Blizzard forced to offer Diablo 3 refunds in S. Korea
Troubles with Diablo III in South Korea have forced Blizzard to go against policy and offer refunds to dissatisfied gamers after prodding from the Korean government.
Server and connection problems with Diablo III in South Korea have forced Blizzard to go against its previous policy and offer refunds to dissatisfied gamers after prodding from a Korean consumer protection agency.
Blizzard announced through is Korean Diablo III site that it would start offering refunds to players lower than level 40 beginning on June 25, according to the Wall Street Journal. Disgruntled players can apply for the refunds through July 3. Blizzard also said that, from now on, it would accept returns of the game within 14 days of purchase from any player under level 20.
The move comes almost a month after Korea's Fair Trade Commission began investigating complaints that gamers unhappy with their Diablo III experience could not get refunds because of Blizzard's no-return policy. In early June, Blizzard added more servers to ease the load of an unexpectedly high number of players joining the game, apologizing in the process for the inconvenience and poor planning.
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Blizzard forced to offer Diablo 3 refunds in S. Korea.
Troubles with Diablo III in South Korea have forced Blizzard to go against policy and offer refunds to dissatisfied gamers after prodding from the Korean government.-
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Yeah, fucking consumer rights! Here in America the land of the FUCKING FREE we don't deal in no faggy consumer protection!
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So you don't think people should be able to get their money back if the product they purchased didn't function? You can do it with just about any product so why not a video game?
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what about diablo 3 doesnt function?
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How many hours of "dissatisfaction" are allowed before a company doesn't have to offer a refund?
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Actually, yeah, think about 30, 60, or 90 day return policies. There is a certain amount of assumed usage, that once it is past, companies don't think they should give you your money back.
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Even if it's a 30 day though they'd still be within their rights at this point. I think the issue is that video games are generally completely finished long before that though.
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Ya. They also dont let you return stuff if you use it. So you rip the tag off those shoes, wear them around in the mud for a bit, then try to return them. See what answer you get.
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That's assuming that the shoes work as shoes.
The big contention here is that the game is not working as a game.
It'd be like you always having to be connected to Nike, and when Nike's servers are down, you can't walk anywhere.
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It's not a question of how many hours. People were wanting a refund from the start because of the lack of server accessibility. Blizzard assured customers that the wheels are in motion to fix this. While they've made strides ahead, the servers still are very inaccessible compared to most products.
This has a lot to do with high demand for the product more than anything but Blizzard essentially created a product that demands a good portion of what is demanded from an MMO without the subscription to keep it funded. So naturally, more players does not mean more servers unless the cash auction really starts booming in transactions and so far you might get $1 for 20 attempts at a real cash auction in a week. There's just no true demand for Diablo items to convince to opt to use cash instead of in-game gold.
This will always be the problem with D3. If it gets too popular, it will become less enjoyable because infrastructure implementation will never meet the demands. The game will become stable once most player become so dissatisfied that they stop playing.
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If im dissatisfied with an apple after eating half of it, should i be able to return it?
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Sure if halfway through the apple you bit into a worm, more than justified to return it.
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not the same. What if i just dont like the taste?
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You claim 'not the same' on his analogy when you are comparing a consumable product to a (theoretically) infinite digital tool. You are the epitome of retarded.
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The analogy works because a game is a consumable product per se. Kinda like a movie or a book. You can buy it, read the story/watch the story/play the game and then return it. Taking the value from the product for free essentially.
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I dont. but thats not the fuckin point. You can buy 1 apple if you want.
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A worm or inner rot would be the equivalent of a defective product. In the case of Diablo it would be anything that renders the game unusable. While the game is usable, it's not usable whenever you want it to be. The frequent server overloads and maintenance would be about the same as having some parts of the apple fresh, but other parts inedible.
Not liking the flavor of the apple is a matter of preference. You still bought the apple and it's a fully functioning apple, you just didn't like it. That would be the same as having a fully usable game that just wasn't to your preference. That is a case where it shouldn't be rightful for refund.
The case here is the prior.
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Do you even need to ask?
1) server overload, even four week into the game. Now it seems to get better, but still not so during peak peroid
2) horrendous lag even if you can log in.
3) excessive server downtime, one a week of scheduled downtime and on average almost one additional ad-hoc/emergency downtime
And these are just the more serious ones which totally disrupt gameplay.
