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Blizzard Reveals Diablo 3 (Real Money) Auction House
trawg writes "At a special event at Blizzard HQ in California, gaming press were treated to the first look at the Diablo 3 auction house — featuring real-world money transactions across different regions allowing you to buy and sell items with real money. There'll be a listing fee and a sales fee for auctions, and while they're not talking dollar numbers just yet, Blizzard assures gamers that they're not looking to pinch pennies."
Update: 08/01 17:41 GMT by S :The other big piece of news about Diablo 3 is that it will require a persistent connection to Battle.net to play, even for single-player mode. Eurogamer has a detailed write-up about the current state of the beta.
tsia
Oh shit. You just KNOW the IRS will be getting involved here. Anytime you have money moving from person-to-person or business-to-person, the Feds will get their pound of flesh. This could get quite ugly for gamers.
Life is not for the lazy.
What is this 'real money' they're talking about? US dollars? hahahahahaha
Cue the spam of...looking 4 2 soc 2 skill 20 fcr barb circlet
Fuck everything about this...
Blizzard jumped a shark.
Blizzard is going to be taking a sizeable percentage off of every transaction.
Awesome new way to launder all of my illicit income.
That is, gamers should not be looking to pinch pennies. Get ready to break out the Sword of Visa and PowerSwipe(tm) the Master Card, and "here comes a new challenger," the PayPalHelm
Yay!
If you can't beat 'em, monetise 'em.
I guess in principle it's probably not _all_ that evil.
Still, it makes me think the gameplay experience will be like a Free To Play game... but with a $60 USD (or $90 AUD, grrrr) barrier to entry.
So, Blizzard doesn't allow Real Money Trading in WoW, but is going to set up a system in Diablo 3 for that?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
More news to come out is their decision to mirror Ubisoft with an always online requirement. Players will require a Battle.net connection even to play single player. I certainly won't be purchasing it, and it seems that most of my friends won't either. Too much DRM and no LAN play make it a poor investment.
So, there's a good chance I'll never play the game. And if I did, I wouldn't spend real money to buy stuff for one of my game characters. However, a lot of people do this. It's amazing how much real world money changes hands over intangible things like this. I say good for Blizzard for taking advantage of it. It doesn't sound like they're going to charge a huge percentage (else players will continue to buy and sell elsewhere like they always have). It just lets Blizzard get that percentage rather than an outside company. And why shouldn't they? These people are going to do it one way or another. Why not integrate it into the game? It may even make the trading a little more secure. If the game system runs the transaction, there's less chance for fraud. The game can ensure that both sides of the transaction take place at the same time. The game can make sure items aren't misrepresented. At least in theory. If they do it right, this could be a significant improvement to the game.
D2JSP has been doing this for years, and thriving.
This way, the transfers are secure, and with a flat rate, can go towards maintaining servers.
If some pathetic loser wants to spend real money on pixels because hes too useless to get the items legitimately thats his choice. Even if blizzard didn't input this, he'd go to d2jsp and do it anyway. If you're bad enough that you can't get the items legit, it won't matter how many you buy, I'm still going to roll your face with skill.
It's also made in a way that you don't have to use it if you don't want to, and if you do want to use it, you don't need to spend real money on it. Put your own items up, since there are so many free listings per week.
The only thing now is the gold auction house is going to suffer greatly, but the salvage system is built to drain items and gold out of the economy anyway so it doesn't even matter.
but will they tax in game gold and the gold auction house?
Is it just me or does it sound like that is exactly what they will be doing. So much of WoW has been homogenized moving toward a seemingly arcade style game, the auction house does not play as big a role for obtaining materials or items as it did years ago.
You can change your name as many times as you want, you're still fucking retarded.
Just about sums it up. This isn't much different than anything else online. I pay taxes on my XBox 360 purchases, this shouldn't be any different just because it is online.
Does this mean that selling duped items could be prosecuted as fraud?
It just lets Blizzard get that percentage rather than an outside company. And why shouldn't they? These people are going to do it one way or another. Why not integrate it into the game?
The general argument is that then Blizzard has a conflict of interest: will future additions and changes to the game focus on increasing fun, or will they focus on increasing transaction profit?
It's easy for any person or organization to say "this is just something on the side and we will always focus on our core intent rather than generating extra profit". This is much harder to do in reality.
It's much easier to restrain oneself from entering a situation with a conflict of interest than getting involved and making questionable choices, perhaps without knowing you are making a tradeoff.
