Is Diablo III Further Evidence Of Overreliance on the Internet?
At Cracked.Com John Cheese provides 5 Reasons ‘Diablo III’ Represents Gaming’s Annoying Future. He reports on his experience with the anticipated new release, noting in exasperation that even playing the one-player version of the game requires you to log in to the company’s website. Thus if the server’s down (and you can bet it was on release day) then you can’t play.
Cheese will have none of it:
We handed Blizzard 64 dollars and said, “I would like to be a monk named F—hole, please.” And in return, they took our money first and responded second, “No, that name doesn’t quite sit with us. Take out the cursing, and you can play. Well, for an hour or so, that is. Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.”
Sixty-four dollars is as much as some people make in an entire day. For them, handing that over to play a video game is not a minor event. All they want in return is to use the product they just f—ing paid for. If any other company in the world sold you a product that didn’t work, and then refused to hand over some sort of compensation in return, you wouldn’t even need a lawyer. The judge would tell them straight up, “Give them a working product, or give them their money back, or go to fucking jail.” But for whatever reason, the video game industry gets away with this now? Every time they have a problem with their servers, I can’t play the game I already bought? In an era when people carry their entire music library around with them on their phones, I have less ownership and control of my video games than I had in 1979?
Are we beginning to rely on the internet too much? Do we just assume that it will always be there when we need it?
I think back to how we managed to live just fine before getting a GPS for our car. And now we get frustrated and worry when it freezes or misdirects us.
A new book on the subject that arrived in the mail the other day: iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us.
Yes, I did take this photo with my smart phone and with the screen of my Mac in the background. And????
I was all set to buy Diablo III, and was even going to buy a new computer just to have the requirements to play the game (current computer is 7 years old). But if I can’t play it off-line, then forget it. The CD/DVD should be enough for me to play any game. Very disappointed by this. And apparently Civilization V isn’t that good either.
Civ V is fine if you’re new to the series. Bit of a letdown for series veterans though with many aspects of the older titles lessened or removed entirely. Better off sticking with Civ IV. Or for that matter, Alpha Centauri. GOG carries that for around 5$, although they don’t seem to have the Alien Crossfire expansion. There’s also Planetfall, an AC mod using the Civ IV engine.
Just from the headline, knew it was the boy wonder.
Hey, PJM, hire some effing grown ups!
When I first heard that Diablo III was going to be online all the time I admit I was a bit dismayed. If I’m playing the single player game I don’t want to be hampered with having to sign in to a server that will not always be available. On top of this, servers eventually are closed so what will players do then?
I think everyone in the gaming community has now witnessed what happens when a game is always connected online. I don’t perceive that this will be the wave of the future as most gaming sites I visit are not very supportive of Diablo III being online. I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard will release a patch sometime in the future which removes always online connectivity for the single player mode.
This is less about reliance on the internet and more about the ridiculous anti-piracy measures companies are employing. There will be a backlash.
This nails it. Creators have a right to get paid, but like music conglomerates before them, they’re inclined to short-sighted measures that accomplish the following:
1. Honest customers get inconvenienced and alienated.
2. Customers start disliking the creators more than they dislike the pirates.
3. Creator-induced roadblocks make piracy begin to look more reasonable, and borderline defensible.
4. Creator loses a non-trivial number of paying customers, and has made the overall climate more hospitable to piracy.
5. Creator loses more money than he was losing to start with.
I would add a few numbers to your list, Monsieur Cracquere:
6. A way around the in place anti-piracy measures will always be discovered and exploited anyway.
7. Those of us who DO pay full retail at release for every game start being a lot more picky about what we fork our money over for. Last time I checked, none of the games I’ve paid money for over the last 5 years have had full-retard anti-piracy (I learned my lesson from buying Half Life 2 while in Iraq in 2005. Steam/Valve have gotten NONE of my money since.)
By the by, I buy a LOT of games, I usually buy the “Collectors Edition” on pre-order, and I’m still going to the occasional midnight release. Why yes Virginia, I also have a pretty successful career, a nightlife, a beautiful fiancee, and own my own home. Why do you ask?
8. If we absolutely have to have the latest game that has full-retard anti-piracy, Pirate Bay and the like are your friend.
And people wonder why the PC gaming industry is dying. I used to be a PC gamer exclusively and then I bought my first XBox (in 2010, again in Iraq). Haven’t looked back. Sure, I lose a little bit of the whizbang cool stuff (in depth level editors, etc) but:
A) I don’t have to worry about whether or not my machine will be capable of running the game effectively. Upgrading my personal computer every other year to keep up with the latest PC gaming demands is for the birds. I’d rather use that money to save for for vacations or for trackdays on the motorcycle.
B) I’ve quit playing Massively Multiplayer games of all kinds. I’ve been tempted to go back for things like SW:TOR, and the recent news concerning Fallout: Online and Elder Scrolls: Online might make me change my tune.
But for now, I’m more than content playing HQ RPGs like Skyrim alone, HQ FPS games like Halo: Reach, MW:3, Battlefield:3 on Co-op multiplayer and Trials: Unleashed with my fiancee (yes, she plays as well – and usually cleans my clock.) Hell is other people.
C) Nobody has my … “dangly bits” in a vice making me worry about when and where I get to play my games. Sure, portable XBoxs aren’t exactly normal but Kindles and PSPs are. If I NEED to play I’ve got a ton of older PC games that are still fun and still work just fine on my 3 year old laptop.
^What he said. Twice.
(Minus playing way too many ‘AAA’ games, that are, usually (but not always), the bane of my existence.)
Le Cracquere and JVictor have pretty much covered the bases. The only thing I’d add is that this sort of DRM also loses a potentially large number of paying customers who travel often, are troops on deployment or at sea, or simply don’t have perfectly reliable broadband.
Diablo III’s not the first title to do this, just the highest profile. I was surprised that Blizzard went this route given the backlash that Ubisoft took for doing the same thing with some of their single-player titles.
Skyrim is the same way, no internet connection, no playee. Kick-@ss single player game but still frustrating that you have to go through a gate-keeper protocol in order to play it.
It may have been different at the time of release, but I think the only time Skyrim needs to be online is the initial activation, at least for the PC version. Just tested it with my network connection disabled and Steam set to offline mode and it started up fine.
Skyrim does not need to be connected when playing on Xbox or PS3
Diablo III is an outlier, and not representative of a larger trend. Diablo III is less like it’s standalone predecessors and more like a “World of Warcraft-lite”: an online multi-player game with an abbreviated single-player component. After wasting the better part of a decade playing WoW, I’ve lost my taste for MMORPGs and will pass on DIII as well.