The State of the Diablo 3 Beta (Two Videos)

It's been almost four years since Diablo 3 was announced, and its development began years earlier. Its predecessors helped define the action RPG genre, so anticipation is high among fans of the franchise. The game has undergone closed beta testing since September, and a lot has changed since then. Now that Blizzard has settled on May 15th as a release date, we thought this would be a good time to take a look at the state of the game as it currently exists. These two videos show actual gameplay of the various classes, explain the skill and rune systems, take a look at the auction house, and go over many of the other changes since the beginning of development. (Click to play the first video, and the second one will play automagically after the first one ends.)

Comments

Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't think so, therefore I'm not interested. Linux defines who I am.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Eraesr]

So you're cheap?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[SJHillman]

It's kind of sad that you're defined by an operating system. Reminds me a bit of the Amish. Their level of technology is a big part of who they are, so they go without modern conveniences (including video games) just to stick to that. All fine and dandy, but you don't hear the Amish complaining that nobody makes spoilers compatible with their buggies because it's a lifestyle choice.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Rik Sweeney]

Didn't think so, therefore I'm not interested.

It runs on the PS3, and the PS3 (sort of) runs Linux.

*ducks*

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

If refusing to pay for a sequence of bits is considered cheap, then yes, by all means, call me cheap.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[paulatz]

So you're cheap?

Digital media is like love, in that you can give it away without ever running out of it.

So I guess, you are cheap if you don't pay for love

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

So by that level of thinking paying 20k for a chunk of metal fashioned into a car is unreasonable?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said I would pay "20k for a chunk of metal fashioned into a car" either.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

So by that level of thinking paying 20k for a chunk of metal fashioned into a car is unreasonable?

When we have Star Trek style replicators that can instantly materialize an endless number of perfect car copies for essentially no cost, then yes it will be.

Unlike data the scarcity of automobiles is not artificial. You need materials, engineering, and labor to make each car.

In summary, you're an idiot and you will remain an idiot for as long as you talk about things you clearly don't understand. That's what idiots do.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Troyusrex]

Digital media is like love, in that you can give it away without ever running out of it.

Digital Media is also like love in that you can't eat it (insert 'witty' innuendo here). Media makers like to eat and giving it away free isn't conducive to the goal of feeding oneself.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[jellomizer]

Companies in the past have tried selling games for Linux. Including some big titles. However here are some estimates
1. Linux use for the desktop is at around 1%
2. 25% of that 1% are Open Source Zealots who will not pay for a program that isn't open source.
3. 25% of that 1% are just too cheap to buy software.
4. 25% of what is left isn't interested in games.
5. 15% Will just Duel Boot/Virtualize/Wine to play the Windows version of the game.
Leaving 10% of that 1% (0.1%) of sales. Of the product. Is that worth having to program a port, have support trained, and testing and bug fixing for that platform?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolling hard today, I see ...

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[unapersson]

Where do the Humble Bundle stats fit in with your assertions?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[jkovacik]

Actually, there's a huge thread on that very subject in the Amish Buggy Customization forum, but since the responses are carved on a rock out in a field in PA, you probably missed it.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[causality]

It's kind of sad that you're defined by an operating system. Reminds me a bit of the Amish.

If you keep talking about the Amish that way, you're going to offend them and they'll stop visiting Slashdot! You insensitive clod...

All fine and dandy, but you don't hear the Amish complaining that nobody makes spoilers compatible with their buggies because it's a lifestyle choice.

It's much harder to entertain that asinine entitlement mentality when eating fried chicken means going to the coop and wringing its neck yourself*. If for some reason they thought aerodynamic lift was a problem for their buggies and wanted a spoiler, they'd make one themselves.


* What I really appreciate are people who can enjoy modern conveniences without becoming soft, complacent and fat because of them. It requires this thing that was once called "values" before politicians destroyed any meaning this term had. It could also be called having principles.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[ifrag]

Is that worth having to program a port, have support trained, and testing and bug fixing for that platform?

Probably not, although Blizzard has stated before that having a Mac port of their games has sometimes helped fixed bugs in the Windows version as well. Blizzard also has a habit of making dual DirectX and OpenGL rendering engines, so they probably are closer than most other companies would be to making a port.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Tyler Eaves]

Nowhere, if he's interested in actual market research, rather than a publicity stunt.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[boxxertrumps]

I think he lets hundreds of people poke around in his innards.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[jellomizer]

That is the stupidest comment I have ever read.
You know these companies that make software, they have staff, they are not going to work for free because they need to pay for food, shelter, travel, fuel, health care, entertainment, education and save some up for an emergency, For themselves and often for other dependents as well. These people are good at "sequencing bits" in new original ways, when executed on a computer that will give entertainment to others. You are not paying for the bits you are paying for the work to make it. Well if you think about it you are probably more likely paying for them to work on their next project.

Standard GNU methods of making profit doesn't work too well with games.
1. You are not going to charge for consulting. If the game needs a consultant they wont play it.
2. If you are not going to charge for support. They just won't pay for it.
3. You could sell add ons. However you need to be careful as those add ons may break the GNU.
4. You package the game on a piece of hardware. Which may work... However after they get the source there will be a PC version soon and they will no longer need your hardware.

Sorry but the GNU model doesn't lead itself for a market of developers. if all software was GNU then Programming will be strictly a part-time/hobby thing and quality will go down the toilet because in order to make money they will need other full time jobs with a different discipline and less people willing to study computer science.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[SJHillman]

So computer programs appear out of thin air? They don't require programmers, artists or project managers? With automobiles, there's heavy costs on both design and production. With software, almost all of the cost is shifted to design... but there's still significant cost that needs to be recouped.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Gideon Wells]

Trolls work on the myth/legend system. They work because in the back of your mind you know people who believe that.

There are people I know who are so cheap that they attempted to use a slice of PVC pipe for their wedding ring because they feel jewelry industry is a racket to sell shiny stones. Not that different than people who feel organized bits are a racket. In the eyes of the company, he is the best procurement employee they've ever had.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, but the people making the digital media have bills to pay. Unlike you, they don't have mommy and daddy paying their way.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Yosho]

It's a shame that numbers you've made up off the top of your head are meaningless, especially when youre entire argument is based on them.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Sarten-X]

It's much harder to entertain that asinine entitlement mentality when eating fried chicken means going to the coop and wringing its neck yourself*

Now, I have a few Mennonite friends who've explained this to me, and from my understanding, this is exactly the point. Religion aside, the Amish culture values hard work, cooperation, and human interaction above worldly things like material goods, entertainment, and wealth. Putting in a good day's work to produce something is valued more in their society than coming home to a store-bought meal and the latest TV show.

In that way, Linux fans are much like the Amish. Open-source developers often contribute not for money, but for the pride in having contributed to a larger goal. Sure, there are some who sell their open code to earn money, just as there are Amish who have cars, phones, and radios to interact with the world outside their hometown.

It is the ideals we live by, not the technology we use, that truly defines who we are. Linux embodies a certain set of ideals, that the OP claims to live by.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[paulatz]

If I'm not going to buy it, you're not going to eat in any case

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[DigiShaman]

You're logic files in the face of idealism. Damn freeloaders need to be put in their place. Bunch of knuckleheads around here, I swear.

As for the rest of you. You don't want pay for a product. Fine. I get that. But don't steal. If it's not yours, hands OFF! Go pick up an OSS game if you're that idealistic.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Hatta]

There are people I know who are so cheap that they attempted to use a slice of PVC pipe for their wedding ring because they feel jewelry industry is a racket to sell shiny stones.

The weird thing is, they're right. The jewelry industry is a racket to sell shiny stones. How is it that they're smart enough to figure that out, but not smart enough to realize that replacing it with plastic is even stupider?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't eat it, but sure can swallow it. Yummy!

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Courageous]

The initial version, patches, support, and other infrastructure are all labor that go into making the software. In additions to all this, there are fringe costs, such as the building, power, computers, administrative support, social security fees, and so forth. The fact that the marginal cost of production is zero is neither here nor there. Investments must be recouped, or there will be no investments to speak of.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Its disturbing how many pirates only listen to the parts of OSS that they want to hear and ignore the parts they don't. Interestingly enough, the parts they always want to listen to is "free" and the parts they always want to ignore is "money."

Stealing is taking anything to which you are not legally entitled. Piracy is just another form of theft. And before some moronic blow hard jumps in like a three year old child trying to correct an adult, there are many different types of theft in most law around the world. Its just that each type of theft has its own classification and legal requirements. Piracy is just one of many different types of theft.

Honestly, the sheer stupidity of pirates is simply amazing. They will rationalize anything so as to justify their criminal activity.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[UnknowingFool]

Other than the 1% desktop Linux estimate, the rest of your comment is pure speculation on your part. And a bit of flamebaiting as well.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[beaverdownunder]

First off, not all linux applications need to follow the GNU. You can distribute a linux application with any license you please -- it may hinder repository access with particular distributions, but there's nothing stopping you from creating your own application manager, putting THAT in the repository, and then using that to distribute your games. Just saying.

Second, freemium is how it's all going to be in a decade full stop. You might as well get on that wagon now. And GNOME and KDE are almost to the point where Grandma can be trained to use it just as easily as Windows, which is the benchmark I tend to use when I consider the emerging market for a particular operating system. So, I expect that in another decade, there'll be a fair whack of linux machines with a fair whack of non-nerd users.

Finally, why you'd write anything in any language you can't cross-compile without great expense or redevelopment I just don't understand.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[SJHillman]

I've heard of a few Mennonite cultures that allow them to work at call centers and the like (their use of technology is accepted as its part of earning a living) and the supervisors love them because they work very hard, take pride in doing a good job and never complain. My only complaint is that they let their kids play in the road far too much, I've almost hit a few of them on blind curves and hills when traveling through the backwoods.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

This man more or less has the right of it. Without sales data from regular (i.e. non-Humble Bundle) games, it's kind of impossible to tell, but the Humble Bundle strikes me as a serious statistical outlier.

1) Some or all of the proceeds go to charity.
2) The sales totals are published right there on the page, making it a great place for Linux lovers to make a case that Linux users will pay for games.
3) It's DRM free.
4) It's a bunch of independent game makers, which adds another crusade-style cause to the sales and probably skews the market more than a little bit.

