For Obvious Reasons, Diablo III's Real Money Auction House Won't Launch On Time

@ghoti221: I totally agree with you, but don't forget, this is a company that still puts out patches for 10 year old games (Diablo 2). If I were a betting man, I'd say these servers will be online for at least 15 years. In all likelyhood there will be a way to play it offline by then but chances are you will be long done with the game.

@e_p said:

@Undeadpool:

I'm definitely not a doomsayer, and I don't think the D3 servers are going anywhere in a hurry. But hoping that the game will at any point be patched to not require Blizzard servers is highly optimistic. The client we have on our discs lacks a significant amount of functionality required for the game to run, persistence for starters. You'd essentially have to create a system similar to realm emulation, runnable on a home computer, for the client to connect to. That's a significant task.

Some crazed open-source fanatic is probably working on that already, though.

I see this argument against always online games constantly, but frankly no one's ever really had to grapple with it on this level, so it's ALL hearsay and conjecture at this point. The only precedent (on the proper level) is servers of super-iterative games shutting down previous editions' servers LONG after they've passed into obsolescence.

@LordCmdrStryker said:

@depecheload said:

I cannot imagine that there isn't a better way to handle that though. It's utterly pathetic.

They could have handled it by giving options for online characters and offline characters, but just like Starcraft 2 they want to eliminate as much piracy as possible, so online is your only option. Any other reasons they give for it are secondary to preventing people from stealing it.

On this story, I did get the achievements disappearing bug, which was really annoying. I'm not sure how many I've already gone past that haven't popped back up. Not real worried cuz I'm sure I'll play thru with all classes, but still slightly bothersome. And another symptom of their problematic online requirement.

You do realize you wouldn't be getting any achievements if you weren't online anyways because there is no way to confirm that you actually earned them.

@Undeadpool:

I agree with everything you say here. I just wanted to assert that single player D3 is not something that's going to happen with anything I'd call a "patch". It'll be a major undertaking, whether implemented by Blizzard, or reverse engineered by a player community.

@FateOfNever said:

They "didn't know this was coming." Trust me, if Blizzard knew that their launch was going to be this bad, they wouldn't have launched it when they did. Blizzard doesn't WANT this. Blizzard doesn't want this horrible start. Between bad impressions, money going to paying workers over time because they need to keep people on to try and fix all this shit in time, potential damage to their servers or needing to pay more money into rebuilding and fixing problems, this isn't something Blizzard knew was coming nor something they wanted.

12 years. They had 12 years to get this shit right and they didn't. They run WoW for gods sake, you'd think they'd take that experience and the 12 years they had to get this game made and out the door to properly prepare. Or am I completely unreasonable in thinking that a game that has been in development for 12 years made by the guys that practically wrote the book on massive online gaming worlds should be blindsided by their own success? I think Blizzard could've had absolutely zero problems on day one. I really do.

@FateOfNever said:

Like I said, and I stress this part, if it works perfectly, you wouldn't see or notice any difference. It did not work perfectly.

I know. I got booted 6 times in a game I was playing all by my lonesome. No excuse for that. Ever. And if a frog had wings he wouldn't bust his ass whenever he hopped. Doesn't matter if could or will work perfectly one day. It didn't. That leaves me with a sense that at any time I could be dropped from a game I'm playing without a justifiable reason and I don't like that feeling. I don't like having the dread of trying to watch out for check points in case I get dropped from my effectively single player game for a million different reasons that are outside my control. Leaving your customer holding the bag with a WTF? look on their face is no way to treat a customer. In any industry.

@FateOfNever said:

...or look at Amazon and go "dude, their server hosting blew up one day and that took a lot of my favorite sites off line, go fuck Amazon."

Apples to oranges. Amazon had a hardware failure, and all the Whiskey sites were offline because they chose not to mirror their sites in other Amazon servers. Will said something about that on the Tested podcast. Hardware failures/outages aren't the same as piss poor planning and stupid game design decisions based on money and not "to prevent cheating" like Blizzard claims. Amazon going down was a legitimate failure that people couldn't have seen coming, and those that chose not to prepare for it suffered. Had they chosen to mirror their sites no one would have been affected.

@FateOfNever said:

But, I want to ask you - you've already spent the 60$ for the game. Blizzard already has your money. So why, in let's say six months from now, would you continue to look at your 60$ game and go "Nope, I don't even want to try and experience this game because I had one bad experience that probably no longer exists, but, go fuck Blizzard because they weren't gods among men and weren't flawless, perfect beings."? That money is already spent, you already have the game, why not revisit it down the line after problems get fixed? I'm not talking about giving Blizzard a free pass, but the only one that really gets hurt from that is you because you've already spent that money, and if one negative experience was enough to turn you off from a company completely for forever, you weren't ever going to be a long time Blizzard fan anyway.

