I know I have a track record of Getting Angry About Shit, particularly when it comes to things like DLC, DRM and other three-letter acronyms. But I'm finding it rather difficult to get riled up over the issues surrounding Diablo III.
For the uninitiated, Diablo III is the latest game from World of Warcraft creators Blizzard, who are part of Activision. Activision used to be gaming's resident Empire Of Evil, but that mantle has since passed to EA, and Activision are now simply Those Guys Who Killed Bizarre Creations, Pump Out Call Of Duty Every Year And Have Something To Do With Blizzard. But that's beside the point.
The point is that Diablo III was always going to be a massive seller and an immensely popular title. It's the long-anticipated third entry in a series with a long history, and one which a lot of players have been looking forward to for a long time.
It's also one which a lot of people are getting extremely angry about, largely due to what they describe as its "always-on Internet DRM". Said "DRM" has had difficulties today due to overloading, leaving many players unable to log in and play the game.
Here's how the system works. To play Diablo III, you have to log in to Blizzard's online service Battle.net. Once logged in, you can then play the game. You have to stay connected in order to play, even if you're playing solo. The benefits of playing in this kind of "always on" environment include the fact you can always see when your Diablo-playing friends are online, that you can jump in and out of each other's cooperative multiplayer games, and that you can make use of the game's auction house facility to trade items.
Some people are getting very upset about this — particularly the fact that you can't play single player offline. And while that may seem a bit silly, I can't help but thinking a lot of people are looking at this from the wrong angle — the "gamers are getting screwed" angle. This is perhaps understandable, given the amount of time gamers spend getting screwed nowadays, but I really find it difficult to agree with the people getting riled about this.
Here's the thing, though: Diablo has pretty much always been designed as an online game to play with either friends or random strangers online. The classes are designed in such a way that it's both desirable and fun to group up with other people and tackle the game's challenges cooperatively. You can play solo, sure, but the game has always been designed with online in mind. With this latest iteration, including the auction house and other mechanics, Diablo is now closer in execution to a massively-multiplayer online title than a single-player dungeon crawler like Torchlight. Sure, it doesn't charge a subscription fee or feature a truly massively-multiplayer open world to explore, but the game has been designed specifically to be an online title. People don't complain about World of Warcraft, Guild Wars or the like having to be always online — what, really, is different here?
I think the issue is that Blizzard hasn't appropriately set people's expectations for the game being an online-only title. We have no problem with games like the aforementioned requiring us to stay online in order to play, despite the fact you can play them solo. (In the case of Guild Wars, you can even team up with computer-controlled partner characters if you really can't stomach playing with real people.) So what, really, is different about Diablo III? Is it simply that the previous games had a discrete "Single Player" option that didn't require you to be online? (I haven't finished installing the new game yet so at the time of writing don't know if this is still the case.)
The other issue is that people believe Blizzard, being the company who runs the world's biggest massively-multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, should have anticipated demand and made sure their servers were up to the job of dealing with the thousands (millions?) of people who were likely to be wanting to log in at the same time. This I sort of agree with, though there is no genuinely reliable way of predicting quite how much demand there is going to be for any given title. Blizzard underestimated demand, and it's caused problems — much like has happened with the launch of many other online-only games. That doesn't make this a "disaster" or a "debacle" or anything like that; it makes it an occurrence that we've seen before. An occurrence we should have figured out a solution for by now, yes, but one we shouldn't really be surprised about any more.
Within a matter of days, the whole issue will be completely forgotten about as everyone starts playing and enjoying the game, which kind of makes the whole RAGE!!! thing seem rather pointless, really.
But I guess you could say the same thing about any sort of "controversy" — including the Mass Effect 3 issues I wrote about a while back.
The fact is, though, this is an issue I find it very difficult to get riled up and upset about. So far as I'm concerned, Diablo III is an online game, almost an MMO, therefore I accept the fact that an unavoidable part of its existence is downtime, during which you cannot play. It's not as if I'm short of other stuff to try when that happens — and getting angry really won't solve anything. I accept that others' views may differ on this subject if Twitter today is anything to go by, but that's how I feel personally.
If you're getting upset, go play something else. Or, in the words of my good friend Jeff, GO OUTSIDE.
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Funny, even before I got to the end of this article I was thinking, "hmmm…I don't recall hijacking Pete's blog and posting this…"
I was able to play enough of the game this morning to get a feel for it. It's good, but I'm not able to get worked up over the outages. They'll work it out and I'll play it then. In the meantime, the rest of my life awaits. Oh, and some Max Payne, right after this episode of Castle.
So, I'll say up front that I'm not buying Diablo III because I disagree with a number of their decisions with the game, not the least of which being the cash auction house. But, we won't discuss that now.
As far as the DRM issue, I think you make a good point. People weren't expecting to always have to be online, and therefore they're angry about it. But, I also think always having to be online is kinda dumb. If I wanna play by myself, that should be my decision. Then you won't have log-in server issues. Or server connectivity issues. It would just be me playing the game I paid for, in the way I want to play it.
