Diablo 3 requires always-on Internet
Like Starcraft 2 before it, Diablo 3 will require a constant connection to the internet to play.
Diablo 3 requires a constant connection to the internet to be played. Get disconnected, and the game will drop back to the title screen and remain unplayable until it can connect again. So don't plan to take Diablo III with you on long flights or anywhere else you won't have access to the Net. The move doesn't come as much surprise as developer Blizzard Entertainment took the same approach with Starcraft 2. Nevertheless, for a game many people play solo, and potentially on their laptops in all manner of on-the-go situations, Diablo 3's connection requirement poses some potentially frustrating limitations.
Blizzard's Rob Pardo explained that Diablo 3 requires a constant connection because all characters are stored on Blizzard's Battle.net servers. This setup allows Blizzard to authenticate all characters and items, adding of protection against player fraud and duplication of items. This latter point becomes particularly important with the (just announced) advent of real money auctions for items in Diablo III.
Pardo went into some additional details about the Battle.net improvements planned for Diablo 3. Finding friends and getting together with them to play received the most attention. Diablo 3 incorporates cross game chat, allowing players to talk with their friends playing Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft. It also ushers in a new persistent party system for keeping groups together.
It will be easy to hop into games with your friends using a quick join function, and Diablo 3 supports dynamic co-op, allowing people to come and go. To help with matching players up compatible partners, Diablo III has a new banner system. The banners will change to reflect a player's accomplishments. So before jumping in to join someone you'll know what you're getting in to. They also serve the handy function of teleporting anyone who joins a game in progress directly to the banner holder. No longer will you have to immediately ask for a town portal.
Many of these new Battle.Net features will be available during the beta test which is expected to begin soon. For more on the what to expect when it arrives, see our Diablo III hands-on preview.
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replyGarnett Lee posted a new article, Diablo 3 requires always-on Internet.
Like Starcraft 2 before it, Diablo 3 will require a constant connection to the internet to play.-
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I know someone who played the SC2 campaign "offline". :(
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That's gonna be awfully hard without server code.
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Fuck-em. That's the last I care about Blizzard. Starcraft 2 pissed me off, but I was thinking maybe it was a one-time thing, but this? Really?
This is no better than Ubisoft. Actually, with the drop back to menu on disconnect, this is Ubisoft at their worst. And I had really been looking forward to playing Diablo 3 with friends. This is a no-buy for me, just like Starcraft 2. -
Wow, this went from my must buy list, to my "maybe buy" list, to my "you'd have to pay me a monthly fee to play this" list in one day. Bravo Kodick.
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I'm already backlogged by 3 games, and plan on buying ~5 games by the end of the year, including Skyrim, X: Rebirth, Torchlight 2, Guild Wars 2, Tropico 4, etc., so Diablo 3 won't be missed all that much amid all these juggernauts :) Kind of like how I decided against Starcraft 2, and I don't miss that at all.
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GEARS OF DIABLO
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You honestly think they'll be selling it for ONLY $50?
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joke's on you blizzard games are $60
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This must be a "Kotick moment", the more infamous version of a "Kodak moment"
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So basically the same limitations for playing WoW. 99% of the time, that's not a problem. If they had a non-server-saved game option, that would be nice for those of us who just want to play some D3 on a plane trip or whatever.
And yes, this is pretty grubby stuff, but realistically I don't see it affecting me much.-
It's also the same limitation as StarCraft 2.
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Except, you can actually play SC2 offline.
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Always being connected doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. I under stand their reasons for it. I just wish there were an "invisible" option or a sign in/out of friends feature.
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No problem unless you're bandwidth capped. This is a stupid move IMO. Certainly makes me stop what was once a no-brainer decision.
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Don't forget if their servers shit the bed, you can't play.
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Unless you've brought your laptop somewhere and don't have wifi or 3G/4G available... You're fucked then.
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Diablo 3 for free with every purchase of 23andme.com's service.
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Whatever, i'm still gonna play it and get 50,000 on it. Like i did with Double Dragon.
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I think PC gamers need to get used to this because it's the DRM scheme that makes most sense. Consoles have proprietary hardware that are a pain for casual gamers to bypass. The PC doesn't have that and the level of piracy is much higher because of it.
Sure it's a shame for the few people who happen to not have an always on connection, but frankly this is getting to be the rare exception. Even public parks and McDonalds have wifi nowadays...-
does anyone in this thread not have an always-on connection?
