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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.
Blizzard is one of the few companies to patch their older games years later to no longer require the CD's to play.
It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection.
While it's anecdotal for a single company, you can still play Diablo and Diablo 2 on Battle.net, not just on single player. As long as Blizzard exists you'll probably be able to play Diablo 3. It's not perfect, but at least it's not as bad as some companies (EA, Ubi).
Indeed. I will not be playing this one. Even pirated. Torchlight II will get my money, time, and affection. Blizzard can FOAD.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Except under the DMCA cracking the game would still be illegal.
At this time we have no legal recourse to play a game if the DRM servers are taken down. Even in 15 years, they can still come after you for pirating the game if they wanted to.
And to add insult to injury they didn't even have the nice idea of implementing queues like most similar systems do..
Why should anyone ever have to queue to play a single player game?
I personally don't like the required internet connection, but I wouldn't say it's strictly to prevent piracy. I'm sure everyone remembers what a mess dupers and hackers made of Diablo II; having everything server-side is an effort to stop the same thing from happing to D3. And with the real money auction house, such measures really are necessary because in-game items have an actual cash value.
So, yes, I'd prefer it if there was an offline single player mode with modding possible, but I understand why they don't have one and that there are benefits to doing it that way.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Oh look, here's another game I'm not going to buy. I don't care how good your game is, if you pull bullshit DRM stunts like this, it's off my radar now and forever.
Maybe I'll download the pirated version and play that, just out of spite.
No, because then I'd be supporting a company that supports DRM. Instead, I'll just not buy the game at all.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If you haven't realized that U.S. law applies everywhere now, you certainly will when the FBI asks your country to extradite you and they comply.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I'm sure everyone remembers what a mess dupers and hackers made of Diablo II
What could dupers and hackers possibly have to do with single player or LAN play? Dupers and hackers are only a problem on internet matches. The solution to that problem should only apply to internet matches.
Those who would sacrifice essential functionality for temporary security deserve neither.
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'actively maintaining' is an overstatement. Usually Blizzard promises some patch 'soon' and 2years later it is still nowhere in sight. I don't know if WC3 players got their promised last patch ever. In case of SC1 few patches fixing meaningless shit nobody cared about, botched the community antihack and few other useful features for no benefit whatsoever and the community had to fix the shit again instead of waiting for some blizzard intern to change 3 lines of code and get approval for release which could take months.
I'm not trolling but honestly looking for insight
Here's the insight: The server for the US zone are offline for "emergency maintenance." This means people who purchased Diablo III cannot play the game in any way shape or form, including launching a single player campaign.
I will repeat that again - On launch day, nobody in the US can play the game because of the DRM.
If you can't see the problem with that, I don't think you will ever see it.
As someone who doesn't play online, I'm not terribly sympathetic. Why should that be my problem, and why shouldn't I just buy another game if Blizzard insists on making that my problem?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It doesn't get your hour back, and it doesn't get you the game, but - return it. The game doesn't work. Not sure of the exact details of the UK Sale of Goods Act, but seems pretty clear to me. If enough people return the game, it might encourage them to think a little about their strategy next time. Sucking it up won't.
Zapsavings: Simply calculate how much energy efficient bulb