Revenge of the Metacritics: Diablo III Getting Review-Bombed

[martyrdrebel27]

snip

wrong again. there is a huge difference between WOW and D3. in WOW, yes you can play the whole game solo and ignore the other players, but they will always be there. Diablo 3 isn't like that, there is nobody else in my game. Not a single other player in my world. I am the Single Player of that game, so how is that NOT a SINGLE PLAYER game?

and as for PVP, you do realize that PVP isn't even in the game yet, right? Let's compare this game to say... Halo. Halo has a single player campaign, which you can then choose to do online or not, and a "PVP" mode. How is so hard for you to comprehend that the same structure could be used for this game? It's essentially single player, unless you choose otherwise.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think that it just goes to show that user scores should be taken with entire ocean's worth of salt.

 

[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.

What part of "hacked server" did you miss? They can play with other people on that server (where the link to it should be up on /v/ within a day or two) and deal with the DRM at all.

All they will miss is... the RMAH.

So... nothing.

And the ACTUAL Auction House.

And the actual jump-in-jump-out coop with Bnet social features. And the matchmaker. And the giant community of real players instead of the few pirates who by their nature are more likely going to be cheating, so have fun in PVP. If they can even add the PVP.

So, a lot of things, really. All the reasons I want to play the game in the first place.

 

[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?

1) Didn't buy D3. Have no intention to. Will wait for Torchlight 2.

2) When you buy a CD, DVD, Book, or any other product that only involves you and the creator of the product, you can use it.

When you place an online order for a CD, DVD, Book, or any other product that only involves you and the creator of the product, you can't use it. You have to wait for it to be packaged, shipped, and delivered. Furthermore, if it's a game, it has to be installed. You can't play it until you've installed it.

All of this is perfectly OK. But saying "if it's a massively multiplayer game, the servers have to stabilize" isn't OK. Uh, what? Why does everything else gets a pass?

I don't want my stuff to have to be delivered to me, that's an inconvenience. I want it teleported here immediately, although there's no need, since it's already auto-installed on my computer, because I want that too.

???

snip

wrong again. there is a huge difference between WOW and D3. in WOW, yes you can play the whole game solo and ignore the other players, but they will always be there. Diablo 3 isn't like that, there is nobody else in my game. Not a single other player in my world. I am the Single Player of that game, so how is that NOT a SINGLE PLAYER game?

and as for PVP, you do realize that PVP isn't even in the game yet, right? Let's compare this game to say... Halo. Halo has a single player campaign, which you can then choose to do online or not, and a "PVP" mode. How is so hard for you to comprehend that the same structure could be used for this game? It's essentially single player, unless you choose otherwise.

It's funny that I'm wrong and you're right and yet there's Diablo 3... sitting right there... agreeing with me. Hmm.

Could Diablo 3 have been made as a single player game? Absolutely.

Could WoW have been made as a single player game? Absolutely.

Neither was. Diablo 3 would have been easier to scale down, sure, I'll agree there. It's easier to pretend that Diablo 3 is a single player game, that's true too! But they didn't! Hence it is not a single player game. It is a multiplayer game that can be played as though it were single player by ignoring its multiplayer features.

 

[girzwald]

I love their low score and think blizzard deserves it. They majorly dropped the ball. They declared their beta stress test a "success" because the servers crashed. Talk about some major spin. But even granting them that, they CLEARLY were not prepared (har har) for the volume they KNEW was coming. All because they probably wanted to save a few bucks on server costs when they expect to make a ton of money off the auction house.

I never thought id say this but im glad i signed up for the annual pass and got D3 for free. Cause I would have been MAJORLY PISSED if I dropped 60 bucks on a game I couldn't even play.

 

[girzwald]

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?

1) Didn't buy D3. Have no intention to. Will wait for Torchlight 2.

2) When you buy a CD, DVD, Book, or any other product that only involves you and the creator of the product, you can use it.

When you place an online order for a CD, DVD, Book, or any other product that only involves you and the creator of the product, you can't use it. You have to wait for it to be packaged, shipped, and delivered. Furthermore, if it's a game, it has to be installed. You can't play it until you've installed it.

All of this is perfectly OK. But saying "if it's a massively multiplayer game, the servers have to stabilize" isn't OK. Uh, what? Why does everything else gets a pass?

I don't want my stuff to have to be delivered to me, that's an inconvenience. I want it teleported here immediately, although there's no need, since it's already auto-installed on my computer, because I want that too.

???

snip

wrong again. there is a huge difference between WOW and D3. in WOW, yes you can play the whole game solo and ignore the other players, but they will always be there. Diablo 3 isn't like that, there is nobody else in my game. Not a single other player in my world. I am the Single Player of that game, so how is that NOT a SINGLE PLAYER game?

and as for PVP, you do realize that PVP isn't even in the game yet, right? Let's compare this game to say... Halo. Halo has a single player campaign, which you can then choose to do online or not, and a "PVP" mode. How is so hard for you to comprehend that the same structure could be used for this game? It's essentially single player, unless you choose otherwise.

It's funny that I'm wrong and you're right and yet there's Diablo 3... sitting right there... agreeing with me. Hmm.

Could Diablo 3 have been made as a single player game? Absolutely.

Could WoW have been made as a single player game? Absolutely.

Neither was. Diablo 3 would have been easier to scale down, sure, I'll agree there. It's easier to pretend that Diablo 3 is a single player game, that's true too! But they didn't! Hence it is not a single player game. It is a multiplayer game that can be played as though it were single player by ignoring its multiplayer features.

Oh, so I guess doom 2 was a multiplayer game because it it had multiplayer capabilities. Logic fail.

If its possible to play then entire thing alone, its a single player game with multiplayer features. Not the other way around like you are portraying it to be.

