Blizzard "surprised" at fan rage over Diablo III online requirement

Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that the forthcoming Diablo III would be online-only, despite not being an MMO. Fan reaction has been brutal. MTV's Russ Frushtick writes:

"I'm actually kind of surprised in terms of there even being a question in today's age around online play and the requirement around that," said Bridenbecker. "We've been doing online gameplay for 15 years now…and with 'World of WarCraft' and our roots in Battle.net and now with 'Diablo 3,' it really is just the nature of how things are going, the nature of the industry. When you look at everything you get by having that persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that."

He also points out that you can play solo online, and that it's about where saves are saved, not DRM, which sucks as far as they are concerned, hurrah.

But here's the thing. Even if Blizzard did it for the good reasons Bridenbecker describes, news of the cash-for-items marketplace and a ban on user modifications emerged at the same time. Because there are no coincidences on the Internet, this makes it look like a scheme to get everyone online where they may pay to upgrade characters, share their doings on social networks, and all that nonsense--even if that's not really the deal at all. It's created fear, uncertainty, and doubt about a game series that's been a gold standard in zero-bullshit single-payment solo 'n' multi PC gaming for a decade.

• [David D.]

  I cannot imagine how they (or my ISP for that matter) are going to offer
  100% uptime so that I could play this game whenever I wanted. And
  cash-for-items is clearly part of the grand design. If I buy a game
  (even as a file), I want to feel some sense of ownership, and certainly
  complete autonomy when it comes to playing the game. (I recognize Steam
  has started us down this road, and that’s been no picnic either.)
  Thankfully there are other games in the world, and likely better ones.

  • [SanFranMan]

    >>I cannot imagine how they (or my ISP for that matter) are going to offer
    >>100% uptime so that I could play this game whenever I wanted.

    Dude, what games are you playing?   Everything is online.

    • [Rob]

      right, every single game in the Humble Bundle is online. Ditto every single game at GoG.
      Skyrim, that’s gonna be an MMO too. Don’t forget that the latest Fallout is an MMO as well.

• [Jason Eisenzimmer]

  I think a demographic that Blizzard forgot to worry about is those who’s internet is capped.

  • [Sam Ley]

    Also, people who like having some single-player games around so they can play in places where they don’t have internet access (airplane, long bus ride, etc.). Also, it might bug people who dislike being treated like a criminal after paying $50 for a game.

  • [Raederle]

    Do people really get so close to their cap that a server handshake will put them over?

    • [Michael Guy]

      if you have a non-permanent internet connection, i.e. you’re on a pretty awful bandwidth shared cable line or capped DSL/cable connection, or dial-up, or WiFi or 3G/4G GSM/CDMA/GPRS or just any old VPN connection, you can’t guarantee a connection for the entire length of the game, and while it’s amusing when the game pauses or quits during the most hectic part, when it happens to you, its not amusing.

      Online DRM often includes many of these issues:

      being kicked out of a single player game
      sudden game closing to desktop
      PC lockups
      DLC that no longer loads due to DRM
      unsaveable scenario/levels
      corrupted savegames
      corrupted game settings.
      forced out of a game, having to sign in again, which loads a 2 hrs old or 2 days previous score or savegame.

      all these things have happened to me. 

      I’m not worried about data carriage or data usage, do you need an internet connection for sudoku or plants vs zombies ? 

      for PC, not yet. 

      The problem with always-on is that there’s never a good time to be disconnected, and more often, in cloud stoarge of saves, or social status enabled games, especially in Starcraft 2′s capaign (single player) modes, a game server disconnect or busy or offline, even in single player would prevent you from saving progress in the campaign, and you’d have to run it again. and again. and again.

      it’s not the bandwidth, it’s the reaction that the developers choose for the game to take when it discovers it’s offline, and instead of ignoring the problem, prevents you from playing. 
      Wether it’s Dragon Age Origin’s refusal to load DLC content or saves made with DLC content while offline, Steam’s refusal to play games unless the file has been signed to work in offline mode, or Starcraft 2′s cumbersome online for a single player or network game, etc. Diablo 3, is more of the same.Perhaps Online DRM is one of the more salient points that big companies like EA treat PC players as if they can’t be trusted, not like console players or iOS/android customers who can play offline without the same level of drawbacks, more and more games are becoming online-only affairs for the simplest games to the more elaborate off-line games. 

    • [Matt Giuca]

      @boingboing-7b0e861aacb92e74f2ea443d7c626b53:disqus It isn’t just going to be a handshake. If it was, that would defeat the whole purpose of preventing cheats, since you would effectively be playing offline and could hack your character. If you play single player, you’ll be essentially playing a multiplayer game hosted by Battle.net, with a single person playing. So it will be using internet traffic the whole time.

      Besides, that’s hardly the point. I don’t want to be treated like a criminal when I’m playing a game I legally purchased.

• [franko]

  honestly, i’m surprised, too. hello, it’s 2011. we’re all online almost all the time anyway.

  • [Thad Boyd]

    Good point, Franko; what ISP do you use that never disconnects from the Internet?  I want to know because I totally want to sign up for it.

    Except, oh right, I can’t, because there are only two ISP’s in my area and they both suck.

• [Raederle]

  “Despite not being an MMO”?  Like Starcraft 2, which likewise must be played online (even solo) and  likewise is not an MMO?

  • [Ket Smith]

    Except that you don’t have to be online to play Starcraft 2, only to validate your key via Battle.net.

  • [Graham Martin]

    You don’t have to play SC2 online, I don’t think.  Only if you want to play against others.  I played all the solo levels offline.

    • [greg kender]

      Ummmm.  No, you didn’t.  You had to have access to the internet to even be able to play single player.  Just because you didn’t play multiplayer, doesn’t mean you didn’t have to be connect. 

  • [Guest]

    Oh, really…? Damn. Guess I’m not gonna get Starcraft 2. Internet signal is shitty here. I also find XBox to be frustratingly internet-dependent. :(

• [milkman]

  Fan’s “suprised” by Blizzard’s delusional understanding of customer service.

• [trippcook]

  I am so angry that a large corporation that I purchase a fraction of my entertainment from is trying to both make money AND discourage modding.

