Revenge of the Metacritics: Diablo III Getting Review-Bombed

[lovest harding]

I didn't want to say this (because I try to stay out of these debates now), but to every person who says it isn't a single player game:
It has a single player campaign, therefore it's a single player game.
If you're trying to say that multiplayer is the emphasis than say it. But since there's a single player campaign it can be considered a single player game.
It's not only a single player game. But it is a single player game.

 

[jpoon]

Blizzard & Craptivision deserve every single bit of this horrible rating specifically because of their DRM. Let's face it...the game is awesome but the DRM pretty much has ruined it for a shit-ton of people all across the globe. If you're going to use this kind of shitware at least make damn certain it's going to work when you release it.

It's pretty aggravating that almost NO other industry other than gaming can release products that don't actually work out of the box and get away with it continually. Fucking annoying!

 

[Funkamander]

Blizzard & Craptivision deserve every single bit of this horrible rating specifically because of their DRM. Let's face it...the game is awesome but the DRM pretty much has ruined it for a shit-ton of people all across the globe. If you're going to use this kind of shitware at least make damn certain it's going to work when you release it.

It's pretty aggravating that almost NO other industry other than gaming can release products that don't actually work out of the box and get away with it continually. Fucking annoying!

That don't work out of the box for...

A few hours? on the first day? Of a game you'll play for years since it's brilliant?

??????

 

[Nikolaz72]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

The game doesnt work mate. They said the game would work, it doesnt. A game not working calls for a 0 score, DRM or not. I remember when Might and Magic 9 didnt work, that got a shitty score. Diablo 3 deserves it just as much.

 

[Aglynugga]

The game sucks. It is such a poorly written piece of garbage. Why do they keep using in-house writers? I mean, ok, they took a creative writing class and they have a solid decade of doctor who erotic fanfiction underneath their belts...
No, this was a lousy game. You want to make a game always online? Then make it a fuckin MMO. Some people like to play single player, and don't have constant access to the internet. I'm not one of these people, but I can emphasize. But even then, people were warned in advance about it, so I can't say too much. However, I can say the quality of the game is very poor. That is my honest opinion. The graphics are lousy. The gameplay is just pathetic. I mean,...how easy do you really need to make a game that consists of 'left-click left-click left-click.'?
This game took elven years to develop. It looks like they stopped developing back in 2003 and just let it sit on a shelf to 'appreciate' in value.
The best part is going to be the play to win pvp, due to an utter lack of character customization. Yeah, every barbarian is the same barbarian, every wizard the same wizard. I see lag and pay gear being the biggest factors for the oh so curtailed pvp.
I also see blizzard making big bucks off the chinese and korean farm factories (Yes, I could point out the brazilians or others, but let's face it, the koreans and chinese are kings in the field), because they'v cleverly set up an auction system where they get to slice a bit off of every sale.
If metacritic allowed it, I would give this game a negative score...maybe -3.
For all those people that honestly enjoy this game...good for you. Good for you. Have some cookies. I made them out of fucking playdough.

 

[Epona]

Clearly those people should have checked with YOU to see how many points should be knocked off for Day 1 DLC and server problems that prevent them from playing a $60 game.

No, it prevents them from playing it ON THE FIRST DAY... and only intermittently at that. I've still managed to play over 8 hours even with all the maintenance and crashes.

People review-bombing and asking for refunds are just acting like children. It's a GIGANTIC online global release. If you didn't expect problems, then you're a bigger fool than I thought... and that's saying something!

This is sad. Any other product you buy you likely expect it to work on day 1. If not, wouldn't you be returning it for a refund?

Oh right though, games are special. Don't bother explaining to me why you think games are special, I have already heard that BS too many times and I am not convinced.

I was actually smart enough NOT to give Blizzard money for online single player that doesn't work very well but I understand anyone who wants to play their new game on Day 1.

