Why You Should Complain about D3′s Online Only?

Posted 22 May 2012 by Flux

Thanks largely to Error 37 and other associated evils, we’ve seen a renewed focused on Diablo III’s always-online requirement. Blizzard’s official stance has always been that removing LAN and SP play was for our own good since online-only makes for a better better gamer experience. When pressed, they also say online-only heighten security and helps them prevent hacks or dupes. (Uh-oh.)

Most fans (and media) laugh at reason #1, accept reason #2, and wonder why Bliz won’t just admit it’s really about anti-piracy DRM.

This issue is taken on quite vigorously in a new installment of the Jimquisition, a short video podcast rant hosted by The Escapist. I didn’t expect much from it, and nearly clicked it off about three minutes in when it gets childishly poop-obsessed, but from around 4:00 to the end the dude makes some good points. I transcribed what I though was his best point, and you can watch the whole thing via the embedded video.

You Should be Mad at Diablo III’s Always Online DRM

The gaming community has a hard time understanding that you can complain about things you love at times. And I know some people want to defend the server problems because they think to attack them would be to attack Diablo III as a piece of entertainment. But no, if you love Diablo III that’s all the more reason to attack it even harder. Because when we love something, criticizing that which holds it back is the best thing we can do. I adore Diablo III personally.

I’ve been having a blast when I’ve been able to get online with it, but that’s all the more reason to be angry. Because we have an industry where great games, remarkable games, are being chained to utterly awful business practices that directly damage them and harm an otherwise beautiful experience. And to just sit back and let that happen makes you a willing accomplice in that harm.

Warning: The video is NSFW due to lots of use of the s-word.

Tagged As: | Categories: Online-Only Diablo 3
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97 Opinions have been expressed on “Why You Should Complain about D3′s Online Only?”
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  • Just woke up — “Severs going down in 15 minutes” … 8 hour maintenance. This is why.

    • Yeah, same, pissed me off as I won’t get to play tonight.

    • They shut down the EU server for maintenance on sunday afternoon right when I was fighting against the last boss in Act 4, for the first time. Online giving the best gaming experience…? I don’t need any of their online experience. 

  • I’ve been trying to make this point on the official forums as much as possible, much to the fanbois hatred. I love Diablo 3, and the thing is I wouldn’t even mind the online only requirement – if it actually did make for a better play experience instead of making it difficult to play. 

  • It’s a bummer sometimes, but the pros outweigh the cons.

    • What Pros? Please don’t say Security.

      • Except security? more profit for blizzard? Piracy protection? Better control over the content? Faster patching and hot-fixing? Much more difficult to (develop)hack/cheat..yea..online only sucks when servers are down.. but I see more pros than cons too..  

        • No Security if you read the news. Indeed More profit for Bli$$ard. It is being pirated, obviously you have never used torrents. Better control over what content? Error 37 still popping up in someplaces, what Hot fixing? they just Ban everything that needs a fix on the forums. Again, you did not read the News if you think it is so hard to Hack/cheat. Yea Online Only sucks when servers are down and when they are not down. If you see more pros than cons, u a blizzfanboy.

          • “It is being pirated, obviously you have never used torrents.”

            having the game will do you no good. you need an account with a unique game key to play. anyone who argues that online-only doesn’t prevent piracy isn’t using their brain.

        • No, fanboy, everything you said brings no improvement to the players or are things that in the best case scenario will only delay the doom of D3 (just like every other Blizzard game).
          Blizzard already have a minimum amount of money they need to support the game, earning extra money will just make their shareholders more rich, so there’s absolutely no advantage for the players. That, of course, if we affirm the online content really has any effect in bringing more money for Blizzard.
          Many players simply didn’t buy the game because of the online one DRM, and pirates would never buy the game in first place, so I don’t even know why should a company care about them.
          Making the game online only will really delay the cheating… (DELAY), but the only thing that prevents cheating is a strong system that can detect them once they are available, and that is something Blizzard is terrible at doing, just look at their old games using bnet 1.0 and SC2.
          Patching will be a common sigh in the early days of the game, as any other game, but when D3 grow old (old = 2 years) patches will be a rare sight, especially when Blizzard starts to work in their next title, especially Titan. Just look at SC2, do you see any real patch for the game is the last years? No, only now Blizzard is thinking in adding extra stuff in the game.

  • I can’t really complain about online only, since from the day Diablo 3 was announced I knew I was going to play on battle.net only anyway.
    Although maybe latency at evenings would be lower if there wasn’t that many people playing on b.net.