The Humble Indie Bundles probably say something positive about Linux gamers, but I'm not sure that they say that there's really, truly a big potential market there for major PC game developers.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[thesandtiger]

Actually, that's not really how the Amish relationship with technology works. They don't eschew technology because it is technology, but rather they eschew some technology because they feel it doesn't facilitate community/interpersonal relationships with people or a relationship with god, or, even if it does, in some cases the disadvantages are not worth it. When technology doesn't impinge on those things and if it is sufficiently needful they use it.

I met an Amish who owns a computer and uses a cellphone for his work. Doesn't have them in his home, doesn't carry the phone with him all the time, but he uses them.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Linux use for the desktop is at around 1%

No. Even those who don't want to admit Linux has a desktop presence typically quote 2%. We know 2% is the lower bound. Factually, the number has consistently trailed that of Apple's OSX. Which is to say, right around 5%-6%.

Now the trick is, how many of those desktops have the video and muscle to play a specific game in question. The answer is, no one knows.

The rest of your argument is pretty true. Interestingly enough, 1 and 2 combine to pirate software and then these guys will complain that no one supports their platform. Oh the irony of stupidity which prevails amongst pirates.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[dylan_-]

Nowhere, if he's interested in actual market research, rather than a publicity stunt.

Heh, that's it...go for "market research" when you don't like what the real world figures say!

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

They will rationalize anything so as to justify their criminal activity.

Well...yes. They're "pirates". Why would you expect anything different?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[KingMotley]

It's closer to 0.63% last time I checked (and dropping), but I suppose 1% is close enough.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

>1. Linux use for the desktop is at around 1%

Who cares about the Linux desktop?

100% of all game servers are run on Linux.

Desktop is for the end-end-end-end-user.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Ihmhi]

Media makers like to eat and giving it away free isn't conducive to the goal of feeding oneself.

Really? Jonathan Coulton and loads of other people seem to give their media away (to the general public) and live just perfectly fine.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[future assassin]

Where do the Humble Bundle stats fit in with your assertions?

It fits in nicely, I've bought two of them as all computers in my house have Linux on them.

Also there's the little fact that Linux users on average will pay more for the game unless Humble Bundle stats lie.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[cpricejones]

But the kinds of estimates he is making are what matters to game developers and the shareholders if the company is traded. They are going to lose money porting to linux if it takes a significant amount of time. You can't really blame Blizzard ...

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Chris Burke]

Blizzard also has a habit of making dual DirectX and OpenGL rendering engines, so they probably are closer than most other companies would be to making a port.

Blizzard is not going to port the game to Linux, and they're not going to officially support Linux/Wine as a platform.

However, Blizzard has worked with Wine and Transgaming to fix issues specific to their games -- in particular WoW, which ran great on Wine. Also, while D2 always worked pretty damn well except for Battlenet, recently even that has worked.

I'm a Linux-exclusive gamer. I understand that means I won't be able to play all the games I might want to. But the odds are better than most that D3 will be among the games I can play.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Lussarn]

Speaking as a Linux user, there has always been problems with third party programs in Linux, nonstandard installers, manual updating and so on. I, and I'm probably not the only one very seldom install third party software in my operating system (something not in the distro). I know if I use the distro supplied packages the system will work, like forever. I've seen (and used) Windows installes which have crawled to an halt in a year, mac likewise (although some would say this can't be). I've never seen a Linux install just getting sluggier as time moves on. I do believe this is because we use mostly distro supplied programs. Breaking this barrier is hard and probably one of the reasons Linux users don't like to buy programs, a normal distro have most of what we need anyways.

Now, late to the game, there has finaly come a technology which will not only offer games to Linux, but also don't screw with our operating systems. That tech is Google NaCL (I'm sort of a fanboy for NaCL if you check my history). I believe this to be the premier way to deliver games, not only to Linux (which most devs don't really care about anyway) but also to Windows and mac. Sandboxed (No possible way to screw around) is the way of the future for this type of programs. I do not want to install my games (And yes, I game in Windows), I want them playable from the net, and just trash them (could even be automatic, similiar to a web cache) when I'm through playing them. Not leaving anything behind. I have payed for a few Linux games over the years (Not enough to justify a Linux version I admit), but now I no longer want a Linux version at all, I want NaCL, it's just superior tech, for any OS.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Reverand Dave]

Totally, that's why you buy a nice sturdy chunk of tungsten.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[rosciol]

I know you're just throwing numbers out there, but the way you arrived at your figure is flawed. You claim that Linux use on the desktop is 1%; okay, fine, I can live with that. You then go on to show that only a fraction of those Linux users are interested in games, and that fraction of the total computer population is the market size.

Your assertion that this is then 0.1% of sales presumes that 100% of the non-Linux market is interested in games, which is clearly not the case. That is, in order to make the numbers comparable, we have to make the same comparison with other platforms that you did with Linux:

1. PC use for the desktop is at around 92%.
2. 50% of that is installed base in corporate systems (market share is common derived from units sold, not 'platform preference by person').
3. 25% are not interested in games.
4. 15% of what is left will pirate any game that comes out.

So, again, maybe 10% of that is actually a viable market. Sure, 9.2% is > 0.1%, but that presumes that any of these ballpark figures are meaningful. What if the average Linux user is actually more likely to be a gamer than the average PC user? That is, there might exist a correlation between being a gamer (or at least being the kind that buys blockbuster titles) and platform preference. What if the average linux user is more likely to pay (when they aren't open source zealots) than the average PC user? All of these ideas need to be factored in to any real calculation of market size.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[geminidomino]

#4 is probably true, at least in my case, since I stopped buying the HIB when I fired up Shank and got a nice, putrescent EA logo for my efforts.

Either that, or I just don't like being falsely advertised to. Maybe that's it.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[barc0001]

The linux version of this?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/12/

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[barc0001]

Outliers. I have run a few of my humble bundle purchases on a couple of my linux machines and thought "hey neat", but my main workstation at the house is Windows for a lot of reasons, so I don't feel compelled to use those purchases on linux just to prove a point.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[abe ferlman]

Corporate/private patronage and episodic content releases based on player prepayments could solve this problem. It's true the industry would be different and possibly smaller, but not gone. Someone would find a way to make money even if software was free, and the public domain would greatly benefit.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Fned]

So computer programs appear out of thin air? They don't require programmers, artists or project managers?

Why don't they sell that service, instead of doing it entirely on spec and then, once it's totally complete, trying to recoup their costs by selling something demonstrably worthless, instead? Seems like kind of a broken business model.

Oh, wait, I know the answer: "BECAUSE THAT'S HOW IT'S ALWAYS BEEN DONE."

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

If I'm not going to buy it, you're not going to eat in any case

And if you're not going to buy it, you shouldn't have possession of it (barring gifts and inheritance, of course).

Most people are trying to frame the anti-piracy efforts of companies as simply "we want money" when it's actually more like "we want money for that product of ours that you've acquired". Yes, quite a few of those efforts are absurd and limit the second-hand market, which is bad, but this "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" justification for piracy is complete and utter nonsense.

Companies aren't guaranteed a profit, but you're also not guaranteed possession of their products for free simply because you disagree with their pricing.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Fned]

Well if you think about it you are probably more likely paying for them to work on their next project.

Yes, if you think about it. In fact, even if you don't think about it, that's STILL what you're really paying them for. In fact, every single dollar that goes towards making the next game comes directly from customers giving money to the publisher.

The problem is, if the people actually MAKING the game successfully promote this angle, then pretty soon the people PUBLISHING the game have to get a job making french fries or something. And they don't want that, no they don't.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Fned]

But don't steal. If it's not yours, hands OFF!

It's no one else's responsibility to make your poor business model work. Using language like "steal" where it's not appropriate just makes you look foolish.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Fned]

Great, but the people making the digital media have bills to pay.

Perhaps they should have thought of that before making the product.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[DigiShaman]

So you own and operate a convenience store. A flash mob of 100 storm your store and starts picking stuff off the shelf and quickly scurry off out and about.

And you call that a poor business model? What, you just broke out of prison or something?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[unapersson]

Me either, I've bought a few humble bundle titles but for the most part I've given up on PC gaming completely as I'm not interested in running multiple operating systems on my PC. I did my bit for PC gaming back in the DOS era, have bought a few boxed Linux titles that interest me since then (from Tux Games and LGP apart from a few exceptions), but these days get my gaming fix elsewhere.

I still buy a lot of games, just very few of them are on PC any more.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[tacarat]

So computer programs appear out of thin air?

Well, yes. That's why you need alcohol to get vaporware into an finished product and use ethernet to download it.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Chris Burke]

I met an Amish who owns a computer and uses a cellphone for his work. Doesn't have them in his home, doesn't carry the phone with him all the time, but he uses them.

That offends my Boy Scout sensibilities: "Be prepared". I very much respect their goal to not have technology interfere with their lives and relationships. So just turn the ringer off and don't use it when at home. But a cell phone can be extremely handy to have in an emergency, and you don't want to waste time running to go get it, or worse have to leave it behind.

I guess that'd probably get into a gray area for them. I'm sure they have their reasons.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[surd1618]

Linux users, like Buddhists and atheists, tend to be a more understanding group than a random sample of people. So I contend that it would be cool if they produced a Linux version, just with the understanding that they not going to support it especially. Distribute it DL only only to those who purchased the regular version. Take out the unneeded parts, cross-compile and fix any clear and obvious problems, and put it in capital letters that support and bugs aren't priority for the Linux version. Many players will bitch about the bugs, but many more will be happy it exists. And I bet they'd break even on salary vs. Linux sales.

This wouldn't be a good idea for say a CAD IDE, but this is a game we're talking about. Game developers can take unorthodox steps in platform support.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Tharkkun]

If refusing to pay for a sequence of bits is considered cheap, then yes, by all means, call me cheap.

Sweet. You refuse to pay for software that isn't being developed for a non-existent gaming platform. Good to know. Go buy an xbox or a mac.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, let me make up numbers as well. Tell me where I'm going wrong according to some imaginary standard:

1. Windows use for the desktop is around 90%.
2. Of those, 95% don't play video games, at least not the AAA kind.
3. Of the remaining 5% of 95%, Blizzard would be thrilled to have a 1% market. But fuck it, let's say that 10% of these buys the game (insane). That leaves .5% of the market as sales.

Are you telling me that it will cost 20% of the _total game budget_ to port the game to Linux, and it will thus not be profitable?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Tharkkun]

This man more or less has the right of it. Without sales data from regular (i.e. non-Humble Bundle) games, it's kind of impossible to tell, but the Humble Bundle strikes me as a serious statistical outlier.

