Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Ingmar]

Makes me wonder if single player is also hosted.

Yes, it is, from everything I've read. There's never been a functional difference between single player and multiplayer Diablo anyway, you played single player on D2 via battle.net by just putting a password on your game and not telling anyone what it was. They may dress it up a little more this time but I expect that will be how it works essentially.

[Mrbloodworth]

D2 was a local host, you were client and server. Same for LAN, ETC... What I said was I wonder if even single player requires a server under this new system. I can't think of another reason to "Always be online". Other than the AH.

[Malakili]

D2 was a local host, you were client and server. Same for LAN, ETC... What I said was I wonder if even single player requires a server under this new system. I can't think of another reason to "Always be online". Other than the AH.

Piracy is likely their answer.

[Talpidae]

I'll put the ETA of Activision selling items directly to the playerbase at 6 months from launch. Anyone want to go lower/higher?

From Launch.

That would kill the game. You can't have items being sold directly to the players and have players selling items.

I'll take that bet.

[Mosesandstick]

It should function just like closed bnet. Any single player game would still be hosted by the server. Hopefully there won't be queues this time?

[koro]

I was already solidly on the fence about Diablo III prior to this due to not giving the slightest toss about any of the available characters, but the double whammy of no offline (I played Diablo II almost exclusively offline singleplayer; I loathe the break-neck pace of online play) and the for-cash auction house (I'm a packrat who likes to collect stuff. Every time I saw some unique item I didn't have I'd have to wrestle with myself over whether to bank it or sell it for money) pretty much killed the last bit of interest I had.

Of course this is all moot anyway since everyone and their brother is going to buy D3 anyhow and none of us being annoyed or indignant is going to change a thing.

[Amaron]

All I'm thinking is that a lot of items that would be destroyed due to trading difficulty in D2 are going to go on the RMT auction house instead.   With botters doing their part as well there is going to be a glut of such items.   So everyone will either have really good gear for cheap or Blizz is going to nerf the hell out of drop rates.

[jakonovski]

The always online requirement is a bit baffling, because all that offline users need to do is to pirate the game.

[Kail]

Of course this is all moot anyway since everyone and their brother is going to buy D3 anyhow and none of us being annoyed or indignant is going to change a thing.

Sigh.  Yeh, that's the most annoying part.

God damn this is getting frustrating, though.  Between Activision pulling this kind of shit, EA's irritating "Only on ORIGIN" schtick, Ubisoft's "hope you like DRM, 'cause I sure do" model, it's like I have to carry around a god damn black book to let me know if I'll be able to actually play the games I'm buying (or, more often nowadays, not buying).

[Mosesandstick]

A tangential question; how do you differentiate between a bot and a player? Apart from things like getting stuck.

[Malakili]

All I'm thinking is that a lot of items that would be destroyed due to trading difficulty in D2 are going to go on the RMT auction house instead.   With botters doing their part as well there is going to be a glut of such items.   So everyone will either have really good gear for cheap or Blizz is going to nerf the hell out of drop rates.

Drop rates on the super high end stuff were always tiny anyway.  It was pretty easy to get your hands on very good but not quite top end gear in D2, I expect it will be basically the same.

[Malakili]

A tangential question; how do you differentiate between a bot and a player? Apart from things like getting stuck.

You mean as a player or as Blizzard?

[Mrbloodworth]

All I'm thinking is that a lot of items that would be destroyed due to trading difficulty in D2 are going to go on the RMT auction house instead.   With botters doing their part as well there is going to be a glut of such items.   So everyone will either have really good gear for cheap or Blizz is going to nerf the hell out of drop rates.

Yes, thats a good point. I want them to make changes to balance the game, I could care less about who has what and I hope no tweaking comes because of this stupid AH.

Isn't there also a PvP component to Diablo 3?

[Malakili]

All I'm thinking is that a lot of items that would be destroyed due to trading difficulty in D2 are going to go on the RMT auction house instead.   With botters doing their part as well there is going to be a glut of such items.   So everyone will either have really good gear for cheap or Blizz is going to nerf the hell out of drop rates.

Yes, thats a good point. I want them to make changes to balance the game, I could care less about who has what and I hope no tweaking comes because of this stupid AH.

Isn't there also a PvP component to Diablo 3?

Yes there is.  They did say however that there won't be a ladder or ratings.  I don't know if that has changed since Blizzcon last year or if it will change later.  Its an obvious potential source of content if there is any "competitive" PvP though.

[FieryBalrog]

There is an item sink in the form of crafting

The big long interview is at http://www.diablofans.com/

Jay Wilson also addresses PvP, how much he doesn't care about D3 being esports, and how PvP will be horribly unbalanced and he doesn't care.

