When I'm objecting to this model, I'm not just objecting to day one problems, I'm objecting to all the problems that will continue to exist as long as single player games being tethered to internet connections remain a thing.
How often does WoW go down and how long? I know it's an MMO, but humor me. Actually, answer that question for Dungeon Fighter Online too, a Korean made game of way smaller proportion / renown.
The answer is that online games aren't down constantly. They target their known downtimes to affect the least amount of people. Yes, I get it, singleplayer shouldn't be online, but again, how often is that actually going to matter? WoW goes down no more than 52 times a year, once for each week, and that's kinda including weeks in which they go down for fifteen minutes for a simple reset rather than a few hours of maintenance. All of those times are known. And with 365 days a year, guess what? THATS NOT TOO FUCKING SHABBY.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Games made to break deliberately for paying customers is something else again.
You're saying that Blizzard did this on purpose. You are now the silliest of the geese.
If X, then Y.
If you tether to servers, sometimes those servers will be down. By design.
Does that make more sense or do I need to explain it again?
But you said they did this to piss in everyone's cheerios. I'm done trying to converse with you. Or talk at you mostly.
I said they created a model meant to break by design. Because they are tethering to something that breaks by design. They have decided that the trade off in favor of whatever the return is, is worth it. I disagree.
"excuse my French
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Games made to break deliberately for paying customers is something else again.
You're saying that Blizzard did this on purpose. You are now the silliest of the geese.
If X, then Y.
If you tether to servers, sometimes those servers will be down. By design.
Does that make more sense or do I need to explain it again?
But you said they did this to piss in everyone's cheerios. I'm done trying to converse with you. Or talk at you mostly.
I said they created a model meant to break by design. Because they are tethering to something that breaks by design. They have decided that the trade off in favor of whatever the return is, is worth it. I disagree.
People don't build things to break. I mean, they do, but you know what I mean. You are so goddamn awful.
Think of Diablo III being always online as what you get into when you get into a sexual relationship with a crazy person.
Sure there are plenty of funtimes ahead, but there are also going to be issues.
NNID: Rehab0
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Admitedly, I did once read about a server that got walled off by accident and ran continuously for 5 years without needing a reboot. But the whole reason this was considered newsworthy was that it was surprising to find a server that could run that long without needing a reboot.
"excuse my French
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Why do we build buildings in California when they're just going to be ruined by earthquakes? MADE TO BREAK BY DESIGN.
Why do we build in the gulf of Mexico when things are going to be ripped up by hurricanes? MADE TO BREAK BY DESIGN.
Sometimes we do things that are necessary knowing the risks. waaaaaah
This is perhaps getting a bit to heated, much like that pit Diablo himself calls home.
Some people get very emotional when you tell them that you won't play a video game.
"excuse my French
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
That or I'm wanting to be convinced that you have some sort of rational point. I'm still waiting for the "PURPOSES OF MAKING MONEY" statement to be validated. Because as it stands, the servers are up and running, costing Blizzard money to maintain. Their income is solely from selling the game.
Oh wait, is that it? You hate purchasing things at all?
They are going to make a metric fuckton on the Auction House when that gets up and running. The amount that makes will make a fuckton look incredibly small by comparison, let alone the distance it will put between itself and a shitton.
Edit: Also, in buying the game they are also setting you up for purchasing an expansion pack. At least one of those is all but guaranteed.
I think I'm the only person who played and loved both Diablo 1 and 2 to death... but doesn't even have the slightest desire to play 3. I wish I knew why that was.
You are not alone. Eleven years has been a long time in the ageing of the gaming taste-buds (for me anyway).
I am intrigued by some of the gameplay changes though, cool-down times on health-chugging and no more town portal seem like they would detract from the fast paced loot farming extravaganza that I always enjoyed about diablo.