• [Halloween Jack]

  I was disappointed by Blizzard’s announcement, but hardly surprised. After they have had the constant flow of money from WoW subscriptions for all these years, why would they want to go back to a system where they have to maintain free servers forever for a one-time-purchase game (well, plus one expansion, as opposed to WoW’s 3)? Even if the game is “free” to play online, expect them to slide into a freemium system where you’re just not going to get the really good drops unless you pay the monthly fee.

  • [Raederle]

    I fully expect that they will come to my house and kill my dog if I don’t pay them more money.

• [Rob Hunt]

  Sweet, this can go on my shelf, right next to Spore!

  • [DarkFox]

    I feel rather limited in my amount of likes… I tried to like Spore… I really did.. But EA ruined it, and now it is collecting dust.

• [Tommy McCarthy]

  If that’s how they are going to keep a cash flow, then the game should be free to play or damn near it.

  As in, I can get a copy of the game for dirt cheap. I’m not going to spend $50 bucks on a game and then get micro-transactions all the time.

  Blizzard, you are not EA and we hold you to a better standard then this.

  • [Richard Dagenais]

    Uh, Blizzard is pretty much the gold standard of making you pay for every unsatisfying ounce of game content.

    The difference here is that they make you log in to SC2 or D3 to play solo. This is utter bullshit.

    Real money for Auction House items is a whole other level of fun-ruining cash-grabbery.

• [William Chuvala]

  I could see if it ping’s out to check if it’s valid and then disconnects but 100% uptime that’s a little silly

• [Brian]

  I see it as a simple question of value.

  A game that cannot be played offline is worth less than one that can. A game that cannot be modded is worth less than one that can. Blizzard has voluntarily removed value from their game, and I won’t buy it at full price as a result.

  Also, to suggest they did this to prevent cheating is laughable. They just legalized cheating with the real money auction house.

• [OohErMissus]

  Great.  A game I was mildly looking forward to has now become something that would take up valuable space in my hard-drive.

  I’m not bugged out by the entire always-online scheme, to be honest.   It’s the mod ban and the entire false item economy that has me dismissing this game as a bargain-bin afterthought.  I play games on the PC specifically for the fact that there are some clever souls out there that find ways to change and make the gaming experience something better, something more enlivening, allowing me to extend my enjoyment of the game over several playthroughs.   Banning mods pretty much quashes that joy.   And to think they can offer a pay-to-play-better schema to ‘make up’ for that?

  There’s a reason I chose not to play an MMO.   Maybe I’m an old grognard, now, but back when I played games more consistently, I did it to GET AWAY from dealing with people.   To forcibly shove me from that in one of my few ways of secluding myself away from the world deprives me of my personal choice in that matter.   So therefore, I’m making my choice in not bothering with this offering, no matter how good it may turn out to be.  They may not miss my $50 dollars and change for items, but it’s my 50 shekels, nonetheless.

• [Kyle Reynolds Conway]

  Nonsense like this has pushed me away from many major game developers and platforms. No worries though, the indie devs are doing a lot of things right. This too shall pass.

• [Ben Carlsen]

  This is why I’ll be getting Torchlight 2 instead.

  • [Terrin Bell]

    Agreed. Torchlight is a great Diablo like game created by the original creators. When it goes multi-player, I will not have a need for Diablo. 

    • [Ben Carlsen]

      Then all you need wait for is Torchlight 2. It will have multiplayer. It comes out later this year.

• [Daniel Hardcastle]

  Why the outrage? Because DRM free games are like shops with no security. Games with some DRM are like shops with security at the door. Always online DRM games are like a shop where the security guard follows you constantly and throws you out randomly. Oh and the no modding is him screaming ‘PUT THAT DOWN’ whenever you look as though you may move something.

  • [Kyle Reynolds Conway]

    Interesting example. That last bit is exactly why I don’t shop at Guitar Center. They stopped me at the door (less than 5 feet from the counter) to check my receipt after a purchase of 5 guitar picks. That was more than 5 years ago and I haven’t stepped inside of one since.

    It’s always nice to have real world analogies for the insanity that is DRM (even if they say it isn’t). 

    • [Keisar Betancourt]

      you should know, you have no obligation to stop for their extra security check… that goes for wal-mart too. besides the obvious ethical balance, it is also written into law that once you purchase an item it is yours and regardless of where you are, or whether they believe you, you need not provide them any assistance in anything they wish to do for their own security/amusement. from the moment that money changes hands it is your product and you can stick it up your ass, in your pocket, burn it, pretend you don’t have it, put it back on the shelf, or anything else you damned well wish. what They can do? nothing.

      • [Donald Petersen]

        what They can do? nothing.

        They reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.  You don’t have to shop at Guitar Center if you don’t like the way they do business, sure.  But they’re under no obligation to sell you anything, either.  In my area, all the GCs stop everyone at the door to check receipts for every purchase.  They do the same thing at Fry’s Electronics, Home Depot, and Costco too.  Never takes more than about four seconds.  But if such a piddling, non-intrusive attempt to thwart shoplifting bothers you all that much, you can certainly take your business elsewhere, as about a zillion people who aren’t negatively affected by Blizzard’s self-centered policy will tell you.

        I don’t mind receipt-checkers at brick-and-mortar stores; it doesn’t adversely affect my progress through my day, nor does it unduly infringe on my property-owning rights regarding the speakers, shovels, and cases of Dr Pepper I’m buying.  And it doesn’t insult me overmuch, either.  It’s a far cry from what Blizzard’s doing, if you ask me.

      • [highlyverbal]

        “put it back on the shelf”
        It is very likely that you are not free to put it back on the shelf.

• [Mujokan]

  Even if there were no mercenary motives, it makes sense from how they want the game to function. I can’t imagine they are judging the bottom line wrong either.

  Anyone remember the nerd rage when Bethesda got the Fallout IP?

• [IronyElemental]

  I could see this being an issue for people 8 or 9 years ago (I recall a similar backlash when Half Life 2 required a connection for registration), but today? Really? Nobody but grandma is on dial-up and she ain’t buying Diablo 3. Even the phone in my pocket is online RIGHT NOW. And the people complaining? Using their internet connections to do it.