 

[ultrachicken]

The user review section of Metacritic has no worth. What ISN'T review bombed these days?

 

[Awexsome]

People can rip on more professional outlets like IGN but the fact is their reviews are still worth infinite more times more than generic user reviews. Because those are worthless. There are worthy ones scattered about but the anonymous ability to rate the game tends to turn people only to extremes.

CoD, Mass Effect, Diablo... anything popular nowadays is going to get review bombed. Always.

 

[Limecake]

2) When you buy a CD, DVD, Book, or any other product that only involves you and the creator of the product, you can use it.

because games are huge pieces of software, software so sensitive that even a misplaced character or missed syntax can throw the entire code out of whack. even small changes to the code to fix problems can open up even more problems. why do you think patches for online games always come with issues? how about the fact that if they try to rush the patch and end up leaving a gaping hole in security for their project they could have a fiasco much worse than 'server downtime' on their hands and could let hackers in within a day of releasing their multi-million dollar game they've been developing for years?

throw in the fact that there are thousands of different types of machines all trying to read the code and every different type of machine might have conflicting software.

that's why you can't compare an online game to a book, you can't even compare Diablo 3 or WoW to something like Halo since they are developed for a strict piece of hardware where every single person using the software is using the same hardware. There is no conflicting software on consoles.

please stop comparing complex pieces of software to mundane things. They aren't even in the same league and that's why 'customer service' is necessary for products like this. When was the last time you had to call customer service on a DvD? who would you even call?

 

[Kae]

Well they asked for it by putting that horrible DRM and not having enough server space to support it, fucking morons, they should have been prepared for that, as far as I'm concerned it's their fault for managing they're stupid DRM so poorly, because I guarantee you that if the servers were up and running it would have something like a 6 or a 7, besides though there will be a time when this DRM isn't considered so awful it's not really right now, a stable Internet connection is still not a standard for the majority of the audience, so regardless of the servers running or not people would have been pissed.
And people defending them because they said so before, well yeah they warned about it, but most people don't look that kind of stuff up, for example my cousin is a really hardcore Diablo fan but he didn't know about that stuff until I told him, most people aren't in on the news about the game.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

lets just get something out of the way first. D3 is not single player and was not built to be played only with single player. Please stop fucking talking about this as some sort of tragedy like an entitled little shit about a game that wasn't even trying to be single player.

It was very obviously designed to support single player and lots of people will play it that way. It's forebears supported single player and most similar titles support single player. The only difference between Diablo III and those other games in regard to single player functionality is the DRM. The issue is not that the game doesn't support single player- it does- but the uber-draconian DRM. Can we please stop pretending the always online requirement is some non-feature instead of DRM?

But even if you insist that this game, alone in the genre, must not be played solo for whatever reason (many allude to this reason but I have seen no one articulate it), I think you have forgotten about LAN play. Which no longer exists, apparently. Because DRM. [Actually it's probably worse than that, but that's a different rant]

And finally, I don't see the connection between complaining about or criticizing a game's DRM scheme and "entitled".

2nd, it is complete bullshit that it is taking this fucking long to have the game run normally. It is complete hubris to assume that they should only go with "just enough" approach to server load. especially with numbers coming in that where saying this was going to be one of the most popular games of all time. They should know better. <--- this is the problem.

Believe it or not, I'm inclined to forgive them for this, if only because these problems seem typical for big online releases. Of course, the DRM scheme doesn't help this situation, either.

 

[Vigormortis]

I'm going to be frank. I don't know what's more hilarious:

The people complaining about all the DRM bullshit, when they knew it was coming months ago.

Or the people defending every single bit of bullshit Blizzard/Activision is shoveling.

Seriously people, if Diablo 3 had come out only a few years after Diablo 2, with this same Always-On DRM and all the other crap, you'd ALL be losing your minds over it. It would be labelled a terrible, horrible, poorly-designed game from the moment it was revealed. No one but the most blind, die-hard fanboys would consider getting it.

But seriously, is it just me or has the gamer population been really whiny during these last couple years. I swear, every time a new game comes out people start immediately start bitching left and right. I just don't recall it ever being this bad before.

Is it just me or has the gamer population been really submissive during these last couple years? I swear, every time a new game comes out people immediately start defending every single thing the developer/publisher does; no matter how greedy, intrusive, or dismissive that thing is. I just don't recall it ever being this bad before.

 

[daveman247]

I'm against always online (though Diablo III and that kind of game in general don't interest me), but Metacritic bombing is just dumb. Review scores have always been pretty irrelevant to me, but now user reviews in general on sites like Metacritic and Amazon have lost all their credibility.

I've always found amazon (UK) quite a good place to find user reviews actually

You just sometimes have to sift through who is genuine and who is lying.

OT: Is there a website where all the trolls gather? And they pick online "targets" like some kind of terrorist organisation?

 

[Elamdri]

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

I hate to break it to you, but people have probably already pirated it, and I am willing to bet that the pirates have been playing longer than the people who purchased the game. When it is actually easier to pirate a game than to actually pay for it, the company involved can't blame people for pirating it.

Except that it's not easier to pirate it. You would have to set up a whole server to handle the enemies and loot tables. Even then, I am for making things as absolutely difficult for pirates as possible.

 

[Elamdri]

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.

I'll tell you what. I remember back in the day when computer games didn't have DRM. You know what happened? Everyone stole them. Then I remember when CDkeys were created. And you know what happened? People came up with a CDkey generator. But it was a lot riskier and more of a pain in the butt. Now you have online authentication. And you know what, yeah it's still possible to crack. But it's still a pain in the butt. AND you still have to have internet, just now you're connecting to a private server.

At some point, buying the game just becomes easier.