 

[Lunar Templar]

And this ladies and gents, gamers cannot be taken serious as a demographic

"Mass effect has day one DLC 1/10!" "Diablo servers have problems at launch that was fixed within 24 hours 1/10!"

User reviews are not worth reading or posting there.

mostly fixed >.> i got booted a little bit ago so they could fix something

other wise i agree.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Yeah, the servers being down sucks. I can agree to that.

But in a couple weeks, I'm gonna be damn glad that it's always online. If the issues in Diablo 2 were half as bad as I hear and the always-online idea fixes half of those problems, it'll still be a plus.

Contrary to what is apparently popular belief, Blizzard has reasons for making the decisions that they do.

And besides, from an outside point of view, bombing the Metacritic page with 0 score reviews doesn't make the reader think "Oh wow, Blizzard must have screwed up bad, these people are upset!" It most likely makes them think "Oh wow, the game has issues on the first day of release and these people shit themselves? Typical."

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Seriously? They couldn't play for a few hours and they go and bomb metacritic?

That's just....sad.

I have nothing else nice to say because this whole thing irritates me.

 

[The Pinray]

It's like two and a half stars on Amazon, too. I can sorta understand some people's issues, though.

Still, pretty uncalled for.

 

[NiPah]

And this ladies and gents, gamers cannot be taken serious as a demographic

"Mass effect has day one DLC 1/10!" "Diablo servers have problems at launch that was fixed within 24 hours 1/10!"

User reviews are not worth reading or posting there.

First off Metacritic is a pretty piss poor benchmark for gamers as a demographic, the only demographic you see on a website like that are people who feel valid points can be made through an online review site and others who get their jollies from giving 0s to everything.

Also you mentioned two valid complaints, some people feel DLC is a giant bait and switch on consumers and should be included in the game. The other is pretty damn big, yes issues are understandable for such a big launch but it doesn't stop people from getting mighty pissed when they wait for a midnight launch only to find the game unplayable. Do these problems deserve a 0 rating on a game? No. But these are user reviews, users are idiots and easily swayed by strong feelings of anger or happiness.

But yeah user reviews on Meta doesn't reflect on gamers, just random people acting like sheep i a fruitless attempt to prove an already known point to people who stopped caring long ago.

 

[kingthrall]

Why people hating on metacritic is beyond me. If anything it is useful as a marketing tool more than anything as it doesn't actually do anything other than display information. Perfectly valid mind you. Blizzard will no doubt will look at this and shake their heads and use their bean counters to accumulate the amount of complaints and approval of certain thing such as this on-line issue. Whether they act on this information is another thing altogether.

Its like how people are entitled to vote, you may disagree with their vote for the KKK but they are stupid enough to cast it and its still a valid vote.

 

[pure.Wasted]

There is no story in a single player environment, where you are completely segregated from other players. There is no way to play this game without being affected to some degree by others.

yes, there is. have you played it? i've played the game from level 1-16 currently, never joining another player or the general chat, leaving my game closed and not using AH, so tell me, in what way is that not a single player game? How is anybody else effecting my experience? they are not, and you are simply wrong.

I could make the same argument for WoW. I leveled from 1-70 without grouping up once, without doing a single instance, without buying a single item from the Auction House or putting one up.

Just because you can do this by actively ignoring gameplay features doesn't mean Blizzard has to accommodate you in doing so. They don't intend for you to ignore the Auction House and Arena PVP. You can, but that means you're doing it wrong.

there is no reason this game couldn't be a "single player with online options" set-up.

And there's no reason WoW couldn't have been that. Alas, they are not.

You're right, why expect that people and companies learn from experience? Tetris had shit graphics back in the day, but it's still a huge success. Obviously complaining about poor graphics is just something militarized gamers with pitchforks do, same as complaining about not being able to play a game you bought.

Have you stopped to think that maybe the increase in outrage, while certainly inflated on account of it being the internet and all, is also a sign that the industry is maturing? That certain standards and expectations and promises are demanded by the consumer, that it's become a mainstream medium? And that's a good thing?