  Complaining about D3′s required internet connection is the new complaining about Netflix raising its fee by like 6 bucks.

  • [Daniel Hardcastle]

    But what if Luzsec or someone hack THEIR servers or THEIR servers are all busy and you can’t connect or THEIR servers are down for maintenance.

    It’s not just your side you have to worry about. This shouldn’t be attached to a single player game.

    • [George Bush]

       i can see it now… /b posting ‘give us 9000 keys or we point the LOIC at your login servers for the first week’
      It would destroy them
      (and dont think the russian mafia wont make some predatory phonecalls as well – afterall they do it to online gambling sites every superbowl)

      • [Mujokan]

        Some reason they haven’t tried it with WOW yet?

  • [dculberson]

    It’s not a question of needing an internet connection to, say, install the game, but of being unable to play even local only campaigns if your connection is down.  It’s a ridiculous road block put up for a reason that has nothing to do with the consumer’s interests and solely to do with the company’s interest.  Since they don’t value my interests, I won’t serve theirs by buying the game.

    • [IronyElemental]

      I will say to you what I’ve said to everyone threatening to walk away from D3 due to cash auction houses, required internet connections, and/or Bobby Kotick:

      See you on launch day!

      • [dculberson]

        I absolutely promise you that I won’t be there.  Enjoy the game, though!  The last thing I would do is try to take away other people’s enjoyment of it.

  • [rustophius]

    50 year old male here, no grandchildren, no persistent internet at home (love living in the woods) and no plans to purchase Diablo III until this ill-advised policy is reversed.

• [dculberson]

  Here’s my problem with the “always connected” requirement: I have very limited time to play games like this, like maybe 2-3 hours a week.  I absolutely loved Diablo and Diablo II, but if there’s a chance that my one designated “me” time to game gets completely derailed by a (not unlikely) internet outage, it’s going to make the game more of a burden than a source of entertainment.

  For comparison’s sake, I have a PS3.  Due to a time bug, one week the PSN was down and so I couldn’t play any of the games on it – even local ones.  Friends had come over and we ended up shifting over to the XBOX 360.  What happened when the next big franchise game came out?  I bought it for the XBOX.  I haven’t even turned the PS3 on in three months now, and the PSN hack and enormous outage both didn’t bother me but wasn’t even noticed by me until the news of it broke on Boing Boing.  They lost me as a customer just like Blizzard has – due to my PS3 experience, I’ll do everything I can to avoid the “online” requirements.

  You can mock me for having both of those consoles, but also realize that I’m right in the demographic that Blizzard should be shooting for – a gamer with money.

• [oldtaku]

  Surprised? This doesn’t surprise me at all since they’re part of Activision now.

  • [Teirhan]

    This ought to be a disclaimer posted whenever someone talks about Activision-Blizzard.

    Activision-blizzard is a fiction.  The parent company of both, Vivendi Universal, combined the stock portfolios of Activision and Blizzard but the two companies still operate separately.  They are effectively independent companies, even though they are traded on the stock market as a single entity.

    Any evil Blizzard commits isn’t from Activision’s influence due to corporate structure, but from inside Blizzard itself. 

    Or from VU, which is arguably eviller, i suppose. 

    (this is paraphrased from a post that gets posted in EVERY blizzard thread on RPS.  I’d give more credit but I don’t remember who posted it originally.)

• [WhyBother]

  There are some games that demand an online presence, some games that benefit from it, and some games that don’t need it at all. The Diablo franchise is just basely in the “games that benefit” category. It’s usually a solo, click-to-kill grind. So now if I have caps, I’m probably hesitant about buying this game. If I have a shaky connection, I’m probably wondering if I’ll end up replaying a large portion of it. If I wanted the game specifically so I could fill in hours of free time without an internet connection — say, when I travel, or because I’m just too young and poor to invest heavily at internet at home (like most of the Diablo target audience) — then this game is a burden.

  And in exchange for the hassle, what do we get? We can’t keep save states. We are left open to micropayment-based features. There is no re-sale value. It can’t be modded. And in five years, when it’s no longer profitable to keep the servers running, the game may as well be gone. I know good number of people who still occasionally re-load mid-90s classics like Dungeon Keeper and Vampire, so the ability to play a game a decade later is not to be completely ignored.

  Naturally, this last point is only an issue if the game is good enough to stand the test of time. But if the game is good there will be a sequel. If there’s money to be made on a sequel and the predecessor depends on company servers, the predecessor will be cut off. There was a large enough uproar over this when it happened to Halo, and Halo was first and foremost a multiplayer game. How is it even justifiable in a primarily single-player game?

  The fact is, if you omit the added time that goes into better graphics in each generation, we’re getting a little less game every time. The games are becoming less valuable to the consumer, but keeping pretty much the same price. Bridenbecker shouldn’t be surprised at the reaction so much as he should be grateful.  Consumers would just tell a lesser franchise “no thanks” and hold on to their cash.

• [Johnny Milaychev]

  Every corporation’s goal is to make more money. With that comes growth, and with growth comes a reduction in innovation. Blizzard has become stuck in their subscription revenue model and will likely be surpassed by smaller game developers who are willing to embrace new ideas. Those developers, in turn, will grow with their success and stagnate over time. Welcome to the circle.

• [Lobster]

  They’d be less surprised if they’d paid the slightest bit of attention to the industry over the last few years.  The fans have gotten outraged every single time anyone has tried that nonsense.  UbiSoft got slapped so hard they patched it out of their game.

• [gwit]

  I don’t like being required to be online to play a single player game.  Sure I am online almost all the time, but that’s not the point.  I have an Android phone which is online all the time sure…  But I can still make a phone call without the data network…  Or I can play a game I downloaded onto it with the phone in airplane mode…  Honestly I’m more annoyed at the outright banning of modding.  Modding is one the reasons I am mainly a PC gamer.  But like other posters have said, the indie game studios are really doing things right and they will get my money.

• [Tdawwg]

  Wow, concerned gamers are concerned.