For all of those who raged about the launch day downtime (some of the user reviews are amusing) it may have presented an opportunity to cure a vitamin-D deficiency, bringing such health benefits as improved temperament. [/high_horse]
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
They are going to make a metric fuckton on the Auction House when that gets up and running. The amount that makes will make a fuckton look incredibly small by comparison, let alone the distance it will put between itself and a shitton.
Edit: Also, in buying the game they are also setting you up for purchasing an expansion pack. At least one of those is all but guaranteed.
Thank you Rehab for stepping in, I knew someone was going to eventually.
Now then, real money auction house vs. the in-game auction house. Obviously we haven't seen them compete, so will the former end up being "required" to getting certain kinds of objects / items? Who knows.
But again, I point back to what I've said already - optional fees are optional, you don't have to spend money to progress. In fact, when you pit the Real Money AH against freemium MMOs, it's a fucking joke in terms of making the argument that you have to pay to succeed. Like hell you do! It's the most player-friendly thing to happen. In that players have a free version that has all the same benefits anyway.
I agree with you regarding the whole optional fee position you laid out, actually. I highly doubt Blizzard is going to release a full suite of items that are a tier above everything else, but that you can only pay for using real world currency. My expectation for the real money Auction House is that it will offer everything from the in-game currency Auction House, only it will trade gold for dollars, yen, euros, etc. I have one sole problem with that Auction House, and its not even that it represents an obvious cash grab for Blizzard (I couldn't care less about that, its pretty ingenious on their part and given that they are a company and their goal is to make money, I understand it completely), its that I think that its existence is the main reason for everyone being online. They want to give everyone playing the ability to see it and hopefully make use of it, regardless of whether they are playing single player or multiplayer.
This in turn creates other benefits from being online (not having to worry about characters not working in the other mode of play), but it also creates some obvious disadvantages (single player lag, server issues). Undoubtedly the disadvantages are being felt to a greater extent right now then they will be in June, let alone months and years past that, but it is an annoyance for those who want to do some good old demon slaying solo.
Back to the Auction House, the comments that I made about it stem from what I've seen from other games and MMOs that offer content to users that require real currency. And that is, that no matter what the game or items, there will be people to make those credit card transactions and make the trade off between time and effort in the game and their own personal assets (I've always thought this to be personally amusing because you are still trading your time anyway, given that you had to give your time to make that money being used in the first place). There was an article posted awhile back in the Video Game Industry Thread that you and I frequent about the paid content in Zynga games and its attach rate vs the user base for those games. On average, ten percent of the people playing those games paid for optional items which required payment in real money. Now think about the userbases for those games and then take into consideration that the average purchase was said to be around 50 dollars (I think that is what it was offhand, something like that). That is a lot of money. Blizzard is looking at a similar scenario, one could easily assume.
Honestly though? I think they are looking at a much better scenario. A large contingent of the people playing MMOs are lazy. They will buy entire characters from other people and pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to make these transactions. I have a relative who used to play Everquest a lot with a group of friends. Eventually they tired of the game and they decided to sell off their characters to other people in-game. They each made a pretty small fortune doing that. My cousin himself turned around and purchased, what was at that time, a very powerful personal computer. The scenario really isn't all that different from all of those times that you heard about people buying PS3s and other consoles from e-Bay scalpers for absurd amounts of money. Blizzard would be foolish to not allow themselves to take advantage of these people. And the thing is, they want to be taken advantage of! That's the beauty of it. I have a feeling this thing is going to be huge and that its revenue will eventually pass that from the game itself over a long enough timeline. There is no real consistent frame of reference for how much these things should cost, and its either play the game and get the items, trade with another person to get the item (binding of items was done for the benefit of the Auction House as much as it was to prevent things like duping, I would guess), or pay what is required in real money or in-game money at the one of the Auction Houses. The former scenario requires you to spend hours playing the game, the latter requires you to have a credit card nearby. More people will probably vouch for the first scenario, but there are going to be lots and lots of people that will simply pay up and take their loot the easy way, but the costly way. Costly in a much more personal and potentially harmful way then a number you have in a videogame, as these numbers will apply to those peoples bank accounts. But again, there are a lot of lazy people out there.