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Not unless I time warped to 1995
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It's more of a problem for bandwidth-capped areas more than anything. They should have the ability to play the game they purchase, instead of having to wait for their cap to reset...and having to forgo other internet schenanigoonery.
That said, I currently have unlimited, and therefore this doesn't affect me (if I don't have the internet on, then I can't be playing on the internet, which is where I want to play, because I played enough Torchlight thank you very much).-
don't games typically use extremely little bandwidth?
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They should - but it's honestly the over reason anyone should be remotely upset as to post on an internet forum about it.
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i'd like to hear from them. not because i distrust your findings, but because it kind of blows my mind
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I haven't bought any of Ubisoft's AC games because of the DRM. I had no intention of doing any multiplayer in those. As much as I enjoy Diablo-style gameplay, always-on DRM is a breaking point - I will not buy any game that requires it, no matter what. Most DRM is utterly worthless against pirates and I'm kind of surprised to find Blizzard buying into it as much as they are.
I really enjoyed the gameplay and storyline in both Diablo games up until now, and played them over and over in single player before I even gave any thought to multiplayer. To me, the multiplayer is a secondary selling point. Fun, sure, but I have other games that are a more enjoyable MP experience.
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Bitching about it on an internet forum is the #1 way to find people from a diverse cross-section of life in the US/Canada/Europe/Australia who may agree with you, and an excellent way to stir discussion so you can learn new viewpoints, even some that conflict with your own.
Armed with these fellow malcontents, their arguments, and their knowledge and experiences that they have shared, they can eventually choose to organize and make what was initially just one person bitching on an internet forum into a population of gamers who would like their sincerely held opinions on PC gaming to be heard by the people that purchase PC games.
Of course, if the real world were made to walker270's liking, then I imagine that purchasers would be prohibited from contacting car manufacturers and sellers to provide them with input about how they would like a car that goes faster than 35 mph and has airbags and seatbelts and a windshield. MADD wouldn't exist, and an audion tube would be installed in your car by the maker that would shut off if it stopped receiving a radio signal from the manufacturer. This ensures that your car can be repossessed if it's found that you drove while not receiving the signal.
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Good as in 5-10%? And those single player people can still play the single player. You would have to A) want to play single player and B) not have a reliable connection in order to even be effected by this on any kind of regular basis. That doesn't seem like it would be a good portion of people who have a modern gaming computer.
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DSL and Cable connections had really taken off by 1997, I'd be willing to bet that most people who were the PC gaming type had better than dial up in 2011.
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My dsl drops every 12 hours (unless I pay extra for a static IP; currently dynamic and paying $90/m for 10mbit down / 1mbit up) and is overall unreliable during the time it's up; frequent packet loss, high latency etc. I live near Zion Park in UT. So I basically steer clear of Ubisoft games and others like it that require "always on". Plenty of other action hack n slash games that I can get my fix from however, so i'm not concerned one bit.
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+1. When I am on the road, Laptop gaming is what I use to pass the time at night. This definitely kills the purchase for me. Fingers crossed for a more challenging Torchlight II...
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My internet has been fucked up for the last month, and as a result I've been playing more SP oriented games. I've had the cable guy out twice to my house, and both (different people) had no fucking clue.
I'm pretty sure that since it's during peak hours, it's probably not going to be fixed.
So yes, my connection isn't always-on =( -
I don't if I'm deployed.
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Cap locks are too cool for school, dawg.
(bandwidth-capped areas deserve more)
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Meh at most 2-3 days for a pirate crack to come out that will disable this allowing off line play.
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yeah, cause there's plenty of sc2 servers kicking around. maybe give it a year or 2.
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My connection is solid. I'm never close to my cap each month. I only play at home in my office. Blizzard will get my money for Diablo 3.
I feel for those of you out there that are being slighted somehow by this approach from Blizzard. Make sure to drop your comments on the official forums as well. If this is something you dislike, stand your ground and DON'T BUY THIS GAME. Money is the only thing that is proven to get through to most devs and publishers.
I understand the lack of interest from those of you that don't see these issues as a problem, but don't dismiss the concerns as simple game rage. If you had something occur that potentially restricted you from doing/playing what you enjoyed, you would want to be heard as well.-
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the thing is when I look at this change I see it as a positive for the hardcore people who like to play online. The D2 economy was horribly broken and making people always online inspires hope that it'll be more like WoW (ie pretty much dupe/hack free). If it was only a matter of this acting as DRM that'd be different and I'd understand the complaints a bit more, but this presumed feature (a secure economy) is one of the biggest things I wanted fixed in D2 along with an Auction House to eliminate ever needing to enter the cesspool that was trade channels.
