Diablo 3 Auction House Re-Dated; Dev Questions DRM

[Bloob]

[citation][nom]azncracker[/nom]Im kinda disappointed with Diablo 3. Not as good as i thought it would be. Good thing im only on the Guest pass, saved me $60[/citation]
After caving in and buying the game, I must admit it's better than the beta, and overall quite good. The atmosphere is good, the areas are varied, the gameplay is fun. But I do maintain my opinion that due to limited customizability, the game won't last that long ( for me ). And I hate the story, and how they ruined some of the classic characters.

 

[Bloob]

[citation][nom]Bloob[/nom]After caving in and buying the game, I must admit it's better than the beta, and overall quite good. The atmosphere is good, the areas are varied, the gameplay is fun. But I do maintain my opinion that due to limited customizability, the game won't last that long ( for me ). And I hate the story, and how they ruined some of the classic characters.[/citation]

Forgot to add, that I love the fact that the manual has some stories / art in it, still far from the old days, but appreciated anyways.

P.S. edit-button would be nice

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]razor512[/nom]the game has already been cracked with working server emulators, meaning while legit customers were struggling over server/DRM issues, people with the pirated copy were enjoying a full and consistent single player experience.Great work blizzard, by annoying your paying customers (possibly for the life of the game), you managed to prevent the game from being pirated for a little over 1 day.Get rid of the DRM and more people will buy the games, there will always be people who pirate the games and those who pay for it.Do you really think that the millions of people who buy games, don't know about pirated copies. This is nothing new and there is nothing complex about it. People who want to buy the game will buy it, especially if it is a good game[/citation]

This is actually what is so amusing was all the sheep who said that the DRM would completely prevent piracy. One day, that was all it took.

Honestly, I could fault no one who bought a legit copy then downloaded one of these so they could enjoy offline play. What would Blizz's argument be then? They couldn't claim piracy had cheated them out of money. All they could do is admit that the piracy gave more choice then they, the devs, had given the customer.

 

[invlem]

The DRM for this game is necessary, the only way the real money auction house will work is if all items in game are controlled by blizzard's servers.

Lose the DRM and all in-game items lose their monetary value (as weird as it may sound, personally I'd never spend real cash for in-game items... but to each their own).

Thats really the only reason this game requires a persistent connection to battle.net

Overall I expected launch bugs, a game this big, it takes quite the infrastructure to support it, things are bound to go sideways, in a weeks time I'm sure the stability issues will be a thing of the past.

 

[therabiddeer]

[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]I find it funny that people expected anythimg different from blizzard. They don't have anything that other companies don't do better.CoH, Sup Com, Total war and Civ are all technologically more advanced and have far better gameplay then SC2 and WC3.Just about every AAA mmo title that's ever come out has been better then WOW.D3 follows suit, as TES SERIES, Torch light 2 and just about every other modern RPG haa been far more interesting then D3.Terrible graphics, simplistic character customization, boring gameplay, horrible voice acting and a Zzz fest of a story... 12 years and all they could give us is this trash? Then combine all that with the DRM nonsense and lauch bugs.Pathetic.[/citation]
If all of these games are better, why is blizzard so popular?

Also, if you want to talk about launch issues... look at SW:TOR. I bought the game and never got to play it because EA Origin said it was already registered, even though I bought it digitally from EA Origin. When I contacted them, they told me to talk to Bioware. Called bioware, they told me to talk to EA. I still havent gotten my refund and I still havent played that game.

 

[razor512]

just have a separate system for offline only play. most users wont really care for the auction house. make it so that only stuff done online that their servers keep track of can work with the auction house and anything that they cant track will not be allowed in the auction house. This will satisfy more people and get rid of the issue of the legit copies failing if blizzard decided to go out of business or decided that the game is no longer profitable enough and shut down the DRM servers

 

[n1k0]

Being "always connected" didn't bother me with SC2. 99% of my play was on ladder where I needed online opponents anyway. In the 2 years it's been out there have been only TWO times that I wanted to play LAN and only a handful of times I've played offline.

However, I can see D3 being much more desirable to play offline from time to time (3+ hour trips) Airport layovers etc... I'm going to see if it's really something my friends are going to play a lot. If so, maybe I'll purchase it to play with them (I did play 5 years of WoW so that wouldn't bother me that much).

For now... Torchlight 2 has a beta weekend

 

[billybobser]

Personally, I find some publishers abhorent these days that I deliberately avoid them.

EA and now Blizzard.

The money from WoW must've really gone to their head.

Comparing D2 to D3, diablo 2 would mop the floor with D3 assuming same graphics and D3 is not even worth half it's current retail value.

 

[robisinho]

I look forward to playing it (Still havent gotten it)... but if any game deserves to be hacked, with private servers, mods and custom campaigns, it is this game. I hope it comes

 

[Pailin]

@ wildkitten :

with a limited budget I buy what games I can.

