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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.
But should we really be celebrating one of the first major single-player games to *require* that you have an internet connection to even play in solo mode? You can still pop in your ancient copies of earlier Diablos and play. Will the same be true 10 or 15 years from now when the Diablo 3 servers no longer work, or if you should lose your internet connection for some reason (or if Blizzard ever goes belly-up)?
I know they want to fight piracy and all that. But once again, I think the people who will pay the price are the honest gamers who are going to be forced into piracy some day just to play the game they actually paid for. You try to do the right thing and end up having to make a choice between either not playing the game at all or becoming a criminal.
Now maybe they'll release a patch some day that will override this, or maybe they won't. But you can bet that the one group that will *definitely* have a patch are the pirates.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
NewEgg has failed me for the first time in a decade. I pre-ordered a copy ($10 off) but they didn't bother shipping it until today (UPS 3 day). Considering D3 has an interesting DRM that allows you to install it before the launch date and just prevents you from playing it until then, it would have made more sense to me if NewEgg shipped them late last week so they would arrive today or yesterday. One egg off for poor planning.
I can't believe it took over 14 (or 13,12,11 depending on time zone) hours from the launch of Diablo III for an article to get on /. I guess all the gamers were busy trying to log in?
sudo make me a sandwich
Requires an internet connection even for single player.
Not paying for that. I'll go find some indie developer to give my money to instead.
I believe he is referring to bnetd. I can see how a younger person might not have known about that.
"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."
No fair that Poland got it two years early >_>
So they told us that having to connect to their servers to play in single player mode wouldn't be a problem, that we should trust them.
And now the EU login server is melting under the pounding of thousands of angry players trying to play solo.
And to add insult to injury they didn't even have the nice idea of implementing queues like most similar systems do..
Add this to the borked-beta weekend and I think they have more polishing to do.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Check out torchlight 2, It looks really good and will allow multi-player without all the hassle.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The real evil here, where players will suffer even if they don't mind jumping through the hoops, is the limit of 10 characters per game copy, even if they are only used for single player. That pisses me off. I've been told you don't "need" more than that many, because there are only five classes times two sexes, and apparently no exclusive character choices such that you would need alts for game-mechanics reasons. But you're SOL if you want to enjoy the game experience from level 1 forward and don't want to delete any of your old characters.
But... I went and picked up my collector's edition this morning anyway. I already play all-online games such as World of Warcraft with similar limitations. I can reluctantly live with with paying for Diablo III as long as I think of it that way: as a limited Internet service and not a game you can really, you know, have. It would be a better product if it were the latter, but oh well. Hopefully it will at least be fun.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
at least simcity 2013 will only need it to start the game.
Now why can't it be once a week?
Diablo II had an interesting storyline, although the expansion was more of the last chapter of a book rather than an extension to the story. After you know the story, it's still fun to play as different characters and enjoy the challenge. Can you make a Barbarian that only throws? What about a melee Sorceress? It's not for everyone, but if you can master a unique style rather than grinding out the same old "winning" combinations as anyone else, it's quite fun.
The fun of the action-RPG genre comes from a number of sources. First is crafting a character through a selection of choices. This is analogous to having a backpack that can only hold so many items and a large selection of tools to bring along. In a backpacking situation this would be something like: Perhaps you want a very sturdy shovel so that you can dig a very good fire pit and latrine, but then you don't have room for a comfortable chair.
The trade-offs involved make it entertaining to find a character loadout that fits your play style and preferences while also being "viable".
Beyond character selection there is skill in the "clicking and walking" where you're trying to keep track of what spells and abilities are activated at any given time and in what manner you approach enemies to ensure you efficiently dispatch them. Or, if you prefer, just running into combat and wading through it all with reckless abandon.
Thirdly, there's usually an aspect of item collection where you find new items that have different abilities attached and you try to find the synergy between different items and your character's strengths and weaknesses.
Finally there is usually a story associated with the game and, in the really good games, your actions modify the story and show some effect upon the game world.
Personally, I'm much more a fan of character creation and item discovery than the actual hack-and-slash or story parts, but it's all pretty fun for me.
Only the people with problems are here to post their complaints. Anyone who it's working fine for is too busy playing/enjoying it.
Except the bastards who have to work, like me, that is.
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.