  What with following this and the BF3 not on Steam for PCs ZOMGWEREALLGONNADIE fracas, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that gaming’s social values–especially the connoisseurship, critique, and complaining about the games we play–are starting to overcome the actual playing of games. Such valid concerns, but at the same time it’s a marvel to me how so many people are concerned about these sorts of thing. How sophisticated we’ve all become, and how jaded, perhaps: I never imagined, playing Donkey Kong in the arcade, that I’d somehow be reading these detailed reports of a company’s business model and customer-service ethics some thirty years later. Has the metagaming singularity arrived?

  • [Johnny Milaychev]

    If by metagaming, you mean a game that continuously evolves based on player interaction, then yes, I believe that is where gaming is headed.

    • [Tdawwg]

      No, I meant it literally, like “after gaming,” or “post gaming,” i.e., as in a lot of the thread, while focused on the game, is much more invested in “meta” issues like the company’s ethics, DRM, social networks, etc.: these things all impact the game, sure, but I was mainly noting–somewhat lamentingly–that we’ve progressed far beyond “Wow, Mario jumps really cool” or “I like blowing up asteroids.” We’ve moved on to “Wow, I’m not playing that fucking asteroid blowing up game because it makes me log in with my real name and its company is suing Notch and the company was implicated in the death of those two Chinese gold farmers etc. etc.” You know, “meta.”

  • [Keisar Betancourt]

    i’m with you but “metagaming singularity” is such a buzz-wordy buzz-phrase my head exploded… it’s also meaningless… utterly meaningless.

    • [Tdawwg]

      You seem to have understood it well enough to cavil at its buzzwordiness, so not “utterly meaningless,” then. Metagaming will stand, thanks, and singularity is a well-known meme: plus, the phrase was a more then a bit tongue-in-cheek, thus justifying its unwieldiness. But, hey, whatever, reasonable folks can differ over terminology: what’s important, I think, is to get pass the mass moaning and carping over any one *bad* designer or company practice, and to recognize the incredibly specialized (and, to me, quite odd) discourse over value that’s going on here. BB, for all its greatness, tends to not want to have these discussions–we discuss makers and copylefting and ukuleles, but tend not to go deeper and interrogate the values, beliefs, and cultural poetics we’re espousing with these discussions–and an unlovely phrase such as mine at least has the value of focusing the debate on what to me is a more interesting, more valuable debate. Otherwise, it’s just “ZOMG X corp. just ganked my Y thing and I feel Z about it,” or “ZOMG X person just produced this nifty Y thingy and I feel Z about it,” which can be limiting. 

• [geekandwife]

  Blizzard intends for you to play this game online with other people.  How is that so hard for people to understand?  They will allow you to play by yourself if you want to, but its a game intended for you to party up with other people and play online.  Its not quite a MMO, but it is intended to be an online multi-player game.

  I just dont get people that are upset about blizzard not 100% supporting a gameplay style they are not working to achieve.

  • [Daniel]

    Umm, because the first two games in the series WERE that style and it confuses people when the style changes in the middle of a series of games.  I don’t get that Blizzard is straying so far from the spirit of the Diablo games in the first place.  I never played the Diablo games so I could fake socialize online.  If I wanted the experience you’re talking about I would play WoW, don’t you think? 

    No one is having trouble understanding anything.  Some people don’t want what Blizzard is pushing and they’re expressing their disappointment that this is what happened to the Diablo series.  If Blizzard is smart they will listen to the fans.

    • [geekandwife]

      Imagine that, in 11 years since the last game or 15 years from the first one they have come up with a new concept of the gameplay due to the way people still today play diablo 2.  A lot of people still play diablo 2 every day on battle.net, why would they not want to appeal to the type of gamer that has stayed with them for 11 years?  

      Would you rather listen to a fan that played single player once or a player that played online for 11 years?  This type of gameplay is exactly what the diablo 2 online play was.  

  • [Rob]

    Then why not completely yank single player?

    • [geekandwife]

      They did… Did you not hear, theres no offline mode :D

• [xzzy]

  Oh boy, another game that becomes unplayable when my internet connection dies! Something tells me this is all part of a clever plan to beat the obesity epidemic. 

  “Sorry, we’re performing network maintenance, your tv and your computer are now useless. Go for a walk!”

• [gwit]

  I won’t be buying this game either.  I was only mildly interested in it for game design or modding reasons.  I’ve only really liked the Starcraft series from Blizzard.  SC2 is somewhat disappointing (the horrible handling of user-made maps for instance).  I’m not surprised that Blizzard’s products are becoming less desirable, just a little sad.  I remember the LAN games of Starcraft we used to play (SC2 has no LAN capability–online only).  I don’t know anyone that does LAN parties anymore. It’s sad.

  • [Guest]

    I would SO go to a LAN party! If I could find one! Madison dorks, where do you hang? I’ve been to only one (Diablo 2 is what we played) and I loved it. I want to play… :(…

• [gandalf23]

  great.  I will not be getting Diablo 3 then, if you have to be online to play.  I, and my laptop, are often in oilfields all over the world where there is no internet connection, or it cost umpteenbrazilian dollars per nanosecond.  Even at the hotel/motel nearby the internet connections are usually crap.   Hell, my ISP at my house is often down, and we’re in the middle of frikin’ Dallas!   ugh.  why the hell did they make it online only?  

• [codera]

  I have Time Warner Cable, which means I lose internet access about 1 day out of every week.  (TWC sucks, but there are no alternatives in the area.)

  I am not okay with BUYING a game that I cannot play when I want.

  Steam games are similar: they connect online to sync stats, player profiles, achievements, friend lists, etc.  BUT when you don’t have an internet connection, they still let you play (after warning you those features aren’t active).  Setting up a system like this is NOT THAT HARD TO DO.  Blizzard is just being greedy.  (Denying DRM has anything to do with it is a huge lie, there is no way a pirated game will be able to connect to their service.)

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I have Time Warner Cable, which means I lose internet access about 1 day out of every week.

    You. Jinxed. Me.

    I haven’t had a cable outage in months.  Until I read your comment.

  • [Keisar Betancourt]

    get the pirated version, then, if you like it, send them your fifty buck (or whatever you feel it’s worth). all problems solved.