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To be fair, I still get frequent bursts of lag, slingshotting back across the screen while just moving.
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I've put 500 hours into this game....Didn't enjoy it, I'd like my money back.
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Hey! Actually I 100% agree with the rules they setup. Up to level 40 and going forward up to level 20. I wish every game would do something similar. LA NOIRE I"M LOOKING AT YOU SINCE YOU DON"T EVEN START
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It is ridiculous this doesn't exist already. Like I said above, no other industry can get away with selling broken shit and not accepting a return. As with everything else, there should be a time limit (or level limit), but you should be able to return games in these situations
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I think time is probably the only safe limit. Levels only exist in certain games and are far too arbitrary to be a rule/law to use for refunds. At GameStop, before it changed, we offered a 7 day return policy on any game, new or used, opened or not. I think that'd be a pretty fair set, even for online purchased digital downloads.
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The game sucks... a total snore fest. Wish I could get my money back, Diablo 3 was all hype and no quality. Blizzard sucks at gameplay as well as story. And the graphics look like it was designed to run on mobile phones. Blizzard totally took a big shit on the potential of a Diablo 2 sequel.
Lucky S Koreans.-
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Where did you delusion the "played through the entire game" part from? Insanely powerful uncontrolled imagination or just off your meds? I couldn't make it through the first chapter. Blizzard sucks royally at everything from gameplay, to writing, to graphics. Diablo 3 is an ultra-shallow bargain bin title selling at premium price simply because of who it's made by.
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I played the beta and realized it was a "snorefest" at that point, which wasn't helped by the ever-present lag and random disconnects. Saved me a lot of trouble.
The latter I'm sure have improved since the beta, but for the type of game Diablo III is I can't excuse the dated graphics and bland appearance. Its just not compelling.
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Pjargon I agree with you totally. Glad someone out here put up a good example of Diablo's problems.
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Diablo 1 and 2 had dated graphics when they were released too.
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As you progress, variety and choice is an illusion. You're really locked into a small subset of skills, with some of them almost mandatory and some completely worthless.
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What monk in Inferno doesn't use Serenity and Breath of Heaven? What demon hunter doesn't use Smokescreen and Nether Tentacles?
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Do you play without Vault? I can't imajine a world without it.
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I like dark shadows with the gloom rune instead of vault.
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I was face tanking Inferno Diablo w/ shadow power + gloom. The build was too rng in Phase 2 because of Diablo's whore for me to beat him, but I did push the fight to Phase 3 using it once.
Lately I've been considering sp + gloom as a ss replacement, since it has twice the duration and better (average) dr. Without the ridiculous one-shots, the invulnerability ss provides isn't as necessary.-
Oh, and Cluster Arrow + Loaded For Bear is my current wtfpwn ability. The hatred cost is ridiculous, but it hits hard.
Going to try it in Act 3 tonight (ran through 1 & 2 yesterday) to see if it keeps up. If so, I might try tweaking some other things to get more hatred regen. Something like Vengeance might reappear in my spec soon...
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I was really referring to before the patch because the same principle still applies now.
Inversely, what demon hunter uses Nether Tentacles, Entangling Shot, Grenades, Spider Companion, Boar Companion, Preparation with Invigoration or Focused Mind, Vault with Action Shot, Marked For Death with Death Toll, Sentry with Chain of Torment or Spitfire Turret, Evasive Fire, Fan of Knives with Retaliate, or Strafe. I may be wrong on some of these, but it seems like 90% of the hunter's skills are useless.-
A lot still use Nether Tentacles.
Preparation + Focused Mind paired with Shadow Power + Gloom is central to a tanky Demon Hunter build. I'm not sure if it's still viable post-patch (the NT nerf kind of hurts it), though. Prep + FM does give you more discipline than normal prep unless you have +20 to your disc pool, but the build needs more regular discipline usage as opposed to the spiky use SS builds show. I can see Invigoration being used here, too, since you'd effectively get 10 extra discipline to use per prep.
Spitfire Turret's like the most useful turret glyph there is. A lot use it for constant damage if they don't have enough ias or movement speed to effectively kite.
Evasive Fire is awesome when paired with Tactical Advantage. In fact, Evasive Fire + Covering Fire has been my main generator since getting to Act 3 inferno (I completed all of Inferno before 1.0.3 hit).
