Voices Rise Against Diablo 3′s Always-Online DRM
Posted 4 August 2011 by FluxWe touched on this in a news item Monday morning that quickly went to 95 comments. That post collected early complaints about the Real Money aspect of the 
Auction House, the lack of mod support, and the always-connected-to-B.net requirement for gameplay.
Since then, the conversation/debate has moved on, and largely focused on RMT and issues of (lack of) character customization stemming from the removal of skill points, the huge simplification of traits to passive skills, and the evolution to freespecs. The issue of Diablo 3′s DRM though, the fact that you MUST be connected to an online service to play a game you paid $60 for, that is not an MMORPG, has grown more troubling in the eyes of some.
I didn’t think too much of the issue at first, since I assumed the developers were going with something like Starcraft 2′s system, where you can play single player offline, so long as you log in to B.net now and then to authenticate your copy of the game. There is no LAN support in SC2; if you want to play with someone else, even if they’re on a computer right beside you, you must log on through Battle.net. A lot of fans found that annoying, but mostly in the form of getting disconnected from B.net mid-game and thereby not earning achievements for the mission.
That’s not going to be a problem in D3.
Either Blizzard was treating SC2 as a half-step towards their “all your base” plans for D3, or else they figured that since SC2′s end game and long term play was meant to be multiplayer, it would be enough to force people to use B.net for that. Because that’s not what they’re doing in Diablo 3. To play Blizzard’s upcoming action RPG, you have to be connected to B.net. All the time. Without fail. If you disconnect, you are done playing.
1up.com and ShackNews do a nice job covering the issue, but I think Jay Wilson, via an interview with GamePlanetNZ, really hammers home the reality of the situation.
Jay Wilson: It was a decision we crept into over the duration of the project. A big part of it is just to give the players the best possible experience. We felt like we’d reached a saturation point with online play and networking that prevented it from being a big concern. 99.9% of people out there have internet connections, even planes now have internet connections, so the old argument of ‘I want to be able to play on the plane’, well, the plane has internet now too.
We felt like there was enough pervasive online technology that the best possible experience we can give players was to offer them persistent characters that can play multiplayer at any time, that we can store forever, that don’t get deleted, which is something we had to do for the previous system because of storage concerns. And also just the enhanced security we can offer in a game that’s only online. A big problem with Diablo II was security, and security is a lot better when we don’t have to ship all the server infrastructure out with the game.
Gameplanet: What happens if you drop out during mid-play?
Wilson: If you completely drop? Your character could die, but we don’t have a case where the penalty for that is harsh, unless you’re playing a hardcore characters, in which case I wouldn’t do that with a bad connection. But then, hardcore characters are generally the type of characters people want to play online because they play them for bragging rights. You can’t really brag if it’s on a home computer where you could have cheated to create the character. So yes, you could die, but the penalty for death isn’t really harsh, it’s essentially a small durability hit on your items, which costs a little bit of gold, which isn’t too bad. There’s no corpse runs or anything like that, and even if there were like in Diablo II, they were not that harsh. You could log out of the game and log back in, and your body would be there waiting for you.
Gameplanet: Has piracy affected this decision?
Wilson: It’s a factor, but it wasn’t a deciding factor. Player experience is pretty much always our deciding factor. We ask what do we think will be the best possible experience we can give to players, and we really felt an online one was the best one.
Gameplanet: Did you toy with the idea of allowing offline play, but locking the player out and requiring them to start again for online play?
Wilson: That was the Diablo II way, and what drove us to this was how bad of an experience we thought that was. It was so common in Diablo II for people to start up a game, finish it, get to normal difficulty and want to play with their friends online, then realise that they can’t actually do that without starting over. We did have the offline Battle.Net experience, but if your friends are on Battle.Net, which is where most people were, you didn’t really get to actually play with them, so that was one of the things that drove us to that decision.
Despite Jay’s blithe contention, considerably more than the .1% of the Diablo community is displeased with this scheme. A protest thread on the B.net D3 forum has run to 10 pages, and there are several angry/baffled threads about it in the almost-too-busy (I certainly haven’t had time to read all the new threads lately) Diablo 3 community forum on this site.
Before this week’s information taught me that I would not be allowed to do so, I expected to play D3 online at least 95% of the time, but I was going to make at least one single player character. It’s not hard to see why you’d want to, even if you live in a metropolitan area with a reliable internet connection. B.net outages. ISP downtimes. Periods of high latency. When you’re traveling and your hotel has spotty wi-fi or wants to extort $15/day to use it. If you want to create 50 different chars and experiment with dozens of builds without using respecs. When you just want to play without having to go through a chat room, or suffer B.net ads, or be interrupted by the people on your friends list. Etc.