Hey, don't get me wrong. I've carried my fair share of pitchforks. I'm glad that, y'know, Modern Warfare sales aside, we can sort of kind of make our voices heard. Good. Excellent.

But I'm not glad that our voices, for the most part, are idiotic. When the mob is so volatile that it's ready to go off at every single franchise from every single company, regarldess of how much good will that company has accrued over time, with minimal actual provocation, it means the times we have legitimate complaints will be as likely to be written off as the times when our complaints are silly and incoherent and deserve to be written off.

You want to make a statement? Great, but do it constructively. Not by giving a game 0's on review day. Anyone with healthy perspective is going to look at that, conclude that you're overreacting, and, having absolutely no way of knowing how badly you're overreacting, simply ignore you completely.

I think a 6/10 after the game had been out for a week would be much more meaningful.

Also, I don't understand what you're trying to say. D3 is a PC game and it didn't work on the PC at launch. And the reason was by design.

Every industry has its own quirks that we have to get used to. TV, for example, has writers' strikes. Yes, they suck - for everyone concerned - but they're a part of the world, we can't exactly do away with them. No such thing as a writers' strike for fiction authors, or bands. But did you go on the metacritic page for every single TV show whose season was shortened as a result of the strike and give it a 0 because you didn't get as many episodes as you normally do? Of course not, that would be absurd.

Hard as it might be to believe, I actually, genuinely have nothing against "massively multiplayer games don't work for the first 3 days after launch" if it becomes a convention. Why should studios waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on servers they won't need the moment account creation stabilizes? It would hike up prices for games unnecessarily, it would cut into the profits made by the developers (unless you actually think the publishers would cover it out of the goodness of their hearts), it would force them to get more greedy with DLC and expansions, and for what? A couple of days if that of better (not perfect) stability than we get? After which the game goes back to playing as smoothly as it was meant to?

I'm really not seeing the problem here. Unless you took a week off work in preparation for Diablo 3 or something... in which case I would point you to Blizzard's announcement last week that this launch "would not be smooth," and I would point you to the launch of WoW, BC, WOTLK, and Cata, and say "I feel for ya, but you had no reason to expect anything else."

 

[jmesch04]

I had to make an account there just to talk about this. It's not that gamers are entitled, it's that they are stupid. Let's break this down point by point.

1. This is not some Casey Hudson bulls**t where they lie to us the whole time and then whoops cupcakes. The always online was well known and spoken both often and early. Even during beta, in fact I think I remember a year ago when it was talked about so if someone gives it a review of 0/10 for this reason they are stupid. It doesn't matter what you want the game to be like they told you what the game will be and then you knowingly purchased it and want them to change it, that's just strange.

2. If you are giving it a 0/10 for story, I don't know you could be correct. However, if that's all you cared about why are you playing Diablo games? (These people are not stupid, but clearly set their own hopes to high for the game so these reviews are legitimate 0/10 seems rough cause they do have a story, but I could see like 3/10)

3. The new skill system, if you are giving it a 0/10 that means it is broken and not functional. Is that true? No. Therefore you again fall into the idiot category. Is it 10 out of 10? Prolly not. I haven't had enough time to decide if I like D2 or D3 better, but neither is a 0/10.

4. If you are complaining about server issues. Should I give Skyrim a 0/10 because one time it kicked me out of a game after I hadn't saved for 25 min. and ended up losing data? No I might knock off a few points because it's a hassle. So if the server is giving you trouble from certain times then yes please take off some points, but it should not go to 0/10. This is different from not working the game just can't connect.

OK I think that's all the points I have so far about that, so we can see there are some reasons to give it a low score based on opinion, but 0/10 should really not be coming into play at this point. It just shows how meta-critic is broken.

