...



I don't even know what to say to this.

As I noted elsewhere, anyone who's living in areas with ZERO broadband service, spotty bb that's subject to nature's whims or hell, is too broke to get a high speed connection is out of luck in terms of playing DIII. Why Blizzard didn't take into account that MANY types of players enjoy their games is beyond me. Sorry, but ignoring that segment of the market is only a way to not make money from those who might want to play your games but can't be online (or hell, don't want to be online) persistently.



Good luck with the game, though... it'll sell like water in the desert, no doubt.

Why is Blizzard insisting on assuming that many players -- especially those who prefer a single-player experience -- will want to "[come] into the online environment"? Why do they keep believing that a meaningful majority of players perceive the same value in Battle.net that Blizzard's executives apparently see?



This reminds me of the same level of obtuseness demonstrated by Blizzard suits when they proposed the "Real ID" system for their Battle.net environment. (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31094/Canessa_Blizzard_Trying_To_Wrap_Its_Hea
d_Around_Anonymity_Issues.php) I actually supported that idea, but Blizzard showed an incredible lack of awareness of how the user community could be counted on to react.



The folks running Blizzard may all be great people, but I'm starting to think they're collectively suffering from a severe case of Reality Distortion Field, where layers of people telling them only what they want to hear insulates them from how the universe actually functions....

I love Diablo. I really do. But I am "actually kind of surprised" that Blizzard think I want to play it online and care about cheaters / dupes. I just want to fire it up whenever I have a few minutes and play it, not deal with internet access, latency, imposed patches/downloads, server downtimes and other peoples.

"Bridenbecker went on to clarify that a persistent online connection would not prevent players from playing by themselves. "Your character will be stored on a server, but it doesn't mean you have to socialize with people," he said. "



Playing by yourself is not the source of the complaint. It is the potential of not being able to play due to issues outside the player's control.



ISP loses your connection

Battle.Net servers go offline

Playing on a plane or train etc

Hitting a monthly data cap

Network hardware dying

Living in rural parts of the world



I think there are plenty of other reasons why a persistent connection is bad, but this list is plenty. In each of these instances, the person who paid money to play the game, would not be able to do so, which are outside their control.

I love what they are doing. As a religious hardcore mode player, after you have had multiple lvl 70+ hardcore characters killed by hacks, any security is welcomed.



I too am surprised by the critics of this decision, Xbox Arcade, Steam and Onlive don't receive criticism for being online only and the whole industry is going in this direction. Why all the Blizzard hatred?

I'm guessing this VP doesn't exactly understand the issue here. No one's looking for a guarantee that they can play by themselves, they just don't want to have to be completely reliant on their internet connection to play a single player game. They didn't like it when Ubisoft did it and they won't like when Blizzard does it.



@Danny: Steam can be used in offline mode. Granted you have to log in first to set it up to use offline mode, but it's better than nothing.

This is 2011, how many people play Call of Duty offline?



As a huge Diablo fan, I have seen what duping and hacks have done to the previous games, and I welcome this FEATURE.

If their claimed reasons were true (preventing hacking of off-line characters who then go on-line), there is an easy way out for Blizzard.



They could just let players create either off-line or on-line characters, and let the off-line ones play in single-player and LAN games only. Their refusal to do this suggests that the decision was really made for DRM reasons (to reduce piracy etc).



I have no interest in playing Diablo 3 online. If it requires a persistent net connection even while playing in single-player mode, that equals "no sale" for me. I haven't played Starcraft 2 either, for the same reasons (no LAN mode? puleeease.)

There are two sides of this coin. You could say that Blizzard is turning their backs on part of their player base, and you would be right. You could also say that Blizzard is choosing to focus on serving the other part of their player base better and this would also be right. This comes down to being a design decision and Blizzard have decided to take Diablo further in the direction of a purely online game. Seeing as cheats and hacks was a major stain on the Diablo2 online experience this will probably end up making the game a whole lot better for the ones who prefer to play online.



If I'm gonna analyze Blizzard based on the games that they have made I would say that they love making long lived games with equally long lived player communities tied to them. They don't aim for the "sequel every year" and get 10 million first week sales. They rather stagnate to a continuous flow of sales over a period of 10 years. And lets face it, it's the multiplayer parts of games like Diablo 2 and Starcraft that have survived the ages. Sure you could play these games in single player and you might even replay them 5 years later, but it's the multiplayer that brings the truly dedicated players. If these games where single player only they might have been good, but would anyone talk about them 10 years later?