1) Some or all of the proceeds go to charity. 2) The sales totals are published right there on the page, making it a great place for Linux lovers to make a case that Linux users will pay for games. 3) It's DRM free. 4) It's a bunch of independent game makers, which adds another crusade-style cause to the sales and probably skews the market more than a little bit.

The Humble Indie Bundles probably say something positive about Linux gamers, but I'm not sure that they say that there's really, truly a big potential market there for major PC game developers.

Yeah, possibly $10 million in total sales over the years. That's pennies compared to what a normal publisher pulls in profit.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[thesandtiger]

My guess is that it would be something like they have dealt with emergencies in the past without it' what new kinds of emergencies are happening now that are so different they require a cellphone? And maybe it's a wedge thing, too.

Why not just go whole hog and add all kinds of things - early warning systems, tractors and combines, cars, etc and so on. If the argument that something were handy but optional were enouh the Amish wouldn't be, well, Amish.

Doing business has changed and so the technology needed to do business has changed, but it gets emoyed only for business. Emergencies haven't changed, so the technology they will use to deal with emergencies doesn't need to change, either. You and I may not agree, but I have a sense neither of us is Amish so we don't get a say :)

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Tubal-Cain]

Also there's the little fact that Linux users on average will pay more for the game unless Humble Bundle stats lie.

The stats are tainted by live updating. No Linux enthusiasts want to drag the average down.

Also, you'll notice that Linux brought in maybe 20% of the total by paying nearly twice as much per copy.

Contributing $10 instead of $5 for a indie/charity thing is all well and good, but would you tolerate being charged $120 for a AAA title while your Windows buddies are only paying $60?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[GuB-42]

GNU can work with online games like Diablo III is expected to be.
People will pay to access the server. The fact that unofficial servers can be used is not really a problem if the official server is well maintained. There are many games where the official server is more popular than the free alternatives.
Also keep in mind that GNU code doesn't mean that the graphics, sounds, levels etc... are free. Take Quake3 for example : the code is GPL but if you want to play the original game, you still need the original CD, because the data are not included in the opensource release.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a long, long lasting publicity stunt that seems to have generated a lot of money. Doesn't really seem like much of a publicity stunt.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[CaptSlaq]

So computer programs appear out of thin air? They don't require programmers, artists or project managers?

Why don't they sell that service, instead of doing it entirely on spec and then, once it's totally complete, trying to recoup their costs by selling something demonstrably worthless, instead? Seems like kind of a broken business model.

Oh, wait, I know the answer: "BECAUSE THAT'S HOW IT'S ALWAYS BEEN DONE."

Could you explain how the service would work, because I can't envision it.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Digital Vomit]

So computer programs appear out of thin air? They don't require programmers, artists or project managers?

Why don't they sell that service, instead of doing it entirely on spec and then, once it's totally complete, trying to recoup their costs by selling something demonstrably worthless, instead? Seems like kind of a broken business model. Oh, wait, I know the answer: "BECAUSE THAT'S HOW IT'S ALWAYS BEEN DONE."

Could you explain how the service would work, because I can't envision it.

Like this, or this

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[CaptSlaq]

The magnitude of complexity of "Recording music" to "writing complex software" isn't exactly apples to apples.

It takes JC himself and time to make an album. Very seldom can one person see an entire current-generation AAA game from conception to workable, much less mostly finished. Art, music, sound, story, and the engine underneath, even if you're using a known quantity like the Unreal Engine to drive all of it, add layers of complexity that are non-trivial in my observation.

Not to say that recording music is EASY by any means: I've done a handful of studio sessions, and learned that I hate sitting in the studio. It's just significantly easier than producing a AAA title like Diablo 3, where music is just one aspect that needs to be addressed.

If someone can get enough people bought-in to work on an ambitious project and make it happen, more power to them. Minecraft/Mojang started out that way (and there could be some debate the "AAA" designation for Minecraft), but even that became a purchase product, and I don't think it's EVER been open source. There is a promise of that happening, but only after Notch says "I think we've made enough money on that".

I sincerely believe that Minecraft/Mojang is an exception rather than a rule. At the end of the day games are entertainment, and seldom world-changers on a grand scale like TED or Kahn Academy which will attract more talent due to the nature of the end product.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[CaptSlaq]

They did, and said "this seems like it could make money, I'll work for them". Just because some don't agree with the method that it generates revenue doesn't mean it's not going to at all.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[CaptSlaq]

Well played.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bay12 is an example of a game developer who is able to do this. It's a two man team that produces only free games, and they are able to live comfortably just on donations from fans. Dwarf Fortress has the most depth out of all the games that I've played, despite its ASCII graphics, and it just might be the best game ever. Although, the learning curve is rather steep.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[CaptSlaq]

Would it be fair to say that these two projects got a fair measure of their massive lifts from industry vets that had already been through the model that you are disparaging?

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Trek replicators actually consume an immense amount of energy. They're not "free." They just happened to have conveniently solved that problem with matter/antimatter reactors to power them.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[ildon]

He'll eat fine when there are 20+ million other people perfectly willing to buy, as will be the case with Diablo 3.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[qwak23]

Back before I had said "I do" (or whatever it is they say in here Japan), I brought up this very discussion with my bride to be. What followed I can only assume was some sort of ninja mysticism that resulted in me buying an even more expensive set of wedding bands.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Courageous]

Well; regardless of more controversial positions on copyright, I've thought for a while that software copyright should be about 7 years or so, and then completely expire. I really don't think all works are created equal. Things that have a short value on the market should not have the near-indefinite copyright that they do today. Rather, it should transition to the commons soon enough that it still has some value to the commons.

Using my approach, the creator of the software still has every reasonable ability to monetize their work, and yet the commons still greatly benefits. This gives all software 7 years until it becomes "legally" abandonware. I can't say it would hurt very many people very much, and the market would thrive.

Software patents, which I despise and would rather have go away, should have equally short periods (say 7 years and not 17)... if we're going to tolerate them at all.

Joe.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Rakarra]

Ah, ok, so "copyright infringement" and refusing to pay when you owe the money required to pay, breaking EULAs and service agreements and such is now "broken business model."

"I don't want to pay for things that require money to make" is just defying a "broken business model."

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[Rakarra]

Not to say that recording music is EASY by any means: I've done a handful of studio sessions, and learned that I hate sitting in the studio. It's just significantly easier than producing a AAA title like Diablo 3, where music is just one aspect that needs to be addressed.

Not least because a AAA title often includes a full album's worth of music now!

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[jwhitener]

Looking at the latest humble bundle, Linux was one eighth of the sales. That's still a pretty small slice of users. If porting to linux would cost more than those 1/8 would provide in sales....

I wonder if humble bundle was only windows/mac, how many linux users would buy a windows or mac version because they dual boot or own multiple machines? In other words, maybe no lost sales to the linux crowd if you don't have a linux version, because most linux users have a windows or mac also?

I know I've bought bundles in the past, and the first one was for linux. Just to see it run. Later I ended up buying windows and mac versions, because when I'm in a gaming mood, those are the OS's I boot to.

The real state of Diablo III

[Totenglocke]

The real state of Diablo III is that is has DRM forcing you to be online even to play single player. As a result, my almost two decade long love affair with Blizzard games has come to an end.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Same goes for the Starcraft 2 campaign. And it's even worse than that, you can't even play it when Battlenet is down.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[SJHillman]

This is basically my thought on it as well. Loved Diablo and Diablo II, but my wireless is a little flaky because of my apartment's layout so the only multiplayer that works well is on the LAN. I'd be ok with an online activation. I'd tolerate it checking in once a week or once a month. But I don't want to have to spend a half hour fudging around with the wireless signal every time I want to play an offline game.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention what this does to the mod community...or lag-free LAN play in other parts of the world that aren't the centre of the known universe like the US...or charging us $25 more down under for *exactly* the same digital product/delivery...or the entire real currency based greed shop they've created...or the consolitis dumbing down of what made the entire 1st two games so great - the *limitations* & inherent replayability that created in the game with the skill system the way it was.

I could go on & on...suffice it to say they've added BullshitNet2 to the equation & some semi-3D eye candy & catered to the (s)lowest common denominator. That's it. Game over. RIP Diablo.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure who in their right mind would pay the $60 or more to play single player Diablo3. Sure, it has single player (back in the day Quake2 had one as well), but if you intend to spend more than a few hours playing it, then you're the 1%. I would hate to have this DRM on a single player game, but D3 is essentially a multiplayer game which has a single player option. I'm buying it and honestly didn't even know for sure if you can play offline and don't much care.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really so much as always on DRM, as it is always online like an MMO.
The always online means:
They can easily make changes on the server like balance fixes etc without client patches.
Allow you to use your "single player" instance in multiplayer without worrying that you cheat hacked the character.
Still let you interact with some online components like auction house.
Not have to test offline vs online modes.

I mean, if you have an unreliable internet connection or want to play on the go on a laptop it sucks, but I genuinely do believe the DRM aspect is more of a "bonus" side effect of the decision rather than the goal of the decision.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[XxtraLarGe]

Ditto. One of the few times I have free time to play games is in the evening during deer hunting season. Our deer camp is out in the sticks, no internet for miles around. If I can't play a game I legitimately purchased without continuously getting the company's constant approval, I'm not interested.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Diablo III?

I'll start to care when a warez group has fixed the game and I can play it offline...

NEXT!

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

The DRM might piss some people off but isn't the server-client integrity quite important when dealing with real money transactions within the game such as the real money auction house?

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?

I think that it's pretty reasonable to assume that if you can afford to drop $2k on a gaming computer (or equivalent amounts on a TV + gaming console), you've got Internet access.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Satanboy]

I agree with OP.

My roomates have decided to buy D3, I am going to be the outsider on this one.

I bought SWTOR and was heavily disappointed, I'm not buying any more games that 'might' be what I want.
The DRM really seals the deal for me, if it weren't for that I'd probably buy it just to toss on my laptop to play once in a while, but with the DRM, it's just craptastic garbage.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Sarten-X]

Hacking my characters was half the fun of D2. I wanted to play different builds, but really wasn't interested in going through the beginning of the game another dozen times.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

But I don't want to have to spend a half hour fudging around with the wireless signal every time I want to play an offline game.

Not even that, what happens in 5-10 years when you want to dig up the game and play it again?
Will the servers still be online? Will there be a "required" patch which doesn't work well with your system or nerfs your favorite character?

