiablo]

Snip

Diablo 3 is not an MMO. None of the previous Diablo games were MMOs. That subverts most of your arguments there.

And before you go saying, "it has the same concepts and emphasis on social interaction than an MMO has," no, no it doesn't. MMOs allow for hundreds, if not thousands of people to be in one place at the same time. Diablo games have always allowed a total of eight players. On each server. So a TOTAL of EIGHT players in the entire game world. Not even remotely massively multiplayer.

The ORIGINAL Diablo only allowed ~FOUR~ players in a MP game (be it TCP/IP, IPX/SPX or B.Net), which gave you the average grouping of 2 Warriors, 1 Rouge and 1 Mage.

Original Diablo I could play Solo then play that character over my LAN game (be it TCP/IP (common now) or IPX/SPX (common back in the days of DOOM)) and have fun playing the game with my gaming family.
Same thing happened with Diablo II/LoD. Hell, often me dad & I would create fresh characters to play on the LAN on a game hosted by one of our extra computers which had a character whom we used for storage of the GOOD stuff we found in the game.

Diablo III? No offline single player mode even though you were saying it'd still have that a year ago? Fine, I might purchase for playing on my LA- What? no LOCAL Area Network capabilities? Then how the fuck am I gonna play with my friends and family without chewing through a monthly bandwidth for every packet of data from each machine?! (100GB/month is a common monthly bandwidth limit for ADSL here in Aus unless you're in the city and on cable, but then again, that's a fucking expensive place to live already.)

Oh wait, you're suggesting that for me to play D3 by my self or with friends in the same physical building without fucking chewing through my bandwidth, I'm basically better off cracking the game after getting it in the bargain bin or simply torrenting a pre-cracked version? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on then Blizzard.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Did you also watch the comic that came with it that called all of the people complaining about it stuck up losers who are just blowing smoke? It was called Sound and Fury after all, Which is a fancy way of saying those people are just full of it.

Boycotting a damn fine game just because your mad a company wants to try and sell you something is just being childish, and if you had enough interest in diablo 3 to actually fish for this information, then your either still going to buy it, or you need to stop getting so pissed off about every little thing that it stops you from buying a good game.

And for the record torchlight 2 is going to price around 20 bucks, it's not like the average person can't afford both.

I expect Torchlight 2 to be a better game than Diablo 3, and that's not even saying much. They're rather average dungeon crawls. I'd rather Play Persona 3 and go into Tartarus than Diablo 2 any day.

Agree'd, I love Diablo but I have just as much fun Dungeon Crawling in Phantasy Star Portable and Izuna or Etrian Odyssey.

 

[gigastrike]

Is it strange that I expected a comic?

 

[migo]

Is it strange that I expected a comic?

Not at all. I didn't realise they did actual blog posts.