Does all of this make the Auction House as evil as Diablo himself? No, of course not! The only thing that it says is that Blizzard is a very smart company and they would love for you to stop by and take a look at their wares. Thanks so much for shopping with Blizzard Auction Houses, and have a nice day!
Rehab on
NNID: Rehab0
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
@Rehab I actually have no problem with game companies coming up with new ways to make money. As an example, I am one person you'll never see complain about day one DLC - I think it's actually a pretty clever idea. Gaming companies figuring out ways to make extra money is cool.
What I don't think is cool is inconviencing those of your customers who aren't interested in the extra thing that you are selling. Sell it to the willing - there are plenty of them! - and leave the rest unmolested. Like remember that thing in Dragon Age Origins, where if there was a dude in your camp trying to sell you DLC? Yeah, you didn't have to click on the guy, and he never even so much as annoyed me because the version of the game I bought was the Ultimate edition (I'm the type who buys games months or years later, remember), so I never even knew about this guy until later on. He's a quest giver who stays in your camp through basically the entire game, unless you buy the DLC he's shilling. That sort of thing, that is not cool.
Forcing single players to remain online so that they have access to your equivalent of the $7.99 DLC quest giver, yeah I don't agree that that is a good thing.
Cambiata on
"excuse my French
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
What I don't think is cool is inconviencing those of your customers who aren't interested in the extra thing that you are selling. Sell it to the willing - there are plenty of them! - and leave the rest unmolested.
Forcing single players to remain online so that they have access to your equivalent of the $7.99 DLC quest giver, yeah I don't agree that that is a good thing.
Apart from ranting about the Auction House itself and stating that I agreed with the optional fee position, that is actually the crux of what I was trying to get across (well, that and that the Auction House is going to make a fuckton of money). My third and fourth sentences in that wall of text which escalated past the character limit that I originally was intending to make actually attacked exactly that, so we're on the same page.
I don't particularly care for the whole day one DLC thing we see more and more often, but I'm also pretty indifferent because I'm a Wii owner and it doesn't effect me. Some people will also often accuse me about being apathetic about things in general. Meh, whatever.
(And I know this is an impossible thing to expect, but if Blizzard did for some reason offer a version of the game with offline single player, I would oh so happily buy that the moment it became available)
NNID: Rehab0
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I agree with you regarding the whole optional fee position you laid out, actually. I highly doubt Blizzard is going to release a full suite of items that are a tier above everything else, but that you can only pay for using real world currency. My expectation for the real money Auction House is that it will offer everything from the in-game currency Auction House, only it will trade gold for dollars, yen, euros, etc. I have one sole problem with that Auction House, and its not even that it represents an obvious cash grab for Blizzard (I couldn't care less about that, its pretty ingenious on their part and given that they are a company and their goal is to make money, I understand it completely), its that I think that its existence is the main reason for everyone being online. They want to give everyone playing the ability to see it and hopefully make use of it, regardless of whether they are playing single player or multiplayer.
That makes a ton of sense now that you've said it. I mean, in this fashion. I've already said that one of the benefits of being online is that you have access to the auction house anyway, but I wasn't thinking about the business side. Exposure to the real money system was probably part of, but not a major factor of, deciding to make online play compulsory.
Still though, the RMAH isn't operating in that you pay Blizzard for items. Blizzard takes a cut of transactions, as does Paypal (who I think is helping to manage it), but the bottom line is people interacting and trading with other people. And from what I remember when they unveiled it, you'll have an account balance, and you can simply make money off the game into your balance. I don't know what the rules are regarding taking money out of your B.Net balance though. I'm sure the info is out there, but it's kinda beside the point; the point is, you aren't making flat out transactions with Blizzard on that market.