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[lytlebill]

The DRM might piss some people off but isn't the server-client integrity quite important when dealing with real money transactions within the game such as the real money auction house?

It would. And it is a problem easily ('easily' in theory, though not perhaps in execution) solved: I can create characters 'online,' which are stored on Blizzard servers, only playable when connected to the internet for communication with said servers, and can vend their inventories on an RMT market. I can also create characters 'offline,' which can be played anytime, connected or not, and whose inventories can't interact with an RMT market. This is a solution which would give Blizzard the ability to keep a tight reign on RMT market activity and still give people to chance to play on a plane, or on a laptop with the wireless off to save battery, or on a dodgy internet connection. It would not, however, serve as DRM, which is half the reason (if not more) why they're doing this in the first place. Yes, Blizzard wants to control RMT stuff tightly, which is why the game is "always online." But they also want to try and stop the pirates, which is why there's no offline play. Simply put, their desire to try and stop the pirates is more important to them than an offline mode for the (who knows how many) players that want/need it.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[DroolTwist]

I love the game, so count me in the 1% for the 'single player option in a multiplayer game'. While I consider the DRM and having to play online an annoyance, I'd label it as a minor one. If for some reason I can't connect to play, I'll view it as I always have with MMOs: a signal to go do something useful until I can play. I did my own thing in those (I triple boxed, as did my wife, so we always had our own group when logging on. In EQ2 this was awesome as the group size was six). I will miss the fast LAN play when we play together though. Hopefully, its not horribly lagged.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[damnbunni]

Not necessarily RELIABLE internet access.

I live in the US, just outside a town of 200,000 people. I'm half a mile from a school.

In order for me to get RELIABLE internet that's faster than dialup would cost me $2,419.60.

Per month.

I use cellular internet. It's not terribly expensive, and it works well enough, and it's fast enough. But it does lag out and drop out a lot, and if I lost my game progress every time it did, I'd get mightily pissed.

I get mad enough as is when Steam decides that since it can sort of see the internet, but not connect to the Steam server, then it won't even start up enough for me to put it in offline mode, so I can't play Steam games nyah nyah.

And that's just a check at the client start, not a constant connection,

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Nidi62]

Not even that, what happens in 5-10 years when you want to dig up the game and play it again? Will the servers still be online? Will there be a "required" patch which doesn't work well with your system or nerfs your favorite character?

Blizzard is actually the one company that I feel I can trust to keep the servers running for a lon gperiod of time, becuase they tend to stick with and support their games. They seem to have a corporate mindset that looks and plans in the long term, as opposed to most other publishers that just look to the next game and leave just a token force to maintain a previous game. That being said, I really enjoyed Diablo II, but after being disappointed with SC2, I do not expect to buy D3 any time soon.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

/signed. Not that I have any problem with the wireless, but with Diablo not being my most beloved series it's just too easy to pass on this one and at least try to make a point. Would be the first Blizzard game to not get my money in quite some time - a pity.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[madeye the younger]

no offline solo play, no sale. If it doesn't get cracked, there's other games to play.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[16Chapel]

Not true - when Battle.net is down you can still play, you just don't get any awards / medals / unlockable things.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Y2KDragon]

On a whim, I dug out my old Diablo II and Lord of Darkness disks. Registering my game on their BattleNet site was easy, and was given new "in game" keys for downloading the client, with patches. Sure, the graphics don't look so good, but I can play. And the online servers are still there, allowing people to play the full-featured game, with all the benefits of the network. If being connected on-line is going to be required to play for Diablo III, Blizzard has shown that they will make sure that the game is available.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Y2KDragon]

It would. And it is a problem easily ('easily' in theory, though not perhaps in execution) solved: I can create characters 'online,' which are stored on Blizzard servers, only playable when connected to the internet for communication with said servers, and can vend their inventories on an RMT market. I can also create characters 'offline,' which can be played anytime, connected or not, and whose inventories can't interact with an RMT market. This is a solution which would give Blizzard the ability to keep a tight reign on RMT market activity and still give people to chance to play on a plane, or on a laptop with the wireless off to save battery, or on a dodgy internet connection. It would not, however, serve as DRM, which is half the reason (if not more) why they're doing this in the first place. Yes, Blizzard wants to control RMT stuff tightly, which is why the game is "always online." But they also want to try and stop the pirates, which is why there's no offline play. Simply put, their desire to try and stop the pirates is more important to them than an offline mode for the (who knows how many) players that want/need it.

Oh, so much like in Diablo II, where your on-line character was different from your local? Funny, you'd think that if such a thing were already possible, it could be a feature in the new game. Guess the devs didn't consider that path.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Chris Burke]

I don't think it works that way. They even added a way to reset your skill points in D2 in a (very) late patch, though only once per difficulty. Still, I think you won't have to hack your character just to try a different build.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - when Battle.net is down you can still play, you just don't get any awards / medals / unlockable things.

You would think that because SC2 is like that... but unless you provide a good citation, my opinion is that D3 is like WOW, where the game logic *IS* in the server [as it seems on the reverse engineering that has been happening on the game communication with battlenet servers]. So if you are not connected, it is impossible to play (or crack) the game. Of course, until a cracked server leaks like it happened in WOW.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news then, D3 fixes that for you. You only have to level each class once and then you can have any skill set you want with the free respec system they have.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[niado]

Wow! It seems Blizzard did not anticipate this backlash from the plays-in-a-deer-stand-only segment of the player base!

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Sarten-X]

It's more than just skills, though... Resetting skill points will not change my barbarian to a rogue, reopen a particular quest dungeon, or let me play an act backwards.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

How was this modded insightful... /smh

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[niado]

But it does lag out and drop out a lo

There were a lot of players in World of Warcraft who had similar issues. Unfortunately WoW also did not have an offline single-player mode.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

They have stated multiple times why they didn't do this. They feel that playing on Battle.net with friends and or random strangers is the way that many people will eventually want to play, and the way that the game was designed to be enjoyed. By letting people play off line with characters that can't go onto Blizzard servers it effectively 'traps' people offline and out of the ideal usage. This is a negative experience and one they don't want to deal with. The review mentions that it happened to him, it's happened to me, and it probably has happened to many other people as well.

They are optimizing for the common case. Most people have internet connections. People will enjoy themselves more if they use the product the way it was intended to be used. Blizzard taking away options that they have determined, through study and consideration, to be sub optimal is not nefarious. It is them trying to make a better game.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Hatta]

This is what Torchlight II is for.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[thesandtiger]

I think that rather than plan to keep the servers up forever, I could see them release a patch that would allow LAN play if it were true that they had to close down for some reason" or, failing that, to at least patch it to remove the must be online part.

Blizzard has by and large done alright by me - I don't like the drm they are using now but they are the one studio that releases and supports their games well enough for me to put up with it.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Chris Burke]

Oh, okay. I'm not as sympathetic to your desire to change classes without starting a new character, or mucking with the game flow. I doubt blizzard is either. Sucks to be you, I guess.

You could revisit any dungeon in the game in D2 as many times as you wanted; I don't know if D3 would change this but I don't see why they would. Do you mean you also wanted to get any unique prize at the end again, like the skill-point scroll?

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? What do you think that we do for those long hours that we spend waiting for deers?
I'll stick with Skyrim while on my hunts!

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[SJHillman]

My only complaint with Blizzard's implementation of Diablo 2 is that each patch (especially after 1.07 or so) drastically changed gameplay. Suddenly great sets were crap, great characters were crap, etc. Sure, it adds a level of replayability, but if I have a lvl 60 on its way to greatness, I don't want to trash it and start over on the Blood Moore with a new character.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[UnknowingFool]

My experience with Wotlk expansion says otherwise. When a new patch rolled out, it was unbearable to play. The server would go down while we in the middle of a boss fight. A few hours later you could log back in and get instantly pwned by the boss. Talking to some veterans, it happened back in the days of vanilla WoW a few times but it seemed to have been corrected. Apparently not.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Sarten-X]

So only 8 times playing boring parts rather than 1... awesome.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Sarten-X]

I do recall some areas being empty of monsters after the first run, but I may be mistaken. It's been too long.

If I'm already hacking the character, the reward is pointless, but yes, playing the boss battle again was fun, and that couldn't always be done. Yes, it's mucking with the game flow, but it's a game. If I want to make it more entertaining without affecting anyone else, why stop me? If I want to make a character with a single health point and an undead horde take on the final boss, what exactly is the problem?

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Triv]

The WotLK launch was bad. It was also 5 years ago. The Cataclysm launch was completely painless - log out at midnight, log back in, start playing. Things keep getting smoother is all I'm saying.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly I'm not surprised that my joking 1% estimate may be overrepresented on /.

People who love tinkering more than the average Joe... Check
People who are inclined to meticulously explore all possibilities... Check
(Both of the above are greatly benefited if you have a local copy of your saved characters that you can edit)
People who may be annoyed a lot by playing with/against 13 year olds online... Check
People who just don't have that many friends to play online with... Check
People who are annoyed by any kind of DRM... double Check

So sure, having an offline mode is pretty cool for us. And so is LAN play. But the sad truth is that for big budget games LAN play is going away and so is offline-only verification. And the reason is that those games start to resemble MMOs in many ways and the majority of gamers (especially the younger ones) don't think that's a bad thing.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Meneth]

By then, the pirate server (which is already under development), will hopefully be good enough for regular use.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Wingfat]

@16Chapel is correct.. ALSO like I always say, there is a way around that. Local Proxy Server set up.. then point the .ini file to 127.0.0.1 and bang your up and running with out having to be logged in. - no rewards, no selling items for real money or in game gold.. but your playing.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[gl4ss]

who cares about game flow in a game like diablo 2 the mother of "let's play it from the beginning again with a boosted character!" ??

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, im DarkLotus a contrib to mooege the D3 Server emu project. A vast majority of core gameplay is server side only. Initally when the beta first came out everything needed for single player was in the mpq's, and there was mention of offline/debug mode.

Few beta patches later and they removed all data related to world generation and drop rates, next up was further data about how scenes and events are connected, and also quest triggers and such.

It's not possible for d3 to be played offline.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[X0563511]

I'm in your crowd.

It's not even DRM - it's more that they decided to save time and effort and use as much of the multiplayer code as they could for single player. As a side effect, single player is just a client into a one-player game.

