The real state of Diablo III is that is has DRM forcing you to be online even to play single player. As a result, my almost two decade long love affair with Blizzard games has come to an end.
This is basically my thought on it as well. Loved Diablo and Diablo II, but my wireless is a little flaky because of my apartment's layout so the only multiplayer that works well is on the LAN. I'd be ok with an online activation. I'd tolerate it checking in once a week or once a month. But I don't want to have to spend a half hour fudging around with the wireless signal every time I want to play an offline game.
But I don't want to have to spend a half hour fudging around with the wireless signal every time I want to play an offline game.
Not even that, what happens in 5-10 years when you want to dig up the game and play it again? Will the servers still be online? Will there be a "required" patch which doesn't work well with your system or nerfs your favorite character?
Not even that, what happens in 5-10 years when you want to dig up the game and play it again?
Will the servers still be online? Will there be a "required" patch which doesn't work well with your system or nerfs your favorite character?
Blizzard is actually the one company that I feel I can trust to keep the servers running for a lon gperiod of time, becuase they tend to stick with and support their games. They seem to have a corporate mindset that looks and plans in the long term, as opposed to most other publishers that just look to the next game and leave just a token force to maintain a previous game. That being said, I really enjoyed Diablo II, but after being disappointed with SC2, I do not expect to buy D3 any time soon.
On a whim, I dug out my old Diablo II and Lord of Darkness disks. Registering my game on their BattleNet site was easy, and was given new "in game" keys for downloading the client, with patches. Sure, the graphics don't look so good, but I can play. And the online servers are still there, allowing people to play the full-featured game, with all the benefits of the network. If being connected on-line is going to be required to play for Diablo III, Blizzard has shown that they will make sure that the game
Maybe being online isn't a problem. But, having multiple computers online, all connecting to battlenet while they really just need to talk to each other might be. Bandwidth may be a bottleneck.
Bandwidth is generally not an issue. Online games use very little of it, and there's no reason to believe Diablo 3 will be different. What you do need is low latency, and even then it's only really important for FPS type games.
COMPASS [for the CDC-6000 series] is the sort of assembler one expects from
a corporation whose president codes in octal.
-- J.N. Gray
The real state of Diablo III (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is basically my thought on it as well. Loved Diablo and Diablo II, but my wireless is a little flaky because of my apartment's layout so the only multiplayer that works well is on the LAN. I'd be ok with an online activation. I'd tolerate it checking in once a week or once a month. But I don't want to have to spend a half hour fudging around with the wireless signal every time I want to play an offline game.
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But I don't want to have to spend a half hour fudging around with the wireless signal every time I want to play an offline game.
Not even that, what happens in 5-10 years when you want to dig up the game and play it again?
Will the servers still be online? Will there be a "required" patch which doesn't work well with your system or nerfs your favorite character?
Re: (Score:4, Insightful)
Not even that, what happens in 5-10 years when you want to dig up the game and play it again? Will the servers still be online? Will there be a "required" patch which doesn't work well with your system or nerfs your favorite character?
Blizzard is actually the one company that I feel I can trust to keep the servers running for a lon gperiod of time, becuase they tend to stick with and support their games. They seem to have a corporate mindset that looks and plans in the long term, as opposed to most other publishers that just look to the next game and leave just a token force to maintain a previous game. That being said, I really enjoyed Diablo II, but after being disappointed with SC2, I do not expect to buy D3 any time soon.
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Re:The real state of Diablo III (Score:2)
Maybe being online isn't a problem. But, having multiple computers online, all connecting to battlenet while they really just need to talk to each other might be. Bandwidth may be a bottleneck.
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No. I was not referring to their bandwidth, but that of 6 people all connection to BNet from the same location.
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Bandwidth is generally not an issue. Online games use very little of it, and there's no reason to believe Diablo 3 will be different. What you do need is low latency, and even then it's only really important for FPS type games.