Also a final note on the "DRM", it is not classical DRM the main reason is not to stop pirating. Blizzard knows that the game will be pirated and people will set-up other servers. It's that the major point of the game is in-game economies and the slow building up of different items. That is why all items and enemies need to spawn server side in order to avoid dupes. It's so bad that it also limits single player, but a vast majority of players from D2 want the benefits of server spawned items and enemies, you must choose one. Or make it so that single player can never to onto multiplayer. (Which D2 had, but again go back to my first point that this was well known before anyone put money on the table.)

 

[Funkamander]

Sorry for chopping up your posts, it helps my brain to think good. I don't want you to take it as condescending.

Just play the game online.

I don't want to or can't, for different reasons at different times. I'll list some if you want me to, but I think I would just be listing things you already know.

It's an online game, not a single-player game.

Only in the sense that it has DRM which requires a permanent connection. In every other sense it is a single player game as well as a coop game, like many games of it's type.

Well actually it is an online game. All the items and enemies are handled server-side.

Newsflash: People are whiny bitches. The servers are working fine now after the maintenance, it's not like every online game in the past 5 years hasn't had day one server issues. The RMAH isn't going to be the ruination of society. Always online DRM isn't an issue unless you are a pirate or you live in the boondocks and your internet sucks, in which case you probably have bigger problems, like trying to get out of the boondocks.

I have never pirated a game, nor do I intend to. I also don't live in the boondocks, and a lack of acceptable access to high speed internet service isn't my reason for not wanting to be shackled by ludicrous DRM.

Well, since I've come back around to my first point, I'll list one reason I might not like always-online DRM. Maybe my router is on one side of the house and my room is on the other. Do I need a better reason than that? I feel like I shouldn't have to explain why I want to play offline singleplayer.

And if I did live in the boondocks with little or no internet access, I think that would be more than enough reason to complain about this obnoxious requirement. I get that it doesn't effect or bother you, but I don't understand why you are so dismissive of those who don't like it, whatever their reasons. Even to the point of telling them to just deal if they literally cannot play the game at all.

This is going to sound callous, but I used to live in a place that had crappy internet, and one of the key reasons that I moved was because I wanted a better internet connection. I don't think that the DRM is bad.

In fact, you know what? I like always-on DRM.

I like it.

I pay for my games. It infuriates me that others don't. The DRM in Diablo 3 is an effective way to stop others from gaming the system. And I like that. If I can't get it for free, neither should anyone else. If there is some collateral damage there, so be it.

Also, I will admit there is a sense of schadenfreude from seeing people whine on the internet.

Ah the "scorched earth" DRM policy. Who cares if it hurts my rights, as long as it hurts those DAMN PIRATES.

Oh wait...

Do you want the links to the hacked server that went up an hour ago? Or the DRM crack and single-player mods that went up this morning? Just asking, because the pirates have been inconvenienced for all of... an hour. Meanwhile, you're asking companies to restrict game play and cause Day One issues... for you.

And? In the end the pirates get the version without the awesome multiplayer or social bonuses. So... they lose out. Their loss.

 

[Funkamander]

People keep mentioning Day 1 DLC. What DLC?

 

[pure.Wasted]

Clearly those people should have checked with YOU to see how many points should be knocked off for Day 1 DLC and server problems that prevent them from playing a $60 game.

No, it prevents them from playing it ON THE FIRST DAY... and only intermittently at that. I've still managed to play over 8 hours even with all the maintenance and crashes.

People review-bombing and asking for refunds are just acting like children. It's a GIGANTIC online global release. If you didn't expect problems, then you're a bigger fool than I thought... and that's saying something!

In every other type of business on this Earth, when you purchase a product you can use it immediately.

Why should games be different?

Really, the moment you make a downpayment on a house you can move in? The moment you buy a ticket for a plane you can get on the plane and fly to your destination? The moment you pre-ordered Diablo 3 you were able to play it? How is this any different from the months you spent waiting for your pre-order?