  • [Guest]

    It annoys the shit out of me that my only choices are AT+T (shitty), Charter (SUPER shitty), or nothing. How can we fix this monopoly on wireless service??

• [itsbing]

  I’ve played Diablo 2 more than any other game I’ve ever owned and have been looking forward to Diablo 3 for years. Specifically I like the fact it can be played by a single player meaning you don’t have to be on line. Now, after years of bullshit, delays, secrecy and other garbage, months away from release they announce this crap. I don’t want to have to be on line to play a video game. I don;t want a game that requires an internet connection and frankly I don’t quite understand the appeal of World of Warcraft. There’s an entire generation of gamers being turned off. They’ll make their money but this is a bad way to do business.

• [LintMan]

  “When you look at everything you get by having that persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that.”

  What do I get from that?  The required persistent connection to their servers doesn’t do anything for me.  There is NO “power and draw”: 
  - I don’t want to be blocked from play if my internet goes down.
  - I don’t want to have remember some login ID and password for this game 2-3 years from now if I decide to reinstall and play it again.  I’ve already forgotten my Starcraft 2 login.
  - I want to be able to play the game on a laptop, in places where I won’t have (reliable) online access.
  - I don’t give a crap about achievements or whatever they call them.
  - I don’t want me game saved “in the cloud”.  My hard disk is just fine, thanks.
  - I want to be able to play and create mods for the game.
  - I don’t care about their anti-cheat measures: I’m playing SOLO.
  - Hell, if I want to cheat in my SOLO game, why shouldn’t I be allowed to?

  And his whole claim “that’s how things are going, the nature of the industry” is a bunch of utter bullshit.  Blizzard is the damn 900 pound gorilla of the industry – it SETS the lead for how things are done. 

  • [Stephen Rice]

    It’s a clever thing, he’s right that there are a lot of advantages to having Internet access but cleverly avoids pointing out that few of them apply to people playing a on singlee player game.

• [allen]

  If I said that I preferred candy bars with caramel in them, would I have to justify it as much as is required to say that I prefer games that don’t require a constant internet connection?

  That said:
  1) Once you rely on some other service (in this case an ISP AND battle.net), your OWNERSHIP of the property you purchased is reduced.  I realize that many people are so accustomed to leasing and renting everything they spend money on these days that they may have trouble understanding this.  I could write for a very long time on why I prefer to have property rather than leasing or renting, but it boils down to freedom, and my personal financial sensibilities.  If you don’t mind being a serf, then this shouldn’t be a big deal to you.

  2) A standalone game is inherently a more reliable product.  Making me depend on my ISP and Battle.net inserts two additional points of failure whenever I want to play my game.  I’m not seeing sufficient value gained from this game architecture to justify this additional risk.

  3) There’s a lot of false choice going on here.  We’re expected to believe that we either get a good online experience, or the ability to play it, modded without being connected to the internet.  This isn’t an either-or situation.  There are plenty of solutions that would give you both.  Blizzard has other business reasons that they don’t want to talk about driving this decision- which brings me full circle to point 1.

  So: that’s why I don’t like it.  They’re valid reasons, even if you don’t have the same concerns.  Blizzard just announced that they have decided to offer me a less attractive product for the same price, and I don’t like it.  There’s nothing I can do about it, and I still want to play the game- so there really shouldn’t be any mystery to why I am frustrated.

  • [jere7my]

     If I said that I preferred candy bars with caramel in them, would I have
    to justify it as much as is required to say that I prefer games that
    don’t require a constant internet connection?

    The FUCK is wrong with nougat, asshole?

    No, wait, I like caramel too.

    • [Spriggan_Prime]

      WHAT the fuck. The phrase is: WHAT the fuck.
      Sorry I just hate that.

  • [Keisar Betancourt]

    there’s another word similar to serf… it also starts with S but it’s a little longer…

• [Happler]

  What if they take down there servers for maint?  Or if their servers crash?  Will I still be able to play the game that I purchased as a single player?  Or will I have just been renting the game from them?

  • [geekandwife]

    Considering they are still running servers for free for a game released 11 years ago and still providing content updates with minimal downtime… thats not much of a concern

• [Morrigan]

  Screw you Blizzard.  You can’t figure out why we are pissed?  Yeah, I’ll keep playing my modded D2. You don’t get my $$ anymore.

  -a 40-something Mom of 3

• [jonathanbruder]

  SC2 does NOT require you to be online to play. It does require a login every few weeks. http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=34725&parentCategoryId&pageNumber=1&categoryId=3633

  • [gwit]

    True you can play single player offline.  And I can somewhat tolerate SC2 since I’m a fan of the series.  But they removed LAN play.  They really messed up the user made custom maps–you have to publish them (and there are limits on how many you can publish and how large they are. And if you get it published, good luck actually finding it to play.) The old way of map handling was great (original starcraft and the warcraft games before WoW), where you could make a map locally on your computer and play it–no hoops to jump through. And you could give it to others to play without the horrible online-only map publishing with limits system. As for no LAN-play…  Maybe not a lot of people these days get to experience the joy of a LAN party so they can’t appreciate how much fun they are (or were I should say). There are a few indie games than can do LAN so there’s hope.

    SC2 was a “sign of things to come”.  Just a little step to what we now have with D3–online only, no modding, and no sale.

• [fxq]

  Has Cory written anything about this? It like his “For the Win” book is coming true. How long until Wall Street starts giving advice about how many rare items need to be in a game???

• [George Frick]

  People can’t read.
  The for-real-money auction house is in addition to the normal one.
  Seriously people; you’ve been sharpening those pitch forks so long you couldn’t stand to miss using them could you?

• [Palefire]

  Well, since I don’t care about mods and I don’t care that they are requiring me be online to play and since I don’t really care about a real cash auction house, I’m still playing the game.

  I like Blizzard and I like the quality of their products.  Value is subjective.  For me, from an entertainment perspective, the game will likely be of value to me.

  So, I’ll probably buy it as soon as it hits the shelves.