[Mosesandstick]

You mean as a player or as Blizzard?

As Blizzard.

Did D2 bots become impractical with 1.10/1.11 and the random boss attributes? I can't remember for my life.

[Malakili]

You mean as a player or as Blizzard?

As Blizzard.

Did D2 bots become impractical with 1.10/1.11 and the random boss attributes? I can't remember for my life.

From what I understand Bots are still pretty rampant, but I'm not sure, I haven't played D2 in a couple of years now.  I assume they will use a similar anti-cheat system to Starcraft 2.  If I remember, it works similar to VAC.

[Amaron]

Drop rates on the super high end stuff were always tiny anyway.  It was pretty easy to get your hands on very good but not quite top end gear in D2, I expect it will be basically the same.

Yea I'm not really talking about the super high end stuff.   That stuff was always super rare.   But you had that level of stuff that wasn't really worth an SoJ but was still way better than the average player had.   You had to play for a while to get into the SoJ economy.   Here you'll pop in your paypal and instantly have a full MF suit for 5 bucks or some such.

I'm guessing they'll have extreme level requirements on items for starters to combat some of this.

[koro]

I totally forgot about the Arena PvP thing in Diablo III. If I recall, some skills even got nerfed in D2 despite its PvP being largely informal. If the PvP stuff becomes popular enough, it's almost a guarantee Blizzard will start balancing with it in mind.

You mean as a player or as Blizzard?

As Blizzard.

Did D2 bots become impractical with 1.10/1.11 and the random boss attributes? I can't remember for my life.

Last I played D2 a couple years back bots were still pretty ubiquitous. The big farm run of Mephisto in Hell became very hard to bot due to Durance 2 being changed to be an enormous sprawling maze. Of course, it made it even more annoying to actually play normally.

[Mosesandstick]

Thats because it always spawns right behind you

I think a lot of the closed players took their pvp seriously, and the patches were a labor of love. Not sure how much it applies to everyone else who is going to play.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The real evil in all this seems to be overlooked by most. It's not the real money auction house or the online-only play.  Those are sad evidence of the end of the age of innocence for computer games. They may be base, money-grubbing, cold-hearted business decisions, but they are not evil or even unreasonable.

No, the true evil that all this hoopla is a smokescreen for is the final enforcement of RealID required to play, combined with their willingness and intent to mine, sell or publish anything and everything they learn about you through that to Facebook, ad agencies, collection agencies, your future employer, or anyone else willing to shell out a few pennies per data item for it.

If you buy this game, you are giving up all privacy regarding your participation in this game, for all time.  Most folks here, except for the youngest perhaps, seem at least a little leary of Facebook's profiting off your personal details.  Well Blizzard has figured out how to not only surgar coat the pill that surrenders your right to privacy for the sake of corporate profits (which you do not share in) like Facebook, but also how to get you to pay for the privilege.

Suckers

[Malakili]

The real evil in all this seems to be overlooked by most. It's not the real money auction house or the online-only play.  Those are sad evidence of the end of the age of innocence for computer games. They may be base, money-grubbing, cold-hearted business decisions, but they are not evil or even unreasonable.

No, the true evil that all this hoopla is a smokescreen for is the final enforcement of RealID required to play, combined with their willingness and intent to mine, sell or publish anything and everything they learn about you through that to Facebook, ad agencies, collection agencies, your future employer, or anyone else willing to shell out a few pennies per data item for it.

If you buy this game, you are giving up all privacy regarding your participation in this game, for all time.  Most folks here, except for the youngest perhaps, seem at least a little leary of Facebook's profiting off your personal details.  Well Blizzard has figured out how to not only surgar coat the pill that surrenders your right to privacy for the sake of corporate profits (which you do not share in) like Facebook, but also how to get you to pay for the privilege.

Suckers

Wait, what?  I'm not sure how this is worse than WoW or SC2 in this particular regard.

[WindupAtheist]

RMT and no offline play! Muahaha!

[Ingmar]

The real evil in all this seems to be overlooked by most. It's not the real money auction house or the online-only play.  Those are sad evidence of the end of the age of innocence for computer games. They may be base, money-grubbing, cold-hearted business decisions, but they are not evil or even unreasonable.

No, the true evil that all this hoopla is a smokescreen for is the final enforcement of RealID required to play, combined with their willingness and intent to mine, sell or publish anything and everything they learn about you through that to Facebook, ad agencies, collection agencies, your future employer, or anyone else willing to shell out a few pennies per data item for it.