Not even 12 hours after launch Blizzard is taking down US zone servers down for 3hr maintenance. Task: Calculate uptime so far.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5051765603?page=1
11:30 a.m. PDT- We are in the process of performing an emergency maintenance for Diablo III servers in the Americas to resolve several issues that are currently impacting the game. This maintenance may cause some interruption in communication, ability to log in, use of in-game features, and disconnections. We anticipate all servers will be available for play at approximately 1:30 p.m. PDT. We will provide further updates as necessary. Thank you for your patience.
10: 22 a.m. PDT- We are in the process of performing an emergency maintenance for all North American Diablo III servers to resolve several issues that are currently impacting the game. This maintenance may cause some interruption in communication, ability to log in, use of in-game features, and disconnections. We anticipate all servers will be available for play in approximately 1 hour.
Thank you for your patience.
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.
Just to elaborate on this for those unfamiliar with Blizzard's older games. It is *not* that they simply put out a patch to remove the CD requirement.
The older starcraft and diablo games have been actively supported for over 10 years. Periodic updates for bug fixes, exploit fixes, new features, new support for communities and tournament organizations (thinking about some starcraft 1 updates), etc.
Blizzard has a team dedicated to actively maintaining and enhancing their "old" games. It is *not* an afterthought for the original dev team if and when they have time like at other companies.
Lack luster story and quests, progression is on rails, no character customization and the itemization is dull. Bit of a let down overall. The defense is that the game doesn't REALLY start till nightmare difficulty, but that feels like a cop out to me.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Personally, I'm much more a fan of character creation and item discovery than the actual hack-and-slash or story parts, but it's all pretty fun for me.
Then I've got a game for you, and it's 100% less expensive than Diablo III.
Behold: http://www.nethack.org/
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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.
So far, i have bought a game that i cannot seem to play. It did take hours last night to get logged in, i played for a bit but it was bed time. Got some time today, but now the servers are down for patching....
So i paid 60.00 for a game i cant even play single player without the OK from blizzard.
So here is the thing, diablo 2 was a great game, the animations where awesome, the story was compelling and the game play was fun. I am not so sure you get any of these from 3.The animations are more drawings then anything else, the skills are all locked so you cant switch them easy; also, once again, here we are starting in tristan....its like imagination went out the window.
Its not to say its fun, the hour i got to play was fun...not diablo 2 fun, but fun; I could be very wrong about this game, act 2 might bring in some cool stuff....but with all the log in problems and having big brother blizzard controlling when i play a 60.00 game, i honestly suggest people dont buy it, Simply to stand up for what they are doing. If i would of realized that single player was going to make me log in, i wouldn't of ever bought this game.
Should of done my research, o well...hope nobody else falls in this trap.
You must also like losing characters, items and hosted environments and getting locked out of the game thanks to bugs and connection troubles and game balance changing patches you can't reject.
That's what I was sorely missing from my single player games, yep.
P.S.: With a bit of symlinking, I just make most of my games save on Dropbox. It's free, it retains older versions if corruption happens and it leaves me offline copy, which gives ability to easily move to another cloud storage service. No need for Blizzard lock-in.
Ok, I'll bite on this and admit that you have at least the bones of a reasonable argument there, and that a couple of your points are valid. However, I don't believe that taken as a whole, they amount to an argument against Diablo 3 needing an offline mode.
Over on the consoles, games that actually require online connectivity to play are few and far between. There are certainly games that lose a good bit of functionality if there's no internet connection present; Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 and Your Shape 2012 on the 360/Kinect stand out as good examples. But the core gameplay is at least accessible offline. There are a couple of exceptions - mainly a few Capcom downloadable games on the PS3. Don't buy them. Certainly not after last summer's PSN outage made them unplayable for months.
Similarly, all of the iPad games that I have been willing to pay money for are playable offline. There are others that don't meet that criterion - and I don't buy them. Facebook gaming? Feels like a step back to me, not progress.
I don't think I've ever argued that all PC games must be playable offline. I excluded MMOs in my earlier post because the very nature of the game requires an always online connection. I suppose I could have excluded multiplayer-online FPSes as well, as they fall into the same category, but I don't buy those anyway (not for ethical reasons, but rather because deathmatch as a game-mode hasn't really appealed to me for 7 or 8 years now). In fact, even with those, I'd expect an offline bots-mode, as it's fairly trivial to implement.
But if a game is to require an always-on connection, then it needs to have features which are both essential to the gameplay and of benefit to the player. And Diablo 3 fails on both counts here. The big thing in Diablo 3 is the auction house - which has in-game currency and real-cash variants. The in-game currency auction house is of some benefit to the average player, but nothing I've seen thus far suggests it's even close to being essential for play. The real-money auction house is frankly only likely to be of benefit to a small hardcore and to Blizzard's coffers.
