Even Steam allows you to temporarily play games without a connection for a certain period of time.
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Blizzard Says It Delivered 4.7 Million Copies of Diablo III on Release Day
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Even Steam allows you to temporarily play games without a connection for a certain period of time.
Agreed. Some people don't have the option for online play.
I used to work overseas and I was so mad when I bought Valve's Orange Box because it said "Offline Play". Well, you still have to connect to the internet (something I couldn't do with a non-work machine where I worked, and I lived where I worked) so I had a $40 waste of money.
Needless to say I went out to the local shops and got a hacked copy that played without the internet. I don't condone piracy but I also don't condone lying on the back of a game box about offline play when the game has to constantly reconnect to the internet.
Uh ? Steam doesn't require online play for single player. There's nothing temporary.
I don't understand why people think it's about cheating. Single player campaign requires Internet and who cares if you cheat there ? You're only cheating yourself if you do. It's about piracy, proving once again that paying customers get the shaft and pirates get the convenience.
Ya, except there is by concept no real single player campaign. There is no multiplayer campaign either. The concept of the game and the architecture behind it is different because without it, you could not switch from singleplayer to multiplayer seamlessly. So many people complained about Apple not giving the iPad a USB connection or stereo speakers etc and Apple's answer was that it is about the whole experience and that is that. Same here: The emphasis is on fast action and non-interruptive gameplay despite people joining you or leaving your game. Meanwhile, my monk is Level 40 and I can honnestly say, I would have hated the fact that everytime someone drops out before the main quest is done I would have had tho stop the game, loose the progress and switch to single player mode - and then if someone wanted to join again, start all over. It might not target your convenience to play offline, it certainly targets my convenience to play seamlessly through the game with and without multiplayer.
Yeah, exactly how I feel about it. Well, only I'd say it's about 'piracy theatre', to appropriate the term that sometimes gets used for what's perceived to be unnecessarily heavy-handed and arguably ineffective security. To create the impression in people's minds that they are doing something about a problem even if it arguably creates more side-effect problems and doesn't really address the original problem anyway.
Steam requires an internet connection for Steam games to work, unless you request to go into "offline mode".
One thing Diablo I got right. Single and multi were seperate, with Single player having more quests and more story elements.
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Not for the games I have. I can play them offline with no issues at all, it's not temporary at all.
I believe Activision was the last of the many owners of the Sierra brand before the icon company finally was shut down for good around 2008. I believe many of the properties are likely still owned by Activision at this point.
However, I think someone else had secured rights to the LSL franchise and ended up making another horrible spin-off game. But it sounds like that Replay Games (http://www.replaygamesinc.com/) started up a Kickstarter campaign to earn enough money to remake the first LSL game.
In a similar vein, I've also seen other similar areas where the Two Guys From Andromeda are making a new space adventure game, and Tim Shafer (sp?) is also putting together a new game (also funded by Kickstarter contributions).
Well I suppose they could have separated single player characters and online characters, although there'd likely be complaints about that too. Offline mode would result in cheating / hacks for sure. I don't care if single players hack their characters, but i don't want them to then take those chars into multi player games - a la the previous Diablos.
I wouldn't hold your breath over a pirated version of the game either. A good server emulator will take some time to be developed and I doubt it will ever rival the legit experience. Much of the game is server side.
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For all people bitching about the game. Quit bitching. Game is amazing. Stop trying to find something in life to complain about. Loving every minute of the game. Game is fantastic Blizzard. Thanks for your hard work! No complaints here!
Hack and slash must not be my thing because I found the game immensely boring. If I could give it away I would. I should've known the voice acting was going to be bad after those pathetic character trailers.
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Ironically, a lot of accounts were hacked over the weekend so Blizzard can't really play the "more secure" card anymore without getting blank looks : /
Lol getting your login information phished is your own fault. Let me know when you see cheaters in game tho...
Matter of opinion and taste. I think Blizzard got it right the way Diablo III is.
The official reason is to maintain the integrity of the real money auction house when it goes live
Regardless it still sucks. I was playing last night, my girl goes on netflix to stream a show, and I start getting hit with lag where nothing happens for 5 seconds, then everything that should have happened in those 5 seconds happens in a split second
Diablo I single player had different characters than multi-player. If Diablo III does it differently, I think that's the mistake.
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You're not forced to play single player. Having them seperate would have given the single player game to those who want it without Internet connection and the others would have had their multi-player online play with possible offline mode.
Diablo I had the best of both worlds.