If you buy this game, you are giving up all privacy regarding your participation in this game, for all time.  Most folks here, except for the youngest perhaps, seem at least a little leary of Facebook's profiting off your personal details.  Well Blizzard has figured out how to not only surgar coat the pill that surrenders your right to privacy for the sake of corporate profits (which you do not share in) like Facebook, but also how to get you to pay for the privilege.

Suckers

Does Sinij know you stole his tinfoil hat?

[Merusk]

Last I played D2 a couple years back bots were still pretty ubiquitous. The big farm run of Mephisto in Hell became very hard to bot due to Durance 2 being changed to be an enormous sprawling maze. Of course, it made it even more annoying to actually play normally.

This solution will not be possible in D3. If you recall they said that there won't be random dungeons so that they can do scripts & set pieces for the story.  Your first run of <endboss> will be the same as your 10,000th run.  This only makes it easier for bots.

[Ingmar]

Last I played D2 a couple years back bots were still pretty ubiquitous. The big farm run of Mephisto in Hell became very hard to bot due to Durance 2 being changed to be an enormous sprawling maze. Of course, it made it even more annoying to actually play normally.

This solution will not be possible in D3. If you recall they said that there won't be random dungeons so that they can do scripts & set pieces for the story.  Your first run of <endboss> will be the same as your 10,000th run.  This only makes it easier for bots.

Ehm, what? I must have missed a piece of news, because every time I've played it (Blizzcons) the dungeons have been random. The last *room* wasn't random, but that's also true of D2.

[Maledict]

Dungeons are random, outdoors isn't. (Although extra areas can be added in for quests like in Diablo 1).

[Ingmar]

Finally something worth getting upset over! 

No random maps was the single biggest problem with Titan Quest, IMO.

[statisticalfool]

It's sad: I totally see offline play as not an edge case. It's definitely lowered my interest in the game.

But how many developers have to come out with "We tracked our stats for players, and found that (50%|70%|90%) were playing illegal copies" to make it mean something?

The AH/RMT thing seems like a natural extension once you make that choice to make it online only, but I have to believe the box sales is what is driving this. And you know, CoD gets away with it because they make huge bank on the console versions, and yes, I know, Blizzard is sitting on piles and piles of money, but I have a lot more sympathy for draconian copy protection for PC games.

[Malakili]

It's sad: I totally see offline play as not an edge case. It's definitely lowered my interest in the game.

But how many developers have to come out with "We tracked our stats for players, and found that (50%|70%|90%) were playing illegal copies" to make it mean something?

The AH/RMT thing seems like a natural extension once you make that choice to make it online only, but I have to believe the box sales is what is driving this. And you know, CoD gets away with it because they make huge bank on the console versions, and yes, I know, Blizzard is sitting on piles and piles of money, but I have a lot more sympathy for draconian copy protection for PC games.

The barrier for playing Diablo 3 is going to be effectively the same as posting on f13. 

[Simond]

Didn't know Bobby Kotick ran f13. 

[Hoax]

All I'm thinking is that a lot of items that would be destroyed due to trading difficulty in D2 are going to go on the RMT auction house instead.   With botters doing their part as well there is going to be a glut of such items.   So everyone will either have really good gear for cheap or Blizz is going to nerf the hell out of drop rates.

/thread

This will end up making the game worse for a feature we didn't really need.

[kildorn]

D2 was a local host, you were client and server. Same for LAN, ETC... What I said was I wonder if even single player requires a server under this new system. I can't think of another reason to "Always be online". Other than the AH.

If you support a real money AH and single player characters are functionally no different than bnet characters, you have to force online to validate that the items aren't being magicked into existence.

The alternative would be single player only characters and multi only characters, and they seem to want to blur that line a bit. But at the expense of the assumption of network connectivity.

[Ratman_tf]

but I also see creating a system that shafts a few customers to completely obliterate piracy as a good one, too.

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[koro]

It's sad: I totally see offline play as not an edge case. It's definitely lowered my interest in the game.

But how many developers have to come out with "We tracked our stats for players, and found that (50%|70%|90%) were playing illegal copies" to make it mean something?

The AH/RMT thing seems like a natural extension once you make that choice to make it online only, but I have to believe the box sales is what is driving this. And you know, CoD gets away with it because they make huge bank on the console versions, and yes, I know, Blizzard is sitting on piles and piles of money, but I have a lot more sympathy for draconian copy protection for PC games.

I only skimmed the interviews, but was "x% of players were using illegal copies" really a thing that was said? Because if so, I find it quite difficult to believe. The Diablo Battle Chest is still in print after 10+ years and continues to retail for $30 new, which suggests to me that the thing still sells and is regularly stocked on store shelves, which I wouldn't imagine would be the case if the piracy rate for it was significant.