You no longer have to wait 72 hours to play the full version of Diablo III that you just paid for.

Blizzard Entertainment has lifted the restrictions placed on the digital versions of Diablo III, which once limited digital consumers from moving beyond the first act or level 13 for as long as 72 hours.

Blizzard claimed this was an “unintended consequence” of a decision designed to protect customers, as it personally verified each purchase of Diablo III. Upon verification, restrictions lifted.

“For security reasons and to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service,” the company said at the time, “players who purchase the digital version of Diablo III may have to wait until payment verification is complete before they can access certain game features. Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone.”

This one always looked bad for the company, and I’m not surprised Blizzard was quick to correct it.

This move coincides with the release of patch 1.0.3a, which reverses some significant loot changes players reacted poorly to and other tweaks outlined here.

You no longer have to wait 72 hours to play the full version of Diablo III that you just paid for.

Blizzard Entertainment has lifted the restrictions placed on the digital versions of Diablo III, which once limited digital consumers from moving beyond the first act or level 13 for as long as 72 hours.

Blizzard claimed this was an “unintended consequence” of a decision designed to protect customers, as it personally verified each purchase of Diablo III. Upon verification, restrictions lifted.

“For security reasons and to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service,” the company said at the time, “players who purchase the digital version of Diablo III may have to wait until payment verification is complete before they can access certain game features. Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone.”

This one always looked bad for the company, and I’m not surprised Blizzard was quick to correct it.

This move coincides with the release of patch 1.0.3a, which reverses some significant loot changes players reacted poorly to and other tweaks outlined here.

Nice

EDIT: HAHAHA YES.

Thank goodness. What an awful decision that would've been.

Where does it talk about reversing loot changes? The durability changes?

SOLE

Note to self: idea for Fox sitcom based on the wacky shenanigans of a multi-million dollar PC game developer. Working title: Oh, Blizzard!

Jesus blizzard you have completely fucked up diablo. What are you thinking?

@patrickklepek said:

This move coincides with the release of patch 1.0.3a, which reverses some significant loot changes players reacted poorly to and other tweaks outlined here.

That might read better if it said:

[...] significant balance changes [...]

Unless you're referencing a change not covered in the patch notes.

These notes don't seem to reflect, at all, the problems users have been describing (and raging about) since the release of 1.0.3... Apart from fixing it so that you take a tiny bit less wear and tear durab. loss... Personally not liking the way blizzard has been handling patches and the community... Pre .3 I used to see 16k+ players in public on the us server, post patch that number has been down to 1k-2k. Dunno what the number is at currently.

You were a templar, D3... :/

What is blizzard doing?

Still not buying. I doubt they even have to worry about fraud as much as they did with WoW, since people are quickly getting bored with Diablo.

They didn't reverse anything in that patch. Not according to the notes linked anyway.

Edit: They loot reverse is in the hotfix area. They put the guarantee rare drop back on bosses.

What happened? I thought this was totally legitimate and not in anyway shitty for the customer.

@Anwar: I think he said Diablo III has angered over 6 million fans on PC and Mac last month.

Fucking duh.

This is just like when they tried to introduce that policy (RealID) that made everyone divulge their personal information if they wanted to use any Blizzard forums.

Maybe they finally understand that shitting on the majority of their users in the name of preventing a few bad things happening is not the way to go.

More importantly, does this mean the next time I get the hankering to play some Diablo III that I'll have to download yet another patch and then be told that the servers are experiencing downtime, as has been the case literally ever single time I've tried to play the game since launch (which has admittedly been less than I figure most people have, what with me having a job and a focus on other games these days)?

At least they turned it around. Blizz is one of the few companies that is willing to say "Yep, our bad." and fix the problem that has everyone complaining instead of just sticking to it.

It seems like everything that sucks about Diablo 3 is due to the RMAH. Just going out on a limb here, maybe they shouldn't have put it in? Even if they're backing down on this one issue (only after considerable public backlash, mind), their prioritizing of that meta-economy over basic gameplay functionality has reaffirmed my decision to give them exactly $0.00 - I can get my Skinner Boxes elsewhere, thanks.

Blizzard ate some gold. They sure did. If you open wide, they'll shit some into your mouth. Then you'll have gold. And shit. Yummy. I'll pass...

