I find it highly entertaining that so many of you people are defending practices which will hurt you in the long run. You are so willing to sacrifice your rights for a few hours of potential enjoyment. You are blind to the issues which are eroding your personal rights and opening you up to a never-ending system of abuse. You deserve whatever you get.
If people want something changed they must speak up and advocate change. Hiding in a corner does not make a difference. Speaking up and defending your rights is what makes the world a better place. And making an amazing game should never be used as a defense for procedures which abuse the customer the way Blizzard is going to do with Diablo 3.
@cheese232323 This has nothing to do with pirating. This has to do with companies introducing policies and procedures which abuse the customer.
I funnly support that developers should make money from their products. But they should be getting it because they are selling good games, not through these abusive policies.
I will not purchase this game due to its abusive customer policies. The always-online play requriement, real-money auction house, and lack of LAN support are game breakers for me. This game needs to fail miserably, because if it does not, we can look forward to a gaming future with ever increasing restrictive, draconian, and anti-consumer business practices.
The used game market is a GOOD thing for game developers. What do you think happens to the money a gamer recieves from selling their new game on the used market? They use that money to buy another new game.
Also having older used games for reduced prices helps improve developer and franchise recognition. It basically gives developers a free form of advertising which can help them sell their New games. For example, if a gamer purchases a game used and enjoys it, then they are more likely to search out more games by that particular developer or franchise in the future.
On top of that there is a very large segment of the population who simply can not pay full price for games. When these people go out and purchase a game from the used market, they are injecting money which would otherwise not exist into the New game market.
By taking these asanine steps to eliminate the used game market, developers are shooting themselves in the foot. They are also alienating their customers through increasingly restrictive requirements and in some cases driving them away entirely. I have practically given up buying games due to measures like this. Years ago I used to stop by the store once a week and purchase one or two new games. These days I mostly just read books on my offtime. I refuse to pay money to a system which abuses its customers like so many developers are starting to do.
Should your internet go down for any reason, you will be unable to play your game. If your connection is slightly unstable you may not be able to play for more than a half hour or so at a time.
Also, some people prefer to play the game single player without any distractions. They want to immerse themselves in the game, when online this is very difficult to accomplish. People will be sending them messeges, or wanting to hang out or chat.
Then there are the problems with the game needlessly suffering from internet 'lag', the delay which occurs when you click something, then have to wait a bit while your click is bounced off the server and back to your client. This is not neccessary in a game like Diablo 3. For a good example of a better way to handle this refer to the functioning of Diablo 1 and 2.
Not every gamer has access to stable, high-speed internet. There are many problems which exist with this setup. What happens for example if the blizzard server goes down? Or when they decide to shut off access to this game permanently? Also there are problems of consumers getting internet lag while playing (what should be) a completely lag-free game experience. I have listed out several valid criticisms here.
Always online DRM does not improve the gaming experience, it also introduces significant problems for the single player experience due to the issues I listed. My logic is quite sound and has valid criticisms. Also, calling someone a troll does not make it so.
Preventing hacking is much easier to accomplish by simply seperating the offline and online character saves. If a player wants to play by him/herself on their own pc, they would have the choice of connecting to the internet to use their 'online' character (stored on the online server). Or playing offline and using the character stored on their personal PC or console. Patches could be handled as they always have been, They are downloaded when you choose to connect. This works fine for every other game on the market and neither is a valid reason for an 'always online' requirement.
preventing hacking is much easier to accomplish by simply seperating the offline and online character saves. If a player wants to play by him/herself on their own pc, they would have the choice of connecting to the internet to use their 'online' character (stored on the online server). Or playing offline and using the character stored on their personal PC or console. Patches could be handled as they always have been, They are downloaded when you choose to connect. This works fine for every other game on the market and neither is a valid reason for an 'always online' requirement.
Reference how Diablo 2 works as a perfect example of how they did it properly.
Gamers should universally boycott Diablo 3. This game is a threat to gamers and gaming. Should diablo 3 become a huge success, then we can look forward to a future where games will require a permanent internet connection in order to play them in any fashion. Everyone who bows to the pressure and purchases this game is encouraging a world where gamers are abused through through ever increasing draconian requirements. I will never buy another blizzard product until they do away with this practice of consumer abuse.
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