Blizzard defends online-only requirement for Diablo 3 | Hacker News Reader

Blizzard defends online-only requirement for Diablo 3

ausgamers.com

11 pointstrog32 comments

Oh fuck them. There is no worse form of DRM than a permanently-required connection. The 99.9% figure is total bullshit too, I "have" internet, except when there's a problem with internet or elec (every week, multiple days), or I shut my laptop (every day), or I move from wifi network to another (every day). C&C4 was ruined by that crap.

What a ridiculous excuse too - "people finished Diablo 2 on normal and couldn't find their friends online".

Call it what it is assholes.

Wait, you played C+C on your laptop while walking between wifi access points, and also somehow with your laptop closed? I'd blame your shitty C+C experience on that.

I agree. I was a huge C&C fan, (bought each game multiple times including the collection packs) but have not even looked at C&C4. I did check how easy it would be to pirate and frankly that's less effort then walking to the shops to buy it. Heck I even looked at it in bargain bins and refuse to touch it based on that DRM. It also locked out my Dad who enjoys C&C from playing as he does not have an always on internet connection nor will he.

I am not going to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt in this, as there is no reason they couldn't allow offline mode. The player confusion thing they cite could be easily fixed with some UI prompts.

You're right. The player confusion thing was already fixed in Diablo 2. You had offline and online characters. Their public understood the concept back then, so why wouldn't they understand it now?

Nobody uses these complaints when the game is called an MMO. Perhaps that's their new take on Diablo? I was a huge fan of Diablo and played it entirely online. I'm not too angry about this, personally.

There's a big difference between an MMO though ... the online play is the only play, it's not in any sense single player nor would you buy it to play alone or when you're disconnected.

With C&C4 it had the single player stuff and the multiplayer stuff just like them all - online play was there and it added lots of value to the game just like it has historically, except they crippled the non-online play by needlessly forcing a constant online connection (if you dropped out you could complete the current game, not save it, not start another), moving your saved games and everything else to their servers etc.

Diablo has always had a strong online component. While the series has never been an MMO in a strict sense, online play has always been more engaging (except for rampant spamming... which Blizzard seriously needs to address). Sites like d2jsp.org will attest to the added depth of online play. An economy developed out of the items you could find and there was also high end game play that was only available online. The experience was clearly superior.

Lots of people are going to jump all over Blizzard for it, but this move was entirely predictable and makes sense. What do you gain by playing offline: less restrictions and less gameplay. While some people will disagree with me, it is akin to asking for an offline component to WoW or EVE: there's technically a game left, but without other people there's much less fun and enjoyment.

D2 had an awesome single player campaign, dozens of hours of fun!

Forcing online connectivity for single player which is what they're doing, is DRM. And it's the worst kind - they're forever, needlessly tying the game to an online service instead of making it a big, optional value add.

This being Blizzard, I'm a little more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe it just might not be for draconian DRM reasons, and actually be for the reasons they stated. Compared to many other game companies, they seem to be all about the online experience.

While I agree, it seems a reasonable compromise would be to default to online yet also allow a player to fork into offline mode.

It seems sort of silly from a user experience point of view. If you start playing online and then for some reason you can't, you have to start over at the beginning of the game. There's no continuity between your gameplay sessions in that case. And that's really how it has to be if you go with that idea; the alternative is too open to abuse.

Unworkable DRM: Important bits in client, client secured by key, key handed to client.

Workable DRM: Unimportant bits in client, important bits in server, server secured by key, key handed to network operations center.

Your local gamers have been voting for this decision with their wallets, for years.

Or maybe our local gamers have been voting with the paychecks they earn. Patio, I generally think your commentary is valuable and insightful. In this case I think you've reduced a complicated situation to a nifty sounding catch phrase that appeals to our libertarian leanings (even mine).

I used to manage a high-volume retail game store (~3m in yearly sales, $30 at a time). Many gamers literally do spend all of their disposable income on the games, and pirate what they cannot afford (and surprise, huge swaths of the gamer population are poor as dirt, and with the amount of time and money they spend on games this isn't changing). This kind of DRM would exist if 1 person or 1million people were pirating games, because its the only secure solution.

I don't think this kind of DRM will be successful in improving PC sales in general. The only reason Blizzard gets away with it is because their games will always be at the top of gamer's purchase lists. They are high quality products with a shitload of content and beautiful user interfaces. If every game company followed suite, I don't think the result would be successful.

edit, and context: I don't really care what Blizzard does to protect their games. People were concerned about Starcraft 2, the required online connectivity hasn't affected my game experience at all in the last year. I think this will probably be true for D3, as well.