If you buy this game you are essentially going to work for Blizzard except you will be paying for the privilege. Blizzard is taking a cut of each auction when it is posted and again when it is sold (real money). So, you pay Blizzard to play the game (where you search for treasures) then you pay Blizzard (in real money) to trade/buy/sell these things you paid them for the opportunity to find. This is a digital diamond mine and you are a fucking slave.
Bitcoin?
Oh, don't get distracted by just this one piece of news when there's been so much more revealed!
Max 4 person multiplayer! Region locking for co-op games! No offline single player! No mod support what so ever!
Sure, this RMT auction house is the shitty icing on the shit cake, but lets not lose sight of the complete mess this game is going to be even without this feature.
Source: http://www.destructoid.com/preview-diablo-iii-beta-207543.phtml
I support your comment. There is way too little talk about Bitcoin on Slashdot.
People are going to bidding in real world auctions with real money for items in a computer game? LOL
Diablo, Bhaal, Mephisto and IRS?
Just wait till large (subjective) sums of money get transfered to hot spots around the world, North Korea, China, etc then things might get interesting.
V
I seem to recall one of the arguments against allowing RMT at all in the past was that if Blizzard acknowledged that in-game items had value then they could be held liable if there was a server issue that caused someone to lose their account. Was that just an excuse, or is Blizzard so confident in their servers that they don't think that will happen?
It's August 1st, not April 1st today. I know they both start with "A", but you really shouldn't post things that are so obviously untrue until April Fool's Day rolls around again, since it's just not funny. I mean, this is a joke, right?
No this isn't a black or gray market it is completely above the board so people could use real dollars.
Time to offend someone
"Blizzard assure gamers that they're not looking to pinch pennies"
But Activision probably are.
This is fantastic. I personally LOVE how every WoW server's economy was total garbage, with huge variances in supply and demand, where low-level items are priceless and the highend stuff is vendor trash. I can't wait to see what happens when Blizzard applies real currency to their systems.
After all, you will be incurring real tangible monetary loss.
Mess up that pull? That will be $5 to cover my repair costs please.
and this is why i wont do diablo 3 ever
why don't you go jump over it, Blizzard. D1 was great, D2 was ok...but this....
This just went from the game I was most looking forward to, to now it being on my Do Not Buy list....
Is this different somehow than the EverQuest 2 Exchange servers? Other than the fact that it applies to all players and not just the ones who opted in?
So I'm reading that there are three parts to what Blizzard revealed today.
1. D3 players must be always connected to the internet. I don't much care about this, as long as I can play single-player. All my Steam games are always connected already; I'm getting used to it. As long as I can have a game that outsiders cannot join and that is balanced for a single person, I don't care if my internet connection has to be on to play it. (Two years ago my answer would have been different, as I only had a flaky dialup connection, but they brought DSL out to my rural area so I'm good now.)
2. No mods. I understand the modding community was a big part of that game, but I wasn't into it very much. I played one mod: After I sucked all the enjoyment out of D2 that I could, I used a mod that gave me the ability to create max-level characters with perfect ability scores and infinite cash, just to wring a little more out of the game. I got bored of that mod in a week. I won't miss mods in D3.
3. The real money auction house. This is an add-on; there will still be an in-game gold auction house and market, just like in D2. So...I don't care. I can ignore it if I choose, as long as it's an addition to the game and not a replacement for one of the existing features. And if I want to sell some crap then I might have the option of selling it for real pennies instead of gold. I'll probably never take the option but I don't mind having it.
These announcements don't bother me at all. I can understand them bothering people with poor internet connections, or serious modders, or gold farmers. I don't fall into any of those categories, so it's a big yawn for me.
If anyone *is* bothered by the way D3 is shaping up, they may have an alternative -- the co-op enabled Torchlight 2. Since they now have competition I doubt that Blizzard will screw up D3 too badly. But if they do I'll yawn again and go play the competing product.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I don't know about other people, but this really doesn't phase me at all for two primary reasons:
It existed in D2 as a very shady underground, much rather it was supported properly if I was ever to want to sell anything. But mainly, they have specifically stated it won't be active in Hardcore mode, and to be honest, that's the only mode that matters to me and my friends. We will rush the original game to completion in order to start the Hardcore characters (if it behaves like D2 did pre-expac/patches) and then play the REAL game where the challenge is. I still have active games of D2 now, and am looking forward to D3, nothing I have seen yet puts me off.