And I'd dispute that Diablo 2 was "miserable" offline. I moved house last month and spent about 5 days without a home internet connection while I waited for my ISP to hook my cable up. I used some of that time (when I wasn't unpacking boxes) to replay Diablo 2, to remind myself of the plot. The game hasn't aged all that well in some respects, but it was far from miserable. Certainly, it was more enjoyable than the 20 minutes I have just now spent copy-pasting my password over and over as I tried to login to Diablo 3's servers so I could play a singleplayer game.
Then move, or start complaining to the people that actually matter.
It's not like any of us can fix it for you.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Stop whining about needing an internet connection.
I'd say it's a valid criticism.
You see, different people value different things. Some people value being free from DRM, and others do not. The fact that you don't agree with their criticism doesn't make them wrong.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The important thing about the D3 launch is this:
People who bought the game online and pre-downloaded it with the advertising from Blizzard that they should (paraphrased) "download it early so you can play the minute it goes live," still cannot play the game.
Except even at it's best it doesn't come close to being an MMO. Games are limited to a player cap of what, 4? That's a Multi-player Online, although not massive in anyway except price and hype.
I had beta access since some time in November. I played it on and off a good bit. I frankly prefered the older skill swapping system although the skill system as a whole leaves a lot to be desired. One of my complaints about Torchlight was that the skills were so limited and 66% of the skill trees were identical between character classes. And now Diablo 3 has come along and taken a page from their book and gone with a dumbed down skill system.
And they completely nuked the idea of having individualized characters. With skill swaping the way it is everyone is practically speaking identical. That would be great if this were a Team Fortress style game, but it's in the Diablo franchise, character building was a large part of the fun.
plenty of people were bitching about the drm because it prevented them completely from playing.... wtf do you do with a steady internet connection except bitch on forums if the login servers aren't working?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I think something that has been missed by posters so far on the DRM issue is the fact that, if/when my internet connection fails, often the first thing I do is go looking for single player games I have installed on the computer.
If you can't do that, it rather defeats the point of single player mode, at least to me. If the Internet connection is up I'm generally doing more productive things than playing games nowadays.
Fair enough - single player seems like it shouldn't be required. But from what I read about it, your single player character is tied into your account (same char when switching between multi player and single player). Sort of like an MMO - maybe done for hacking / cheat prevention - if all your character data is saved online on Blizzard's servers, then it makes hacking your character a lot harder, or near impossible.
I'm not saying the DRM isn't annoying for single player, but a 10-second check from my stable internet connection before playing a marathon session isn't going to make me stop purchasing the game, and neither is a few hours of downtime on launch day. But that's the alarmist reaction I'm seeing in "insightful" comments peppered on this thread.
Yes, it sucks if you have little or no internet, and I sympathize with you then. But I'd willing to bet 95%+ of the posters here have DSL / cable / better and just like to bitch about any and all DRM
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
It's May 15th and I'm going to rant, and you know why: Diablo.
I have a love/hate relationship with Blizzard. I love Diablo, but I absolutely LOATHE Blizzard as a developer.
First: Go here and page down to the Diablo section: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/legacy/
Do you see the PSone version listed? No. And you won't see the PSone version of Warcraft II listed either! It's not as if those games got bad ratings either, both got ABOVE average ratings at the time. It's like Blizzard doesn't want to admit one of their premier franchises had a console release at all.
And for those who don't know, this is the PSone version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv5dQwCFWoQ
It actually plays better (and faster) with direct movement control. And it's the ONLY version to have French language support, not even the PC version has that. (also German and Swedish even in the US version)
Then they did Diablo II...which I've never played because it never got ported. This is D2 as it's called:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea8Ma7qqQaQ
Like D1, it was isometric 2D and since it came out in 2000 the PS2 should have been able to handle a port easy. But Blizzard never did it, and I think the following is the reason why:
2001's, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srBRB18mHEs
Notice how in the review, Diablo is mentioned? BGDA is a Diablo clone, and a very good one, with a true 3D engine with a rotatable camera. It was a VERY popular game. The company that made it, Snowblind, licensed the engine out and there were more similar games made a LOT more. Good times, good times. Blizzard simply couldn't release D2 on consoles with Snowblind having trumped them with their engine.