To me this move is completely in line with what Blizzard "is" and has always tried to be. Sure, if you are on the losing end of this trade they may seem "evil" or "corporate" to you. But it's every game developers right to aim for making the kind of games that they really want to make. And if you make infinite amounts of money you can actually go ahead and do exactly the game you want to make. I support that.

The ideal solution would be to separate the offline and online modes. If you think that playing online might ever matter to you, then you need to play in the persistent online mode. If you don't care about online and just want a single player game, then play in the offline mode.

Robert Bridenbecker told MTV Multiplayer the requirement actually stemmed from a desire to maintain "the sanctity of the actual game systems."



Blizzard sounds like they don't want to reconsider any of their plans to force all players into their draconian plan to combat piracy by maintaining an intrusive electronic tether between all players and the all knowing corporate eye in the sky.



And the real reason these executives want to be constantly attached to players--combatting piracy is merely a derivative benefit of their real agenda---to be able to utilize any and every bit of personal information about players that maximizes monetary charges and sales.

This just in: A Blizzard VP is EFFING STUPID. Seriously, he's surprised? I think he completely missed the boat.

Get out the tinfoil hats everybody!

Vocal minority, ya'll talk loud but carry a VERY little stick, it's not 1998 by and large internet connections are pretty stable, if your internet is really that crappy I think playing Diablo is the least of your concerns. Vocal and extremely annoying minority please stop your persistent bitching this is the nature of the industry now either jump on board or get left behind or just play Diablo II and talk about the good old days.



And two all those people who say their not gonna buy the game most of you are BS and the very few who don't well your not going to effect the bottom line anyways but yeah keep complaining it's really helping your cause.

How about, instead of dictating the terms, you give players options and let them choose what's right for them?



Of course, after their reaction to the RealID debacle nothing they say surprises me anymore. But honestly, Blizzard, I expect more from you. Guess Kotick's mentality is rubbing off on them more than they'd like to admit.

Once again I don't understand why the RMT AH isn't seen as the root problem.



You do not have offline play with a sanctioned RMT AH.



At least complain about the proper issue..

This seems like a good idea.

Not really sure I agree with the majority of the complains.

The thing is I played all my D2 single player on closed battlenet due to battlenet providing more rich content ( better loot, rune words, uber diablo,...)that offline single player so personally I won't even notice the difference...

Look, if the rationale for this is to protect the MP experience then fine: require constant internet connection and up-to-date patches for MP games. But do not infliuct this crap on the SP gamer who has no interest in MP whatsoever.



I bought SC2, and have a satellite internet connection that is capped (I'm nin the USA and it's not just the australians/new zealanders that have no choice but to deal with caps!!!), slow, and very high latency. I no longer play it because I dread the F-ing patch updater every I time I want to just log in for a quick vs-AI game. Instead, I almost always end up waiting for the latest patch to download for a half hour or so. Then the scenario maps go AWOL for several hours each time.



End result: never going to buy another SC game again with such a requirement. And given that D3 is even more draconian, not going to be buying any further Diablo Blizzard products either.



If Blizzard thinks I'm all talk and will give in to the impulse because their game is all awesome-sauce, then they've just gotten too big for their britches IMO. I'm 100% not interested because their 'awesome' SC2 product has pissed me off far too many times for me to want to ever touch it again. Never, ever again.

Everyone just pick up Torchlight 2, 'k?;)

This really shouldn't be a discussion about pro's and con's relating to this system. Last time i checked a single player experience was an isolated experience that is best enjoyed with no one else around, hence the name single player. If they are going for an online only system that implements the ideals of anti-hacks and anti-cheats, then why call it a measure to protect the single player experience? At this point it's starting to look like world of diablo.



Either way, online only DRM is a really cluster of a mess to deal with. With the latest storms rocking the midwest, i have found it almost impossible to stay within the confines of my broadband service because it keeps going down. It doesn't take much to annoy someone who is trying to enjoy their overall purchase, and i really hope they decide against going with this DRM plan. Online only DRM doesn't make my single player experience feel safe, just monitored.