I didn't buy the game precisely because I wanted to test out how it ran on my MacBook (flawlessly graphics wise which I was very, very happy to see), and to see what kind of gameplay issues would surface. I understand there would be launch day issues so I waited, maybe not long enough apparently, but I waited. While I got right on today with no issue, I got dropped another 2 times. First time was 15 minutes in, the second was about 45 minutes later with no checkpoint reached because I cover every square inch before moving on. One was my fault (router burped) and the other must have been Blizzard. I was playing all by myself and the second time it went down I had to do a whole area all over again, all my items and gold magically disappeared. Not confidence inspiring. I'll admit I can't hold the router burp on them, and I don't. But what happens next time? Say it works swimmingly for a week and then one day the server decides it's version of my character and my computers version aren't right, boots me out and I lose all my shit again? Is that fair to me? I know I haven't bought it but that doesn't fill me with confidence as a customer for any company, not just Blizzard. I don't hold this game design decision just against them, I don't like it wherever it exists.

I've been a fan of Blizzard since the first SC. I loved it. Great game. Tried WoW and thought it was mind-numbingly stupid and boring (for me, not as a judgement on the game). I bought SC2, haven't played it all the way through but it's been a shit ton of fun for me the entire time I've played it, though I'm really bad at it and would have zero chance online. I figured, what the hell let's try Diablo. A friend of mine from way back loved it and I never really got into it but it looked interesting. I decided to see if I could "try before you buy" and a friend gave me a guest pass. It was sort of a blessing he did because had they given me the chance to play without being connected I wouldn't have known I could be booted at any time for thousands of reason I don't have control over and the only person being penalized by this would be me. Blizzard doesn't care if I lose some gold and a sweet hat. "Tough shit, we did it so people wouldn't cheat." they'd say and I'd be boned. All because of a game design decision they took not to prevent cheating as their primary goal, but to make as much money selling items that cost them absolutely nothing to make. I don't like that. It leaves me stomping the bag of dogshit on the doorstep while the homeowner laughs at me. I'm the only one with anything to lose here and it could happen at any time.

All that being said, even with all the troubles I've had and the feelings of dread it has left me when I think about really getting into the game, I'm seriously thinking about buying. Call me a sellout or whatever you want, I deserve it. But this game is seriously fun for a first time player. I've just got to decide if I want to support a company that willingly puts the customers balls in a vise after the sale with no recourse for recovering lost items from circumstances outside their control. I know the customer can walk away, but a business shouldn't have those stipulations in place if you want to use their product. Had they said in the game that you can play offline but never use anything from there online, I would've clicked that check box and never looked back. I know they don't have to bend to my will, obviously the product doesn't fit my needs. I just wish Blizzard would've casted a wider net for those wanting to play the game but don't care about online play. Maybe I'm an idiot, maybe I'm expecting too much. But I really want to play this game and that first experience left a really bad taste in my mouth when it didn't need to.

If I do decide to purchase this game it'll be simply to play multiplayer, in that arena I understand and am completely okay with hiccups. Happens to me all the time in Steam games and BF3 (which I seriously regret buying). I wouldn't be the slightest bit miffed if something went wrong there at all and wouldn't think badly of Blizzard if things did go south. That comes with the territory. I understand that your friends can drop in and out of the game whenever they wish, I feel there should be an option to stop that and play solo all the way if you want. A few of my friends have this already and are really liking it, and being on the outside looking in I want to play too. I've just got to decide whether or not I want to support these game design decisions or not. So far I really don't like it because I can't even try the game out on my own without it failing on me. Out of a total 8 failures, one has been my fault and having the sense of sitting on a ticking time bomb that shoudn't be makes me very much dislike Blizzards decisions. I'll still play the hell out of StarCraft 2, it's a great game. But I'll think very hard and very serious about purchasing Diablo simply because I have no control over what happens if I want to just sit down and zone out. I haven't given up completely because I've had a shitload of fun when I did get to play it, but Blizzard didn't help their case by being caught with their pants down on day 1.

@Veiasma said:

@Aetheldod said:

And I hope it is a short future :/ but not likely tho

people said the same thing about steam when it launched.

now its "the savior of PC gaming"...

Which shows how desperate PC elitists are...