My singular gripe with it is 4 players max in co-op, that will mean my friends and I will have to run multiple games instead of playing all together like before, which is sad.
I bought Diablo II and played it in single player and on a LAN exclusively.
My friends and I did the same, at least initially, but once I got onto Battle.net, I played online exclusively. The rest of them did the same once they got internet access at home.
One of them did something I thought very odd, though. He played on Battle.net, but only ever by himself. He didn't trade items, either. I couldn't fathom why anyone would do that, considering the palpable negative effects the added latency and the occasional full-on desync had on the game itself.
[nostalgia]
To this day, I really, really miss hacking that game. I hereby give a shout out to anyone who recognizes these names or hacks: Herzog Zwei, Thohell, Very_Superior (though a jerk he mostly was), BootyJu1ce, EvilCheese (very, very brilliant hacker), Oxide (who I was told was a twerp), the Chest Hack (0x44, how we hardly knew ye), "The Matrix" (and anyone who liked the Ith War Pike I made on USEast), and (quite possibly the funniest exploit ever) Imbue Scanning.
[/nostalgia]
That game made me loathe dialup internet.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I don't know what the case law on that is, but technically I think that would be considered bartering and as such taxable. You spent time accumulating the gold or items that you're then trading for some other items or gold.
If Blizzard disallowed real-money trading in their games, and then engaged in real-money trading for items in other games, THAT would be hypocrisy.
Having one game work one way, and then a different game work a different way, is just inconsistent. And further, being inconsistent doesn't make it wrong or bad...sometimes different games should work differently.
Semantics matter. I am amazed by how many people on slashdot get these two words confused.
It started slowly, but Blizzard was used to be the most active at stamping out gold farming, because it massively imbalances the game, so that rich gamers won't end up with better equipment then poor ones, but alas, that seems so long ago now.
No matter what they say, this is just a giant cash-crop, and nothing more. Hell, in WoW, if you got caught gold farming, you and your credit card got banned, (not only would you have to purchase the game anew, but get a different credit card to verify yourself).
Being an old fart and only playing a few very specific games, I'm hinging the purchase of a new computer (well overdue) on the release of this game. Now learning this I fear it will be completely ruined.
Try Median XL (free mod for Diablo II). Beware, it is much more complex and hard than the original one (at least if you want to beat all the new levels/bosses). You will actually have to *think* to beat the challenges.
You won't be disappointed and it will give you much more hours of fun than Diablo III will (which is pretty sad, as probably not even a mod will be able to fix the crap Blizzard is doing with Diablo III).
I oppose micro-transactions vehemently when its game-play displacing. EX: Player spends real world money to pop an item into existence. However real money trading happens in every game regardless of what the company's stance on it is, and I generally don't have a problem with it because any item obtained must fundamentally come from players actually playing the game.
So Bliz makes an way to safely facilitate those transactions and charges a tax on the sale for the service. I'm not sure what the problem there is.
In fact, unlike game-play displacing microtransactions this approach actually encourages Blizzard to make a fun game.
So I write code for Diablo 3. I find, while looking at the source code, an exploit. I give this information to my wife/child/best friend who then uses it to gain an advantage in gaining real cash. I don't fix it. I still do my job, I still fix every bug Q&A finds, I still give great input into the hard technical decisions. I just don't fix this one exploit I found. Even if I am caught the best they could claim is incompetence.
Evil, possibly, but I am a developer and an atheist. I offset my personal moral compass by knowing that they are underpaying me for my brilliance and contribution. The CTO has a yacht and a Ferrari for goodness sake.
The risk/reward relationship between getting fired and doing something unethical but monetarily beneficial will be more skewed toward unethical behavior because of this decision. They are now dealing with money and all the security concerns that come with it, whether they like it or admit it or not.
This is good! Looking forward to D3 even more. Since I was not looking forward to it much, now I am looking forward to it less but a bigger less that is closer to much. How much closer is yet to be revealed.
Just out of curiosity:
- If you play a game which has a significant component of chance (i.e. random drops) which can be directly turned into money, would that not be considered gambling?
If that is so, would it not be the case that by hosting Real Money Auctions Blizaard is in fact running an online gambling facility (a bit like a Poker site).
Should they not be taxed and regulated as such then?
He played on Battle.net, but only ever by himself. He didn't trade items, either. I couldn't fathom why anyone would do that, considering the palpable negative effects the added latency and the occasional full-on desync had on the game itself.