I don't exactly think it's the BEST idea ever, but I do see how it saved a shitton of developer effort - only one place to modify, and it takes your "server code" completely out of the clients hands and leaves it in the servers.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Captain Centropyge]

I wouldn't be surprised if they put out some kind of offline patch when they try to discontinue support for the game. But I'm sure they'll keep the servers up for quite some time before they do anything.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Captain Centropyge]

I was actually just playing through Diablo, and planning to run through Diablo II again. Good times!

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[X0563511]

Not gonna happen without a server breach. The server code is completely disconnected (that's why SP requires a net connection - not because it authenticates you, but because the client is dumb)

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[XxtraLarGe]

LOL! I don't play while out in the woods, but rather in the evenings while I'm in the house. I doubt I'd have much success shooting a deer while frantically clicking & hitting keys on my laptop. Of course, I do like to play games while on long rides etc., so that was just one example. :-P

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[X0563511]

Sigh. It's not DRM. It's a dumb client, that doesn't have the code required to drive it all.

The "DRM" aspect is just a side effect. At least call it for what it is.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Diablo. And I like Blizzard pretty good too. But how will Blizzard make sure servers are up for all their games if they happen to go tits up?

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[slyrat]

Blizzard is actually the one company that I feel I can trust to keep the servers running for a lon gperiod of time, becuase they tend to stick with and support their games. They seem to have a corporate mindset that looks and plans in the long term, as opposed to most other publishers that just look to the next game and leave just a token force to maintain a previous game. That being said, I really enjoyed Diablo II, but after being disappointed with SC2, I do not expect to buy D3 any time soon.

I agree with this, but the problem now is that it isn't just Blizzard. Activision is in the picture and my trust in them is much lower. I somewhat want to play Diablo 3 but I doubt I will because of this.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[UnknowingFool]

The majority of the issues seem to be affected by the number players in an area. Even when the server didn't give up, moving around in Dalaran was painful. It sounds like they might have fixed it with Cataclysm but I wonder is that because of fewer players these days or better architecture? There was a recent article about Blizzard auctioning off old blades for charity.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[tlhIngan]

The real state of Diablo III is that is has DRM forcing you to be online even to play single player. As a result, my almost two decade long love affair with Blizzard games has come to an end.

You can consider it "Activision-Blizzard" actually. The "Activision" part is important as it explains what happened to the Blizzard we knew and loved. Think "monetized" and "nickel and dimed".

It's not just the DRM that requires online stuff, it's so they can ding you as much as possible - if you didn't go online, there would be a bunch of ways to extract more money from you that you'd be missing, least of which would be giving you a permanent name on Bnet 2.0 that can only be changed with $$$. But doing so right at the beginning after you've excitedly ripped open the box and installed it and double-clicked the icon.

Everything's on a WoW type business plan - sell the game, and also try to ding them as much money as possible.

Also why I was horribly saddened when Bungie signed with Activision for an exclusive 10 year deal. They may not be a part, but you know those execs are seeing dollar signs in everything, and in 10 years, another good game developer will be nickle and diming players.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Raenex]

It's naive to think making the client dumb wasn't primarily driven by DRM concerns.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

And hopefully with you go the trillions of Stones of Jordan that were duped because the game wasn't secure.

If you ask me, the DRM requirement isn't there to protect their profits so much as to protect the game's economy. And for this reason, my decade long love affair with Blizzard games is stronger than ever.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Chris Burke]

I do recall some areas being empty of monsters after the first run, but I may be mistaken. It's been too long.

If I'm already hacking the character, the reward is pointless, but yes, playing the boss battle again was fun, and that couldn't always be done.

Yeah, it hasn't been that long for me (decided I finally wanted to beat the game through Hell mode to prep for D3 ) and you're mistaken. All the monsters, including all bosses, are waiting for you again when you quit and restart. There's no reason to edit a character just to re-do content. Re-doing content is pretty much what the whole game is based on. :P

If I want to make a character with a single health point and an undead horde take on the final boss, what exactly is the problem?

Absolutely no problem! I don't care at all if you want to hack your single player game all to hell. I also don't care if you can't. Not every single-player RPG has character editors for them -- is this a crime?

Having to start a new character just to try out a different build of the same class -- or because you mis-clicked a single skill point -- is a gameplay issue that should be fixed. Not being able to do anything you want like skipping to the end boss with an unworkable build or giving yourself a zillion skill points is not an issue that needs to be fixed.

If not being able to do this ruins the fun of the game for you, I'm sorry you feel that way.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Chris Burke]

who cares about game flow in a game like diablo 2 the mother of "let's play it from the beginning again with a boosted character!" ??

I don't, but I also don't care if you can't break the game flow just because. "Cheating" in a single player game doesn't matter to me. Not being able to cheat in a single player game also doesn't matter to me.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[X0563511]

I think it much more likely it was done to cut costs and development time.

Which is faster to work with, you think?

1. Dumb client, server who does all the AI and logic. They also get to use all the goodies they learned with WoW, and probably a good portion of the same infrastructure.
2. Smart client, who can do what server does, and a server that does it all as well for MP.

#2 means lots of duplication, which increases maintenance cost/effort etc. #1 is elegant, with the drawback that the client is useless without said server.

I've seen plenty of games use the model #1 has - and there is never an outcry... since the server comes with the client and for single player is used behind the scenes. We don't have that here with D3, however.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[X0563511]

I should add that NOT giving us the server in that first model actually makes sense here too, in that it impedes third-party gateways from springing up. I may not agree with the choice, but I do see it's merit.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Sarten-X]

Not being able to do anything you want like skipping to the end boss with an unworkable build or giving yourself a zillion skill points is not an issue that needs to be fixed.

I didn't ever say it should be fixed, but it does diminish the fun of the game for me, so I simply won't buy it. Less game for me, less money for Blizzard... Too bad.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[dmomo]

Maybe being online isn't a problem. But, having multiple computers online, all connecting to battlenet while they really just need to talk to each other might be. Bandwidth may be a bottleneck.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[dionye]

my wireless is a little flaky because of my apartment's layout so the only multiplayer that works well is on the LAN.

wait how is LAN any different from online play if your problem is with your "wireless"?

For all those who complain about lack of LAN play, do you really need that? what is the different between playing with your "friends" who sit in his mom's basement or across the table in your mom's basement? of all places, /.er should have the know-how to set up an across-the-table-like-experence(tm) over the interweb.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Patch86]

I think that rather than plan to keep the servers up forever, I could see them release a patch that would allow LAN play if it were true that they had to close down for some reason" or, failing that, to at least patch it to remove the must be online part.

What if they go bankrupt? Blizzard are a strong company now, but 10 years is a long time and plenty of great companies have fallen before. Then they wouldn't have the resources to throw at that sort of thing- you'd be stuck with things in the state they are when the bailiffs move in.

What if they're purchased by someone less trustworthy. What if Oracle decided to move into video gaming and bought them out- do you trust Oracle to do right by you? Or some faceless private equity firm?

Better to not put the stupid broken-by-design features in in the first place, rather than cripple your product at launch and hope to fix it later.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[narcberry]

Have you tried playing Diablo 2 lately? The only thing you can do on it today is spam the 'n' key to clear the neverending spam. If you play in a game of 8 people, you'll be lucky to have just 1 of them be an actual person, the rest are bots hosting the run, leeching the xp, or spamming the chat log with websites.

If Blizzard were truly committed to their games, they would still be addressing live multiplayer issues. Keeping resources available for a game from not last decade, but the one prior, is not a major commitment to anything.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Chris Burke]

Whereas I will gladly exchange the ability to hack my character for a talent-reset ability and getting rid of having to choose whether I'm playing single or multi-player at character creation time.

*shrug*

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, that has not been my beta experience.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[narcberry]

Also, Blizzard got big on Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. Looking at the latest releases of these games it's clear they are no longer capable of creating the games that made them so popular. Would you like to play Diablo-themed WoW single player? We can do that!

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[SJHillman]

Because the wireless bridges the wired LAN to where the cable comes into the house, which is where the wireless AP is located. So the LAN is wired, except for the link back to the router. It's almost identical to the setup I had to use in college when they yanked all of the wired ports in favor of campus-wide 802.11n coverage about 5 years ago - great when you have a number of machines that don't have wireless cards and don't need a huge amount of bandwidth.

And for those of us who like games, but are still somewhat social, there's no substitution for being around a table. While there are some remote solutions to the talking part and even seeing each other, it's really freaking hard to share a pizza. I tried faxing it, but the machine gave an error. There's also the fact I maintain several machines networked together for people to come play on when they don't own the game at home. It's not always the same people coming over, so no - me owning four copies of a game isn't the same as everyone owning a copy.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[AlamedaStone]

Remember this?

"I am Akara, High Priestess of the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye. I welcome you, traveler, to our camp, but I'm afraid I can offer you but poor shelter within these rickety walls."

She'll reset your stats once per difficulty level now.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[AlamedaStone]

This is what Torchlight II is for.

That's my answer too. Ever since Activision, every move Blizzard makes gets seedier and seedier. I've played every Blizzard game since Blackthorne, but I'm done. If I wanted to pay to win, I'd...

I don't ever want to pay to win.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[AlamedaStone]

So only 8 times playing boring parts rather than 1... awesome.

You mean "only 27 times playing boring parts rather than 3"? I don't understand why people play games like this past the Normal Mode section.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Raenex]

Given that SC2 went out of it's way to make the online connection obtrusive, even though the game was distributed as a whole, it's clear that what they really care about is preventing piracy.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[AlamedaStone]

or possibly 24.

because - maths.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[geminidomino]

If only it would come out already! I'm running out of feet to gnaw off.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Agreed. Blizzard can rot for all I care. Also, as I have learned repeatedly here on /. your sig is right on the money.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[AlamedaStone]

the ideal usage

The ideal usage for a screwdriver is to remove screws, but tool manufacturers don't stand over your shoulder and slap your hand when you want to use one to open a can of paint.

I also can't help but notice there's a spike in ACs in this topic writing long, thoughtful posts supportive of Blizzard in an article that reads like yet another slashvert.

Troubling.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, that's not a good assumption. Look at it this way: Once D3 is out, Blizzard won't want you spending time playing D2.