  • It’s there for the auction halls as well as DRM, mainly the RMAH.  (Which if you’re like me, you don’t care about)

    Hacking, duping and other nefarious sorts were a huge plague in the D2 item trading community.  By taking control of the item trade D3 helps ensure trading takes place honestly and effectively.  However Blizzard needs to take action to make sure hacked items and duped items don’t exist.  Hence…always online.

    “But why not make an offline single player mode that can’t trade/etc?”

    That means Blizzard would need the game to store player file information on users PC’s.  If this information only ever exists on the servers, it becomes infinitely harder for hackers to get ahold of it to start cooking up duped/hacked/whatevered items.  To make the item trading economy work, they needed always online and for player files to never touch a user’s PC.  If they settled for gold only?  This would be less concerning, but they’re letting player’s real money out into the wild so they needed to get as serious as possible about this.

    …so..there are three reasons.  But honestly?  I could care less about the RMAH.  I understand why it needs online only, but I’d give up the RMAH for offline mode in a heartbeat. 

    • what are you flapping your gums on about? have you seen the latest D3 hackers headline? dupes and hax have already been spotted in D3 since the beta. Blizzard’s bull**** DRM has made 0 difference. no pros, all cons

      all it’s accomplished is piss 100s of 1000s paying customers off

      • I haven’t seen anything about dupes. The only in-game ‘hacks’ I’ve seen were in the beta with the speed hacks, but that was very early on and I suspect Blizzard will have accounted for that by now. We have recently had apparent account-hacking, but that’s not really the same thing at all (and of course account-hacking is only possible with an online game…).

      • no dupes..and one hack already dealt with…so.

    • So now because of Online only, hacks and dupes are no longer around, instead, Hackers are stealing from players by Hacking their accounts. Good Job Bli$$ard, you make me feel so safe.

      • Maybe you should take some responsibility into your own hands and make sure your account is safe instead of bitching about Blizzard not doing it for you. The only way a hacker gets a hold of your account is if your careless/stupid. Unfortunately Blizzard cant fix stupid…

    • “ hacked items and duped items don’t exist.  Hence…always online.” Who cares hacked or duped item exist in offline mode ? no one, take Warcraft III for example, if you play single player you have cheat codes but once you go on lan or online, you don’t have them anymore. And no one is complaining

      There are no good reason to make online only, even without singleplayer or lan, D2 would have experienced the same item isssues. And i don’t get your third point, i mean, the online characters would be stored the same way as it is now, it would just changes the offline ones, also the point of offline is to be able to play without any internet connection, hence, no auction house at all, gold nor money.

    • Those Blizzard quotations just make me wanna puke because of so many lies. Blizzard never stored characters files in the player’s computers in the first place (only in D1 they did that). There are rumors about people who managed to import single player items to bnet, but that happened because of a failure in battle.net and not because players could edit they single player characters (It’s like blaming google for allowing people to find pirate content in the internet).
      Also, duping has absolutely nothing to do with local files, its all about players exploiting the game by lagging the server to make it think a character is still logged in, so you can strip his gear off with a second char and once the naked char relogs his items will be with him again (and the duped items on the second char).

  • Pros outweigh the cons, this guy just doesn’t get it. No other gaming company has been able to truly combat hacking and other issues so this is the outcome.

    • People keep saying this, but don’t explain what the pros are.  I hasn’t stopped hackers, if that’s what you mean.  In fact, it’s now possible for them to steal your stuff even if you would have otherwise been playing offline.

  • i think always online is really annoying when it fails, but i have a few problems with complaining about it, chief among them being that blizzard didnt tell me it was always online after i bought the game, but before hands. It was therefore my choice whether to buy it or not. But sitting here, commenting on a forum rather than playing because the server is down for eight hours makes that argument harder to make.  it’s a tough one. i wish they could have figured out a way to prevent hacking and duping while still having offline play (if that was the real reason they went always online) but I dont know enough about software development to say either way.  

  • “The gaming community has a hard time understanding that you can complain about things you love at times.”
     
    LOL I’m pretty sure they already know that. Or is this guy new to the internet?

    • No, the guy is actually right. Just see how many people, even on these forums, see people who don’t like D3 as the most repugnant, loathsome creatures that walk on earth. Or how many people just tell everyone to “quit whining, just because you can’t log in for 8 hours, doesn’t mean that Online-DRM is bad”.

  • 8 hour maintenance.. unbelievable..

  • +2
    blablabla
    May 22, 2012 at 09:20

    I just don’t care if it’s online only or not, since I have internet connection anyways.

    And Diablo 3 is NOT the only game in the world. It’s not like you depend on it. If the servers are down, I simply play a different game.

    Any problems? not at all 

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