@Ravenlight said:

@patrickklepek said:

This move coincides with the release of patch 1.0.3a, which reverses some significant loot changes players reacted poorly to and other tweaks outlined here.

That might read better if it said:

[...] significant balance changes [...]

Unless you're referencing a change not covered in the patch notes.

My guess is that he was thinking of the 1.0.3b patch that was deployed as a hotfix today.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6214196/

@Anwar said:

Diablo III has sole more than six million copies since it launched on PC and Mac last month.

Diablo 3 has what now? :P

Diablo 3 has motherfucking soul is what it has brah!

They need to give their fucking head a shake. These sort of business decisions are not going to fly with the consumer.

@TheBrainninja said:

It seems like everything that sucks about Diablo 3 is due to the RMAH. Just going out on a limb here, maybe they shouldn't have put it in? Even if they're backing down on this one issue (only after considerable public backlash, mind), their prioritizing of that meta-economy over basic gameplay functionality has reaffirmed my decision to give them exactly $0.00 - I can get my Skinner Boxes elsewhere, thanks.

That's about my feeling on it all too. It's a fantastic game, extremely fun to play, but the amount of compromises they've had to make to accommodate the AH are downright depressing and make me fear for the future of gaming. It definitely makes me feel that the game was made for all the wrong reasons in the first place.

Yes, because removing protection for Credit Card Fraud is such a great idea.

"Rawr! Blizzard did bad!" "Rabble rabble rabble Blizzard changed their bad! Thus they are bad! For some reason!" "Blargable! I hate this game and don't care about it at all, but I'm still going to constantly pay attention to the game to let everyone else know how much I hate it and don't care about it!"

@FateOfNever said:

"Rawr! Blizzard did bad!" "Rabble rabble rabble Blizzard changed their bad! Thus they are bad! For some reason!" "Blargable! I hate this game and don't care about it at all, but I'm still going to constantly pay attention to the game to let everyone else know how much I hate it and don't care about it!"

It bothers you, does it? I'm constantly paying attention to the game because of this:

@Draxyle said:

[...] fear for the future of gaming. [...]

First they came for the console gamer, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a console gamer. Then they came for the MMO players, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an MMO player. Then they came for the single player PC gamer, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

@umdesch4 said:

@FateOfNever said:

"Rawr! Blizzard did bad!" "Rabble rabble rabble Blizzard changed their bad! Thus they are bad! For some reason!" "Blargable! I hate this game and don't care about it at all, but I'm still going to constantly pay attention to the game to let everyone else know how much I hate it and don't care about it!"

It bothers you, does it? I'm constantly paying attention to the game because of this:

@Draxyle said:

[...] fear for the future of gaming. [...]

First they came for the console gamer, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a console gamer. Then they came for the MMO players, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an MMO player. Then they came for the single player PC gamer, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Because video game companies are like the Nazis. Godwin's law strikes fast and early here.

@FateOfNever said:

Because video game companies are like the Nazis. Godwin's law strikes fast and early here.

Actually, it rarely does strike that early. I simply did that to point out that you missed something in your ultra-clever generalization of responses in this thread. Trolling a troll, I guess you could say...

@umdesch4 said:

@FateOfNever said:

Because video game companies are like the Nazis. Godwin's law strikes fast and early here.

Actually, it rarely does strike that early. I simply did that to point out that you missed something in your ultra-clever generalization of responses in this thread. Trolling a troll, I guess you could say...

If you think I was trolling people, you're mistaken. What I was doing was pointing out how people just want to bitch about Blizzard. People bitch and moan about Blizzard's policy towards the players. Blizzard does something that people bitch and moan about. Blizzard changes the something that people are bitching and moaning about because they care about the effect of it on the players... and people bitch and moan about it. Explain to me how that makes logical sense. And invoking Godwin's law about something like this is just sad. One single game company experimenting with a system is ruining the future of gaming? Give me a break. Game companies are not Nazis. You have the freedom of choice in what games you buy and play. They are not "coming for you" the way the Nazis came for the Jews, for fuck's sake. With game companies they have to experiment to grow and expand and develop the future of gaming. If a company does something you don't like, once, that does not mean they are Nazis. It does not mean that, as a company, they are now morally bankrupt. If you don't like what they've done, say your peace with it to them once, leave it at that, and don't buy their products until they change their ways/only buy their products that you like what they've done with, not their products that feature things you don't approve of/don't care about. At the end of the day though, guess what, video games are an open market. The future of gaming is not defined by a single company. It is defined by many companies, and even if the future of gaming starts heading in one direction as a whole, there are so many smaller game companies out there that will do things to appeal to people in the opposite direction that all you have to do is support them to show the bigger companies where you want gaming to go. Or, to support those smaller companies to keep on doing things that the bigger companies aren't doing.

