Server Issues Mar Diablo III's Launch

[Abedeus]

'cept it didn't. You could play SC2 in offline mode.

You could? I thought Battlenet 2.0 made that impossible. Oh well.
As I said, I haven't played any of the Blizzard games after Frozen Throne, so my understanding is only second-hand.

You could most definitely play it in offline mode and, contrary to what PercyBoleyn said, you could do so on your account and not need a guest account. I have done so when my internet was down.

Yep. You didn't get achievements or anything of the like, but who cares. At least the functionality was there.

In Diablo 3, drops are server-side. That's to prevent people from getting data about items, coming up with duping methods, then ruining the market. Like in Diablo 2.

You can easily compartmentalize, as in retain server side drops while providing drops client side in a separate file for single player.

No. If you give any drop table to the client, people WILL find a way to get dupes and cheats online.

So you're saying that having the drops client-side is the only way to dupe/cheat? That must be why no MMO has ever had item duplication bugs or hacking of any kind.

I haven't realized MMOs have item and monster drop data EXCLUSIVELY on player's PC!

How about read a bit about the subject, then you'll understand why they did what they did.

 

[hellsop]

I have spent some time on the forums with some popcorn prepared to listen to the QQ and boy was I not disappointed. So many people complaining about constant internet connection required to play when they apparently ignored the box cover that said it and also did not read Blizzard mentioning that there will be an internet connection required.

People on the forums say the internet requirement is to help shake off hackers and any other kind of annoyances that were around in D2.

I have not played D2 (never really got into the franchise TBH) so I cannot tell how annoying those people were but after Starcraft 2 needed a constant internet connection to play should this have surprised anyone?

Also today is the launch day; I can not really recall any game, that had such a huge fanbase, that ran without a hitch so to speak.

While they did say from the first moment that it will have an internet connection required and be always on, did it ever occur to you that it annoys people who buy a game like this and then cannot play it for that reason, especially in light of it not being a necessary part of the actual gameplay? I understand, all the crying and what not is annoying, but crying about crying isn't making leaps and bounds into new territory either.

Let's make this a little clearer: "*I* have an internet connection, and it is working. That requirement is not unfulfilled. It is *your fault* that your servers are not working and denying me access to what I paid for." That's a HUGE difference.

 

[Baresark]

Let's make this a little clearer: "*I* have an internet connection, and it is working. That requirement is not unfulfilled. It is *your fault* that your servers are not working and denying me access to what I paid for." That's a HUGE difference.

I agree completely. I didn't mean it to sound different than that, so I apologize for not making myself clear. I was saying the people have every right to be annoyed the game server issues interrupting the experience they payed for. We all know this issue wouldn't be happening if the game was simply allowed to have a true single player experience.

 

[Aeshi]

Bullshit. I've gone through every page of this thread, nobody here who dislikes this ever went after somebody who did not directly antagonize them

So one Diablo III thread out of dozens is free from flat-out antagonisation, big fucking whoop.

Spoiler: ...and even that might not be true

eh... I'm already in act III. playing with around 50-100 ms in latency, no problems whatsoever.

Good thing you're the only one who matters.

Close the thread, oggebogge91 has no problems whatsoever with Diablo III.

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and of course people have complained to blizzard, here's a thread of 200+ pages (4000+ posts) long of customers who can't play the game: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4077738283?page=1

Servers are overwhelmed by tons of people trying to connect to them all at once, that's just how servers work. Blizzard flat-out said this would (probably) happen. Perhaps those people should've cancelled their pre-orders if it bothers them that bad.
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and what do you expect us to do about the DRM? There's only two options, 1. don't buy it, 2. Pirate/crack it, which goes against the point of having the DRM.

Exactly! If you don't like the DRM don't buy the goddamn game. Why did you buy it if you knew from the start you would hate it? Never ceases to amaze me how people can mistake their own stupidity for a lack of fairness.
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If you think this DRM will keep stuck up people from the servers, or stop people from pirating it, then I really feel sorry for you.

