Diablo III - It's official

[scooby_dooby]

Yes, that's unfortunate. But on the other hand, you don't lose your items and your progress (the xp and gold you earned). If your computer crashes, or suffer a power outage, you probably will lose all items and progress you got during that time. So online is not all downside.

So you're comparing something that happens daily, to something that happens once or twice a year? Fail.

I don't see how this can be spun as anything other than bullshit.

I paid $60, which is the standard full price for a title, and I only want to play it offline. Why the fuck am I having to deal with this bullshit?

At least if my power craps out regularly, I can buy a UPS. If my pc crashes all the time, I can build a new PC. At least I'm in control. WTF am I supposed to do when my ISP keeps dropping connection, or the blizzard servers go down?

I can promise you that the next online-only single player game I see, I will not buy it, I will pirate it, cause this is pure bullshit. I'll then donate $60 to some charity who actually deserves that money.

 

[pcchen]

Then they can't make money off of charging users to get slightly different less sucky stats on an item. A large motivation for online only is so that users cannot create their own items and therefore will have to RMT via blizzard.

I'm awaiting the day the scandal breaks that a bliz employee is creating the best items in the game and RMTing them via bliz's auction house.

You know, Blizzard operates a certain MMORPG with a huge gray gold market and this has yet to happen. Not convinced.

 

[pcchen]

So you're comparing something that happens daily, to something that happens once or twice a year? Fail.

Come on, most applications are not that reliable, not to mention games. For example, Skyrim crashes much more frequently than, say, World of Warcraft, to me.

I paid $60, which is the standard full price for a title, and I only want to play it offline. Why the fuck am I having to deal with this bullshit?

Why buy an online only game when you only want to play it offline?

 

[aaronspink]

Come on, most applications are not that reliable, not to mention games. For example, Skyrim crashes much more frequently than, say, World of Warcraft, to me.

Yet the most I've ever lost is 5 minutes of time in Skyrim. Most games do routine time/progress based checkpointing.

 

[aaronspink]

You know, Blizzard operates a certain MMORPG with a huge gray gold market and this has yet to happen. Not convinced.

You've probably not heard about it, I'm fairly certain it has happened. And MMOs tend to have much tighter oversight than something like d3 which has massive security holes apparently.

 

[pcchen]

Yet the most I've ever lost is 5 minutes of time in Skyrim. Most games do routine time/progress based checkpointing.

Actually it's not that good for Skyrim, because it's possible that some game breaking bug may write to all your three autosaves (it happened to me once).

You've probably not heard about it, I'm fairly certain it has happened. And MMOs tend to have much tighter oversight than something like d3 which has massive security holes apparently.

I don't know. It certainly happened to other MMORPG (I know it happened in EVE-Online). And about Diablo 3's security hole, right now it looks like traditional account hacking (e.g. Trojans keyloggers).

I think it should be clear now that both offline mode and online mode have their benefits and shortcoming. It's just a trade off, not necessarily of some nefarious intent.

 

[Malo]

Diablo 3 online vs offline is the new nvidia vs AMD.

 

[RobertR1]

Going through the last part of the ACT II on Nightmare now. I'm at level 41 with 1900DPS as a Wizard. So far, it's pretty easy.

I did have to change up my strategy from Normal but all in all it's quite manageable.

 

[trinibwoy]

Downloading now, wish me luck. Last couple hack-and-slashes were fun - Titan Quest and Torchlight.

 

[aaronspink]

I don't know. It certainly happened to other MMORPG (I know it happened in EVE-Online). And about Diablo 3's security hole, right now it looks like traditional account hacking (e.g. Trojans keyloggers).

People have apparently had their accounts hacked even though they were using 3 factor authentication. So, no, not just keyloggers.

I think it should be clear now that both offline mode and online mode have their benefits and shortcoming. It's just a trade off, not necessarily of some nefarious intent.

online only is ONLY SHORTCOMINGS. There are no advantages and only disadvantages to the consumer with online only.

 

[cjo]

People have apparently had their accounts hacked even though they were using 3 factor authentication. So, no, not just keyloggers.

1) Keylog username / password for email account
2) Log in to battle.net account and email account using same login details, change passwords.
3) Register an iphone / android authenticator to the account.
4) ???
5) PROFIT

online only is ONLY SHORTCOMINGS. There are no advantages and only disadvantages to the consumer with online only.

Assuming that it takes precisely 0 development / testing / budget to implement and introduces exactly 0 bugs, then yes, there is no cost or disadvantage. Sadly, those assumptions are flawed beyond belief.

 

[trinibwoy]

1) Keylog username / password for email account

Does the online requirement make you more susceptible to key logging in some way? Or are you just referring to the fact that you need a login to play and therefore your characters/progress can be shanghaied?

 

[cjo]

Does the online requirement make you more susceptible to key logging in some way? Or are you just referring to the fact that you need a login to play and therefore your characters/progress can be shanghaied?

Aaron was saying that there must be security holes in D3 because of accounts being hacked even though they used an authenticator. I was suggesting a way that an account could be hijacked even if there is an authenticator on the account.

 

[trinibwoy]

Aaron was saying that there must be security holes in D3 because of accounts being hacked even though they used an authenticator. I was suggesting a way that an account could be hijacked even if there is an authenticator on the account.

Oh ok, yeah they explicitly advise you not to use the same password for your bnet account as you do for other accounts (email etc).

 

[Davros]

Assuming that it takes precisely 0 development / testing / budget to implement and introduces exactly 0 bugs, then yes, there is no cost or disadvantage. Sadly, those assumptions are flawed beyond belief.

He means from the pov of the user

 

[cjo]

He means from the pov of the user

And more development time and a larger number of bugs isn't a downside from the POV of a user?

 

[trinibwoy]

Single-player lag? Wtf Blizzard.

 

[BRiT]

Yes, there is single-player lag. It's as if Blizzard are stuck in the time-era of 14 years ago. They have not learned a damned thing on how to do networking and security. It's pretty damn pitiful for a supposed top-notch development company.

 

[Kaotik]

There's no such thing as "singleplayer" really, there's just "solo multiplayer" and "multiplayer" if you think about it

And I'm not sure what you mean BRiT, you can't make all the delays between the server and the players machine disappear no matter what tech you use, at least for me the ping has been just fine, only occasional lag/hitches during busy hours.

 

[trinibwoy]

The question is wtf is it constantly phoning home during an offline session? At least do it asynchronously - why is it affecting the game engine?