By the way, yes they are doing this to fight piracy, no matter the reason given.

But put yourselves in their shoes for a second.

They've been running one of the successful and less pirated games of all times for several years ( WoW).



They are getting ready to release a new game in a franchise that was quite heavily pirated in the past.

The majority of the customers that will purchase D3 will be current or ex-Wow players.

So why not apply the same thing that is working with Wow when you know that it :

- is effective against piracy

- won't be a big issue for the majority of your customer base as they are used to that model ( no matter what the vocal minority says).

Blizzard can't talk out one side of their mouth and say they want a fair online experience, and then have a cash shop at the same time so anyone with a full wallet will be unstoppable. Duping will be replaced by heavy farming. Regardless of duping or farming, the online portion is screwed for the casual user.

So, looks like we're only renting games in the end.

IMHO, VPs don't have the luxury of being "kind of surprised" by the negative reactions towards the decisions concerning their products. Being "kind of surprised" is admitting that he's out of touch with the market and the players.



If you were the CEO, would you fully trust one of your VPs who's admittedly out of touch with his market?

So, I'm not a fan of any DRM, but I don't foresee us convincing publishers to stop using it. But here's a novel compromise in this situation. When you log in, you get a token that is valid for a period of time, say, one week. Whenever you log in, you get a new token. You can play single player as long as you have a valid token. This would solve most (but not all) of the use cases where needing a constant internet connection fails. If your internet is spotty, no problem; the token will outlast any momentary outages. Same with a plane ride or other trip. The token will outlast the trip itself, so as long as you're not spending a week in the Himalayas and wanting to play Diablo 3, you're probably going to be good.

I think in this case "kind of surprised" is a euphemism for, "We knew some people were going to be angry, but we already proved that a similar system worked for Starcraft 2 and that game sold great, so bitch and moan all you want we know you'll still buy it."

What I want to know is, if this is an upfront fee game, not a monthly membership like WoW, who is going to pay for the servers in the long run? When the money from the release dries up and if the "off the top" skimmings from the RMT AH doesn't cut it, does that mean that everybody will be forced to stop playing just because they didnt fully embrace RMT?

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft lately and if I'm not mistaken it requires registration and log in as well. I don't hear much griping about that requirement and to be blunt, it hasn't really hindered my ability to both play and fully appreciate the game. This is simply the new paradigmn for protecting the investment needed to create the games that we all love but are becoming increasing more expensive to produce.



To be honest, I'd rather see this type of "rights management", as it comes with additional services, the value of which the player can decide for themselves if the cost of membership is worth paying. Given this model, Blizzard is less incline to go the route of copyright infringement suits against it's own potential customers for "copying" their software onto multiple computers. In fact there doesn't seem to be any reprocussions to installing WoW or StarCraft 2, two other Blizzard games that require active accounts (in good standing) to gain access to content, on any number of machines desired. And while it's no doubt frowned upon by the ToS, account sharing is a definite possiblity should a player so desire to do so.



While I am truely sympathetic to those folks who are interseted in offline play, I am also enthusiatic at this shift in business models. What we are seeing is the gradual shift of video games as a commodity in and of it self, to be bought and sold by the media format of the day to that of a service provided to players. This second choice, like a membership at the local gym, is in my opinion friendlier to the consumer in that we remove from the equation the question of copyright infringment, a threat more dangerous to our culture then the inconvience of not being able to play a favorite video game offline.



At the end of the day I want to see the hard working and talented pool of developers rewarded for their efforts and if this shift in business model keeps the paychecks flowing while maintaing a sustainable balance between player enjoyment and cost of doing business, then so be it. :)



Oh, one conscern I do have about such a model, and I think this was alluded to in an above comment, what happens to the game when the servers hosting access to it go dark? As mentioned earlier, there are those of us who are still playing games from ages past, online authentication was not an issue back then. Still, how many of those companies are still in existance. LAN play was way more popular because of it's stability to the then primitive internet connections. LAN play has since gone the way of the dodo bird, yet I can still think of some some games that needed community support to maintain and active game server and match making service. Bungie's own bungie.net for Myth I & II are just such a service that is no longer available. Luckly for fans of the game, a community driven service is now available. Which gets be to thinking, perhaps legacy support for such game services could open up avenues of entrepenurship one the parent company goes under or discontinues service... If the player base is large enough to keep it's own service running yet too small for the AAA companies to maintain at a profit, perhaps deals could be worked out for future titles. Just a thought.

