Good news.. and some bad news...

Mar. 31st, 2012 at 12:33 AM

Diablo III is at looong last being released on May 15. Sorta. They're requiring people to be hooked up to Battlenet to play it. I don't know if this means you cannot play the game without interference from other players - if it does the on-line market for selling goodies to other players for actual cash may mean that newbies will get trampled, as has been known to happen elsewhere. I'm dubious, here. And having to bring up the net to play a game on my own laptop which isn't always in a PLACE I can connect... Bleah.

So instead of pouncing on it with glee after all these years, it appears I shall have to wait and see what players have to say about it over the first few months of play. In any case, back to awaiting Torchlight II.

Comments

( 7 comments — Leave a comment )

doodlesthegreat

Mar. 31st, 2012 04:42 pm (UTC)

It's become commonplace for AAA titles to do that, since it's the only way to ensure that patches and updates can make it to players regularly, as well as making it possible to sell DLC that's becoming the way more games are going to pay for themselves. More the latter than the former. The legit RMT system Blizzard has created is just another part of that.

Me, I'm tired of Skinner boxes. I'll play stuff I can enjoy without having to wait a month killing rats to be able to take part.

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jeran

Mar. 31st, 2012 04:57 pm (UTC)

I don't think it means it's going to be multi-player. It'll still be a single-player game with no interference from other players unless you go into a distinct multi-player mode. It's for a couple of things. As Doodles mentioned, it's for patches and DLC. And also it's for digital rights management. If your game won't play unless it's connected to and authorized by the BattleNet servers, it means the game's harder to pirate (the activation's locked to your BattleNet account, anyone who pirates a copy won't have access to your account and won't be able to play). It also means Blizzard gets to put the kibosh on the used-game market: used copies of D3 are worthless because they can't be played.

You've already noticed the price you have to pay for this: if you're somewhere without a network connection, or if there's problems with network connectivity, your game's unplayable. Ditto if Blizzard has any problems with the servers on their end and they aren't responding to authorization requests. Those sorts of things are what make this a non-starter for me.

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kayshapero

Apr. 1st, 2012 04:50 am (UTC)

Agreed. There are other things I can play that don't require jumping through hoops because somebody's that paranoid. Be it noted that Torchlight was made largely by the folks who actually WROTE Diablo II...

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fabula_umbrae

Apr. 2nd, 2012 08:43 pm (UTC)

What I don't get really is what's wrong with having it hook up when you are online to sync with the main system but still be playable regardless of if you're online or not. Is that really so hard?

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kayshapero

Apr. 2nd, 2012 10:03 pm (UTC)

Maybe they're keeping some of the graphics on line or something? I suspect

jeran's right though - DRM and general fear that someone will steal their game (which I can almost guarantee costs more sales than the pirates ever did...)

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niall_shapero

Apr. 4th, 2012 06:44 am (UTC)

Diablo III and Battlenet

I've been playing StarCraft II (which requires Battlenet for MOST of the game functionality). It's not TOO much of a pain when Battlenet is down (as it was for a fair part of today - 04/03/2012). I could still play, mind you, I just couldn't play against other real people, and I couldn't replay the against-AI sessions I played.
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I suspect that Diablo III will be somewhat the same - limited functionality in off-line mode, but still playable. Personally, I'm looking forward to BOTH Diablo III and Torchlight II...

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