My friends and I get together now and then for a weekend LAN party and have a server set up with pirated versions of all games we are going to play / try out - to be sure we can all play...

I remember playing FarCry at one LAN all of us had "free" pirated copies and from that LAN 7/10 of us bought a real copy afterwards (myself included) - I was quite impressed so many ponied up for the real deal

Most gamers are not so shortsighted I think that they cannot get the fact you need to pay for what you want to see more of


Many Years back I had a Pirated copy of Dungeon Master on my trusty old Amiga 2000 (updgraded to a whole 2MB RAM ^^)... I Loved that game So Much I bought 2 copies

 

[ojas]

In many ways, this is just like BF3. Can't believe they didn't learn from it.

 

[bryonhowley]

Once Reloaded or another group gets a working server emulator out I will by the but not until then. I only play offline and do not want anything to do with any part of online play period!

 

[Guest]

Looks like DRM has finally killed gaming. I played tons for years, but this DRM garbage is just too frustrating. Consoles do not cut it for me with their closed hardware, limited controls, and poor graphics. After using Steam and Windows Live I guess I'll have to play older games which actually work until there are no more I have not tried. Disappointing, but a lot cheaper. I really am done with the new crap.

 

[mindless728]

The only connection issues that I am having is because of the 7 year old modem that I have from time Warner, going to have to replace that soon

 

[onewiththemouse]

why cant ppl just enjoy a game anymore? I sure am and I never had any of these problems ppl speak of.

 

[SirGCal]

[citation][nom]AlderonnX[/nom]Click to move (WTF its 2012 let me have my WASD) and DRM have my mind made up.. I won't be buying it.[/citation]

This was my complaint exactly... The game is a Dumbed down version of Diablo.. Horribly disappointing After the beta, I canceled my pre-order.

 

[techguy911]

Every gamer who gets hit with this sort of thing has a chance of being pushed away from the PC (and with good reason!) and toward consoles and iOS, platforms that don’t have these hassles," he said. "My business will, in a small way, get tarred with this brush, and it hurts my bottom line. Which makes me sad."

Wait a minute this stuff does NOT just happen with the pc sorry to say i have a ps3 and have bought game of thrones the game is riddled with bugs such as:

Skipping audio.
Clipping problems with graphics
Getting stuck on terrain and in doors
Locking up hard when you try to save or visit a vendor.
Buggy quest where you die with full bar of hit points
No audio sometimes during conversation audio cuts out.

Seems more common that new games are released with missing and buggy content so far 5 games i have bought for ps3 have bugs that cases problems in the games.
I have checked on forums and others are having same problems so it's not my console older games that have been tested and patched work fine.

 

[Guest]

Ive put >50 hours into d3 so far, im enjoying it. The first 2 days had a bit of a rodky start during prime time. But they were fine at night and in the morning, it was just peak hours they had issues. On thrusday i played all day without any problems. Friday again no problems.

 

[steven_15]

"Paraphased: People having problems with Diablo 3 are more likely to stick to console gaming or move to it."

I'm going to have to agree with this. People play games to play them, not to struggle to find ways of playing them. All these compatibility problems aren't a problem on consoles because designers know what they need to make their game work on. Though if it wasn't online only, most of the problems with D3 as a whole wouldn't exist.

 

[Scotty99]

Whats with the doomsday tone of the article? Twitchtv is a streaming site and ive never seen lower than 20,000 people WATCHING other people play diablo, i dont think the troubles blizz has had in the first week have had any real impact on the playerbase.

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]invlem[/nom]The DRM for this game is necessary, the only way the real money auction house will work is if all items in game are controlled by blizzard's servers.Lose the DRM and all in-game items lose their monetary value (as weird as it may sound, personally I'd never spend real cash for in-game items... but to each their own).Thats really the only reason this game requires a persistent connection to battle.netOverall I expected launch bugs, a game this big, it takes quite the infrastructure to support it, things are bound to go sideways, in a weeks time I'm sure the stability issues will be a thing of the past.[/citation]

This argument is completely, totally false. It's what Blizzard claims, but there are ways to guarantee offline play loot doesn't get on to the RMAH.

Think about this. The entire point of this argument is that players can't see the loot file so can not hack or dupe it. If that is so, then all that needs to be done to make offline play possible while preserving the integrity of the RMAH is to add in code to offline loot that identifies it as offline loot. Yes, a hacker may be able to dig through the file and see this code, but since they can't do the same with the server controlled loot, they wouldn't know what code to put in to the offline loot to be able to put it on the RMAH.