Also, Diablo 3, no matter how much you may want it to be, is not a single player PC game. You may be able to play it that way, but you can play an MMO that way too, that doesn't make it that though. And if you truly, desperately want a D3 single player experience, push Blizzard more for making a console version, because I imagine that a console version of the game is considerably less likely to be mandatory always online. It's still possible, but less likely.

Edit: Also, there are better ways to make your point than fucking Godwin's Law, which honestly, I find pretty disgusting and belittling of human life to invoke that quote in regards to video game companies, even more so when it doesn't even apply to the situation at hand. It's gross.

Wear and tear should be taken out permanently.

@FateOfNever said:

Edit: Also, there are better ways to make your point than fucking Godwin's Law, which honestly, I find pretty disgusting and belittling of human life to invoke that quote in regards to video game companies, even more so when it doesn't even apply to the situation at hand. It's gross.

I think you missed my point entirely, which was that I was surprised that you, in your raging diatribe above, hadn't already accused people of invoking Godwin's law. That's about how much of an asshole you sound like up there. I'm not enough of an idiot to seriously compare a game company to the Nazis. I am, however, finding some amusement in how superior and enraged you've been since you started mocking people in here.

@umdesch4 said:

@FateOfNever said:

Edit: Also, there are better ways to make your point than fucking Godwin's Law, which honestly, I find pretty disgusting and belittling of human life to invoke that quote in regards to video game companies, even more so when it doesn't even apply to the situation at hand. It's gross.

I think you missed my point entirely, which was that I was surprised that you, in your raging diatribe above, hadn't already accused people of invoking Godwin's law. That's about how much of an asshole you sound like up there. I'm not enough of an idiot to seriously compare a game company to the Nazis. I am, however, finding some amusement in how superior and enraged you've been since you started mocking people in here.

And yet, you were the one that invoke it. It doesn't matter if you tried to do it as some kind of trolling attempt, you were the one that invoked it. You can't take that back. You can, after the fact, try to crawl your way away from it, but all the same you, of your own free will, compared Blizzard to Nazis. That's on you and on no one else. I'm fine with sounding like an asshole considering you, and the plethora of other people that sound like assholes on this whole matter. But sounding like an asshole and being the kind of person that invokes Godwin's law because you can't think of any other way to make your point are two very separate things and I would much rather be the person that sounds like just a random asshole that is just so tired of seeing any topic involving Blizzard devolve into a "Blizzard hate" topic than someone that thinks video game companies are like Nazis. I mean, I'm not saying you're an idiot, but, you did compare video game companies to the Nazis. No one else did.

Someone saying that they're afraid of the future of video games is fine. I can even respect that concern. Trying to say that someone being concerned about the future of video games is like trying to invoke Godwin's Law.. well, that's something. And it's something you'll have to live with.

@Draxyle said:

@TheBrainninja said:

It seems like everything that sucks about Diablo 3 is due to the RMAH. Just going out on a limb here, maybe they shouldn't have put it in? Even if they're backing down on this one issue (only after considerable public backlash, mind), their prioritizing of that meta-economy over basic gameplay functionality has reaffirmed my decision to give them exactly $0.00 - I can get my Skinner Boxes elsewhere, thanks.

That's about my feeling on it all too. It's a fantastic game, extremely fun to play, but the amount of compromises they've had to make to accommodate the AH are downright depressing and make me fear for the future of gaming. It definitely makes me feel that the game was made for all the wrong reasons in the first place.