And where did I say it would stop people from pirating? I know odds are good that pirates will find a way around the DRM eventually (which, as always, seems to mean we should just give up altogether) but given how much of this game is supposedly server-side I don't think it'll be easy for them, and nor should we make it.

 

[halfeclipse]

Oh man yea, imagine if I wanted to boot up an original copy of Spacewar!
Err no wait, things have changed so much there's exactly one computer in the world able to run it

Let's try Vette! instead, that's only 20 or so yeas old after all. I'm sure it'll require a whole bunch of fuckery well beyond the average computer user for it to run, but that's fine. I'll just pop this floppy dis.... oh wait no.

Well what about Dungeon Keeper 2? That's about 10 years old so it comes on a CD. Installs happily, boots up but all sorts of colour issues... and oh look it just crashed to desktop for no reason at all.

But no, you're so right net connection is going to be the biggest problem with playing Diablo 3 50 years from now.

Actually Dungeon Keeper 2 is pretty easy to get running perfectly, aside from that, if only there was some sort of game distribution that we could do digitally, so that we wouldn't have to worry about older game installation problems, if only there was some way to check once to make sure the game wasn't pirated, I agree that the time-frame given is absurd, but you can't just write off the always online crap by assuming that means it will work better than the games you mentioned.

Unless someones figured something new out since I last tried, DK2 really doesn't play well with Vista and 7. You can run it, but save often.

Not saying it will work better, simply that by time the server thing becomes an issue, there's almost certain to be an emulator for it (Assuming there's any real demand for it anyways) especially since blizzards proven they're perfectly willing to keep servers up long term (Something like 17 years for the original Diablo now?)

Besides, we'd have the same problems even if there was a pure offline option for Diablo 3. Battle-net is the main reason Diablo was so great, LAN and TCP/IP ended up being used mostly by pirates (And really), or people who lost the CD keys and needed to use a keygen (which the new system renders moot.)

Oh man yea, imagine if I wanted to boot up an original copy of Spacewar!
Err no wait, things have changed so much there's exactly one computer in the world able to run it

http://spacewar.oversigma.com/

In 50 years time you'll probably be able to run Crysis in the future equivalent of Java. And yes, Spacewar (and the specs of the hardware it ran on) is in the public domain so there should not be any legal issues regarding an emulator for it.

Someone had to create an emulator for that to work, and that only happened because the game is rather iconic. If no one had bothered, you'd be shit out of luck.

 

[TheMadTypist]

What baffles me is the "everyone should have seen this coming" excuse. Okay... so if we, as consumers, knew that this was going to happen, why do they, as developers, do nothing about it?

-snip-

Exactly what I'm freaking talking about. Nobody is surprised by this turnout, so they sure as hell don't have an excuse. But, they're going to be able to pull it together and call it a success, just because it's Blizzard. If you couldn't read the scathing frustration before, you can now.

 

[Zer_]

'cept it didn't. You could play SC2 in offline mode.

You could? I thought Battlenet 2.0 made that impossible. Oh well.
As I said, I haven't played any of the Blizzard games after Frozen Throne, so my understanding is only second-hand.

You could most definitely play it in offline mode and, contrary to what PercyBoleyn said, you could do so on your account and not need a guest account. I have done so when my internet was down.

Yep. You didn't get achievements or anything of the like, but who cares. At least the functionality was there.

In Diablo 3, drops are server-side. That's to prevent people from getting data about items, coming up with duping methods, then ruining the market. Like in Diablo 2.

You can easily compartmentalize, as in retain server side drops while providing drops client side in a separate file for single player.

No. If you give any drop table to the client, people WILL find a way to get dupes and cheats online.