• [ZikZak]

  It’s a dick move on Blizzard’s part for sure, but no need to worry so much.  Diablo 3 will get cracked within weeks of release by some assembly genius from the warez scene, and then you can play offline.  This is the nature of DRM:  It Doesn’t Work.

  If anything, companies like Blizzard are just driving more legitimate consumers to learn about the wonders of software reverse-engineering, modding, and the hacker ethos.  And also convincing their fans to pirate cracked versions of games rather than buying them at absurd rates from their local Wal*Mart.  When I look at it like that, I almost want to thank Blizzard!

• [thekinginyellow]

  i loved diablo 1 and 2 but i doubt i’ll ever get around to playing 3 anyway and especially not since i know i can’t play single player offline. it’s enough of a pita when i have to get online just to play portal or half life! i mean…come on…i’m enjoying an evening with a single player game…why do i have to be jacked on?

  however, a pal of mine works at riot and they’ve got a sweet free mmo called league of legends. no money exchanges hands. you don’t buy items to get better than the other players. everyone is equal. go get some. did i mention…free?

• [JeffF]

  Playing the game should not have a significant interaction with data capped internet accounts.  Game playing doesn’t take much bandwidth really.

  Possibly what they are after is the ultimate “copy protection system”.  What is installed on your machine isn’t the entire game.  It is the client side of a client-server game, useless without the server.  The client doesn’t need to be protected from copying and they don’t give anyone the server.

  That model probably also makes it harder to support mods.  They don’t want to give the server software to anyone ever so the only way to mod would involve some kind of mod package uploaded to blizzard servers.

• [gwit]

  While this is not as serious as the issues in Orwell’s 1984, some of the things said by Blizzard about D3 make me think of the chocolate rations (others mentioning candy bars may have helped the quote pop up in my head):

      “For the moment [Winston] had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it . . . with the stupidity of an animal.”
      — from Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

  We removed the ability to play offline.  But great news! You can play online!
  — Blizzard

• [rustophius]

  I live in the boonies, and was planning on purchasing Diablo III. At my house, internet access is slow, limited and unreliable (but the view and solitude are amazing). As such, no Diablo III purchase for me. More time to enjoy Mother Nature, I guess.

• [TombKing]

  As awesome as Starcraft was I have passed on Starcraft II for the must make an account with blizzard, with real name and it needs to call home every time you play and I am only interested in single player. Looks like they won’t be getting my money for Diablo 3 either.

• [Mujokan]

  This decision will not be reversed. They want to protect their multiplayer environment. If you are not buying Diablo in part for multiplayer, you are better off getting Skyrim anyway. It will be a way better game.

• [Jon Heibeck]

  I guess i’ll just play torchlight. i’m sick of all these companies trying to own me. And mods are what keeps a game replayable. I guess i won’t be buying this one.

• [Teirhan]

  I wasn’t planning on buying D3 day of launch unless they did some sort of deal to buy 4-for-3 or something anyways, but this did make me reconsider even that.

  I know i’ll get it.  I have to, because all my friends will buy it and I don’t want to be a social outcast when we get together and play.

  but i’m probably going to spend the entire time wishing I could play Torchlight 2, instead.Not exactly a ringing endorsement.  :P

• [oasisob1]

  Eff the US Navy and our troops in places like Afghanistan who might want to play. It might seem a little weird, but Sailors love hauling their laptops around the world to enjoy a little downtime now and then. You know, just long as it’s not Diablo III they’re playing.

  • [fxq]

    Great meme: Why does Blizzard hate our troops?

    • [Keisar Betancourt]

      flagged – improper use of the word meme!

  • [Mujokan]

    Yes, now that you mention it that does seem a little weird.

  • [Teirhan]

    Weird?  How so?  to me, it makes sense – a lot of soldiering is, I’m told, excruciatingly boring.  Not to mention many of my guildmates over the few years I’ve played have been active or reserve military.

• [ace0415]

  This is simple, and I’m sure others have said it above, I’ll just add my voice to the chorus: I don’t always have an internet connection and I loved being able to play Diablo II when I was bored and without internet, and now that will be impossible with Diablo III.  The fact that they are surprised that people don’t want MORE restrictions on the games they buy is, well, surprising.  It doesn’t take a vast amount of intelligence to see the inherent problems here, it’s disappointing that Blizzard can’t seem to figure this one out.

  • [Mujokan]

    it’s disappointing that Blizzard can’t seem to figure this one out

    They figured it out, but they are deliberately sacrificing the person who wants to play single-player in some location without internet to cater to the people who play multiplayer. If you disagree, of course just buy some other game, there are so many good ones these days.

    So why not give offline characters that can only be used offline? Because they figure that will lower the take-up rate for multiplayer and so make multiplayer less successful. Again that is just a decision based on what will make money and what will make the game what they want it to be. Multiplayer has always been a big deal with Diablo.

    • [Keisar Betancourt]

      they’re not catering to anyone but themselves. online players don’t get anything from HAVING to be online, not a single. bloody. thing. the CAPABILITY of being online services them, but that also doesn’t harm single-player users. your argument is full of fail.

      • [Mujokan]

        Yeah, yeah. They want to keep all characters on their servers for more reasons than just to piss you off. If it was pure DRM they would let you keep your character on your computer.

        This is their judgement about how to prevent exploits. It is the same rationale as say Guild Wars, which no-one cares you can’t play offline solo. The idea is also to maximize ease of transition from single-player, and thus maximize the size of the online community, which makes the community more interesting.

• [Eddie Perkins]

  I never would have found Torchlight if it weren’t for Activi– ahem, Blizzard’s always-online requirement, their pay-to-win real cash auction house, their anti-mod policy and their new stance that farmers are fine as long as Bliz get’s a cut.

  Best thing about Blizzard driving me to Torchlight, I discovered Torchlight is made by the people who made Diablo and Diablo 2. Even the same music composer. Plus, Torchlight 2 is coming out this year and it sounds like it will have everything D3 has, except an always-online requirement and a pay-to-win real cash auction house, but it will have the original D1 and D2 developers. Plus, it’s mod friendly doesn’t appear to have any pay to upgrade characters or any stupid social network BS to sell more ads. And it will have a lower price tag. 