For evidence, look at our Diablo 2 strategy forums. The busiest one, for about the last 6 years, is the legendary SPF; the Single Player Forum. It’s home to many of the most dedicated D2 players; people who made made 100+ guardians, who have completed the grail (more than once), who experiment with every odd variant and play style, etc. You don’t have to play offline SP to be in the SPF, but most people there do, since it’s just easier and more reliable than having to log on to B.net.
So what do you guys think? Is online-only in D3 a good thing? No biggie? A horrible idea? The one thing that may drive you to pirate a hacked copy of the game? Chew it over; our next site vote will address this very issue. Thanks to Blascid for some of the links and motivation to write this post.
Update: Related news from Mtv with quotes from a befuddled Blizzard dude.
He also repeats the usual canard that D2′s SP chars couldn’t be played in MP games — does the entire D3 team really not know about the open realm B.net servers, or that D2 allowed TCP/IP and LAN play?
I didn’t mention it initially, but this seems to go to a common point; that the Bliz guys are just so insulated in their world of Facebook and smart phones and always online gaming that they don’t realize what a lot of their customers are doing. It came up during the whole mandatory Real ID on B.net snafu, where no one at Blizzard seemed to have the faintest clue that lots of their customers didn’t want all of their real life friends to know exactly when and how often they were playing video games. And here again, the Blizzard employee mindset seems to be, “We’re online gaming all the time and it’s fine. Isn’t everybody?”
Well, way, way back in Diablo 1 there were single player characters and multi-player characters. You pretty clearly had to pick on to play online and one to play alone at home. It wasn’t that freaking difficult to figure out which and I don’t remember people complaining that they couldn’t now use their single player character to play with their friends. What a dumb argument.
I don’t even remember the last time I played Diablo 2 NOT on battle.net. This is a non-issue for me and all of my other friends who I gladly will be playing cooperatively with.
In fact that’s egsactly the issue: it isn’t a problem for you, so you automatically assume it is not going to be an issue for anyone else. What scares me the most is Blizz’ way of thinking is this same one.
Internet connections are not equally pervasive around the world. Far from it. You have to be extremely closed-minded to think that.
I can only imagine people going to their local VG shop, buy the game on day one (after a 10+ years wait) and come back home to play the game only to realize they need a 24h connection they don’t have access to to play the game.
This is not going to work very well for Blizz. I wonder if they’re going to clearly state “Needs an always-on internet connection to be played” on the game’s box.
At some point you have to realize not every person on this silly planet will be able to afford what Blizz is asking. Also, rest assured a huge part of those several millions of players who bought D2 was perfectly happy to play D2 in single player only (or in LAN), and never really missed the bnet experience.
I think Blizz is seriously risking to not gross those outrageously big figures in sales they’re hoping for with D3 if they continue seeking the bnet play only way.
Its 2011 guys, come on. Arguing that that the game is ruined because you have to be online… seriously? Why not take it a step further and complain that you can’t get the game on vinyl or 8-track.
Sure there is going to be a small percentage of the time when you can’t get internet access, but maybe the complaints should be directed towards who ever is impeding your access, not blaming blizzard for it.
I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that they are essentially ignoring a portion of the player base that is seemingly much larger than 1%.
Personally, every time I read some response as to why online-only is absolutely essential, it ends up being ‘everyone has [a completely reliable, super-fast connection to] the Internet’ (not true, but you’re right in that Blizzard is not the one to blame for that) or has something to do with some vague conjecture about what Blizzard thinks is ‘the best possible experience’ for the player, which is a non-answer in my book.
It’s 2011 and children are still dying of hunger and there is no cure for cancer and the economy is awful. The year has nothing to do with it.
Yeahhh, you’re right. It’s 2011 now. More and more people are loosing their jobs, thus more and more people have to decide wether to fill the pockets of ISPs or their fridge. Although internet access is still quite cheap, it tends to become a luxury for a lot of people at the moment…
I mostly played D2 online, but I made a few dozen single player characters, too. It was nice to be able to use the /players command, to move items around very easily with ATMA, and to go at my own pace without lag. When I first heard about the cash auction house my first thought was “oh..I guess I’ll play single player mode, then”. I immediately remembered that this didn’t exist, and that if I play D3 I’ll have to filter every gear decision through “can I make money off this, or will I be happier making a stronger character?”, which isn’t fun at all.
When this was first announced I didn’t care much about it. After all, I have a good, stable, fast Internet connection at home. But the more I think about it, the less I like it.
I played d2 single player as well, I loved the command line options and using ATMA for storage and grailing. When d2x first came out I was studying abroad and didn’t have Internet at my host family. Nowadays, I travel for business and certainly don’t want to drop $15 on every plane ride or hotel stay if I want to play d3. And what if times get tough and I have to downgrade or drop Internet at home? What if I want to still be playing d3 occasionally fifteen years from now the way I still break out d1 now and again? Are they going to guarantee that the servers and my characters are still available?