No, they won't, not if it's a different drop table. Also, 95% of the drops in Diablo are randomized. On top of that all they have to do is add extra code to the B.Net drop tables that assigns hash tags generated by an algorithm to the save files. All this is done server side, the client won't even load these hash tags. Should the code get leaked, then they just patch it, change the algorithm and recalculate on current save files, easy as fuck.

 

[Warachia]

Bullshit. I've gone through every page of this thread, nobody here who dislikes this ever went after somebody who did not directly antagonize them, and of course people have complained to blizzard, here's a thread of 200+ pages (4000+ posts) long of customers who can't play the game: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4077738283?page=1
and what do you expect us to do about the DRM? There's only two options, 1. don't buy it, 2. Pirate/crack it, which goes against the point of having the DRM.

If you think this DRM will keep stuck up people from the servers, or stop people from pirating it, then I really feel sorry for you.

You know, when I was a kid, if I couldn't log on to the internet or something, I just went outside or read some sci-fi or whatever. I realize some of you blew 60$ on this, but why oh why would you sit behind your computer for eight hours trying to log on? I realize you have been waiting for this for years but most of you are adults. I know I started several topics about how "it's just a game" isn't an acceptable response to the issues surrounding gaming, but come on! You guys are better than this.

You've been around the block a few times. Day 1 launches have been clusterfucks since gaming went digital. Yes I realize that Blizzard screwed up big time, but some of you skipped work and class to play this. What the hell?

EDIT: Also, back in my day, AOL and 56k was king, and we dethroned them both as soon as we got the chance.

Actually, I'm with you on this, I don't have a very good internet today, which is why I'll go for a walk, read a book, or just play games offline when my internet fails, not being able to play a game isn't the end of the world, but I don't see how any of this excuses Diablo 3.

 

[Warachia]

Big post:

Spoiler

Bullshit. I've gone through every page of this thread, nobody here who dislikes this ever went after somebody who did not directly antagonize them

So one Diablo III thread out of dozens is free from flat-out antagonisation, big fucking whoop.

Oh Bullshit, you can't decry my example simply because you don't like it.
Incidentally, posting that you had no problems in a thread talking about problems comes off as bragging about how lucky you were.

and of course people have complained to blizzard, here's a thread of 200+ pages (4000+ posts) long of customers who can't play the game: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4077738283?page=1

Servers are overwhelmed by tons of people trying to connect to them all at once, that's just how servers work. Blizzard flat-out said this would (probably) happen. Perhaps those people should've cancelled their pre-orders if it bothers them that bad.

More Bullshit, you asked people to complain to Blizzard, I showed you where they did, Blizzard rums the largest MMO, they should have been more than prepared for this, and how the hell could they have possibly known it would be this bad? Going by your logic, you might as well not reply to this, due to something I might or might not say five posts later.

and what do you expect us to do about the DRM? There's only two options, 1. don't buy it, 2. Pirate/crack it, which goes against the point of having the DRM.

Exactly! If you don't like the DRM don't buy the goddamn game. Why did you buy it if you knew from the start you would hate it? Never ceases to amaze me how people can mistake their own stupidity for a lack of fairness.

So I'm supposed to just hate everything new? I had no idea Diablo 3 would be this bad before yesterday, I had no idea that all the monster and item drops would be handled server side, and if I did buy the game I'd consider it stupidity on both the customer and the developer's part, one for including it, and the other for buying it.

If you think this DRM will keep stuck up people from the servers, or stop people from pirating it, then I really feel sorry for you.

And where did I say it would stop people from pirating? I know odds are good that pirates will find a way around the DRM eventually (which, as always, seems to mean we should just give up altogether) but given how much of this game is supposedly server-side I don't think it'll be easy for them, and nor should we make it.

No, we should not make it easy for pirates, but it shouldn't hurt the customer like this, there are other ways of doing DRM that are far better, the biggest thing that pisses me off, is that in these scenarios the pirates end up with the better deal once they crack the DRM.