D2 support becomes a drag on the D3 revenue stream, instead of good advertising for it. It's really hard to defend against that argument in a board room, and to shareholders ("due diligence"), especially if D3 is less than a spectacular success. You shouldn't expect at all that D2 will be supported in 2 or 5 years.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[thesandtiger]

With Blizzard, specifically, I'm willing to take those risks because of their past track record. As I said, I don't buy drm laden stuff except with Blizzard.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Omestes]

Conspiracy theory: They didn't split online and offline communities (ala Diablo 2) to channel more people into the RMT auctions, meaning more profit. People like me (I play games to get away from morons, not to interact with them) would never be tempted to ever interact with the RMT market, since I'd be sandboxed away in my own single player world, and thus the mighty Activision-Blizzard would never see a single red cent from me beyond purchase price. But now I might get an epic drop, have no use for it, and try to sell it for real money, meaning Activision-Blizzard gets their cut.

This, truth be told, isn't a large game killer for me. Annoying, yes; but it isn't going to keep me from playing. Originally, though, I was going to use Torchlight 2 (which was supposed to be out now) as a bridge to keep me busy until Diablo 3. Now Diablo 3 is the bridge to keep me busy until Torchlight 2 and Guild Wars 2. Which is sad, since Blizzard has gotten a metric shit-ton of money from me (every single game since Blackthorne through WotLK, and about 3.5 cumulative years of paying for WoW). I would buy any Blizzard game without reading reviews, just because they never released a game previously that was bad (the only other company that ever was in the same category was Black Isle). But now Diablo 3 is their test, if it fails, or goes to casual (in the pejorative) I'm probably going to give up on them. Looking at the development of Diablo 3 doesn't build faith, they've chopped out far too much, they seemed to renege on their general "when its done" philosophy, and they seem to be trying to get house wives and children to play while alienating their old fans (nothing wrong with the former, as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the latter). The last minute rune changes exemplify all of these suspicions.

Granted this is all opinion based on my experience with the beta, and my opinions might change dramatically with the full release. But right now I'm far more excited about Torchlight 2 (which, from a talent perspective is truly Diablo 3) and Guild Wars 2. Back when Diablo 2, and its expansion, came out it was all I could think about. The expectation was unbearable. and me and several friends would sit around and talk exclusively about them. Diablo 2 (and LoD) were, to me and my ilk, more important than the second coming of Christ. Now... We're all kind of "meh", about it. But then again, we're all much older than we were then, with far more to worry about (and be excited about).

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Lolwut.

Blizzard has millions of simultaneous WoW users on Battlenet. They already scaled Battlenet from its original Diablo/StarCraft matchmaking service to support a huge MMO. When the Cataclysm expansion for WoW launched, millions of users were activating and logging in to play. The service worked without a hitch.

*Now* they're going to have a bandwidth problem? Ha ha, right.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[X0563511]

Aren't SC, Diablo, and WoW all done by different divisions of Blizzard? I suppose this could be coming down from a higher level than those units, but I was under the impression they were all fairly autonomous. (Eg Ivrine, North, and whoever does SC)

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[surd1618]

On a whim, I dug up my old D2 discs, still works, haha, gee good old D2...

40 hours later, surrounded by empty cans of caffeinated beverages, trying with all my wits to get some 14 year old to trade a perf 3 OS DS for my spare SOJ and Mal so I can friggin get on with my hellfire grind...have to go to work in 3 hours...

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Tharkkun]

Have you tried playing Diablo 2 lately? The only thing you can do on it today is spam the 'n' key to clear the neverending spam. If you play in a game of 8 people, you'll be lucky to have just 1 of them be an actual person, the rest are bots hosting the run, leeching the xp, or spamming the chat log with websites.

If Blizzard were truly committed to their games, they would still be addressing live multiplayer issues. Keeping resources available for a game from not last decade, but the one prior, is not a major commitment to anything.

That's also the old battle.net. The game had a lot of client side data which could be manipulated. Fixing it would require a major re-write of something earning 0 profit. The new battle.net and design of D3 prevents a lot of this. Not to mention they have lots of experience in combating bots. That doesn't mean they will all be gone but I'm sure they will actively ban in big groups as before.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[niado]

I guess that makes more sense than an epic entertainment-center-equipped deer stand, but definitely not as exciting. :(

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[zzyzyx]

Bandwidth is generally not an issue. Online games use very little of it, and there's no reason to believe Diablo 3 will be different. What you do need is low latency, and even then it's only really important for FPS type games.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[bfandreas]

D2 is a decade old. It still received a patch 2-3 years ago that added new content. I wasn't really paying attention but I was astonished they still support it.
True, the online multiplayer only restriction is a bummer for retro gaming in 10-20 years. And it will really bite me then. GOG will be an unsustainable business model. Could I play Dungeon Keeper 2 if it had been made today in 2022? Propably not.
That being said, for the time being I'm not too miffed about the online only restriction of D3. bnet play was huge fun. Item swapping, speedruns and so forth was a real blast. In its heyday you didn't have to wait too long for your game to fill up and there were tons of fan webforums where you could organize trade. To me that was what kept the game alive. Due to the trash others didn't want you could try the weirdest character builds and due to your game filling up quickly you could count on the help of others if you were stuck.
The asshole to nice person ration on bnet was about 50:50(gut feeling). So your chances were quite high to meet someone who would help. Until fat leewt dropped, of course.
I have completed Torchlight about 2 times(with a lot of fan made maps). I had 6 characters in their mid 80ies and two in the mid nineties all satisfactory euipped in D2 in 2005. All due to online bnet play.

But that is just me. If you prefer on your own and possibly want to try a character editor to locally test weird things then you are rightfully bummed. But D3 isn't as relevant as D2 was. There are plenty alternatives. Torchlight 2 springs to mind. If ActiBLizz want to play it that way then they may lose a couple of sales. But I still predict they still will be rolling in cash.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[fluffynuts]

Sorry, but your "not true" is, I'm afraid, really not true. I was lucky enough to be picked for the closed beta recently so I can say so from actual experience.

The "online all the time" aspect of the game sucks, granted, but it's not for DRM. It's because Blizzard wanted to allow people to play with their characters that they built up "at home" on the Battle.Net servers -- and you couldn't in Diablo 2 for the obvious reason that hacking a local character was ridiculously easy.

Now, is it a good idea to go this route? I don't think so -- personally, I'm more likely to play single player than online, mainly because the game starts to feel like it's lagging when everything has to go through a central server. The game itself, even in single player, is essentially played at the server and it becomes obvious if you disable your network connection (or saturate your line) during play: the player's character animates attacks which do nothing and monsters seem oblivious to your existence.

I have a 1mbps line and with nothing else on it I still sometimes feel lag :/

Personally, I would rather have the split home/battle.net characters of Diablo 2. That being said, Diablo 3 is very pretty (most especially the environments): dark, grisly, befitting a Diablo title. The music could be more horrifying (I miss the original Diablo 1 music!). The character development in the beta is incredibly limited and linear, so I'm really hoping that changes (though I don't know how much it can). You no longer get to assign your attribute points on level up. I have yet to (in one play-through with a Barbarian and an hour as a Monk) have to make a tough decision between two skills at level up as I've basically been forced to take one by virtue of it being the only option opened to me.

I've pre-ordered and I'm hoping I won't be (too) disappointed. Blizzard has some real talent -- perhaps they can work something out (like batched information transfer for single player with a kind of disconnected mechanism). I really, really hope so.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[dmomo]

No. I was not referring to their bandwidth, but that of 6 people all connection to BNet from the same location.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Totenglocke]

Completely irrelevant. I only played Diablo II online - I also chose to register my copy with them so I can access the downloadable version and not have to use cd's. The issue here is that if you buy this game, they FORCE you to register it with your email so that you can never resell the game (violating the doctrine of first sale) and they FORCE you to play online all of the time. It doesn't matter if I would have voluntarily chosen to do it - it's the fact that they take away my choice that pisses me off.

It's kind of like how your girlfriend would choose to have sex with you, but she gets pissed if you rape her and take away her ability to choose.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Totenglocke]

Oh, I'm very much aware it's the bastards at Activision forcing this - just like the forced the registration with Starcraft 2 (which I didn't buy, but was waiting for the price to drop - now I just won't buy it).

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Rakarra]

Have you tried playing Diablo 2 lately? The only thing you can do on it today is spam the 'n' key to clear the neverending spam.

Sure I have. I just play solo or with friends.
Never EVER enter a public area on Diablo 2.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Coren22]

AC says

Same goes for the Starcraft 2 campaign. And it's even worse than that, you can't even play it when Battlenet is down

16Chapel says

Not true - when Battle.net is down you can still play, you just don't get any awards / medals / unlockable things.

Perhaps you couldn't see AC?

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree entirely. in the UK London is upgrading to 4G and yet a large percentage of the country still struggles to make a phone call on mobile phone (cell phone) and many places have no broadband at all!

I like a lot of the content changes but I think they've fallen pray to the WOW players that spammed the forums saying they wanted the game like wow. cooldown pots? health orbs? really? no mana orbs? melee players will be fine at least i guess.

I'm not cancelling my preorder but i'l expressing my concerns :)

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen. Hate Blizzard, the software-as-service model, whatever, but get proper internet connection/signal. It's for your own good...

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason for this is because of the real money auction house, they have to prevent item dupes. If all the information is handled on their end instead of the clients end, it will keep counterfeit items from being traded for real money.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

The real state of Diablo III is that is has DRM forcing you to be online even to play single player. As a result, my almost two decade long love affair with Blizzard games has come to an end.

DRM..... I dont have any problems with DRM..... and if I did I wouldnt buy the game. Its that simple. If you plan on not buying this game because of DRM, then good for me its one less person sucking up the bandwidth. Also I dont think blizzard cares if you dont like the DRM settings they put in place...... WOW has 9million+ users, Who knows how many users SC3 has.... they dont need any more users on their servers. Most people that complain about the DRM settings have terrible internet..... If your wireless sucks, get a cat 5 cable. If its too long of a run for a cat 5 cable, move your computer. If where you live has slow internet, then move. If fast internet is too expensive, work more hours. Stop complaining, and if you are going to complain then do it on your own time, no one cares if you are going to play Diablo 3 because you have internet issues.

Slashdotted

[monsted]

It seems Slashdot has slashdotted their own video host :)

The real question here is

[chr1st1anSoldier]

Will it blend?

Looks Dated

[Anonymous Coward]

Not bashing or anything, but this really looks like a lot of other games that have been out for a while. I'm sure it will be good, but it seems like Blizzard got with it a little too late. That and the pointless DRM that's really putting me off the game.

Can someone upload the videos to Youtube?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't watch them here because I am to lazy to unblock the advertising.

Or just reply and tell me if that game will still be released with DRM.

OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! no... I would've been hyped over this a few years ago.

DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I might buy this, but only if I can download a crack and play off-line. If that doesn't happen, then Blizzard doesn't get my money.

Diablo two and a half:

[Anonymous Coward]

So I've been playing an isometric arpg called Path of Exile for the last week+. It's still in beta, and the story is fleshing out, but the gameplay itself is really polished, and it has lots of interesting features I won't list, but to name a few:

Diablo 2 is it's role-model.
Skills/spells go into gem sockets similar to FF7's materia.
Passive skills are assigned to a board, similar to FF10.
There is no gold, rather players trade "orbs", which vary in what they do, from turn a normal item into a rare, or change the numerical properties on a magical item, etc., etc. This is also the "crafting" for the game.

Anyways, I'm not affiliated with the company (A 16-man team out of New Zeeland), but am hoping to spread some word of mouth so others can find and play it. Look me up if you have any questions, Harvester is my IGN.

Re:Diablo two and a half:

[Colonel Korn]

So I've been playing an isometric arpg called Path of Exile for the last week+. It's still in beta, and the story is fleshing out, but the gameplay itself is really polished, and it has lots of interesting features I won't list, but to name a few:

Diablo 2 is it's role-model.
Skills/spells go into gem sockets similar to FF7's materia.
Passive skills are assigned to a board, similar to FF10.
There is no gold, rather players trade "orbs", which vary in what they do, from turn a normal item into a rare, or change the numerical properties on a magical item, etc., etc. This is also the "crafting" for the game.

Anyways, I'm not affiliated with the company (A 16-man team out of New Zeeland), but am hoping to spread some word of mouth so others can find and play it. Look me up if you have any questions, Harvester is my IGN.

I played it on the stress test last weekend. I hadn't heard of it before last week and came into it without preconceived notions. I think it might better be labeled Diablo 3.5 than 2.5 - it seems to take the good from 2, discard the bad, and introduce new ideas to a much greater degree than D3. Also, it's supposedly going to be F2P despite the level of polish that looks equivalent to D3's beta.

Re:Diablo two and a half:

[oreiasecaman]

Looks promising but... Windows-only... won't be able to play it :(

Re:Diablo two and a half:

[Fozzyuw]

I've always considered Diablo 2.5 to be Titan Quest. Titan Quest is almost free on Steam during holidays and it's a pretty good ARPG game that's more or less Diablo 2 but with a Green Mythos story instead (Greek Gods, Titans, etc). I always thought it was too bad the company went under.

Meh.

[Sarten-X]

Diablo 2 was great... good enough graphics for its time, with a challenging skill system and, most importantly to me, a fantastic story. Then it ended on a cliffhanger, with one of the Prime Evils still loose. Then the expansion ended on somewhat less of a cliffhanger: "I'm going to destroy this thing, and I have no idea what's going to happen to the world."

I want to play the next installment, I really do... but I probably won't. I've been hearing about it for two years, and the excitement's gone. Sure, it was neat to read about the new classes and see the new baddies. It was fun to go back and play the first two again to remember the story. Now all I hear about is DRM and auctions.

If I wanted artificial restrictions, I'd go lock myself in a dark room for a few hours. If I wanted an auction, I'd go browse eBay. I don't want those, though. I want a visual interactive story, so I'm going to play a video game. Perhaps someday I'll be able to buy D3 off of GOG to find out the end of the story, or perhaps even get a pirated version (ignoring my usual attitude toward those lazy mooching pirates). Maybe I'll break down and buy the retail version, if I get excited again.

My attitude right now is an utterly non-committal "meh." Sorry, Blizzard, but you've lost my attention, and I doubt you'll get it back again.

Re:Meh.

[guido1]

Now all I hear about is DRM and auctions.

If I wanted artificial restrictions, I'd go lock myself in a dark room for a few hours. If I wanted an auction, I'd go browse eBay. I don't want those, though. I want a visual interactive story, so I'm going to play a video game.

Having been in the beta since November or so, all I can tell you is that you're visiting the wrong websites. I've bought 0 items at an auction house, and sold just as many. Maybe this means I won't end up with the top 10% of gear, but that's fine by me.

The story is there, the gameplay is there. Tristram is once again in trouble. Decard Cain is still old. The button mash fast "sweet got a rare" fun is still present.

If you're convinced you won't buy it, or have a moral obligation not to due to the DRM, fine. I found it to be a nice continuation of the series and will be plopping down my $.

Re:Meh.

[twocows]

At least there are Path of Exile and Torchlight 2. I'm still excited, even if it's not about Diablo 3, personally.

Re:Meh.

[skovnymfe]

So what you're saying is you've grown out of playing games. Big whoop, really. There'll be 20 people to replace you.

Re:Meh.

[Drophet]

I'll probably do what I did with Skyrim. Buy a legit copy and never open it... and download the pirate version that allows me to not have to be online to play it.

I am only interested in the single player experience. I was on dial-up through 95% of my time during Diablo 1 and 2, and I have never had the urge to play online with people in those games. The few times I tried was ridiculous... people had crazy obviously illegitimate equipment who constantly offered to give me a "dupe" of their cool shit. Meh...
So I played single player with "Players X 8" enabled to have a good time.

I'll give it a few days and then get the pirate version that has the stupid DRM stripped from it like Skyrim (and Steam requirements). Maybe it'll be available a day early on the torrent sites like Skyrim was! :)

Re:Meh.

[Sarten-X]

With a steady income and a shiny new computer, I've grown into playing games. Heck, I bought Portal 2 within the first hour it was available (which was conveniently 7 hours before I left on a long car trip, where I was conveniently a passenger). I'm just not excited about this one, and don't see Blizzard doing anything to make me excited.

Re:Meh.

[narcberry]

I played D1 as a child, and would probably enjoy D3 at that age. But I played D2 as a competitive older teen, and still come back to it.

Playing with the top 10% of gear is important to me in a game where the only success is defined in your gear. You killed Diablo? Neat, I guess. Bale? Ok, whatever. You have a perfect crown of ages? CAN I SEE IT?!

How much time have you spent oogling or being oogled on D2? Maybe I'm not in the majority, but I think I am.

The value in this system is the lack of constant new items. A Tyrael's Might from 10 years ago is still, today, awesome due to it's tremendous rarity. Now introduce TF2 buy your hats here system and the second you buy Tyrael's Might to be competitive they introduce Tyraels Superbigshoulderedheydoyouplaywowcuzyoushouldarmor.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting the top 10% of gear in D2 didn't require an auction house or spending money. If you were patient and spent some time on trade forums you could usually trade something decent that you had for something decent that someone else had until you'd end up with the best gear for your character. It might take a few months to get everything, but it wasn't terribly difficult if you made smart trades and were able to find a few good items of your own to start with.

It sounds like the end game will be insanely difficult so I think there's going to be a lot of value in continuing to play even after beating the game and reaching the top level. Add in a few of the other mechanics that Blizzard has put into the game, and it sounds as though doing an hour or so of magic find runs might be viable enough to actually allow you to progress.

Re:Meh.

[Rakarra]

Playing with the top 10% of gear is important to me in a game where the only success is defined in your gear. You killed Diablo? Neat, I guess. Bale? Ok, whatever. You have a perfect crown of ages? CAN I SEE IT?!

You didn't get the top 10% of gear in Diablo 2 either.
Unless, that is, you traded on some fairly shady websites for an ingame purchase/swap (for items, gold, or hacked Stones of Jordan). The D3 auction house replaces the black market from D2 where the good gear could be found.

Exciting video!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, I do like a nice long hard...look.

Auction House

[Yvan256]

I hope they don't repeat the same stupid useless feature of World of Warcraft's auction house: stacks.

Why stacks are completely pointless:
- People list dozens if not hundreds of 1-item listings in order to bury others who sell by stacks.
- Sorting by price means you're sorting by stack price, which is pointless. Sorting by price should be based on the price per unit.
- Selling items should never "stack". You have 56 items for sale, that's all there is to it.
- If I want to only buy 8 units and you've got the lowest price per unit, then I buy 8 of those 56 units that you have for sale.
- If people are selling at the same price as you, then items listed earlier have precedence.

Whoever thought using stacks in the auction house was a good idea never actually used it.

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

I like purchasing stacks. Yes its hard to make money selling it, but when your trying to level a profession quickly, you don't want to buy 5000 single items, when you can buy 500 stacks for example. I think they should refine the AH. Purchase by stack or single item and purchase buy single item price. I do agree with you there, but sometimes I want to purchase in bulk and not have to sit 30 minutes clicking items into my bags from the mailbox

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding your "I want to buy 8 of those 56 units" comment. I agree that it should be an option if the seller allows it, but seriously? When I post items in MMO auction houses, I post variable stack sizes with larger stacks at cheaper per unit costs. It's done specifically to provide incentive for a buyer to purchase more of my wares at a cheaper price. It allows me to optimize profits between people who just want one or two pieces, and people who want a lot. It's just like in real life where you purchase things cheaper wholesale/in bulk.

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

You can sell stacks of items, but from a buyers perspective you only see one listing with the current price and the average over the last few days. Set an amount you want to buy and that's pretty much it.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3595343777

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

He never said a thing about having to buy 5000 single items - you click the listing, click buy, enter how many you want. Just like EVE.

Re:Auction House

[niado]

You are pretty much spot-on there. I used to poke around and find lowest PPU for commodity goods and then spam the AH with singles at an up-charge. There were other somewhat dubious AH tricks I learned in WoW that I'm interested to try out in the D3 RMAH.

Re:Auction House

[Whorhay]

Your complaint is more a problem of how you recieve your purchased good than how the market system actually functions.

I just started playing Eve last weekend and so far I really like how the market there is set up. You can sort any which way you want. You can post buy and sell orders. When you buy something it's automatically placed in your storage, at whichever station it was posted from. The fact that the markets are all locality based allows for some real commerce though it isn't necessary in a game like Diablo 3. The only reason that method wouldn't work in many other games like WoW and Diablo 3 is because of the perverse storage limitations. Which, by the way, in a game driven by item collecting makes no sense other than as a way to incite a little more grinding.

Re:Auction House

[thesandtiger]

Use auctionator and those issues go away. It's free and trivial to install and use.

While WoW has integrated many addons into their core UI, they also added the ability to use addons for things where users want to customize their UI even more, so there's really no reason to settle for the stock UI if some element of it doesn't work for you.

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the problem with stacks was the crappy default WOW UI that made it easy for people to scam and bury others. When I still played WOW I used a custom addon for it and the annoyance and trepidation regarding getting boned went away very fast.