Here's a visualization where your understanding of the world and my understanding of the world converge:

Let's say the statistical composite gamer buys 10 games a year and consumes 100. Game companies don't get rewarded for being in the top 100 and they don't get rewarded for having perfect anti-piracy: they get rewarded for being 1 step ahead of #11.

You're probably insanely familiar with the importance of the new release window, where the supermajority of game sales (and more importantly to publishers, original sales) are made. All you have to do is be desirable enough and annoying enough to be a must have in those first ten days, and you secure your coveted position among games that our poor subject actually purchases.

With regards to poverty and video game players: personally, I don't really see a justice concern in "I am wealthy enough to consume video games, but not wealthy enough to consume video games up to my desired level of consumption." If they were stealing food to feed their children, I'd be darn careful with how I talked about them, but unless Diablo III tastes great with ketchup...

Yea, I agree. My main point was that you can't get blood from a turnip. I don't think DRM will change sales (or even affect them that much). Those who can afford will continue to play what they normally play, and those who can't afford will just opt out of playing PC games that they can't pirate.

I perhaps misread your original statement as saying "people won't pay, so they get DRM." I don't really think this is the case. I think this kind of DRM is inevitable as a natural loss prevention measure(whether the threat to profits is imagined or real), and I think games that don't provide enough content to mitigate the hassle of DRM (real or imagined) will suffer regardless.

D3 sales will be huge, and SC2 sales were too. I'd hate to see someone draw the conclusion that it's the DRM selling these products.

edit: In light of your response I see now exactly what you meant in your original post.

It is the DRM that is selling these products. Most Warcraft III players have never bought a license and play on Garena. Any of those people who want to play StarCraft II will now have to give Blizzard money. These people greatly outnumber the people who will refuse to buy it because of the DRM.

Well that's one way to ensure a burgeoning trade in hacked copies of your software on Bittorrent.

Honestly, it was going to happen anyway. D3 is a heavily anticipated title.

I find very interesting the difference in philosophy of the two most respected game makers.

Blizzard has become much more closed as they've aged, while id has a history of open sourcing their software.

I wonder how long until an open source Diablo 3 private server is created, and this form of DRM is rendered near-useless.

It's much easier for them to shut down 1 server vs. 20m pirated copies that need no server.

Well just as with private servers for World of Warcraft, it's more than likely going to be several big private servers.

edit: This would also enable for LAN parties to play without anything more than a few cross-over Ethernet cables.

they had private "realm" servers for diablo 2 too. I remember playing ones that ran mods

Starcraft II has thus far survived, and I have never seen a private WoW server in which all of the raid content works correctly (or indeed, even all of the raid content that's at least 2 years old).

What's important to Blizzard isn't that nobody ever breaks the security, but that they can delay that for long enough that people in the parts of the world that mostly pirated Warcraft III buy the game before anyone has working private servers.

The game itself will be made worse for everyone by this decision. Perhaps if it takes off as an esport we'll get to see BNet go down during tournaments like we have for SC2.

SC2 has an offline mode.

SC2 has an offline mode as long as you log in once every month and don't want to play any custom maps or play with anyone else. For an RTS, that is a lot like not having an offline mode.

This is also a great way to prevent a modding community to flourish. The complete oposite of what Notch has been doing with Minecraft: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/4955141617/the-plan-for-mods

The Diablo franchise was never meant to be game with a lot of modding. It was always about a great hack and slash with friends. Since modding was never allowed in online play over Battle.net, the majority of the community never bothered themselves with mods.

Far worse is their endorsement of RMT, allowing both items and gold to be sold for USD within the in-game auction house. This ruins any kind of competitive play.

The bots would have ruined the competitive play anyways (like always). No matter how many patches/updates the bots always take over and cheapen the game. I don't really care as much about what people do with their own money.

Bots isnt a problem - they are a symptom of game play deficiencies. People would not "bot" the fun bits - they bot the bad/grindy bits, in order to spend maximum amount of time on the "fun" bits that they actually like to do.

hence, the advent of RMT and botting.

The best competitive play comes in Hardcore mode in Diablo, and there is no RMT in Hardcore, so I don't see that being a concern.

I love the RMT combined with the always-online experience because it means Blizzard is absolutely serious about preventing the rampant duping and cheating that make Diablo II so unplayable for many people.

[Disclaimer: I used to work for Blizzard, but only really making graphics for websites and definitely not anywhere near decisions like this. Having been there for many years I have seen first hand what a great company Blizzard is, and how they're not afraid of making tough choices that make life better for players, even if it makes Blizzard look selfish to the outside world. Blizzard is made up of gamers, and they're honestly just doing gamers right.]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com