Diablo III

This just the multiplayer right?

There is no single-player. There are only multiplayer games where you don't let anybody else join.

........

does not compute

Diablo III does not have an offline mode. You can go online and create a password-protected game that you don't give anyone else the password to (or they may just have an option to set the maximum number of players in the game to one), thus preventing anybody else from showing up and annoying you, but you'll still be playing on battle.net. If you want to play a game entirely from your own hard drive, you can't.

Thats the most dumb idead ever, and I thought Activision was the devil

Seems like Blizzard has fully embraced the Activision side...

Nope, won't be buying this one. Blizzard has made it blatantly clear over the last few years that they have zero respect for their customers. This is just the latest in a long list of screw ups.

CURSE YOU ACTIVISION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wasn't sure if I would be playing Diablo III anyway; I played the first two but never got into multiplayer except with RL friends and that seems to be the driving focus. I don't give a damn about the online-only aspect. When am I ever away from Internet and in a place to play the game? Still, if the point is to maintain control over the game environment to prevent the rampant cheating that plagued both of the earlier games, I can see where they're going with it.

The fact that the in-game Auction House is going to have a Real Money Trade component to it surprises me, but only because I thought Blizzard was adamantly against RMT. I suppose it's a concession to the fact that it's going to happen whether they want it to or not, so they might as well control it and get a cut at the same time. I mean, would you rather have it occur explicitly and with Blizzard's blessing, or as a black market underworld dealing with who knows what kind of crooks?

If I do get D3, I'll probably be mostly playing solo anyway, so the buying of uber items for hard cash won't affect me at all.

What does interest me though is the option to have your AH profits deposited directly to your payment account or to your b.net account. That means you could, among other things, earn World Of Warcraft playtime by selling stuff in D3. That's kind of crazy. Also it raises the specter of people making actual income off of the game and needing to report said income, which reminds me of that flap about Congress taxing MMOs.

edited 1st Aug '11 9:05:24 AM by Fighteer

Actually, I've read that there is a second auction house that uses in game currency instead of real money.

edited 1st Aug '11 9:40:18 AM by edvedd

Yes, they are separate AH's that work side by side. You can list an item in the in-game currency AH or the real currency AH. Gold can be traded in the real currency AH at a rate set by the community.

Welcome to modern PC gaming. Want this cool item? Fuck you, pay me. Want a new party member? Fuck you, pay me. Wanna do this quest? Fuck you, pay me.

Thats sound like a thing Activision doe- wait.........

Okay now I am PISSED. My faith in blizzard is dwindling quickly.

Better, their FAQ says they plan to introduce character trading as well through the AH.

Again, it doesn't affect me since I never plan to actually do any of these things, but it does bug me that the guy with the level 99 Barbarian (or whatever) next to me might have just bought it — and this is officially sanctioned.

I have only one very important question that may or may not matter: "Why would you do this blizzard? This goes against everything you used to stand for."

Because, according to them, people were going to do it anyway, so they might as well sanction and control it to prevent scamming and cheating than have it run wild in the black market.

Essentially, it's an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" thing.

Does anybody doubt that if Blizzard hadn't done this, there would have been a massive RMT black market for D3? It does worry me that this might be a trial run for similar changes made to World Of Warcraft in the future, though.

edited 1st Aug '11 10:04:27 AM by Fighteer

Indeed, I'm usually against the Blizzard hate bandwagon. But this is very distressing.

I hope the real money AH and character selling doesn't spill over into World Of Warcraft.

Honestly, "if you can't beat them join them" in this case will not help them PR wise.

edited 1st Aug '11 10:06:18 AM by Neo_Crimson

At this point I have had enough of Blizzard. Until they learn the value of a community and what made their games popular back in the day they won't be seeing a single penny from my wallet.

Whats made the popular anyway

They made games that people enjoy playing, and established memorable franchises in the process that they can now capitalize on. I find all this grumbling about the peripheral stuff to be mostly sour grapes from people who fall into the It's Popular, Now It Sucks! bandwagon. Seriously, you can play the game and never have to interact with the RMT if you don't want to. But when you get involved with other players, it's inevitable that you will either (a) run into cheaters, hackers, and people buying stuff on the black market; (b) run into other players who have bought goods from an in-game marketplace sanctioned by the developers.

Honestly I'd rather deal with the guy who used his credit card to buy the Level 55 Axe of Smashing Things than the script kiddie who hacked his way into having level 99 epics on a level 2 character with 500 skill points. That's one of the key reasons I never really got excited by the idea of D2 on battle.net. It's one thing to get a bunch of guys together and go smash Diablo, but it's quite another to start a game and have a bunch of pus-oozing retards start dupe-hacking on it.

You can claim to be paying Blizzard their just desserts for "selling out", but you are the one who won't get to play the game as a result. Blizzard will still make its customary skyscrapers-full of cash out of the deal, and there will be far less cheating thanks to the server-only requirement. So who, exactly, is winning and who is losing? Seems like you're pissing into the wind here.

A valid point. I'd actually rather deal with players buying gold in World Of Warcraft through a Blizzard-sanctioned channel than through the black market; at the very minimum it would annihilate the gold seller market in a heartbeat and make it unprofitable to hack accounts.

edited 1st Aug '11 11:52:37 AM by Fighteer

Why shouldn't it spill? There already is a black market of RMT for WOW, just like there would be for Diablo.

Also, for PR it can be presented as "If it is problematic to exterminate the rmt vermin the standard way, change the way and take out all of their base"

Man, a whirlwind of new info today. I salivate the minute I hear of new news on D3. I re-read articles with new info three to four times. I might not make it till it's release, if it ever will be released. D3 is starting to reach mythical proportions in my eyes.

I'm all for the RMT, better that Blizzard controls the market instead, but I'm guessing there are still going to be black marketers that will find ways to undercut the current in-game market, and spam the heck out of the chat channels with their advertisements. If there's money to be made, a way will be found.

edited 1st Aug '11 11:52:08 AM by Gregcomic

^The only profit they can possibly make is bypassing Blizz's cash transfer fees. Which is likely to be too small to bother. (If Blizz will not make official character selling, that's what they'll turn to).

Official RMT is grandiose All Your Base Are Belong to Us to black market RMT.

Of course, along with the bases, it will also get all the botters and it is dubious whether or not their antibot will suck as it does in Warcraft.

edited 1st Aug '11 12:00:19 PM by Adannor

Activision needs to die. RIGHT NOW.