One thing to consider too is that this shift in the way games work should allow Blizzard to do one thing that players often asks but developer rarely provide. I am speaking of the ability to provide free trials or demo that customers can try for free for a certain lapse of time. Traditional demo usually contains portions of the game but with this shift nothing prevents Blizzard for providing the full game as a demo and either limit it to a certain amount of play time or a certain level ( the same way they offer free trials for WoW) and once those have been reached they can lock the character on the server and if the customer likes what he saw he can probably get the game and keep playing with the same character he was playing in the demo whereas most old school demos force you to start anew when you purchase the game...

If they decide to reimplement offline play because of a loud minority bluffing they wont buy the game, we can kiss any chances of the game coming out this year goodbye.

When I find myself in a place that doesn't have an internet connection (mom's house, car dealership etc.), I still play D2 or Warcraft3. I can do that because no internet connection is required!



That is why I did not buy SC2 and do not plan to buy D3 as it stands now.



I f I want to play an online game I play a MMO or MOBO.



I feel D3 going online connection required is a poor decision. I vote with my wallet. This will be yet another Blizzard game I pass on.

there is no way this topic deserves over one hundred comments. its not that big of a deal.

Good thing I was never to invested in the Diablo series. One more game to add to my boycott list.

How can you be surprised

This is not DRM, it's a client-server architecture. There is irony when people use the internet to complain about having to use the internet to play games.

"What are we going to have to do about those players that are in the offline environment coming into the online environment?"



Umm... Make them create a new character for online play? I dunno... It sounds sensible to me.

Why Blizzard lost me:



1. Outdated Graphics

2. Console Game Prices on PC Games

3. Long Release time for Games & Expansions

4. Online DRM - Single player

5. Piracy, yes pirates have more fun than consumers reason #4!



They make games for money now, not for consumer satisfaction.



Blizzard died long ago when Activision acquired them!

NEWS FLASH......once valued and trusted consumers now treated like thieves what's surprising that people who love blizzard and have legally purchased and enjoyed many a game must now be online because big blizzard wants to watch you and if you're grinding away and loose internet but not power too bad so sad.



Honest people would be the most offended by this as they simply want to enjoy their game that they earned the money to buy it and not be guilty until proven innocent by the overlords at blizzard.



There needs to be a set of rights everyone has online which would not be able to be violated and the guilty until proven innocent must go so we can again be valued consumers,not treated with disdain.



I know capcom should be learning this as well...the last game i bought from them was m vs c 3 but with the disrespect they showed the industry with res evil 3ds and requiring online without telling anyone in psn games they've lost a customer-if they prove to me they care again i'll consider their games but not until i feel valued again.

Yeah I really don't see why they don't just split offline and online accounts. If you want to play online your simply required to create a character for online play only. I was interested in this game till I was told that I would forced to be online at all times. This is really dropping the ball and the reasoning is weak at best. By making an offline character only I miss out on the online features, well okay. I work up North of Canada a lot and the majority of the places I work have zip for internet connections. Gaming is something I enjoy in my downtime and it is a massive bummer to see that Diablo 3, something I have been itching for for nearly 10 years is not going to be on the menu.



At this point I am rooting for the pirates. I hope when Diablo 3 comes out that it will be enabled to play offline by pirates. Its pretty damn sad when the game I have been dying to play is something I want to see pirated just so I can play it.



Yeah I know I could wait to play it when I come home (usually my work runs for 4 - 5 month stretches) yadda yadda but those arguments are weak when simply adding an option to play offline and forego online "perks" would just solve the problem and net Blizzard my dollars.



So bummed.....

In my honest opinion I think this is a sad day for gaming in general.



I'm still going to school and live in a boarding-school where video games are blocked from the web, so i cant play online even if i want to.



We still played countless hours of d2, mostly over LAN, and we were waiting for d3 for an eternity.



Now they are telling me that i neither can play with my roommates via LAN, nor can i play on my own there.