I played Diablo I at work for a major game publisher when I worked their in-game helpline - I think I know it pretty well. Still, I think for my convenience, I don't want to spend twice the time with two characters just to have an off-line mode. I rather see the positive sides of it: I can play my characters on any computer it is installed and has connection to the web. I understand it comes to a price (no offline mode) but in our modern days, that is rather no problem for me. Whereever I am, there is usually internet. If it isn't, I am not there (or have time) to play in the first place. Someone reported it works just fine on 3G connections with no lag whatsoever... So, I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. One of the big parts of this game will be ranking and PVP. The best control solution Blizzard came up with doing the database and therefore loot table etc online. Again, if it is a dealbraker for you, don't play it. I just want to do what the game is intended to do: Have some fun! I live in a very rural area and still, I don't have any problems. You might not be able to play it in a hunting cabin out in the boons - but yet again - you didn't go there for Diablo III either.
The beauty of Diablo I is you didn't have to. You could play single player with the multi-player side of the game perfectly well. Heck, you didn't even have to connect to Battle.net to do it.
Again, having a true offline mode where caracters can't be used wouldn't harm your convenience at all. No one forces you to play that side of the game.
But it sure would alleviate the concerns of those who want offline play. I don't get why you're against choice...
It is about both cheating and piracy. Playing online with the same character you can play in single mode is one of the best benefits. What sucked was playing with people who've hacked the character file to make it impossibly experianced, armored, weaponed etc.... If stopping that requires the character to be stored online and you have to stay connected I am all for it. Starcraft II is the same way.
Who says I'm against choice? You have the choice as well. You can either decide not to buy it and that is that - or you can buy it, try it and see how limiting the online requirement really is. As I get it, you didn't buy it and you just argue from a philosophical standpoint. But you are right: You have the choice between Diablo I+II and Diablo III if you want to play offline. Also, you don't have to have a CD (or DVD) in your computer to verify you have a legal copy - an aspect which wasn't mentioned at all and is part of why you can only play it online. Here again: If you have D I or D II, you have to have the CD - that is your choice.
It's almost like arguing that I bought a car that goes 160mp/h and then I complain that in the USA, they didn't build roads for that except race tracks: "But I don't want to use it with 160mp/h on the racetrack only, I want to speed everywhere!" Nope, your car comes with the limitation that you are only legal within the limits. You have the choice between driving within legal limits, not driving at all or getting arrested when caught speeding. (keep in mind that the supreme court ruled they can strip search you now whenever they arrest you no matter what - as long as you have to go to jail.)
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Who says I'm against choice? You have the choice as well. You can either decide not to buy it and that is that - or you can buy it, try it and see how limiting the online requirement really is. As I get it, you didn't buy it and you just argue from a philosophical standpoint. But you are right: You have the choice between Diablo I+II and Diablo III if you want to play offline. Also, you don't have to have a CD (or DVD) in your computer to verify you have a legal copy - an aspect which wasn't mentioned at all and is part of why you can only play it online. Here again: If you have D I or D II, you have to have the CD - that is your choice.
Yes, that is the choice we have presently. What is being argued is that it is a choice that creates a certain convenience to pirating the game and hurts only the paying customer.
If Blizzard had made the game with a true single player mode that was 100% offline, then that removes the convenience of pirating and for those who want to use the same character online and for single player, they could still have that option if the game followed Diablo I's mode, where you could select "Multi-player" and then play alone in your own game.
I would argue the pirating issue. If you want to go illegal, you can just find and copy over the D2.exe (I think that is what it was) to make D2 playable without CD - same with D1 (and you can just google a compromised key for the installation). Now, if you pirate DIII, you actually have to reverse engineer the server because loot tables etc. are server-based and not on the client. Now, that is risky if you trust the hackers and install their server package on your computer. Thats like asking hackers "Please do whatever you do without giving me a trojan, please with whip cream and cherry on top." or you log in on an illegal server just to wait until Blizzard's legal team wipes your progess by shutting it down.
Diablo 3 really is an online game, even if you play it solo, all the items and character info is handled server side like an MMO. Besides, the glory of the game is playing in pugs. I highly doubt there will ever be a stand alone client.
This is pretty much the future of gaming, less and less will done on your home box, and more of it will be in the cloud, most game companies will become services like Onlive where everything is server side. Personally I believe this will actually increase the longevity of games, as your personal systems specs, graphic cards, even OS becomes more irrelevant. I look to Onlive's release of that the Sega Genesis titles as an example, which would have been very difficult and expensive to re-issue and support as stand alone software packages. As your computer becomes simply a terminal, a developer no longer has to support the thousand of different types of hardware and OS's that are currently used and no long has keep up with new tech that enters the market. The developer only has to update its own servers making it much easier and cheaper to keep your favorite games alive.
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Ah so you agree with me it's simply a piracy issue then, has nothing to do with cheating (since that was my initial point).
But frankly, they could have gone the D1 way, seperate single and multi player characters, and it would have alleviated the concerns. They didn't, saved the time and are still racking in the cash.
In the end, a few customers get burned, Blizzard saves dev time and money. Typical corporate choice.
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Diablo III's system and Onlive have very little to do with each other. MMOs and games like Diablo III do very little processing server side, only sending status and small data chunks for modifying your player model and position. Onlive streams input and display from and to your computer.