Re:Auction House

[UnknowingFool]

It would have a cool idea to select how much you would buy out of a stack. But there are times when you want to buy all 56 of an item. For any crafting profession, people might want to do it all once. Buy a stack, start crafting, get a drink while it finishes, etc.

Re:Auction House

[Yvan256]

So that part of the game is so utterly broken and hopeless that you need an external program to actually fix it? That makes sense to you?

For a company the size of Blizzard, and the insane profits they make, they could afford to fix such a major flaw. Even the auction house in Final Fantasy XI was a bit better than WoW in that single/stack aspect.

Re:Auction House

[Yvan256]

So what? Just enter "56" for the quantity you want to buy. I never said that buying should be limited to one unit at a time, that would be insane.

Re:Auction House

[Yvan256]

Real life is limited by manufacturing costs, shipping and other factors. WoW is only a game.

Re:Auction House

[UnknowingFool]

No but you said they should never stack which implies that you have to purchase them separately.

Re:Auction House

[thesandtiger]

Blizzard added the ability to incorporate addons for people who want to customize UI elements that they want to swap. Addons are free and easily available from a number of places, and can be developed by anyone.

So no, that is the exact opposite of broken to me. It allows me greater choice to modify things to make them how I want them rather than how some designer decrees I must use them.

An extensible and modifiable design that allows everyone to make things just right for their own use is infinitely superior to a set design forcing people to use things in only one way.

It's baffling to me that you seem to have a problem with Blizzard acknowledging that their default UI might not work for everyone and allowing people to mod things to their own goal and would rather see people forced to use one UI instead.

Do you really think all people everywhere would want the exact same things in a UI?

Re:Auction House

[synapse7]

If you install Auctioneer you can sort by price per unit.

Re:Auction House

[drinkypoo]

You should be able to just say you want up to x number of something up to y currency units each and get up to x of them from the lowest bidding, earliest sellers.

Re:Auction House

[Yvan256]

I don't mind add-ons, but if one is REQUIRED to fix a FLAW in the game, the game needs to be fixed, period.

Give me an example where going with stacks at the auction house makes any sense, let alone sorting prices per stacks (which is the price for the stack, not the price per unit).

The fact that they seem to have fixed that in Diablo III only proves my point.

Re:Auction House

[Yvan256]

I said they should not sell as (fixed) stacks, meaning you just tell the auction house how many units you want.

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the complaint of a man who can't fix his own problems.

There are auction addons that sort by per-unit price; these addons are permitted by the ToS. None of them use more than a few MB of memory. Problem solved. //Whoever thought using stacks in the auction house was a good idea never actually used it.//

I buy and sell stacks all the time. //If I want to only buy 8 units and you've got the lowest price per unit, then I buy 8 of those 56 units that you have for sale.//

This is similar to a Dutch auction, and a seller can accomplish this feat by... wait for it... choosing not to use stacks. The seller chooses how/whether he is willing to part with his items; if you don't like his 10-unit stack then buy someone else's items.

Anyway, this reads as a "QQ, EVERYTHING MUST BE MY WAY" rant. Get over yourself.

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens if you only want 8 units but everybody is selling stacks of 20?

Get over yourself.

Re:Auction House

[thesandtiger]

Except it obviously isn't REQUIRED, as millions of people play, use the AH, and don't use add-ons.

You see it as a FLAW (and from al caps, I'm guessing you see it as a huge one) and that's certainly your right, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other people who have different views. My big issue with your post is you seem to think your experience is universal when it just simply isn't.

I don't have to give you a good reason why going with stacks is a good idea since I never made the argument that it is. The argument that I'm making is that going with stacks and a price-per-stack setup is a UI choice Blizzard made and one that, if a player doesn't like, can be changed by using addons. Blizzard designed their game to allow users to make their own choice about how e UI works by providing the ability to customize the UI with addons because they're bright enough to realize that some customers will make different choices.

I am not saying the default UI is perfect and without flaw, but I am saying that Blizzard designed the system to allow the use of addons to let the players have choices in how and whether they want to address the flaw, and because they have a way for players to fix what they may consider flaws (while other people may not see them as flaws) it's not a big deal for some default UI elements to be clunky.

I would much rather have the dev team focusing on making the game more fun rather than focusing on fiddle bits in the UI. Blizzard made what I consider the right choice here - open the game up for a kind of moddability and let the players have a huge range of choices, freeing up developer and designer resources from dicking around with the UI and leaving that to players to tweak.

As I said, I use a lot of addons and I personally find the default UI too be basically functional but really obnoxious in a tin of ways, but I differ from you in that I view it as a choice rather than some kind of horrible thing Blizzard inflicted on me. If there were no ability to write addons yeah, I would be bugged as hell. But there is so I'm not.

One last thing: I agree that the idea of putting up items as singletons instead of stacks would be more flexible, but ere are unintended consequences. Right now, the inefficiencies in using the AH actually serve to limit the amount that people who spend all day abusing the AH can do; making it easier to trade on the AH would also make it a lot easier for AH barons to drive up prices and control markets, making it harder for people who don't sit at the AH all day to use it. In fact, Blizzard even removed the functionality in the auction addons that would allow you to specify how many stacks would get bought and let the addon do it - you now have to click at least once per purchase, which slows othings down just enough to give other people a fitting chance.

Re:Auction House

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need some help getting started in Eve, let me know. CorenJames1 is the account I am on most times.

God-awful advertisements

[Anonymous Coward]

The instant an ad with a FUCKING ALARM CLOCK came on in place of the video I was trying to watch, I just closed the tab. Sorry, Slashdot, but I'll just wait until May.

p90x dvd

[cheapp90xdvdsale]

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said it was "a great victory for democracy in Senegal and in Africa", reports the AFP news agency. "Senegal is a great example for Africa," he added.P90X DVD AU Commission chairman Jean Ping said the peaceful conduct of the presidential elections "proved that Africa, despite its challenges, continues to register significant progress towards democracy and transparent elections".Cheap P90X DVD Earlier, President Nicolas Sarkozy of Senegal's former colonial ruler, France, said the peaceful election was "good news for Africa in general and for Senegal in particular".P90X DVD Sale "Senegal is a major African country and a model of democracy," he said. The election comes just days after a military coup in neighbouring Mali. Senegal remains the only country in West Africa to have never undergone a coup. Mr Wade "phoned his rival Macky Sall at 21:30 GMT [on Sunday] to congratulate him after the first results showed him to be the winner of a presidential run-off," the Senegalese Press Agency said.P90X Workout Schedule Even before Mr Wade's concession, thousands of Sall supporters began celebrating on the streets of Dakar. Maldives defence officials say it is the first time Somali pirates have taken a ship in its waters.Insanity Workout The vessel, the MV Eglantine, was hijacked off the north-western Hoarafush island.

Everyone may disagree, but...

[Higgins_Boson]

...I am really enjoying the beta.

The gameplay feels smooth and polished, the updated graphics are a nice touch and not very over the top. The story is a little dull compared to even the original release of the game, but it's not hard to follow and does not overly bore me. The witch doctor class is all kinds of fun and the random comments made by the characters are sometimes witty and soft chuckle worthy.

As much as I hate Blizzard, I may just end up buying this game anyway.

How can we possibly disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

How can we possibly disagree with your statement "I an really enjoying the beta"??? If you were to say "YOU will really enjoy the Beta", there'd be some wiggle room for the possibility for someone to disagree. But unless we can read your mind and see that you're telling porkies, how on EARTH can anyone disagree with your statement about YOUR enjoyment?

Re:How can we possibly disagree

[Higgins_Boson]

How can we possibly disagree with your statement "I an really enjoying the beta"??? If you were to say "YOU will really enjoy the Beta", there'd be some wiggle room for the possibility for someone to disagree. But unless we can read your mind and see that you're telling porkies, how on EARTH can anyone disagree with your statement about YOUR enjoyment?

I said a bit more than that. Also, I said "I am " really enjoying it, not "I an ." I said things like "gameplay feels smooth" and "updated graphics" are a nice touch. Things with which people CAN disagree with.

Arguing ridiculous bullshit like you are trying to is not your strong suit. Come back later when you are able to close your man-pleaser and type out a full sentence without sounding like a total idiot.

Now float away, little troll. Float away, back under your bridge, where you can give hobos blowjobs just so you can get drunk off of the alcohol content of their semen.

gnu works for "tools"

[zugedneb]

if u see software as a "tool" then gnu says: take a tool from our pool; if u modify it aÃr make a new tool, blease give back, so that we prospere. this works for compilers, codecs, math software, editors, kernels and such. actually it works in all situations where "knowledge" is accumualting. it may not work for the games themselves, but for the tools to make games with, it works.

I'll pass...

[CFBMoo1]

The game seems kinda dumbed down and I really don't want to bother with the restrictions in place for the AH and economy. I'll wait for the YouTube video to see what happens to the prime evils. Also since Windows 8 is around the corner and I'm avoidig that like the plague I don't feel like buying games for Windows like I used to.

i didn't watch the videos

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't watch content that forces you to watch ads first.

And if it doesn't take significant time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you CAN blame Blizzard.

What happened to completing StarCraft 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

It took them nearly as long to get StarCraft 2 out the door and it really was only a part 1 of 3 release. Why can't they finish working on the games that they start on?

Sequel or Prequel?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't Diablo 3, it's either Diablo 4 or a World of Warcraft expansion.

Streaming Diablo 3 with live Q&A

[Kashell]

Hey everyone!

Tonight I am streaming Diablo 3 Beta! I do a little show about Diablo 3 you might find enjoyable. :D

Streaming starts at 6pm PST. I will be taking questions and requests and answering and demoing on stream. :D

http://twitch.tv/DrZealotTV

Thank you Slashdot TV!

[Anonymous Coward]

This video is so impressive! Hype-free, calm, informative, competent, well thought out and well structured, non-judgemental, etc. - the list goes on! All these - qualities unheard of in the modern age internet. A true feast for analytical minds, such as my own. I wish all video-game reporting was like this.

Your work is much appreciated, Slashdot TV. I'll have to keep a closer eye on your future productions.

Video's Messed Up

[Digital Vomit]

I tried playing the embedded video to watch the Diablo 3 Beta video, but when I hit play it started some weird commercial or something for HP instead.

Please fix the video link, mods. Thanks.

STUPID /.

[xuvetyn]

if your videos don't cache, they do me no good (stupid IDSL).