@HotSauceMagik, @Undeadpool : Given that my most recent play experience of Diablo II was less than a year ago (not a full run, just Act I), you'd be surprised how often I pull something from my bookshelf. :)

In terms of offline play -- as other people have pointed out, most evidence points to this game being more like WoW in technical structure, as opposed to a single player game with online DRM (e.g. Ubisoft.) So, the challenge in making this single player, would be the analogous to trying to make WoW single player - technically challenging, very time consuming, and very expensive. If they're at a point where they're going to shut the servers down due to decreasing revenue, it's extremely unlikely they're going to spend the money to throw a twenty or thirty person team at it for six months to make it single player. The old Blizzard pre-Vivendi days might have done it, but Blizzard as a part of Activision Blizzard always has to keep an eye on the bottom line.

Likewise, remember, there's a cost difference between throwing out a patch every so often, versus throwing out a patch and maintaining the servers required to serve the existing game population. I'd like to think Blizzard would keep the servers up for a decade. But, as I said above, Blizzard is a part of a larger corporation, which has one purpose - extract maximum value for the shareholders.

I'm not dissing Diablo III as a bad game - far from it. I'm just pointing out that the way the game is delivered to the users is different, and that difference is 'game as service' as opposed to 'game as product.' You do not own a copy of Diablo III, you're leasing it until Blizzard says you cannot play it anymore. And for me, personally, the way I evaluate value of "game as service" versus "game as product" is completely different.

JGH

@ghoti221: I agree its a completely different value proposition. And I know everyone's standards are different for what constitutes "a good value" but I can't help feeling like 60 bones for 10+ years of the super high quality production that D3 is, is not a bad one.

I guess what this boils down to is the way we purchase and play games as a media and really all media in general, are changing. They're in the awkward teen years where the future is uncertain and every new product is trying to find there own way . They want to take the car out, stay out late and hang around malls all day. We as the generations who grew up in the infancy of take-home media want things the way they always have been. Go to a store, buy a thing, take it home; yours for ever. Unfortunately, I don't think that way is sustainable anymore in today's economy.

@HotSauceMagik : Of course, that assumes it's actually 10+ years. :) (I know, everything in the track record appears that it would be, but I'm always reminded of that line of "Past performance is not an indicator of future events."

About "games as product not being serviceable in a modern economy" - I think it all depends on what type of profit margin you require, and what the consumer is willing to accept. If the title in question wasn't Diablo III, I think there would be a lot less tolerance for this type of system, especially since 'always on' doesn't add anything fundamental to the gameplay. This game is configured like a MMORPG, but it's not a MMORPG. The only game feature I've seen that seems to require the always on requirement are the auction houses - everything else in the game can (and/or has) been implemented in ways that doesn't require connection to a server.

The problem for Blizzard (and Activision/Blizzard) is that they know the WoW gravy train can't last forever. So, what they're looking for isn't just a hit game - because that's only worth a year of revenue, no matter how big. It's like a perverse addiction -- they've now become addicted to a monthly revenue stream. They need something recurring, and Diablo III + Real Money Auction House does that.

They're not the only one, BTW, Valve is in the same boat - except, since their cash cow is Steam (something that people will never get tired of because it's a utility, not an experience) , they're pretty much set unless they do something completely and utterly insane, or there's a massive paradigm shift in the way content delivery occurs (like, for example, if Net Neutrality completely fails and each major ISP creates their own little kingdom of network access.)

So, to summarize: maybe the way I'm thinking is old-fashioned, but I don't think it's old-fashioned in a bad way. The issue here isn't sustainability - the issue here is pure capitalism: how much can you get people to pay for a product? In this case, Blizzard is betting they can get people to shell out $60 plus however much they get from fees from the real money auction house plus whatever other fees they can charge down the road. (Monthly server maintenance fee, anyone?)

I don't blame them, that's capitalism at work -- but we're not going down this road because we have to do this in order to get good games. We're going down this road because this corporation has the power to extract this much money from the consumer base, and enough of the consumer base is willing to play along. It's just like cell phone data plans, cable TV subscriptions, most professional sports franchises et al. - they charge not what they think is fair, they charge what the market will bear.

JGH

FYI, servers definitely not running smooth. Still HUGE lag spikes (2000 msec+) when playing solo and co-op. Only time it's been relatively smooth (I'm talking 200ms ping, still not good but "Green" by Diablo 3 standards) was early morning solo when all the kids were probably still in bed.

Oooh, okay. That explains why everyone is in such a frenzy to level up and get the best loot. They're trying to turn it into a source of income. How cute.