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Pretty much my thoughts on the matter.
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they did it specifically to make you buy 3 copies of the game abrasion, they knew they could get an extra $100 out of you
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he wants to qualify for beta's by having 6 accounts. So blizzard will just make him buy 3 accounts so he can play with Aussies/Americunts/euros
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he complained relentlessly about how they did it in SC2 to make people buy multiple copies to play in different regions as if more than 1000 people were actually going to do that
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Gotta love having to buy two copies. One that only works in Taiwan, and one that I can play with my friends in the states.
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It makes the game much better for those of us who legitimately bought it and will be playing online
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Well I passed on SC2 because of this type of thing and now I'll be passing on D3 as well.
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SC2 has a "guest" mode that you can still play around with the game when Internet is gone. Do some vs. comps or such.
Will D3 not even have that? If it's absolutely Internet mandatory or no game play at all - Will not buy. Skipped plenty of games because of this kind of BS. No problem adding another to the pile. -
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Who was that other dude on here that said he'd never buy SC2 until they fixed the cross country multiplayer issues?
I remember he ended up trying to cheat his way through single player by using a glitch in the guest pass thing.. and ended up having someone "buy" him the game so he could play multiplayer. I thought it was hilarious!
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http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27387874231&sid=3000
Scroll down to the first blue post and read the last sentence. Now you can all quit your bitching (lol yeah right).-
That post is almost a year old and is clearly no longer true.
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Hey, I might be wrong, but this isn't 10 years ago, and a constant internet connection shouldn't be a big issue. Not even for people with a bandwidth cap. I can't see it requiring much bandwidth at all.
And in my opinion, the benefits here outweigh the disadvantage of not being able to play the game on a computer not connected to the internet.-
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"Hey, I might be wrong, but this isn't 10 years ago, and a constant internet connection shouldn't be a big issue."
My connection goes offline up to several times a day. Never mind what could happen at THEIR end.
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I don't care about the internet connection, I played D2 as if realms were the only option. I don't care about the auction house thing either, if I want to drop a dollar on something rather than grinding for hours to find an equivalent drop, I may do exactly that... or I might not.
I just want this game NOW -
Trying to submit my system info for their little beta begging pool and it can't even connect. I've opened all the ports I saw for my game (Warcraft 3) and some of the ports I saw that the other games had in common. If this is the way Battle.net is, guess I'm not going to be playing Diablo 3 either
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Well, if you are going to introduce an auction house you obviously have to make beeing online while playing a must. Because if not, cloning and editing of items will ruin it completely.
And it will probably have an offline mode just like in starcraft 2 and... well, just like Diablo 2 does xD. -
I really hate to post complaints but this fucking irks me. Of ALL my PC games, the Diablo series, especially D2 I've played on the go where I have no internet. I've played on many flights and in hotels/lodgings with no internet or they want a too much for one nights connection. Sure this wouldn't effect me all the time but the fact that I don't have a choice anymore just makes me mad.
Also I dislike the fact that you can't have a hard drive copy of your characters. I understand the reasoning but I never hacked I enjoy having back-ups of so many THOUSANDS of hours of game play. With Blizz/Activision in control they can also pull EA bull shit or characters can be lost one way or another. Also they better not have the "character has to be played every 30-60 days or it will be deleted" bull shit. I still randomly go back and play my characters all this years later. It's fun to look at all the neat stuff I've collected. -
I honestly think this is a good thing. I prefer all my stuff being stored on Battle.net, works for SC2, works for WoW, and those games I've had ZERO probs with.
Sounds good.-
Also it's 2011 for God's sake, which self respecting gamer doesn't have a persistent internet connection? Also the bandwidh cap is moot, if you have a bandwidth cap then you are NOT a savvy consumer and clearly haven't tried hard enough when looking for an ISP.
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For one those of us who deploy don't.
There's been several games that I haven't purchased because of things such as this, if I can't play them I'm not going to pay for them. In my opinion this actually encourages piracy because if I really want this game and I know I can't play it due to issues such as a constant connection then I'm just going to get a pirated copy. Not only that but because of the inconvenience of making me do such things I'd hand out the pirated copy like candy to everyone.-
Erm...not really. You could just NOT pirate it. It doesn't encourage or discourage piracy, if you're prone to pirating games then you always will.