 

[Warachia]

Oh man yea, imagine if I wanted to boot up an original copy of Spacewar!
Err no wait, things have changed so much there's exactly one computer in the world able to run it

Let's try Vette! instead, that's only 20 or so yeas old after all. I'm sure it'll require a whole bunch of fuckery well beyond the average computer user for it to run, but that's fine. I'll just pop this floppy dis.... oh wait no.

Well what about Dungeon Keeper 2? That's about 10 years old so it comes on a CD. Installs happily, boots up but all sorts of colour issues... and oh look it just crashed to desktop for no reason at all.

But no, you're so right net connection is going to be the biggest problem with playing Diablo 3 50 years from now.

Actually Dungeon Keeper 2 is pretty easy to get running perfectly, aside from that, if only there was some sort of game distribution that we could do digitally, so that we wouldn't have to worry about older game installation problems, if only there was some way to check once to make sure the game wasn't pirated, I agree that the time-frame given is absurd, but you can't just write off the always online crap by assuming that means it will work better than the games you mentioned.

Unless someones figured something new out since I last tried, DK2 really doesn't play well with Vista and 7. You can run it, but save often.

Just run it in compatibility mode, Windows XP service pack 2, disable visual themes and desktop composition, if that doesn't work, run it in 256 colours as well as run it as an administrator, everybody I've talked to after giving them this has had the game run with no problems, at least none due to the games fault or Microsoft's.)

Besides, we'd have the same problems even if there was a pure offline option for Diablo 3. Battle-net is the main reason Diablo was so great, LAN and TCP/IP ended up being used mostly by pirates (And really), or people who lost the CD keys and needed to use a keygen (which the new system renders moot.)

Yes, it's not like friends used it to play co-op with other friends when they were younger, it's not like people still use LAN with other games for reasons than pirates.

In the entire time I played Diablo 2 (several years starting from when the game first came out) I never once got into battle.net, at all, partially due to server problems, partially due to bad internet, and even without it I still saw it as a great game, with this limitation, I'd never have been able to play it, and as I've said before, I still physically cannot play Diablo 3 due to internet problems.

 

[Zer_]

Oh man yea, imagine if I wanted to boot up an original copy of Spacewar!
Err no wait, things have changed so much there's exactly one computer in the world able to run it

Let's try Vette! instead, that's only 20 or so yeas old after all. I'm sure it'll require a whole bunch of fuckery well beyond the average computer user for it to run, but that's fine. I'll just pop this floppy dis.... oh wait no.

Well what about Dungeon Keeper 2? That's about 10 years old so it comes on a CD. Installs happily, boots up but all sorts of colour issues... and oh look it just crashed to desktop for no reason at all.

But no, you're so right net connection is going to be the biggest problem with playing Diablo 3 50 years from now.

Actually Dungeon Keeper 2 is pretty easy to get running perfectly, aside from that, if only there was some sort of game distribution that we could do digitally, so that we wouldn't have to worry about older game installation problems, if only there was some way to check once to make sure the game wasn't pirated, I agree that the time-frame given is absurd, but you can't just write off the always online crap by assuming that means it will work better than the games you mentioned.

Unless someones figured something new out since I last tried, DK2 really doesn't play well with Vista and 7. You can run it, but save often.

Just run it in compatibility mode, Windows XP service pack 2, disable visual themes and desktop composition, if that doesn't work, run it in 256 colours as well as run it as an administrator, everybody I've talked to after giving them this has had the game run with no problems, at least none due to the games fault or Microsoft's.)

Besides, we'd have the same problems even if there was a pure offline option for Diablo 3. Battle-net is the main reason Diablo was so great, LAN and TCP/IP ended up being used mostly by pirates (And really), or people who lost the CD keys and needed to use a keygen (which the new system renders moot.)

Yes, it's not like friends used it to play co-op with other friends when they were younger, it's not like people still use LAN with other games for reasons than pirates.