And, from my time with WoW, I've learned to never expect to play an online game day one, especially a big release like this. When a WoW expansions came out, I basically did other things for three days. It was just part of the cycle.
And I agree with you, it's kind of silly to get mad about it, but I think that's the standard response t not being able to do something now a days. Right away, you go "WTF?!", which I believe is understandable. That's frustration. But, to let it continue, and turn into actual anger, shows a lack of self-control, and sort of immature. My life is quite good, and not being able to log into a game is a very small worry comparatively.
Just to follow up on the discussion we'd had over on my blog, but I don't necessarily see where or how we can assume that "Diablo is primarily an online-only game". Sure, a lot of today's gamers did play it online. But that's like assuming that modern console gamers all use PSN or Xbox Live, when the actual stats show that many (even most) consoles are never really attached to the internet much at all.
I suspect that the actual stats will show that Diablo's always been as much of a single-player game as a multiplayer game. And when it HAS been a multiplayer game, it's often been a peer-to-peer LAN title, rather than the sort of MMO-style server-client game that was given the Diablo moniker. You don't need "servers" for a LAN-based game any more than you need them for a single-player game. So why should players be forced into that structure just because Blizzard's got some nifty new ways of monetizing players?
And, yes, I do think people have the right to be upset. This is a sixty dollar product, Peter; more in Europe. People aren't necessarily in a position to blow off that kind of money because Blizzard couldn't be bothered to rent some extra server capacity for a few weeks until the furor died down a bit. It's not like they can take the thing back, either; there's absolutely no recourse for software purchases, unlike pretty much any other good or service out there. You aren't even guaranteed that the thing will work; that little factum is the reason why they can get away with this sort of thing at all.
Most importantly, though, people have good reason to kick up a fuss because if they don't, this will become standard procedure. "Going outside" doesn't help when the entire industry moves in a direction. The classic British (and Canadian!) reaction of just sucking it up and remaining polite is the worst thing to do in this case. It won't accomplish anything. How could they possibly know what you like or dislike if you don't TELL them?
If people don't yell, they won't get the message. The louder the noise, the stronger the message. Contrary to what you said, it DID make a difference for Mass Effect 3; the backlash that game got is going to be a cautionary tale for every single head writer and producer on every triple-A title going forward, just as the backlash over Dragon Age 2 has prompted Bioware to rethink a lot of their assumptions for DA3, and the backlash over being forced to use your real name on the Blizzard forum pushed Blizzard to abandon that notion.
Yelling works. It may not be polite, it may not be "nice", but it works. Sure, go outside. But let 'em know how you feel first.
I'll grant you that Diablo and Diablo II were played much more by solo and/or LAN players, but having spent some time with Diablo III this evening, it's abundantly clear that the game has been designed from the ground up as an online-only game like the examples I mentioned. It's a shift in style for the series, but I actually do think it's for the better. The ability to chat with friends who are playing but not in your party, for example, is excellent, and I'm sure the auction house is going to see a lot of activity. There are no interface elements that say "single player" anywhere — you simply start a game.
I'm all for yelling, you know that — I just don't personally feel in this instance that it's particularly warranted, particularly as the game will doubtless be running smoothly in a few days and everyone will have forgotten all about this. I do, however, accept that some people are going to get frustrated by it — this post was simply to explain how I felt about it.
Sure, fair enough. You, as always, completely own your feelings.
My feelings are pretty simple: this was a choice. Blizzard didn't need to make this particular choice, but they made it. Because they made that choice, though, it was on them to make sure that they anticipated and dealt with all the consequences of that choice. Part of that really has to include rigorous load-testing and rental of extra server capacity to deal with the early rush.
It's just how this sort of thing works, and we know other software companies can deal with this sort of thing, as it's not like Amazon goes down every Cyber Tuesday. Their choice, their money, their responsibility. And they didn't live up to it.
'what's a tater Precioussss?' . . . I mean – what's a DRM Pete? I know the DLC now thanks to you, but don't know what the DRM stands for.. I'm guessing something to do with logging online to play a game. When are you going to put out your Blog of Gaming Terms for Dummies? 🙂
DRM is Digital Rights Management. It's a form of access control of copyrighted materials designed to stop/restrict the act of media piracy, by means of encryption. Usually found in gaming as CD Keys and the like.
I am so crazy damn riled up over the epic fail of a launch that I swear that I will never play another Blizzard game again, including Diablo 3 which I just paid £45 for. That'll teach Blizzard a lesson.
As I am currently without internet (I've just moved house) I've had to accept that I won't yet be able to play my (£65 Collector's Edition) Diablo III – so it's a little bit difficult for me to get particularly worked up about the failings of their server infrastructure.
I suppose I'm a bit miffed about there not being any single player – I think I remarked that it was "pretty ridiculous" to my brother on Tuesday. And I genuinely think Blizzard of all people should have gotten their act together with the infrastructure – I tweeted a hundred-odd characters saying the same yesterday. I felt those were appropriate levels of ire for those transgressions.
But all in, it's cool. I got other games I can play; and I'm sure Diablo III will be wicked fun once I get round to it!