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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.
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.
"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..."
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.
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?"
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.
"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?