In the entire time I played Diablo 2 (several years starting from when the game first came out) I never once got into battle.net, at all, partially due to server problems, partially due to bad internet, and even without it I still saw it as a great game, with this limitation, I'd never have been able to play it, and as I've said before, I still physically cannot play Diablo 3 due to internet problems.

Actually people with ATi cards will have a lot of trouble running DK2. New ATI cards don't support 16-bit Z-Buffering, which is what DK2 uses. The only option is to use some customized DLL files like DDraw.dll and put them in your application folder.

 

[KiKiweaky]

I wouldnt like to be working in customer support in blizzard right now, if emails and nerd rage could kill they'd need to hire alot of new staff :|

 

[katsumoto03]

See? This is why required online connectivity is a terrible fucking idea.

Anyone who tries to justify it can now fuck right off.

 

[Warachia]

Actually people with ATi cards will have a lot of trouble running DK2. New ATI cards don't support 16-bit Z-Buffering, which is what DK2 uses. The only option is to use some customized DLL files like DDraw.dll and put them in your application folder.

Huh, I've never heard of this problem before, although after looking it up, it seems to be true, in that case it is more of a hardware issue than any software issue like we were discussing, and as such I don't really consider it a valid point, since we were talking about games not working on computers that could otherwise support them.

 

[Zer_]

Actually people with ATi cards will have a lot of trouble running DK2. New ATI cards don't support 16-bit Z-Buffering, which is what DK2 uses. The only option is to use some customized DLL files like DDraw.dll and put them in your application folder.

Huh, I've never heard of this problem before, although after looking it up, it seems to be true, in that case it is more of a hardware issue than any software issue like we were discussing, and as such I don't really consider it a valid point, since we were talking about games not working on computers that could otherwise support them.

Getting around the Hardware problems involves installing Ubuntu and running the game in Wine. Just worth saying. Also hardware issues are always part of the discussion. DK2 has had issues with hardware since it came out.

 

[Harker067]

After all this time how does anyone underestimate these things. You'd think they'd just go ahead rent a metric butt load of servers. Then start buying or loosing servers after that. Alas I hate games that are at the tied to company servers.

 

[Warachia]

Actually people with ATi cards will have a lot of trouble running DK2. New ATI cards don't support 16-bit Z-Buffering, which is what DK2 uses. The only option is to use some customized DLL files like DDraw.dll and put them in your application folder.

Huh, I've never heard of this problem before, although after looking it up, it seems to be true, in that case it is more of a hardware issue than any software issue like we were discussing, and as such I don't really consider it a valid point, since we were talking about games not working on computers that could otherwise support them.

Getting around the Hardware problems involves installing Ubuntu and running the game in Wine. Just worth saying. Also hardware issues are always part of the discussion. DK2 has had issues with hardware since it came out.

Hardware issues are not a part of this discussion, as I said, we were looking at computers that had the hardware required to run the games, but had some problem with the software on either the developers part, or the operating system itself that made it so you couldn't run the games.

Sure sucks that you have to go through that many hoops to run DK2 though, I bet it doesn't even run half decent when you are finished.

 

[Grunt_Man11]

Well, now it looks like the other Blizzard games are now plagued with Diablo 3's server issues.

At least World of Warcraft is. Just about 30 minutes ago, (around 12:05 AM mountain time; May 17, 2012), all of the WoW servers suffered from horrendous lag spikes and now people who are still logged in can't do anything, and those that got booted can't get back on.

I've been though server issues before, but this is one of the worst.

Wonder what the fanboys have to say now.

EDIT: *gasp* It's back up! It didn't go down for two days! I'm a little surprised to tell the truth. For a moment, I thought the fecal matter had really hit the rapidly-rotating-bladed apparatus there.

So, it wasn't the worst but it was still pretty bad. The last time I saw latency in the quad-digits was when I had satellite internet.

Still stands that making Diablo 3 always require an internet connect is a bad idea. More so if it shares the same login server with WoW.