Seems like i am not gonna buy this game now, even though i played most of the games made by blizzard

Let's put it the other around: I don't mind, if singleplayer characters manipulate their gaming experience as long as it doesn't interferes with online multiplayer experience. And if I want to have my own little private slaughter I usually put a password on my multiplayer session and reduce the the player count down to 1. Just like in Diablo 2.



But ... I gonna buy it anyway -_-

It's sad consumers still don't see pirating as a big deal. These features are what comes from everyone's bittorrent downloads. Simple cause and effect. Bravo to Blizzard for pulling the trigger on something that will be on every PC game in the next 10 years.

As a huge Blizzard fan since i was 5, I really dont see whats wrong with the guys making decisions here. there was negative feedback when a persistent online presence for SC2 and the removal of lan play, why would there be positive feedback on it now. My cousin enabled offline play for SC2 on his laptop and when we were visiting family at my grandmothers he could not play because it claimed he had not enabled the computer.

Its just one big headache.

I am actually surprised (and insulted) that some PR guy from Blizzard expected us to believe that they're surprised. They know perfectly well what they are doing, they just don't care about what gamers want. It would be SO much easier for them to offer options and keep the offline mode for anyone that prefers playing that way. None of the excuses they have given justifies removing offline play, or LAN play for that matter. They just want to control how everybody is playing. They made that clear with SC2, and this is just another step.



Not with me, though. And not with any of my friends. All of us have always been Blizz fanboys, but they are not getting our money. This is not Blizz anymore, just a carcass of what it was with the only objective of making money for Bobby Kotick, in any possible way. If they have to milk Chinese gold farmers, so be it. And if they lose those with rural ADSL or dial up (a LOT of those in the world, commenters up there), so be it. The rich customers will compensate by buying all their shit from the Auction House.

I'm guessing that just from the number of people that plays WOW (which requires persistent online collection) buys the game, they'll still make an outrageous profit.



Sure, they are alienating people, but based on the numbers from their "money making game", they don't have to worry :o



I'm against DRM that really only inconveniences paying customers (since pirates always find a way), but I can see how it's a non-issue in their eyes- They are in the business of making money, and keeping a majority of their players happy, although it sucks for a bunch of other people, the majority of their core audience probable won't even be aware that it's a problem :o

Certainly the Torchlight 2 developers have a golden oportunity to capitalize here... better have that marketing rebuf on Blizzard quickly! They could actually topple the big (Activision-)Blizzard on this one (just topple, not actually bring it down)...



Looks like Activision's "evil schemes" (lol) are taking on Blizzard. And it also look like this might their "Guitar hero" tale.



In short term they'll sell but in the long term? Does crediblitiy really matter, or are their fans indescructible zombies and cannot change their minds?

This is definitely not targeted just at the US / Australia.. I think people on here forget places like China, where boxed games are pirated at a rate near 100%, yet played for years by the entire population. That is reason enough for the "online only" single player and taking away LAN from multiplayer. Sure, it's an inconvenience (look at disconnections in starcraft 2 tournaments), but honestly it's a smart business decision that is going to keep them #1 for years to come.



They could lose ALL of the US / EU / Aussie players that have internet connections too poor to play this online / don't like the inconvenience and still make WAY WAY WAY more money on the game internationally.



Yet still.. they shouldn't be shocked by the English speaking community's reaction. That's just silly.

Another comment to get lost in the heap.



Diablo II is to this day my favorite video game. I also happen to live in a country with very unreliable internet. So obviously I will be missing out on the next part of my favorite video game. So obviously the 'always online' decision is one I am not happy about.



I, and I am sure many other people, would love for a single player only mode. Or even better a LAN mode. We actually LAN a significant amount in my country.



Also in response to people saying that this is just the cry of a loud minority. Firstly do you have any evidence to back up that claim. As much as the the average WoW player may not care about persistent internet connection, that by no means shows that they support it. I believe one might find a 'loud minority' that supports these 'features'.



Redundantly this is also serves as an an anti-piracy measure. But as is the case with most draconian DRM systems the pirates shall enjoy off-line and LAN play. This in no way means that I support piracy, or that I will even touch the game now, but show how companies treat their clients like criminals while the criminals enjoy the game.



I now see Diablo 3 in the same way I see Hellgate. Something I really wanted, but failed to do right by the fans. Each in their own way.