This in turn creates other benefits from being online (not having to worry about characters not working in the other mode of play), but it also creates some obvious disadvantages (single player lag, server issues). Undoubtedly the disadvantages are being felt to a greater extent right now then they will be in June, let alone months and years past that, but it is an annoyance for those who want to do some good old demon slaying solo.
I'm really treating it with the same regard as Starcraft 2. So many people were shit-canning that game about the pre-announced expansion packs and the single-race campaigns. But when the product came out, a lot of that rhetoric not only stopped, but people realized and noted they were mistaken. And a more direct comparison is the online-check for Starcraft 2 - it hasn't hurt that game one bit, despite the objections being just as loud as Diablo 3. That doesn't make the actions on Blizzard's part okay, but it does mean taking the negative stuff with a grain of salt and getting some perspective.
Back to the Auction House, the comments that I made about it stem from what I've seen from other games and MMOs that offer content to users that require real currency. And that is, that no matter what the game or items, there will be people to make those credit card transactions and make the trade off between time and effort in the game and their own personal assets (I've always thought this to be personally amusing because you are still trading your time anyway, given that you had to give your time to make that money being used in the first place). There was an article posted awhile back in the Video Game Industry Thread that you and I frequent about the paid content in Zynga games and its attach rate vs the user base for those games. On average, ten percent of the people playing those games paid for optional items which required payment in real money. Now think about the userbases for those games and then take into consideration that the average purchase was said to be around 50 dollars (I think that is what it was offhand, something like that). That is a lot of money. Blizzard is looking at a similar scenario, one could easily assume.
I must have missed that article, that's so weird. And it says a lot of bad things for Zynga in particular, because we've had articles in the same thread about how the freemium model has big optional purchase rates, and I think it was in the high-40 percentile that people were involved with buying stuff on any level. But given what I outlined above about the RMAH and how the transactions work, I disagree that either study example applies to Diablo 3. The game's optional-money-making for Blizzard is kind of a different thing than any other game has done before. I'm shocked really, because the typical freemium marketplace is easy to imagine for a game like Diablo 3, and Blizzard would make gangbusters on it. Kinda makes me wonder why they didn't go for it. They totally could have. Maybe they figured they had enough negative stigma from the always-on DRM solution.
There is no real consistent frame of reference for how much these things should cost, and its either play the game and get the items, trade with another person to get the item (binding of items was done for the benefit of the Auction House as much as it was to prevent things like duping, I would guess), or pay what is required in real money or in-game money at the one of the Auction Houses. The former scenario requires you to spend hours playing the game, the latter requires you to have a credit card nearby. More people will probably vouch for the first scenario, but there are going to be lots and lots of people that will simply pay up and take their loot the easy way, but the costly way. Costly in a much more personal and potentially harmful way then a number you have in a videogame, as these numbers will apply to those peoples bank accounts. But again, there are a lot of lazy people out there.
Speaking from experience, absolutely true about the consistent frame of reference. One game's "pay for 2 extra character slots" is another game's "pay for this hat." It's a super weird business model and it's why people aren't getting involved yet. I don't blame them, but when I can I try to offer the perspective of why something is a deal or worth getting, if they're thinking about it.
The scenarios you produced by the way, there's another - Some freemium markets do have things obtainable only via that marketplace. Gunbound and Shattered Galaxy are the two most notorious examples that come to my mind in this context, because that paid for stuff REALLY gave you an edge in games that were purely competitive. They're both the example that people dread, which is the "Buy this awesome gun in an FPS" thing that as far as I know hasn't come to light. Because it's way too bold-faced for any company to get away with it. At least in the two examples I provided, people could be shit at working with the mechanics of firing a turret or shit at playing RTS games, despite having a monetary advantage.
That last paragraph is kinda moot though; that's not happening in Diablo 3.