The harsh DR on slows make a lot of those other abilities kind of useless in Inferno, but they get a lot of use before that. However, DH's no longer have to dedicate 4 slots to discipline abilities to simply survive, which opens up a lot of experimentation in Inferno. Basically, Inferno's very different now than it was last week.
There are a lot of questionable and downright bad abilities, but that's to be expected when there's 130 of them. The worst ones (Strafe has explicitly been called out) are being looked at/modified in 1.1.-
Seems like a very small number of viable skills, doesn't it?
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Yes, and after your explanation, it still seems like a very small number of viable skills out of 650 skill and rune combinations.
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My mistake.
Yes, and after your explanation, it still seems like a very small number of viable skills out of 138 skill and rune combinations.-
Okay? Well, it's not.
Grenades and Strafe are two abilities I can't think of a single viable build that use them. Every other ability has at least one rune that's useful (at some point in the game), and for many (if not most) abilities all of the runes are useful and reduce to personal preference or gear. The only ones that lose their viability entirely in current Inferno are those whose only purpose is to slow enemies (ex: entangling shot).
People who still claim Demon Hunters have <10 viable skills after 1.0.3 simply haven't experimented, have no imagination, or are too stuck in their glass cannon ways to see the other alternatives.
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Fair enough. But my thoughts while playing through Normal to Hell were always: Why should I use that when this is so much better?
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I don't really take issue with him not liking the game, moreso that he (like many others) feel they're entitled to a refund "because its Blizzard" and the game didn't live up to their lofty/unrealistic expectations.
With all of the media that Blizzard had put out prior to the release of the game, I can't see how anybody could have purchased it expecting there to be something completely contrary to that in the box. On top of that, he didn't even purchase it at release, so he had plenty of time to read the myriad of reviews (positive and negative) before plopping down the cash for the game.
No sympathy.
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I just got my refund. I was surprised by how easily the person on the phone gave it to me, but I guess the 30 day policy applies to North America, while I've read that people in EU and elsewhere get screwed with only a 3 day return policy.
It took a couple days of trying to get through to support though, their wait queue was always maxed out and not accepting more callers.
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you want pizzaputs?
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yes. do you know what the diablo series is about, by chance? repetitive play. getting loot.
it seems a huge segment of consumers are suddenly very stupid. they know exactly what they are getting into (hopefully, it's the information age), consume the content, and then want a refund. this is not a good framework for the future.-
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I think D2 was a niche release. very tight in design, for all its pros and cons. D3, the audience is MUCH MUCH larger, and they tried to tackle the design challenges therein. they wanted it simpler, more forgiving, and to acknowledge that people want loot upgrades RIGHT NOW instead of a constant grind in perpetuity. that worked in the D2 era. not so much now.
I have a lot of hours in D3, mostly co-op, and it's been a great value. as my friends go back to BF3, world of tanks, TF2, etc, we all know we fuckin BINGED on D3 for a month, and that's been fun. But, 1.03 is mostly a disappointment, and we're all starting to peel off for a while. Personally it's going to be rough to fix up the IAS nerf, and my witch doctor buddy almost /wristed.
and I also think a lot of folks are new to the diablo loot zerg type of game. where you do the same stuff over and over... by design. I also think blizzard didn't make it nearly hard enough in hell mode. and seeing how they had to capitulate to fix inferno shows how little they tested it, but enthusiastic gamers were all up in that shit in such a short amount of time. so I totally agree that D3 isn't a perfect game, but we have to consider the reality of the gaming market now. people value time more than anything, and will pay extra to get stuff to bypass a grind.-
The only reason D3 has a larger audience is because the total gaming market is larger. The D2 release was HUGE.
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Diablo 2 had writing?
There is 30 times the spoken words in D3 compared to D2. It's pretty easy for so little of something to avoid being annoying.-
Sometimes less is more. I've started muting the dialoge in D3 and it's better for it.
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Diablo 2 was just as bad at launch if not worse than 3 was. So many completely unbalanced things, corpse explosion anyone (but damn it was fun). Battle.net couldn't stay up worth a damn, and you'd get kicked out of games all the time.
Diablo 2 was great but people are remembering the good and forgetting all of the bad.-
Corpse Explosion was just ridiculous.
Our first run was a paly (me), sorc, necro, and amazon (I think?). Three of us would focus on getting the first mob down, and the necro would kill the other 30 on the screen instantly after that.
