need help understanding the last comic (blizzard & durm)

pygmyshrew

What does, "blizzard on durm" mean? I would really like to know.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/8/8/

Esh

I think he's phonetically saying "DRM".

StrifeRaZoR

Yeah, Esh is correct. He's basically taking a quick jab at the copyright protection on Blizzard's new game (I'm assuming Diablo 3). Always On DRM means that you have to have a constant connection to the internet just to play the game, even in offline singleplayer. There's a few games out there that use this already.

Forar

For further clarification, there is no offline singleplayer in D3. The game will use an mmo-style client/server architecture, which means that if you don't have a net connection you literally cannot play the game, not even because your software isn't able to check in with the DRM, but because the information required to play isn't present. I don't know how deeply that goes, but it's possible that all we'll have will be art assets, and that what monsters and npcs do, what they drop, etc, will all be controlled server side.

It's been discussed at length in the D3 G&T topic, and while it's a deal breaker for some, many people (especially those who enjoy Steam) don't seem to have a problem with it.

So even if there's a "single player" option, it'll likely just be, essentially, a multi player game that other people can't join, which is basically how I played back in the D2/LoD days anyway.

pygmyshrew

Ahh ok thx. I just assumed DURM some kind of new DRM or something totally other thing. Couldnt find anything like it in google so I asked here. Also I'd like to note that I got no beef with blizzard, they always do godly games, that are produced better than any other game I have seen.