I don't believe the always-online thing was a decision made to force people to be exposed to the auction house; the auction house doesn't actually appear in the game. It is presented to you at the character select-type screen.
Exposure to the real money system was probably part of, but not a major factor of, deciding to make online play compulsory.
While I think that it certainly was a major factor, its actually pretty likely that it wasn't the main factor, as I asserted. That may be a bit unfair to say now that you've elaborated on some of the specifics I wasn't aware of.
So basically, I would say now that along the spectrum of "not a major factor to deciding to make online play mandatory" and "the main reason for everyone being online" that it exists somewhere in between. But still a major factor, most certainly sir!
Still though, the RMAH isn't operating in that you pay Blizzard for items. Blizzard takes a cut of transactions, as does Paypal (who I think is helping to manage it), but the bottom line is people interacting and trading with other people. And from what I remember when they unveiled it, you'll have an account balance, and you can simply make money off the game into your balance. I don't know what the rules are regarding taking money out of your B.Net balance though. I'm sure the info is out there, but it's kinda beside the point; the point is, you aren't making flat out transactions with Blizzard on that market.
This is you informing me now as I didn't actually look into the specifics as deeply as I should have and assumed a few things. I actually don't know why I hadn't considered the involvement of Paypal, as that is admittedly a pretty obvious thing to overlook. Interesting info there.
I wonder how much Blizzard makes off of each transaction and how that works? Oh, I looked up the Battle Net part just because I was curious about it myself.
The gold-based auction house uses in-game gold for purchases and sales. With the real-money auction house, players will be able to conduct these transactions using actual currency from an authorized payment method or using their Battle.net Balance. Players can choose to participate in whichever version of the auction house they prefer, on a per-transaction basis.
Also, to answer my own question:
In the gold-based auction house, a 15% transaction fee will be deducted from the final sale price of a successful auction.
In the real-money auction-house, for equipment such as weapons and armor, a fixed transaction fee will be deducted from the seller for each piece of equipment successfully sold. This fee is assessed only if the item is sold. For commodities such as crafting materials, gems, gold, and other “stackable” items, a 15% transaction fee will be deducted from the total sale price.
Transaction fee off the gold-based auction house too? Huh.
Does Blizzard plan to post weapons, armor, and other such items for sale in the real-money version of the auction house?
The currency-based auction house is a place for players to purchase or sell items they’ve obtained within the game. Blizzard does not plan to post items that affect gameplay in the auction house directly.
Okay, so you were indeed absolutely correct about the not paying Blizzard directly for items thing. I approve of the real-money version of the Auction House a lot more now than I did before, to be sure.
I'm really treating it with the same regard as Starcraft 2. So many people were shit-canning that game about the per-announced expansion packs and the single-race campaigns. But when the product came out, a lot of that rhetoric not only stopped, but people realized and noted they were mistaken. And a more direct comparison is the online-check for Starcraft 2 - it hasn't hurt that game one bit, despite the objections being just as loud as Diablo 3. That doesn't make the actions on Blizzard's part okay, but it does mean taking the negative stuff with a grain of salt and getting some perspective.
The Starcraft 2 negativity was pretty weird, and mostly uncalled for. I agree that its the same thing here for the most part, even if I don't personally like what they did with the always online bit. How much of a problem that will end up being is of course highly debatable and not really worth trying to predict though. Pachter wouldn't even bother.
I must have missed that article, that's so weird. And it says a lot of bad things for Zynga in particular, because we've had articles in the same thread about how the freemium model has big optional purchase rates, and I think it was in the high-40 percentile that people were involved with buying stuff on any level.
It was pretty fascinating and revealing, albeit a bit scary. On a personal and completely unrelated note, I do sincerely fucking hate Zynga.
