Diablo III to be Online Only

Oh, Activision. You're such a shady puppeteer, hiding behind Blizzard's massive monetary growth and slowly maneuvering Blizzard towards its inevitable, anti-community future.

Online for also the single player?

Why does that sound silly?

Now will have to endure message pop-ups constantly asking us if we want other players to join our game, even if we wish to be left to explore the world of Diablo 3 alone. So, Blizzard never heard the negative outcry from fans of Ubisoft that their own persistent online connection for their PC games was horrible, forcing Ubisoft to quickly take it back within a year. (Which makes Ubisoft bringing it all back for Driver: San Francisco sound like they have poor memories). Maybe Blizzard's servers are great, I wouldn't know, but expecting a constant, solid internet connection out of anyone in the world would be a fallacy. Internet connections slow, they dip, they drop; it doesn't matter where you are. There are simply too many people connected at all times, Blizzard.

DRM like this is the reason why I don't buy a lot of ubisoft games...instead i found another way to play on my comp...lol. Not only is online all the time DRM horrible, it makes no sense for the single player portions of the game. I want to be able to play the solo single player portion of the game without needing an internet connection all the time. For example AC2 needed internet when it was SP only..... I understand u wanna stop ppl from cheating and whatnot, but this DRM and a list of other changes makes me say.....Torchlight 2 here I come!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, that blows.

"To me this sounds like Blizzard didn’t view that market share as big enough to accommodate."

Hell, I like you already. Welcome to the 4PP team :)

"The one thing that has bothered me about Blizzard’s recent decisions is that this doesn’t sound like the Blizzard I remember; it sounds like Activision is influencing these choices."

See also: Bioware and EA

I wasn't too disgruntled from hearing the news, but I found it a little wierd. Now hearing their reasons it doesn't sound that bad. I might try it out as long as the single player is their since im not a online kind of guy. Good article by the way!

bob webb you are a really good writer

When real money is involved (like with the new Auction House) having it be online all the time is the best option.

Well apparently LAN and Spawn were both instruments to extreme amount of piracy Blizzard games received in China, at least was their case with Starcraft 2. Also they have a Battle.net that I think they want to make into a Xbox.live, Steam, etc. Ya know, systems that you already log into before you play your games anyway. Sadly to think that Diablo now is going to be the same Diablo yesterday is a mistake when you take consideration of the many many changes that happened in the game world, and is almost like expecting a new Alice in Wonderland to look and feel like the same game as the last 10 years later.

Though I wonder how many people out there has stable internet connection vs those who don't. It's like the sort of thing of how many people have HDTV's to me.

You know what... I'm not gonna play Diablo 3 now... that'll show em.

I hate this new trend and passes and shit

As much as this might suck I have to admit I don't know anyone who didn't play Diablo II exclusively on an online Realm.

I'll just do the same thing I did for Starcraft II...Not care and not buy the game.

It was a sad inevitability, there was no stopping this.

Oh boo frigging whoo, so you have to play something else while your internet is down. If you aren't buying it because of this then you didn't really want the game..

Well I bought Assassin's Creed 2 (pretty cheap on Steam) and I haven't been able to play it yet because I'm a dumb arse who was confused by their requirements, so its definitely a pain if you are as stupid as I am. Choice is good and these compulsions serve the interest only of the company not the consumer so I hope the London looters burn down their servers or something bad like that, or the BIG ONE earthquake swallowers their servers so that i can have a good laugh when the online only game just doesnt work anymore lol. Where is my whiskey?

I'm sure Blizzard will do fine with Diablo 3. I'm also sure that I won't be part of the experience. Hopefully Torchlight 2 will not be as restrictive. Call me crazy, but when I buy something, I like to decide when, where, and how I play with it.

I think it's silly and playing into Activisions hand to blame them and not Blizzard. They have always been saying "Oh we are seperate entities and are doing our own thing". As soon as we take the blame away from the culprits and get mad at Activision then Blizzard is off the hook and people will continue to trust them. I don't agree with this or the real money marketplace they are going to implement. The gold marketplace makes a little more sense but from what I've heard it seems to be defeating the purpose of Diablos addictive nature.

Also, on another note, this pretty much is the truth of fan reaction.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/8/8/

Honestly this doesn't sound like that big of a problem to me and the people that are actually complaining about this are probably the people who were only planning on pirating the game. I can't really blame Blizzard for wanting to ensure purchases, though what do I do know

I want to be able to play Diablo regardless of what the Blizzard servers are up to. This seems like Blizz is pulling Diablo one step closer to WoW. And I /really/ don't like that.

that's rly disapointing ... I think its the reason for me to don't buy it

All I have to say, this is not surprising. Still gonna get it though...(maybe)

Having to connect to the internet whenever I want to play single player is going to suck. I will still get the games it's just was hoping to play it during the times I have slow/no internet.

Nice post, but yea it was expected of Diablo 3. I just have this strange feeling that this game isn't gonna do well since it's been in development so long. I mean look at Duke Nukem: Forever and I know it's not a game but Chinese Democracy took 10 years to make and it was garbage.

Great post but that feature is lame. Prob still gonna get it tho I've been waiting for it so....

well this is disappointing news

There's a lot of things that you brought up that they should really think off.
If your internet suddenly goes down, what will happen to your character?
Let's say your fighting a boss and then your internet crashes. Will they let you get your ass handed against him because of that? (Seen that happen in a MMORPG I play). What if you loose your gear because of that.

If they can solve some of the issues you brought up then it might work.

The online thing does kind of turn a lot of people off to the game, including myself. I'm not sure if I still want to get it or nor because Diablo was an awesome series. As for the in game buy idea with actual money, it doesn't phase me too much since you don't actually have to use it, and people did rip people off on the other games.

This is a really bad idea I think with the fact that I was hoping to play this game on the go on my labtop. You can argue that lots of places have wifi now but that's not entirely true. I don't play games on the go in a Starbucks I play them when I'm in the passenger seat in a car and such.

If they are going to make the game online only, then they need to take the next step and make it on the cloud. How many years do I have to wait after the release of D3 before it can be played in my browser? At least that makes the most sense for an online only game.

I've been like waiting for this game for 3 years, since it was announced in 2008. And then they pull this stunt? Yeah, sure, I have an internet connection, so according to Blizzard, I can play, right? Wrong! In monitoring my statistics, I've experienced 206 connections of between 1 or 2 hours this month, and 1077 connections lasting less than one hour. How is that leading up to Blizzard's "secure and cohesive experience" for Diablo 3?

And there are NO other 'net providers in South Africa other than Telkom, so I either make do with their shoddy service, or I go without...