Have you started groaning over this decision yet? Yes, Blizzard has decided to make Diablo III only playable as long as players have a constant online connection. While this kind of feature has been utilized for authentication purposes, Diablo III will be requiring a constant connection for a whole plethora of Battle.NET features.
The exclusion of offline play for Diablo III may hurt some players, especially those who live in areas that might not have high-speed internet on a regular basis. Blizzard executive vice president Rob Pardo justified the need for constant connection by citing the increased security made possible, and that the perks of the Battle.NET features outweigh the drawback of not being able to play while offline.
In Pardo’s own words, those players who would hope to play Diablo III while traveling on an airplane may have their complaints heard by the developer, but simply put, there are “other games for that.” Some people may disagree, but unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Blizzard’s going to be changing their minds regarding this decision any time soon.
So what kind of features will be available to you with a constant internet connection? The list below is pretty significant and includes the in-game auction house feature, but there are bound to be some individuals out there who would gladly give it up for the chance to play the game whenever and wherever they want.
- Persistent friend list
- RealID Cross-Game chat
- Persistent party system
- Server-side persistent character storage
- Drop in/drop out co-op
- Increased item-stash that gets shared among characters (up to 10)
- Achievements and stat tracking
- The Banner system, which acts like a player’s emblem, detailing achievements, win/loss in PVP, whether or not a player is playing Hardcore, and can also be used to teleport to a player’s position in-game.
The list is pretty significant, and having just a few of those features can make the need for constant internet a bit easier to take, especially for online character storage. However, there will still be a number of people who would sacrifice all the features for the chance to play their copy of Diablo III while sitting on a flight.
If the need to stay connected to play Diablo III wasn’t enough of a disappointment, then alloww us to inform you absolutely no mods of the game will be permitted by Blizzard. We won’t attempt to speculate on just how many fans will be infuriated by the announcement, which was provided in a FAQ statement to Kotaku:
“Q: Will Diablo III include support for bots and/or mods?
“A: No, for a variety of gameplay and security reasons, we will not be supporting bots or mods in Diablo III, and they’ll be expressly prohibited by our terms of use for the game.”
For all the players who had their great dungeon, class, or quest designs in mind, we’re sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The exact nature of the security improvements that come as a result of denying mod support to players is open to speculation. But even if there are legitimate reasons, it’s unlikely that they’ll prevent the inevitable dismay, anger, or feelings of betrayal from the fan base.
With Diablo III in the last legs of development, the decisions made are probably for good. Will these decisions impact whether or not you will be buying the game on PC or possibly on console?
Diablo III is still without an official release date for the PC, but a n Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version is still a rumored possibility.
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That’s really gay…
They did this to Starcraft II and they’ll do it again. Man this game looked good too.
damn im more interest in the system requirements…
I’d rather play the previous Diablo games than to have to deal with this crap. Better the Diablo you know than the Diablo you don’t.
WOW! (pun intended)
First EA bullsh!t and now this?
Guess I won’t be buying this game either. Their loss.
Yep, I’m out too. The future’s looking like slim pickings for us country born gamers. I both can’t and don’t want to keep up with constant internet requirements and slowly but surely there’s gonna be no such thing as playing games offline. This is a sad day.
A huge pass for me. Internet connection in Philippines is not that good, lags and other troubles brought by online play seriously undermines gameplay. Seriously dissapointed.
I was weary of this game at first, now I know I won’t buy it. This is turning into too much security and measures and control, all under the guise of protecting the consumers, when in reality it’s about maximising profits.
Buying games used to be simple. You paid for a game, and it was yours to play. Now, you have to register and submit to control and basically pay the company to have you by the balls as long as you put up with it. That’s not how games should be. This §hite has got to go. Stop buying games with drm. That way you hit them where it hurts: their profit margin, and it’s the only language they’ll understand.
I canceled my pre-order. No need to buy a game I can’t have fun in. Since thats what games are made for “To have Fun”. Game companys don’t understand that they are slowly destroying that fun for us Gamers from birth.
I very confused……why exactly is it there can’t be a completely separate, single player feature? As a person playing the game solo, I don’t “need” a single one of those supposed features.
Just have it like DII. You can play it solo off line or log onto BNet for the multi-player experience.
Because it’s more profitable for Blizzard to force us to be online so we’ll use their s****y real life cash auction house if there’s a offline char profile seperate from the online then blizzard can’t make profits from your looting in the offline game since you would be prohibited to sell offline char items.
Thus they want you to be only online so you’ll be more easily seduced into using their AH it’s that simple.
so if D3 is to be ported on consoles we can access battle.net too?? (same as steam) If that happens could we also possibly play WoW(can be played on iOS in the future) ,wc3,SC3 on consoles?? btw Im still not backing up tho D3 is a gem, if you want offline games “there are other games for that” ^^
another game ruined before release loved D2, played it for ages, have cancelled pre order. i have never heard of anything so utterly stupid.it’s breathtaking that games companies go to these lengths to protect their IP’s and hackers take 2 hours to circumvent it and pirate the game! who remembers the uncrackable blue ray? whats the point? don’t sotfware companies multiple the price of a product by three as they believe that every legit copy sold is copied at least three times.maybe they could do that?! okay they’ll do that too:(
Curious to see if Blizzard decides to release Diablo 3 on consoles and whether or not the numbers of console players will outweigh the PC players.
So, let’s have a look at the “significant list” of features that players will get “only if they have a constant internet connection”:
Persistent friend list (um… Steam remembers my friends if I logout and log back in again… wtf?)
RealID Cross-Game chat (If I’m offline, not being able to chat is a given. This isn’t a “feature” I’d miss, obviously.)
Persistent party system (dunno about this one)
Server-side persistent character storage (Thats cool for multiplayer games. For single player games, the only advantage of that is to log in on another computer and have my character there. Otherwise, who cares?)
Drop in/drop out co-op (Again, doesn’t matter in single player. Otherwise a cool feature to have)
Increased item-stash that gets shared among characters (up to 10) (That is just an arbritary game design choice and is in no way inhibited by a constant internet connection, or single player mode.)
Achievements and stat tracking (Yep. Tonnes of single player/offline games have these features. Am I missing something?)
The Banner system, which acts like a player’s emblem, detailing achievements, win/loss in PVP, whether or not a player is playing Hardcore, and can also be used to teleport to a player’s position in-game. (again, who cares?)
Really the only things that seem to be benefits in this list are drop-in multiplayer and persistant party stuff. And if you want to play single player/offline, then who cares?
Aside from that, they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for reasons this game “needs” a “constant” internet connection. It’s kinda insulting.
This is a game breaker for me, as my internet connection cuts out at least once every 20 minutes… Thanks, Blizzard, for ruining another game for me.
Wow, first games start getting ruined by having the folks at Steam track you and only allow updates through them, now the best video game that is supposed to be worth the wait comes out and it is screwed up too.
Welcome to the bleeding edge. I don’t want to be tracked, have my stats displayed, be forced to use my software in your online world only, I am an American. Get the communist folks out of the room and make some software that does not require big brother to be watching and reporting on our every move.
Do I have to go back to looking for cracked versions to be able to play any of the games I purchase?
Used games are starting to sell more and more because they work without all of the facebook generated overheading hype. Get some folks with Android phones and drop the icloud, ipad, iphone, igiveupmyrights crowd.