But given what I outlined above about the RMAH and how the transactions work, I disagree that either study example applies to Diablo 3. The game's optional-money-making for Blizzard is kind of a different thing than any other game has done before. I'm shocked really, because the typical freemium marketplace is easy to imagine for a game like Diablo 3, and Blizzard would make gangbusters on it. Kinda makes me wonder why they didn't go for it. They totally could have. Maybe they figured they had enough negative stigma from the always-on DRM solution.
I bet the sheer amount of transactions will be similar, if not more for Blizzard as I said, but you did clear up how the transactions actually take place and were right about that. With the model they are using they of course won't make quite as much as with what I had envisioned (again, glad that isn't what they are doing though), but it will still be an enormous amount even at 15 percent per transaction.
Speaking from experience, absolutely true about the consistent frame of reference. One game's "pay for 2 extra character slots" is another game's "pay for this hat." It's a super weird business model and it's why people aren't getting involved yet. I don't blame them, but when I can I try to offer the perspective of why something is a deal or worth getting, if they're thinking about it.
This could very well end up being the most objectional part of the whole operation, but we'll have to see.
Hopefully the auction houses don't operate at the same prices Wirt did. I always wanted to break that little bastards other leg.
The scenarios you produced by the way, there's another - Some freemium markets do have things obtainable only via that marketplace. Gunbound and Shattered Galaxy are the two most notorious examples that come to my mind in this context, because that paid for stuff REALLY gave you an edge in games that were purely competitive. They're both the example that people dread, which is the "Buy this awesome gun in an FPS" thing that as far as I know hasn't come to light. Because it's way too bold-faced for any company to get away with it. At least in the two examples I provided, people could be shit at working with the mechanics of firing a turret or shit at playing RTS games, despite having a monetary advantage.
That is definitely the shadiest of practices with these markets: anything that gives you an advantage over other people that cannot be obtained by any other means but paying up. The Farmville ring that cost 50 dollars that made it so your plants wouldn't die I think is one of the worst. Its literally an item to save you from the monotony of clicking, but what those people should realize is that they should just step away from this machination of entrapment that would have them toil in virtual fields for hour and hours on end, slowly depriving them of happiness and giving them the most banal escapism experience for procrastinating at work. Slowly they turn into zombies to create the hive-mind culture that Zynga desires, as everyone bids them offerings compulsively, and then spams their friends so that they go forth and do the same.
Our grandchildren must not be damned to a fate of waving their arms to match human skulls in Zynga sponsored re-education camps, but I fear that this is all but inevitable. Well, its that or the machines take over, what with their eventual superior collective intellect and contempt for humanity and all.
That last paragraph is kinda moot though; that's not happening in Diablo 3.
Haha, indeed! While the wares you will be looking at are those of other people, Blizzard will still thank you for that 15 percent though, most assuredly!
Anyway, I'm not even really looking to argue too much. This is just a somewhat entertaining discussion.
1) It costs Blizzard more money to have the game always on than to have an offline mode because that means they need tons servers running 24/7. Also if I'm not mistaken the original Battle.net matchmade peer-to-peer games rather than ran them on a central server such that Blizzard's servers also now have to take care of that as well.
2) Let's say the amount of servers Blizzard needs for day-to-day operation is X and to handle the launch traffic is Y (where Y > X). The best amount of servers for Blizzard to pick would be somewhere between X and Y trending closer to X than Y. Why? Because they would waste tons of money if they put together Y servers just to handle a one-time burst of traffic. And that's ignoring the fact that at midnight Diablo 3 players essentially act as a DDoS attack so parts of the internet completely out of Blizzard's control can (and did) go down. If they have at least X servers to handle the day to day load they're good, with maybe a few more to handle bursts such as the weekends and holidays.
Also so far the cross-game Auction House is amazing. I haven't bought anything from vendors because generally I can find Rare level items on the AH that have the stats I want for cheaper than a Magic level item from an ingame vendor. Of course I'm behind the curve some so I'm benefitting from that, but still it's great. If its existance was the only reason why the game was always online (which it's not, as already discussed) then I'd still be sold because I've used it so much.