Also it's hard that it's a n inconvenience on you, but for 90% of gamers it's fine, I game at home, at my PC, so do most gamers.
If you have a job that prevents that then maybe you should just take up a diff hobby while you're away.
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People who travel a lot? Be that playing in hotels while on business trips or people who play games on the go, I for one have played a bunch of games on trains while travelling, 2 hour train journeys tend not to have free internet and are pretty long.
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Sadly that's just tough, an occupational hazard...game dev's can't be expected to bend over backwards for your train ride. Get a good book or an old school game like Civ for the long rides.
Also most hotels, etc have free Wi-Fi these days anyway.-
Diablo to me is a single player game, always has been, why would I need to be online to play it. Sure cloud saves are nice, but not really needed. I can (and have played torchlight, D1, and other games like this on journeys, while offline, but I can't play D3?
Also Bending over backwards?! Fuck off. They've been doing it a certain way for decades and they can't even have an offline mode for a certain customer. How about a board game I can only play on a circular table, a book I can only read on a sofa, a TV program I can only watch on a CRT.-
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You miss the point, I was merely offering an alternative.
Basically the majority of people who play the game are gonna be playing at home, on a desktop PC, with a persistent connection. I'm not saying they shouldn't implement offline play, but they are pushing Battle.net and it's features and actually they ARE pretty cool.
On SC2 I like having my achievments tracked and my matches recorded and my friendslist to easily get games going etc etc, if Diablo 3 brings me the same with BNet then I'm happy. A shit-ton of people also played DIablo 2 co-op (not me, was before my time, only played singleplayer), and it seems Diablo 3 is gonna be best enjoyed co-op so it makes sense to have a persistent connection that can track your characters.
I'd be pissed off too if I had connection issues/long commutes, all I was saying is that it won't affect me and I'm actually happy its constant online. Helps stop hackers and cheaters and wankers, etc etc.
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That's harsh to be sure, but it would be the same if you were playing SC2 or WoW or any other MMO. I get where you guys are coming from but for me it just isn't a big deal and I actually prefer it in this case due to Battle.net.
It's a great platform and it will no doubt smoothly let me manage my toons and play with my friends from my other Blizzard games.
I must be very lucky because since 1997 I think my ISP has failed me once, and that was AOL in the early years of the last decade. A lot of people have connection issues due to inferior knowledge/bad PC setup, not saying that's always the case but I've sorted people's connections after they've been hours on the phone complaining to their ISP's.
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Diablo 3 supports offline Single Player: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27387874231&sid=3000#16
There is offline single player, but it's something we're going to attempt to discourage as best as possible.
A lot of us, myself included, and probably a lot of you and your friends had the exact same Diablo II experience. You get the game, start playing, your friend says let's try co-op, and when you log in your characters aren't there. After a slight freakout moment and potentially some use of Webcrawler to search the World Wide Web with Netscape 6, you realized or figured out that you had to start over. That's actually an experience that can cause someone to stop playing the game. Maybe you or I let out a huge sigh, and maybe a brief mourning period after realizing the last 60 hours were completely wasted, but we pressed on. That's not the case for everyone. Maybe most people. I actually refused to start over for a while and continued on in single-player before finally jumping on Battle.net. Who knows what a lesser man would have done... ;)
So, if we can get people online and creating character on Battle.net from the get-go, there's less chance of that catastrophe. But there's still a play offline option, if you should need it.-
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Someone already posted this up above, that post is almost a year old and probably not true anymore. In general, it's probably not a good idea to trust a forum mod as the authority on what is in our out with a particular game. They are not decision makers, they could be deceiving you without even knowing it. On the other hand, Rob Pardo is the VP of design (and not just any executive, he was the lead designer of WoW) and he would have said if there was an offline mode. That's why they are coming out with this news now, so that people can hurry up and get angry and get over it before the game's release. Personally, I hate this decision...at the same time, I have a connection wherever I'll be playing it so I can't say that I'm planning to be inconvenienced a whole lot.
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Question is, is the game content going to be supplied by the server like in WoW, or is the game content controlled by the client? (Monster spawning, looting and such)
I wonder this due to lag. If I have a really REALLY shoddy connection, will the experiece be crap like in WoW or will it just delay how often a savefile is saved to the cloud?
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