... and then be all, "what? you guys can't do something similar? O_o"-
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Some are, some aren't.
The best belt for melee is String of Ears, which is a level 53 legendary. The best helm for melee is Helm of Command, which is a level 62 legendary crafted. The best helm for ranged is Andariel's Visage, which is a level 59 legendary. Lacuni Prowlers, a level 53 legendary, are considered required for effective glass cannon builds.
I think some people have started toying with the class sets, but not sure if any effective builds have resulted yet.
A poorly rolled/itemized level 60 legendary could be better than a perfectly rolled/itemized level 50 rare. There's not much that should change about that.
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I disagree:
Unbalanced builds are FINE. Their interview even mentioned it! It's awesome to find a combo that makes you feel overpowered. That's what it's about. Corpse Explosion wasn't OP, not really, but it was really powerful and (and this is the part they're forgetting now) FUN.
Battle.net was no more stable than it is now, I totally agree. That's why I never used it.
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I just saw a post on the Blizzard D3 forums which I think puts it in fair terms:
diablo 2 = dragon age: origins
diablo 3 = dragon age 2
blizzard then = bioware then
blizzard now = bioware now
passion then, greed now
source: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5889309189
Blizzard just sucks a big one these days.-
Haha - a source from the blizzard forums? Have you lost your mind?
Ive been playing Blizzard games since the 90's and Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are the deepest, most polished yet. Not perfect by any means, but absolutely fantastic, genre defining games.-
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Can you name a better game in the ARPG genre?
D3 is the standard that every future ARPG will be measured against. Nothing else is even close. Whether or not you like all the aspects of the game, it introduced a new skill system, great social integration, a global AH & RMAH, and a higher difficulty level than any previous ARPG.
That's a pretty dramatic shift in the genre. -
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I think the social stuff will get skipped, but RMAH is a long term revenue stream. Dev's will flock to that like F2P because they can.
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Yeah, I can.
Diablo 2's long term community was fairly small, and (I believe) less than 1% of its total sales. Diablo 3 will certainly have an expansion that incorporates feedback/lessons learned from D3, and history shows that's when Blizzard really knocks their games out of the park.
People don't remember Starcraft, Diablo 2, or Warcraft 3 -- they remember Brood War, Lord of Destruction, and The Frozen Throne.-
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" tried to fix some many of the more glaring flaws in D2 but they're poorly implemented"
WHAT flaws???
Not saying D3 is perfect, but are we supposed to divine what the FUCK you're talking about??
"Couple that with a poor visual style"
Opinion, I like it, it's a brilliant look. So what, wanna fight about it?
" sub-par soundtrack"
Bull, it's fantastic
"cringe-worthy dialogue"
Oh, yeah...that...can't argue with that one!
"Also, I want my Wizard to be able to hit things with a staff. "
1. You can, just deselect the skill assigned to left click.
2. WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT????
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With expansions, yes, I can see it. They're planning at least 2 this time around.
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I think EVERYONE forgets that Blizzard games BECOME classics because of the sheer amount of polish and HUGE game changes that are done AFTER the game is released.
Rune words? Synergies? remember those? those were all added in patches in D2.
In Wow: Arenas, instanced quest lines, honor system. All this stuff was added later. Blizzard is not afraid to add to their games. if you played an early version of D2, you'd think it sucked.
Yah D3 seems to have started pretty low on the totem pole. But I have faith it will get polished to something really freakin good.
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I'm calling this as a Phil or Fred Garvin character account.
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Not only that - in France & Germany are looking into consumer protection complaints because of not clearly stating on the packaging that the game needs to be always online to be playable, even single player. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/352950/20120616/diablo-3-blizzard-legal-notices-false-advertisement.htm
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And what about all the people over here (Taiwan) who can't log in because the servers in Korea were limiting connections from outside Korea?
Hilariously enough the easiest way to fix the problem was to set up a VPN bouncing through Korea and you could long in instantly. I'm not sure if this is still an issue, but it was for a couple weeks after launch..-
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I mostly play on the NA servers. The only reason I brought this up was because a large amount of my friends here haven't been able to log in, or get stuck with large waits just to play the game. It's something that really shoudln't be happening.
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Brilliant.
About time Software producers properly tested their products before releasing them!
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