
Blizzard defends online-only requirement for Diablo 3 - trog
http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/3094306
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benologist
Oh fuck them. There is no worse form of DRM than a permanently-required
connection. The 99.9% figure is total bullshit too, I "have" internet, except
when there's a problem with internet or elec (every week, multiple days), or I
shut my laptop (every day), or I move from wifi network to another (every
day). C&C4 was ruined by that crap.

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

Call it what it is assholes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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patio11
Unworkable DRM: Important bits in client, client secured by key, key handed to
client.

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
patio11
Here's a visualization where your understanding of the world and my
understanding of the world converge:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
gte910h
SC2 has an offline mode.

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

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

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

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

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

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

hence, the advent of RMT and botting.