And as always Blizzard said, "Oh were not doing Diablo III yet, it''l be ready when it's ready"
And my thoughts were, "yeah, if you were still had theconsole developer get-up-and-go like in the old days D3 would have been out in 2002! Because the sequel comes out in 2 years or less or heads will roll. Lazy Bums."
It didn't come out in 2003, or 2004, or 2005, or 2006, etc etc. Really what were they doing? It's not like a developer can't develop an MMO AND single player games at the same time......Square-Enix did....twice.
So eventually D3 was announced in development, and eventually video was released in 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NR6XNYs8f4
When I was that video my first thought: "Did Blizzard buy Snowblind's engine, because it looks EXACTLY like a snowblind engine game on the PS2."
in 2010 they posted job listings for people with console experience for a Diablo-related concept. So I expected the game to be cross platform from the start But then Blizzard executives said things that implied that a console release wasn't certain, very very stupid things
One was reported to say that D3's gameplay "might" work on consoles. Might? It's rather funny that he said, "Might" Since
the original Diablo game was released for the PSone... in 1998. Doesn't he remember?
He also said that the controls might be an issue. Well now, considering D1 was released for the pre-dual shock PSone
I don't think that's a problem at all. Heck, the modern consoles have USB ports so a keyboard+ mouse control
option could be thrown in alongside a traditional controller one. In fact, having played both the PC and PSone versions of
Diablo, I can say that the control pad suits the game better because it's less stressful on the hands. I can play the PSone
version for far far longer without crippling hand fatigue/pain.
In an interview Alex Mayberry is quoted as saying: "We want to give console players the Diab
... who just didn't really like the game?
Maybe I'm just older and my tastes have changed, maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but for whatever reason I didn't really like Diablo 3.
I played in the Beta for a few weeks, on and off - it never really hooked me. It was prettier than Diablo 2, but it didn't seem graphically more impressive than WoW. The colors were wrong, too bright and bold - big departure from D1 and D2. The gameplay was... kinda boring and repetitive. I didn't really care why I was going to click these things to death, and even the act of clicking them to death got very tiresome very quickly.
The class system was stagnant and unfeatured, linear progression unlocks are dull - I did hear about using runes to change talents/skills, maybe that's where the spice is but I saw none of that. The enemies were very standard fare with zero challenge and no real hooks to keep me playing. Again, maybe that changed with the full release, but I just don't feel the need to pay $60 to find out.
Maybe I've been MMOing too much but I've come to expect a little more thought required and challenge from my games. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Either way I Loved Diablo 1 and 2, but this one just didn't have the magic juice in it for me.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
"I'm not sure why slashdot hates the DRM here so much."
Because it's people like you who allow corporations to strip us of our rights to own the products we buy by blinding buying their bullshit. Most older slashdotters remember when you owned the games you bought and could play them without the hassle of the nanny corporation to look over your shouldre 'authenticating' your copy every time you want to play a game YOU PAID FOR. If you're paying you deserve to own it, this idea that when you pay for a product it is 'never yours' and you should just bow down for a bunch of greedy corporations who don't give a fuck about you is just fucking DISTURBING.
Most intelligent people on slashdot don't like the way gaming is going. We all grew up during era's where we owned the games we bought (effectively) both console and PC. Even console games have been getting worse with 'already on disc dlc' and 'online passes' and other nonsense. The game industry is corrupt and out of control and it's people like you that tick us off.
As time as gone on DRM has gotten more intrusive and restrictive. Do you think it's just going to stop?
Dude, the N64 version of StarCraft was fucking awful - and I've played it. Controls and horrible and hard to use, the interface was terrible, and the game was laggy as shit.
And health orbs? Really? You're claiming that that's from Marvel Ultimate Alliance when games from the bloody 80's had that (on PC no less, not console)?Sounds like the lazy elitist might be you.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I intend to play Diablo 3 on Blizzard servers with friends, never single player "offline". Therefore, the DRM has no negative impact for me. If you were hoping to play it on your own, offline, sure the DRM means the game isn't for you, but that doesn't make you somehow more intelligent, your preferences are just different. If we were talking about a game that has no online/community gameplay (so far as I know Assassin's Creed meets that description), then I am 100% with you, as in that case the DRM is certainly a problem. I would certainly like to see Blizzard allow offline single player (to accomodate those who want to play that way), but that doesn't bother me as much as people like you telling me I'm an idiot for buying a game for reasons that don't affect me.
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