The argument that d3 is an essentially “online” game like an mmo just doesn’t hold water with me. It’s a discrete, self-contained story that is entirely possible to beat without any other players. It may have co-op and competitive aspects, but the core game is essentially no different in scope than d1/d2. It really should be available offline too.
I don’t like it at all. It means that If my internet is down, for whatever reason. I can’t play my game that I payed X amount of money for. THAT is unfair.
It also means that if your connection sucks for any number of reasons, you won’t have any reliable way to enjoy a lag free experience, not even playing solo.
It also means if by any chance Blizz decides to close its servers, you can take your boxed copy of the game and flush it down the WC, regardless you payed 60 bucks for it.
How cool is that? Chances are in X years you won’t be able to play D3, while D2 SP on the other hand will continue working perfectly fine. That’s what I call technology advancement baby, that’s the true future, embrace it.
Its 2011 guys, come on. Arguing that that the game is ruined because you have to be online… seriously? Why not take it a step further and complain that you can’t get the game on vinyl or 8-track.
Sure there is going to be a small percentage of the time when you can’t get internet access, but maybe the complaints should be directed towards who ever is impeding your access, not blaming blizzard for it.
Bull****. If I pay $60 for a game, I expect to be able to play that game wherever or whenever I so choose regardless of the state or availability of an internet connection.
unfortunately for you, it’s Blizzard’s decision what you can do with their game- not yours. As with any commercial product, if the price is too much for what you’re getting, don’t buy it.
It’s also our decision if we buy it or not. No one will buy a game they know they can’t play. Blizzard stands to lose money if they keep this course of action.
keddren I agree with you 100%, 60$ is a lot I should get my money’s worth and that means including offline.
Your money’s worth? How many millions does Blizz have to spend on their own game to develop it they way they want to? $60 vs multi-million multi-year development schedule, hmmm…
Again, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. I’m willing to bet that 9 out of 10 people saying they won’t buy the game because of this will buy it any ways.
tell me this, why do you have to defend blizzard? seriously you are so concern for blizzard.
and you got to be kidding me about the 60$ comment right? as if it’s only my 60$ that is at stakes.
you don’t need to remind people that they can choose to not buy the game, that is a given. but don’t act like you some how have any say in telling people here that they don’t have the right to demand what they want from this game. sure blizzard can refuse to make the appropriate changes and they will pay the price with reduced sales.
Fine. Soon enough, people will be able to play the game without buying the game, as always happens. This decision will just make it happen a lot more.
I agree with SavalBork 100% here.
Aggressive DRM technology never made customers happy.
Giving paying customers excellent experiences is what makes the sale. A superb online experience on top of an already great offline one is the way to go.
Customer: I want to play offline.
Blizz: We’re living in 2011 pal, playing online is great!
Customer: Yeah whatever, I’m paying for it and I want to play offline whenever I want, this isn’t WoW you know?
Blizz: Yes but we’re developing the game to give you the best online experience ever!
Customer: Ok I’m pissed, I’ll buy Torchlight 2. I can play it offline, I can play it online, I can mod it and I can download other player’s mods freely and my experience won’t be tied to you being willing to offer me the appropriate servers infrastructure nor to me having to be connected 24h. Oh you know what? TL2 is great fun too.
Blizz: =’(
I have a bad connection. I intended to play hardcore, and serious Jay tells me that thats a bad idea. For me, that means that is a bad idea buying the game.
The only reason they do this is piracy. Easy to tell as they perfectly can design a game with an offline single-player feature.
Nahh, don’t think so. If there’s a marketingreason behind it, it probably lies in resales, whereas Blizzard won’t get a buck from… By the way: All sincere research on pirating have shown that piracy tends to increase sells. And it’s often enough just an argument to reach the same while not talking about drying out the resellermarket.
I plan on playing online anyway. I guess I’m lucky that I trust that my internet will be up most of the time. Sure I would be annoyed if it would be down on the day of D3 release, but its not the end of the world.
Battle.net and WoW uptime track record for me when I wanted to play is pretty damn good. There was some shady times in the 1 year of WoW, but for the other normal Blizzard games that just logged on battle.net for AMM and chat it was fine.
I don’t see why they can’t just add an “Are you sure? Y/N” type message when making an offline character stating that you’ll never be able to play online with it. Give people the freedom to play how they like, just make sure they know upfront the limitations of offline play.
Brilliant!
Why don’t they do this ? This completely counters the cheating part. And you can have fun playing diablo when your internet is out or with your laptop somewhere.
I’m guessing that Blizz feels their overall community would be weakened if they had fewer players able to contribute to the auction house, or populate games. *shrug*
I remember back in the day (last year), when Jay would say, “It’s your money, we won’t tell you how to play.” Ha ha. Good one, Jay. You burned me good.
Big corporations never liked consumer’s freedom.
Well I think that this will make cheating really hard. And I’m all for that.
And I think DRM is the future of gaming. If done right it’s very good. Like sc2.
I’m glad the post voting is back up.