Also, if you remember, D2 had 2 online player options. One where you could play your offline character on, one you could not. That second was purely online only. All D3 needs to do is make sure offline characters can only be played offline. So even if someone could hack or dupe an item, they would have no way to put it on the RMAH short of hacking the server itself. If these two things were done, the RMAH would be just as secure as it currently is.

But this won't be done because of the real reason this so called "DRM" exists. It has nothing to do with keeping hacked items off it, which I jus explained how easy it would be to keep them off. Rather it has to do with the fact that an offline player wouldn't want to, and in fact couldn't even access the RMAH. Even if the offline player wanted to buy something, there would be no way to get it to the offline character. Activision Blizzard realizes these offline customers would be potential lost sales.

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]n1k0[/nom]Being "always connected" didn't bother me with SC2. 99% of my play was on ladder where I needed online opponents anyway. In the 2 years it's been out there have been only TWO times that I wanted to play LAN and only a handful of times I've played offline.However, I can see D3 being much more desirable to play offline from time to time (3+ hour trips) Airport layovers etc... I'm going to see if it's really something my friends are going to play a lot. If so, maybe I'll purchase it to play with them (I did play 5 years of WoW so that wouldn't bother me that much). For now... Torchlight 2 has a beta weekend[/citation]

Actually one can play offline for SC2. You just can't play the multiplayer obviously.

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]Pailin[/nom]@ wildkitten : with a limited budget I buy what games I can.My friends and I get together now and then for a weekend LAN party and have a server set up with pirated versions of all games we are going to play / try out - to be sure we can all play...I remember playing FarCry at one LAN all of us had "free" pirated copies and from that LAN 7/10 of us bought a real copy afterwards (myself included) - I was quite impressed so many ponied up for the real dealMost gamers are not so shortsighted I think that they cannot get the fact you need to pay for what you want to see more of Many Years back I had a Pirated copy of Dungeon Master on my trusty old Amiga 2000 (updgraded to a whole 2MB RAM ^^)... I Loved that game So Much I bought 2 copies[/citation]

Please don't misunderstand. My intent was not to pass judgement. I merely gave my personal viewpoint and how I look upon pirated software as a disclaimer to my point.

My point was that all these claims of "we have to use DRM like this because piracy costs us X amount of dollars" is fallacious. There is no way to know how much money they lose to piracy because not everyone who pirates a game would have bought it anyway. And in fact, some who do pirate games and use it more as a demo situation actually go out and buy it, this the software companies actually GAIN sales because of the piracy.

So while my personal opinion is that yes, piracy does cost them some in sales, I do not believe that it is anywhere near the amounts they try to claim, and that they infact do more harm to their sales by instituting these inconveniences to their customers.

I can't speak for people I don't know, but I know among me and my friends, they have lost at least $360 (assuming $60 per copy) of sales for D3 because of the online requirement and my believe is we are not nearly alone on that feeling.

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]razor512[/nom]just have a separate system for offline only play. most users wont really care for the auction house. make it so that only stuff done online that their servers keep track of can work with the auction house and anything that they cant track will not be allowed in the auction house. This will satisfy more people and get rid of the issue of the legit copies failing if blizzard decided to go out of business or decided that the game is no longer profitable enough and shut down the DRM servers[/citation]
This is of course the technical solution that would make offline play work and keep the RMAH "secure" of hacked or duped loot.

But the real reason this "DRM" is in place and they won't allow offline play is Activision Blizzard takes cut off of every RMAH transaction. An offline only player is one who can not use the RMAH so Activision Blizzard loses money off what they see as a potential transaction.

I believe ActiBlizz thinks that the loss in potential revenue from the RMAH would be more than the loss of sales of copies of the game that no offline play has caused and prefers to stay with what they see as the greater revenue stream.

 

[steven_15]

[citation][nom]wildkitten[/nom]This is of course the technical solution that would make offline play work and keep the RMAH "secure" of hacked or duped loot.But the real reason this "DRM" is in place and they won't allow offline play is Activision Blizzard takes cut off of every RMAH transaction. An offline only player is one who can not use the RMAH so Activision Blizzard loses money off what they see as a potential transaction.I believe ActiBlizz thinks that the loss in potential revenue from the RMAH would be more than the loss of sales of copies of the game that no offline play has caused and prefers to stay with what they see as the greater revenue stream.[/citation]

This is true. The whole reason they did it is for security, preventing D3 from becoming as exploit infested as D2. A noble goal, except that there were hacks out for the game before it was actually released, despite these measures to prevent that very thing from happening. You could fairly argue there would be more of them without those security measures but what it comes down to is that money = motivation, RMAH = money, and therefore online or offline those of a mind to exploit the game will. At this point online only becomes a liability to the game and so does the RMAH itself.

Despite the grim tone of the article and recent events I do want the game to succeed but the more things happen the less confidence I have that will happen.