Perhaps to only level up a character once? If he changed his mind about multiplayer he would be ready. Single player characters could not be transferred to Battle.net, at least last time I played.
There is also the possibility of using Battle.net to store his character. If he played from multiple computers this could be convenient.
Fuck you Blizzard.
You set the standard in fucking things up so there is no way I am going to involve my real money in that. I can shit in the punch bowl without your help thank you very much.
What the fuck is blizzard thinking? Now players with money to burn can outpace other players that chose to try and play the game themselves without cheating. And yes buying items with real money and shortcutting the game is cheating because your bypassing actually playing the game yourself.
Its basically blizzard saying "We dont feel like trying to stop gold sellers and item sellers so were just going to let you sell stuff on your own.....of course we will get a cut of the cash ourselves." So basically blizzard took online item selling and put it in house by instead of letting cheaters make money off other cheaters blizzard will make the money off the cheaters themselves instead of actually solving the problem.
I used to love blizzard but honestly ever since they have been doing cheap money grabs left and right and becoming more about just getting cash than making games since they joined with activision. Its obvious the greed of activision is influencing blizzard now. Since they have joined activision the prices of their pc games has increased like starcraft 2 was 60 bucks for a very long time when before they were always 50 like everyone else, instead of puting all of starcraft 2 into one game they broke it up into 3 games, they started selling mounts and pets in WOW for real money, now you cant play starcraft 2 single player without being logged into b.net and now you can buy items in game with real world money while blizzard gets a cut?
I was really looking forward to diablo 3, but not after this news.
If items are worth actual money, will Blizzard be liable if you through a bug lose your item?
If you have bought an item and someone in some way steals from you, will you get your money back?
Seems a bit risky.
The true test is the kinds of items Blizzard allows to be bought with in-game gold and not real money. If they follow the free to play model of making in-game gold purchased items both prohibitively expensive, considerably less useful than the real money items, and does NOT contain any items that require real money, I will never play D3 or any other blizzard products in the future
Us pirates will have the drm cracked, which due to beta it probably already is. And again a company forces people to go pirate to play a game normally.
Any company that requires persistent connection online will never see a penny from me, It's off to http://demonoid.me/ or http://www.kat.ph/ to pick up my copy when it releases.
Eventually I hope game companies get the fucking clue and realize they make more money when they stop with the draconian drm's (see Amnesia for great sales and no drm or X3 series with no drm, heck the company that owns X3 even released their own no cd patch)
Except that it's now given away completely free with loads more features, that you can buy, but don't have to buy because you can earn. And no funky always on requirements or strange DRM, especially given that TF came out of a completely user community generated mod of Quake...
See, Valve is just like... wait, wait a minute... they're nothing alike!
I8-D
Am I the only one that sees this?
Blizzard is allowing real-money auctions. Requiring an online connection is a check against cheating to create a flood of premium items for sale, as the transferable items will have Blizz-generated GUIDs and the ability to track whether they were legitimately obtained.
The policy exists because so many people are dishonest to the core (don't believe me? Check the responses elsewhere in this article where people announce their intent to scam, hack, and pirate). It's not anti-piracy, it's anti-fraud. If you don't like it, take it out on the cheaters and scammers who are trying to take your money. I suggest breaking fingers.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
vote with your wallet.
Why? Because of the real money auction house (which it would have had anyway because not even Blizzard could stop it) or because of the always-connected DRM?
If it is because of the always-connected DRM, then I expect that a lot of new games will be on your do-not-buy list.
blizzard, permanent network connection needed ? That's a deal breaker.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
It's the sound of account hackers drooling at the notion of hacking into an account and selling off items for dollars without having to deal with a third party.
The persistent internet connection seems to work for SC2, unless you want to play only offline which is single player mode only. There seems to be quite an industry around SC2 competitions and multiplayer...
Obviously, rare items will fetch a higher cash price value in an D3 auction house.
And the rare items would randomly be obtained ("dropped" in MMO lingo) at a much lower rate than more common items. The more you play, the higher your odds are to win that real-world cash prize.
The only thing I see breaking an analogy to gambling is that you don't pay for each and every spin of the wheel / monster kill; I don't know a lot about the online version of D3, but I haven't heard of any monthly costs, similar to a MMO-- so you pay a one time entry fee and then could kill things over and over to raise the chances of hitting the D3 jackpot.
Minors would certainly be playing this game, so the legality of a "win bucks the more you play" could, IMHO, be questionable. As the father of an 11-year old, I'm sure he'd go crazy happy insane playing / getting addicted to a game that would offer him a real cash payout.