I agree, pretty much all the always online stuff have been justified as requirements for the RMAH (which I don't get in the first place, why not just do it like Diablo 2 and allow you to make offline characters, lose out on the potential better loot and the ability to play along with your friends but being able to play alone on your own terms), while I'd think the vast majority of players would never actually use it. Then, it adds potential security issues - and a motive for people interested in exploiting such security issues to target the game (and it's players) specifically. I rather like the game, but the fact that I have to log in every time I want to play means I rarely bother doing it, and the fact that I have to remain online while playing, and at the same time make sure I don't try at one of the many occasions when it's down for maintenance introduces way too many potential points of failure (my ISP doesn't have fantastic uptimes, and evidently, neither does Blizzard), making me unable to play the game a large number of the times I feel like playing it.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

Note to self: idea for Fox sitcom based on the wacky shenanigans of a multi-million dollar PC game developer. Working title: Oh, Blizzard!

How about "$h*! Blizzard Does"

I didn't even realize they only disabled the game until the purchase was confirmed, which could take UP TO 72 hours. I feel like every game site on the web has been intentionally reporting this in a misleading way.

@DrRandle said:

Yes, because removing protection for Credit Card Fraud is such a great idea.

Literally every single other online purchasing outlet seems to do just fine without this restriction. I think we'll be okay.

@DrRandle said:

Yes, because removing protection for Credit Card Fraud is such a great idea.

More like, abusing paying customers because you haven't come up with a good fraud prevention scheme because your game is just a gateway to a cash auction house is why Blizzard will never see any money from me.

Never.

@satansmagichat: @satansmagichat said:

I didn't even realize they only disabled the game until the purchase was confirmed, which could take UP TO 72 hours. I feel like every game site on the web has been intentionally reporting this in a misleading way.

I personally experienced, not sure how wide spread it was (there was a long thread about it, but that's besides the point), there was something buggy which caused the "cap" to be imposed passed 72 hours. I had to sign my account up to the SMS security service and reset my password.

This was the first Blizzard game I've played in a long, long time, and two things which really made Blizzard look bad to me was: 1) In the installation process I never noticed anything about the 72 hour rule, it could have been in the Licensing Agreement or I may have missed it. Not making that message prominent enough definitely illicit-ed a freak out from me when I beat the skeleton key and was told I was using the free trial version. 2) There support/help files had absolutely nothing about the issue, and it took about a solid hour of searching, reading through forum posts to find what ended up being the solution.

It's very shocking that a company with Blizzard's reputation and resources would allow such a customer experience crushing bug to get past, especially related to an already controversially "feature". A more progressive and intelligent approach would have been to limit access to the Auction House in that verification period, I mean that makes the most sense since this was what this "protocol" was attempting to protect, why (potentially) ruin and stifle a new player's first impression like this?

Big deal.

Lots of drama about Diablo 3 still? Sounds like some hearts got broken.

hmm, i just hope when gw2 launches it'll have more fluent launch.

I honestly stopped keeping up with the game completely. I haven't even updated it in like 2 weeks or more. I just haven't felt any desire to play it again. Meh.

Diablo 3 is like a turd wrapped in ribbons and covered in candy sprinkles.

@TheBrainninja said:

It seems like everything that sucks about Diablo 3 is due to the RMAH. Just going out on a limb here, maybe they shouldn't have put it in? Even if they're backing down on this one issue (only after considerable public backlash, mind), their prioritizing of that meta-economy over basic gameplay functionality has reaffirmed my decision to give them exactly $0.00 - I can get my Skinner Boxes elsewhere, thanks.

The RMAH is the core of Diablo 3. The entire game was designed around it. Inferno is impassable without using the AH to get the edge and Blizzard is banking (figuratively and literally) on the chance that you'll use the RMAH to buy new items to get through inferno. Why? Because it's actually impossible to get through inferno without decking out your character on the AH. The more people that use the AH, the more money Blizzard makes.

Diablo 3 is broken. Or at least my definition of broken. I guarantee Blizzard's next game will have some scam bullshit to siphon money from customers just like Diablo 3. That's why I'm not buying another Blizzard game again. I'd rather play minesweeper.

@SpartanHoplite said:

hmm, i just hope when gw2 launches it'll have more fluent launch.

It's a MMO with a certain amount of hype, I'd wait at least a week before getting in.