This has probably been mentioned before in other variations, but what is the point of making single player online only? Their reasoning seems to be that player's will have the opportunity to take their characters into multiplayer, while allowing them to maintain stability in their online realm, but doesn't it serve the same purpose to have single player characters separate from multiplayer characters?



The only other reasoning I could see them getting away with from a technical standpoint is that they will no longer store your characters on their servers, thus eliminating the need for them to maintain a little extra database space, but space is cheap and proper normalization and incorporation of concepts from OO would reduce the redundancy of having to store every player's item, even though another player has the exact same item. Perhaps they are approaching this possibility from a quality of service standpoint, meaning that they no longer have to delete characters and accounts after 60 days (or was it 90?) of inactivity, which probably upset a number of players that wanted to come back to their level 99 Pally with Schaefer's Hammer (when it was the best item) only to find that their character was deleted (so annoying).



If they do happen to still store the characters online, then, again, what is the point other than to simply enforce DRM? While I have little doubt that this game will be successful and profitable, this move will most likely harm their revenue stream in the long run.

I agree with the complaints; one additional reason not yet mentioned is that I enjoy having an offline, single-player experience that I can hack up and cheat and just play around with. I would not want it interacting with a "clean" multiplayer experience, but it's still fun to do. I will miss that optional way to enjoy the game.



However, this this entire thread reminds me of when Starcraft 2 came out. Suddenly, "lack of LAN" was a major concern and everyone threatened to not purchase the game and the complaints were pretty much the same as now: and in the end a zillion people bought it anyway. I suspect a similar story will be told here.



The sad truth is that in all aspects of gaming the player base is losing ground: we no longer own games, we simply rent a copy of the (usually beta) code for a period of time that is up to the developer to determine. You can barely trade games anymore; even consoles have their ways to make sure players purchase their own copies. The development model that could sustain the old system is gone: now games are multi-million dollar projects that require multi-million dollar returns on investment, and to do this everyone has to buy the game new. (Personally, I feel that all the emphasis on marketing and product placement ends up taking away from the game experience, but what do I know.) In the end, gamers keep willingly giving up ground because they either don't know any better or don't care. Fickle attention spans and a glut of content means that typically no one plays games for years and years anymore - so who cares if we just "rented" the experience for a short while?



Games are becoming more like movies everyday - specifically, more like seeing a movie in a movie theater. And gamers are voting with their wallets that this is ok. It's hard to complain when money is talking. And in the end, if no one cares, does it really matter?

Since the topic of DRM came up several times… I really fail to see how DRM is a problem, unless you plan on pirating a game. It's actually kinda funny how you people talk as if game companies provide some life-sustaining necessities for you.



You don't like the game? Don't buy it. Don't like how games work these days? Don't buy them. It really doesn't matter, there are still enough customers left for the new games and enough old games for you to enjoy.



Chill, people. They're not cutting off your water or threaten to kick you out of your home. It's games. Try board games or RPGs, they're fun and don't need internet access either.



And if you really love Blizzard's products that much that you actually get angry because they didn't think about your (rather special) situation, bitching really won't help your cause. Start groups, collect signatures and ask politely for a re-consideration, but don't blow your top if they fail to see your point. It's their game and they can sell it any way they want.

If you have a good internet connection then the DRM issue will not be a big issue for you, but I have have only recently aquired a stable internet connection for less than a year now. I live in South Africa so our internet infrastructure isn't as good as many other countries so I could never play those games that required a stable internet connection. I never even played multiplayer. I hated DRM because even though I could afford those games I could never play them so I always checked the back of the case, swore loudly if I saw DRM and left the game back on the shelf. Now though its not such an issue.

My main issue with Diablo 3 is the game itself. I loved Diablo 1 and 2 and really loved all the starcraft games. When starcraft 2 was released I relished everything about the game. The fantastic story, the amazing graphics nad the smoothness the game plays online even when my connection abit wonky.

I expected much of the same from Diablo 3 and I am sad to say that I am deeply dssapointed. I've had the game now for 4 days and have no real desire to play it further. The story is dreary, the graphics reminds me of Titans Quest and the gameplay does not feel fluid at all. Titans Quest atleast allowed you to customise your character in whichever way you wanted. The only way I think Blizzard can make it up to me is by making the multiplayer really kickass with PvP and give it to us for free since we have already paid for the damn thing.