I am done. This just sealed my decision to quit. Its been clear that they were going down a bad road when blizzard decided their best pieces of art would be purchase only, (disco lion) and its come time to look for greener pastures. I want to spend my time playing a game designed to be fun rather than a game designed to maximize micro-transactions.
This isn't going to stop piracy of the game, as someone who was only interested in the single player experience this just went from my must buy list to the must bootleg list. I encourage anyone who disagrees with these methods to vote with your wallets and don't give them a cent. Like another poster mentioned, buy Torchlight 2 instead. You'll be supporting the original Diablo devs that way anyway.
Hasn't Blizzard made enough money from their cash cow MMO to not need to load down their other games with moneymaking scams and DRM? They're turning into Zynga for crying out loud.
"There'll be a listing fee and a sales fee for auctions, and while they're not talking dollar numbers just yet, Blizzard assures gamers that they're not looking to pinch pennies."
This is the same company that sells a World of Warcraft mount for a whopping $25, more than the entire monthly subscription fee.
when you can pinch whole dollars?
A game where you are able to buy your gear with real money is a horrible design concept. It was all about finding it in the wild in D2. When you can just buy godly gear because you are rich...that takes all the fun and challenge out of the game immediately. It's like turning hacks on with money.
People will just buy all their gear and then become selling whores. Then when there is a flood of surplus'd items in the market, everyone will be able to afford godly gear and then the game will be whored out.
When Blizzard outlawed runes in D3, the immediately replaced that concept with buying gear. Except there is no middle man this time.
You know what other game 'required't his? Starcraft 2. Look at it now, you just need the internet connection for 1st activation and achievements. No LAN is a non-issue anymore really. Anyone that thinks otherwise is stuck in 1999. If MLG can run tournament after tournament over battle.net, I sure as hell think you can run your little LAN party over it too without a problem.
One of the funnest things to do with Diablo 2 was get a bunch of people over to play on a lan. We would all start new characters and work through the various acts together, finding loot and gaining levels, and it was awesome.
When we got to nightmare, one thing that would always help would be if we had some decent gear, so I would load up a character editor, and load up am ule full of decent gear. Like say, one class specific item for each character. Just enough to give us a little boost. We werent creating Ungodly Axes of Doomcasting or crap like that, we always made sure that the items we came up with were either existing set/unique items or rares that could actually spawn. Once we got to Hell we'd get two more of these, and even with 3 custom items it would be pretty difficult. None of our characters could solo, as we all built to synergize with the group as a whole. We came up with some pretty unique character combinations too.
And when we werent together, the character editor gave us a way to try out some of the cool crap we could never, ever get just by playing the actual game. High level runes, the armor for the Immortal King set, most of the paladin set, it's stuff that would never ever drop. Hell, I spent over a year of my life doing magicfinding runs of some kind, and the best drop I ever got was Tal Rasha's armor (which wasnt even dropped for my MF character), and a Schaefers Hammer. And I think I probably got lucky. I even tried to trade for some of the more rare set pieces, and simply finding people who actually had those parts was near impossible.
So the issue I have with the game is that it just sounds like its going to be small group unfriendly, and youre going to be required to more or less trade with the rest of the general population in order to get gear good enough for you to survive in hell difficulty. And now with this real money trading mechanism, how do you suppose people are going to get their high end loot? Why, theyre gonna have to buy it, cause I know if I get lucky enough to get an Unholy Warhammer of Righteous Indignation to drop into my lap, and I know its a once and a lifetime kind of item, I'm going to see if I can pay some bills with it rather than get some gear for another character that I will enjoy for maybe a month or two.
And then the fact that its online only means that even if you get all your friends in the same place, youre still all going to have to have a net connection of some sort, and you'll be subject to the same crappy lag, drops, and other random bullshit that Battle.Net was known for with Diablo II.
And that just plain sucks. I think these developments take Diablo III from "I've been looking forward to this game for years" to "I wont touch this with a 10 foot pole".
Screw you, Blizzard.
You can put money into the game, but you cannot get paid (you can't take your money out). You can sell a million dollars worth of gear to people, but that money is tied up in your account, and you cannot take it out.
Yes, you can buy stuff for real money ... but if you sell for real money, you can't get your money out!
No, I did not make that up.