  So, thanks Bliz, I played your games loyally for 16 years, but you’ve pushed me away and on to something in many ways much better.

• [psulli]

  Executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo is quoted from 1up: “I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that”

  That pretty much sums up their attitude toward the customer.  At some point all businesses begin to look at having customers as something regrettable.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    At some point all businesses begin to look at having customers as something regrettable.

    That’s particularly true in the design field. And frequently justified, although not in this case.

• [Cheshire Noir]

  OK so my fear is this: I love playing older games (Such as *shock Horror* Diablo 1 and 2) as they run at ludicrous speeds and they fulfill a lovely nostalgia trip. How long before Blizzard decide they’re bored of DIII (or that they want everyone to upgrade to DIV) and they simply turn off the servers? Hello? I PAYED for the game and you can turn it off from YOUR end whenever you feel like?

• [oisin]

  I had an unhealthy addiction to Diablo, and was hoping to take that up again with Diablo 3 – but I play games offline on train commutes all the time. However – before I read this thread I had never heard of Torchlight, so I got some upside at least now that I can check that out.

  • [TombKing]

    - before I read this thread I had never heard of Torchlight, so I got some upside at least now that I can check that out.
    Torchlight is great fun and well worth the $20 and NO DRM

• [Spriggan_Prime]

  So how long til some cracking group make a patch for native saves and fix the need to connect to the server.

• [Tj Howell]

  I just hope they keep making the game as the D3 team envisions it and not cave to the usual Blizzard community QQ.

• [ABProsper]

  I loved Diablo 2 and played it more than anything except Arcanum. I was looking forward to getting D3 but well this always online requirement and the general “contempt of customer” attitude I see displayed by them says I’ll pass.

  If it ends up patched into working without a connection, well  I see them in a few years. Till than I’ll look into Torchlight 2 as some people here suggested.

• [Anon_Mahna]

  I was going to get D3, then decided not after I first heard of the must always be online. I like to play my single player with out having to be connected to the internet.

  ..go ahead and fetch someone from the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies to pick me up if you want.

  …hell I already get the ‘deer in the headlights’ look from the people at the cell store for talking about getting rid of my smart phone.. and from when tell co-works I walked to work because I felt like it.. crap, maybe I should change my name to Leonard Mead….

  side note,thank you people for talking about Tochlight. I do believe I’ll have to pick up a copy next paycheque.

• [PaulCyopick]

  It’s not just about bandwidth caps. Canadian ISPs are actively throttling gaming. 

  http://openmedia.ca/blog/guest-blog-canadian-gamers-fed-crtc-net-neutrality-issues

• [Nicholas Calderon]

  Will make it more difficult and fixable when cloning items occurs. Also it will force many to have to buy the game instead of bootleg. Ruh roh.

• [jonjonz]

  The real meat here is the cash shop grab.  This kills the gaming experience so fast its not funny.  Check out any mature cash shopped game, you find that all previous MMORPG fare like teaming and learning skills is left by the wayside as console bred cash shoppers spend the cost of a new car or two just so they can ‘beat the game’ in a few weeks, and have an OP players to strut around in and one shot mobs for a few weeks.  They leave, and leave behind 100x more cash than a thousand subscription players ever did.  Most of these games population consists of very new low level players, and powerleveled endgamers.  There are no people at mid game, and no one plays the mid game, they all powerlevel – cash shop strait to the end.  It’s really sad to see if you ever experienced classic MMORPG gameplay back in the day.

  • [Stephen Favron]

    How many of these “mature cash shopped” games that you’re thinking of involve *only* players selling items they have found to other players? The real-money auction house isn’t a cash shop… you’re buying an item, that dropped during normal gameplay, from another player. Not buying an item from Blizzard that just appears out of the aether.

    I’d say there’s a pretty significant difference between the two.

• [travtastic]

  Things like this are why I don’t buy new games from major developers. Hell, there’s probably still a trillion PS2 games I haven’t played yet.

• [Dummy00001]

  Irony of the “always on-line” scheme is that I often pop some game to play when I internet connection goes down and I cut off from the streaming/chat/etc.

  • [Guest]

    Me too: Age of Empires II. :)

• [John Stephens]

  (blinding flash) You know, there are other things to do in life besides play games. 

• [BBNinja]

  This is why I didn’t buy Starcraft 2, Blizzard took out lanplay and then split the game into 3 boxes all which you have to buy to get the full game experience.  Games like Diablo and Starcraft I barely played online but largely played against friends.  While deployed in the military we would play SC and Diablo together often as a way of unwinding, plus our internet connections/speed were pretty much non-existent.  Blizzard is now trying to make everything WoW.  I’ll pass.

• [BBNinja]

  I’d also suggest Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum (19 bucks) as an alternative.  Comes with all 3 games, online play is optional and they actually have all the patches and bugfixes in the box in this one as opposed to the Gold edition which was bugged as soon as you installed MoTB. -_-

  • [Stephen Rice]

    Good shout on NWN2.

• [purple-stater]

  I stopped buying any sort of software that required any registration to use over 15 years ago (obvious exception for the operating system).  I got tired of not being able to use software that I paid for just because a few years later the publisher had either shutdown or sold the software to somebody else that got tired of paying for authentication servers on old stuff.

  My son and I still install Diablo I & II at least once a year (for the last six years now) to play them through.

  I’m not going to be buying Civilization V, and I won’t be buying Diablo III.  I think I’ll still find things to do though.

  • [travtastic]

    Well, the length of time until you start see it for offline play on bittorrent is going to be directly related to how deeply they embed this crap in the code. I wouldn’t give it very long.

• [narciblog]

  This would also kill the used game market for Diablo III. Once the CD key has been locked to your account, it becomes worthless for anyone else. It used to be that after I played a typical game, I’d sell it. But this destroys that possibility and will force every Diablo III purchase to be a new, full-retail-price purchase. I suspect that’s the real motivator for these sort of online-only solo player games.

