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Diablo III Released
Almost 12 years after the launch of its predecessor, Diablo III has now been released. The game went live last night with over 8,000 midnight launch parties across the world. 2,000,000 players showed up for the beta test prior to launch, including 300,000 concurrently during an open beta weekend, but even so, the login servers struggled for the first few hours after launch. Diablo III had been in the works for quite some time — another example of Blizzard's notoriously long development cycle — and game director Jay Wilson said it was in "polish mode" for the past two years. "One of our sayings internally is 'polish as you go.' We have a belief that when you put a feature in, you should prototype, but then after you prototype you should do the real thing, and you should polish it to shipping quality." For those of you who are familiar with this type of game, there's an official game guide in which you can browse class skills, items, and other game information. There are also YouTube videos showing how each of the classes work.
Go fuck yourself raw with a giant DRM'd dildo.
"DRM Sucks!!11! Not going to buy"
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+5 Insightful
Really mods? Not seeing anything terribly insightful here...
I don't care too much to the DRM myself, but if it's part of the requirements - then meh, i'll install it. And so will the other 2 million people that ordered this game. Some other possibly relevant details
- non invasive DRM / tied to the client. You're logged in but it doesn't seem like an additional program is running. Integrated better than steam, or origin (which stay active when you exit the game, somewhat annoying)
- Almost always works. I'm not sure how many "9s" I can say that it's constantly up or working, but from experience with SC2, Diablo 2 and other other games, battle.net is almost always up. Not working on launch day? Well I'll cut them some slack on the release day of the product, with 2 million or so people trying to play. The track record at Blizzard is pretty good, and i'm sure that after another 24 hours or so, all issues there will be resolved (if they aren't already). Compare that with Assassin's Creed 2 - didn't they have like 3 consecutive weeks of login / drm issues?
- Single player tied into the multiplayer. I haven't played this game yet, but I'm pretty sure that when you're playing single player, your character information and leveling and whatnot is tied into multiplayer. If that's the case, it's not truly "single player" in the sense that you're constantly progressing more like an MMO, where your data isn't kept on client side.
- Hacks / cheats. Remember the old diablo, when everyone had their "whale armor of the gods +99" and hacks ran rampant? Same for starcraft, and most multiplayer games. If DRM helps reducing hacking (or eliminate it altogether, then bring it on.
I'm not sure why slashdot hates the DRM here so much. There's a very absolutist position stance taken by many... that *all* DRM is inherently evil and they'll never buy any game with DRM. I can perhaps sympathize with those that don't have steady or constant internet connections - maybe if you're living in the country or with 3rd world infrastructure you can't play this game as a result. But if you have a steady internet connection, then quit whining about *all* DRM. Some is bad (Ubisoft), and some is barely noticable (Blizzard), it's not so black & white.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Its not harm. Don't buy the game, but DO shut the fuck up like it's some crime against humanity.
"Well, that's you. I for one am capable of caring about multiple things at once."
But you do lack any ability to scale them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on