Just think of it. If drops can be so rare and valuable that they may become monetized within the game, you can't leave drop rate to random chance. So I'm assuming that such drops will be controlled by a weekly budget. If not regulated in such a manner it's just a matter of time until the economy comes crashing down. This leaves me worried that the gaming experience will be suffering. Shit drops? Gee whiz, you'll have to wait till Wednesday night for reset! :P
Starcraft was released with the same restrictions and has been absolutely brilliant. Maybe I would care if they released crap, but the point is they have consistently released the best computer games available period..and if they want to ensure they are getting their profit out of that, then thats awesome since it ensures more games from them in the future. Stop getting yourself worked up into a frenzy every time you think your rights as a consumer are being violated. The game will be epic and I pity da fool that rights it off due to a few minor restrictions.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-drm-requires-constant-internet-connection-until-you-crack-it-of-course/
and the 1up interview:>
http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-requires-online-when-playing
be sure to scroll down for the new internet meme, it has been a while since i had a good lol
Meh Blizzard now. I used to love d1 and d2, but.. well, I got older and I don't feel like bending over just because Pardo wants me to. I want a date and a hug and kiss in the morning. Sheeeeet...
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
This has been happening since D2 came out, with people selling items/sojs on Ebay. Then specialty sites like JSP came around with forum gold (which can be bought for cash).
Either Blizzard sponsors it or they don't, and I think people would rather Blizzard got the transaction fee rather than some shady forum.
This way, the game can continue to make money instead of being dead weight to them like D2 is now. This will provide incentive for Blizzard to continue to develop new content for the game.
Nobody likes the idea of pay-to-win, but with the item focused economy of Diablo, it is inevitable that there will be people willing to sell their in game spoils for money and people willing to just pay a few dollars instead of running some boss 10000 times.
No LAN/SP is still crap, but not surprising
I'm *only* interested in single-player and LAN play for D3. I have absolute zero interest in playing any game online with strangers. These announcements are throwing me very strongly from my original plan to purchase two copies of D3 - yes, purchase, at retail - and the player's guide, immediately upon release. Now I'm thinking I would be much, much better off to wait a few weeks (days? hours?) and download the cracked-for-offline-play version, or just not bothering at all. Blizzard is going from getting around $150 from me upon D3's release to getting a goose egg.
The killers here are the lack of LAN play, the 10-character limit (which is absolutely mindblowing - can I at least delete them and rotate, or do Activision's beancounters expect me to buy another copy of D3 if I want to replay with different skill builds for an 11th time?), and the always-connected requirement. None of those are acceptable. They aren't even up for discussion for me.
I don't care at all about the auction house, because I don't play online, so I'm not concerned with keeping up with the latest 'leet loot all the twelve-year-olds have. See how it all comes in a circle?
Blizzard, it's not too late. One of your own VPs is explicitly telling me not to buy this game. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that", indeed. There are lots of other games. I wanted to play this one, but you don't want me (or anyone else in my family - I'm the head of a household full of game geeks) to do so.
-Zirbert
Torchlight 2 just became a lot more interesting. I loved D1, skipped D2, was looking forward to D3. But this constant connection requirement for single player just needs to go away. I'll never buy a game with that sort of DRM. Luckily, there are literally tens of thousands of games to choose from that do not require an always-on internet connection whenever I want to play.
Blizzard will still sell truckloads, of course. Plenty of people don't care.
Well another 2 reasons, to go with their leading free to play competitor
...so you mean i can profit with /real/ money off the laziness of other players now? Count me in.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Seems like the perfect way to encourage gold farmers/scammers/dupers/etc that generally plague MMOs (and Diablo II) to really crack down and focus on Diablo III. Seems like a really bad idea to me - Blizzard won't make enough money selling 3 million copies at $60 a pop? (Plus expansions).
If my past 5 years of playing WoW have taught me anything, it's that Blizzard is all too eager to cave to customer demands. It will only take a small percentage of customers dissenting to get both of these (shitty shitty shitty) ideas scrapped.
I'm all too happy to pay Blizzard $15 a month for WoW, as I feel it offers me good value. I would be all too happy to pay for D3 when it launches too, because I trust that it will be a good game. However if they do happen to keep the persistent connection bullshit intact, I will be all too happy to find one of those nifty offline cracks that emulates a BNet server on my local machine so I can play the game I legally acquired on my terms, not theirs.
Cool post bro, highfive \o
I decided not to buy D3 a long time ago. At this point I'm just having fun watching them come up with even more reasons to keep me away.