• [Jerril]

  I’m one of the folks with yes, high speed internet, and yes, a bandwidth cap and an ISP who severely throttles video games. My ISP is currently in a screaming match with the government regulators here (Canada) over their persistent throttling and spamming reset packets at WoW players. Somehow I don’t think Diablo III is going to be treated any better. They haven’t even gotten in shit yet over the same treatment of EVE ONLINE players :P

  I live in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. And yet in my area there are simply no other options for high speed internet. In Canada, due to a rather tied-down market, you always have two choices for your carrier for high speed – your local phone company, and your local cable company. Anyone you get high speed internet from will be reselling either your phone company’s service, or your cable companies service.

  If one can’t reach you (like where I am) then you’re stuck with the other. And if I pay someone else for the service, I still get the same, choked, resetting, miserable service, but I have to wait three weeks for service calls. I have nothing but false choices.

  I would like to be able to play SOMETHING other than Solitaire or Sudoku when the cable goes out. I would like SOME of my good games to work even when my ISP is being shitty. I have a laptop and a honking great big UPS battery – I can amuse myself in a blackout. Except when I need a bloody internet connection to play my single player click-on-the-monster game.

  So I’m getting Torchlight 2. Blizzard can go hang.

• [masamunecyrus]

  I’m sick and tired of the “everyone is online in 2011 so it’s no big deal” apologists. In the words of Kefka from FF6,

  I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate this argument.

  Yes, everyone is online, but not everyone’s online is equal. Some people have caps. I’m in Taiwan studying abroad right now. Taiwan is one of the first countries with 100% broadband coverage, but it’s not all that great. I’m in a suburb of Taipei — the capital — and i frequently get DNS lookup errors (enough so that I am now using OpenDNS and things are working better). The ethernet cable that comes out of the wall for internet connectivity is shoddy in my apartment, so even a small tremor of the cable will make it disconnect momentarily — a problem that is minimized but not negated by buying a wireless router so i can plug it in and not touch it, again.

  A couple of months ago, I was traveling in Japan. Despite Japan’s almost ubiquitous awesome internet, people there just don’t use internet like we expect. Right now with the energy savings, a lot of people are just unplugging their internet connections to save energy unless they want to Google something. And even if not, there are still many places outside of the gigantic metropolises where the internet sucks as bad as country internet in the US.

  Or if you go to Australia or Canada, some people have very restrictive caps.

  And then, yes, you do go to the US. And there are still a lot of people with crap internet. But you don’t even need that rare situation to arise. What if I go to a friend’s house and I need to forward ports? Not a big problem now that I’m 23. It was a big problem when I was younger when his typically-paranoid IT-industry dad didn’t like us screwing with the internet settings. I recall we could never host Warcraft 3 games at his house. And I know that I’m not the only one with a similar situation. Anywhere you go that’s not your own home, there’s a good chance that your online experience will be poor or non-existent unless you can forward ports. And then there are college dorm rooms and schools. How many dorms block all kinds of ports making Battle.Net impossible? A lot of them do.

  And what about our military men and women? There are a ton of them that
  play video games. What else are you going to do on your time off in a
  desert?

  Simply put, there are a LOT of everyday situations where you will run into restricted internet or no internet at all where you won’t be able to play Diablo III. Is it that hard to make it just like Diablo II, where you have single-player, open battle.net, and closed battle.net? No, it’s not. Does the online-only make it more secure? Heavens no. None of the hacks that worked offline in Diablo II worked online save for map hack (hah), and Blizzard’s anti-hacking software is much more sophisticated now than back then, anyways.

  And not only that, they’ll lose customers over this. Not only will they the old cave-hermit people who refuse to buy games they don’t own (I don’t like that there’s no single player, but I’ll honestly say that I’ll buy the game, anyways), but they will lose a much bigger customer — the pirates. Closed battle.net was a big draw for Diablo II. I installed my copy with my CD-Key of the game on 3 friends computers (we played over the network), and all 3 friends later bought the game so they could play online. That’s not pirating, but it’s the same market as people that will download the game. In either case, you have people that are playing the game for free, love it, and buy it for the additional online functionality. Blizzard won’t get those people, anymore, and there are a LOT — A WHOLE LOT — of those people.

• [elix]

  Blizzard is drunk on the WoW kool-aid, with its constant stream of monthly income, zero secondary market (not counting the sale of complete accounts), and reasonably bulletproof DRM (by way of requiring a serial number to register an account). If they thought they could get away with charging for battle.net access, they would.

  I was considering getting Diablo 3. That’s completely off the table now.

  I’m waiting for an item dupe exploit to be uncovered, and it’s near inevitable that there will be one. And I doubt it’ll be announced right away. Instead, it’ll be exploited by someone who’ll make quite a lot of real money before it’s disclosed and patched. You just watch.

• [Ryan Lenethen]

  Well not surprised about the online only option. Its just DRM to prevent Pirates. It seems to be the way to go. It doesn’t effect me personally. I have a desktop and internet at home. However if I had a laptop and wanted to play this on the road someplace, that would seriously piss me off…

  Anyway that’s not what concerns me. What concerns me is using real money in a game auction. Just look how brutal WOW is with gold farmers, and hacked accounts, etc… and that is using FAKE money. Just think of how much hacking, phishing, and general BS that is going to come along with that from people trying to make a buck off your account. I already have a password, and an encryption key to guard against jerks trying to steal my fake worth, what happens when shit becomes real?

• [wylkyn]

  I could not play one of my new games the other day because, for whatever reason, my computer could not connect to the Steam server. I had my DVD, legally purchased and successfully installed, my Internet connection was functioning properly, but I could not play my single-player game. I do not see any benefit to this forced connection except to limit my use of a product for which I paid full price. I am really sorry that Blizzard is choosing to do this. There should be a choice to play connected or not. No one should be forced to connect to play a single-player game.

• [stuck411]

  Back with Diablo 2 I loved how I could play a game on my own wherever I traveled. The online connection is going to blow chunks. Do they know how many hotel Wi-Fi systems throttle or secretly disallow connections to game servers? Don’t even get me started on Skype killing.

  Guess I’ll just get my jollies on with the new Elder Scrolls when it comes out. (Please don’t tell me I have to be connected to play that too.)

• [snakedart]

  It’s not that hard to understand, Blizzard.

  An option is a feature.  A requirement is a bug.