D2 online was a hacked fuckfest. If the client-server design of D3 (i.e., "online only") keeps the online game relatively clean, then you can't really say the DRM is all bad or anti-customer.
Don't forget that being online, even in a singleplayer context, can still leave doors open for other sorts of interactivity and functions. Achievement tracking sort of things, or access to the auction house even if you're just playing by yourself. It's the one form of DRM that actually provides features. I hated the sound of it at first, because I'm a guy with a shitty internet situation, and I still resent it for practical reasons, but I see the good in it. Anyone living on either coast of the USA, or in a major metro area, I invite you to come to where I currently live. See how good you have it. SEE IT.
While I was initially kind of irked about the always online thing, as I was installing it on my and my wife's computer's one benefit showed itself to me. Much like WoW you can just install it on any old PC and play it just by logging into an account which owns the game. No more digging around for your disc with the worn off sticker that had the CD key.
While I wish they would have been able to incorporate a segregated offline mode, kind of like what they had with Open battlenet and Closed battlenet for D2, they absolutely need authentication for any character which will produce items for sale on the RMAH. Because once you have people paying real money for stuff, you need to make certain it isn't duped or hacked or whatever.
And the prime benefit of the RMAH, is that it gives a sanctioned avenue for people to do what they would have done anyway. Instead of paying money to some guy on eBay, hoping that he's not gonna take it run, (or vice versa, someone paying you, getting the item, then claiming product was never delivered), or worse, steal your credit card info or hack your account, there is an game process where the trade is enforced and legit.
Though I don't like the downtimes, I expected them. It would be nice though if there was a bit more communication as to the situation. For some of them they did give some details fairly quickly, while other times they didn't comment on the issues till much later. This seems to be an issue with many game companies (delayed updates about problems). Can't a better line of communication be established? A lot of the hate about downtimes would be quelled by timely messages as simple as "we're aware of the issue and investigating".
My main grievance is with the fact that latency has a serious affect on gameplay. I knew the game was going to be online-always, but I didn't know that lag was going to be such an issue. Luckily I have not had it happen too many times (though it has gotten me killed once), but I've seen many complaining in the general chat about much more frequent lag issues. This is what seems silly. Not the always online requirement, but that latency (whether it's their servers or somewhere in between) can cause major issues with someone playing solo.
I'd hate to be someone playing hardcore that got killed by getting rubberbanded back into a group of enemies.
I have never really understood the Diablo series. I've never played the first two games, and know literally not one person that has. I understand it has a huge following, but I suppose it's just one of those games that slipped by me. It makes it a peculiar experience to see articles claiming "If you count yourself among the mass known as humanity, you're probably playing or waiting to play Diablo 3" (sic). It was a Kotaku article I believe.
I know quite a few humans! And none of them are playing or waiting to play Diablo.
On second thought, I must wonder if it is just an American thing. The online aspect seemed to be what drew may people to Diablo, but at the time the likelihood of people having an internet connection in their homes was very low. I imagine, in some way, that may have hindered the popularity of the game here.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
D2 online was a hacked fuckfest. If the client-server design of D3 (i.e., "online only") keeps the online game relatively clean, then you can't really say the DRM is all bad or anti-customer.
Don't forget that being online, even in a singleplayer context, can still leave doors open for other sorts of interactivity and functions. Achievement tracking sort of things, or access to the auction house even if you're just playing by yourself. It's the one form of DRM that actually provides features. I hated the sound of it at first, because I'm a guy with a shitty internet situation, and I still resent it for practical reasons, but I see the good in it. Anyone living on either coast of the USA, or in a major metro area, I invite you to come to where I currently live. See how good you have it. SEE IT.
While I was initially kind of irked about the always online thing, as I was installing it on my and my wife's computer's one benefit showed itself to me. Much like WoW you can just install it on any old PC and play it just by logging into an account which owns the game. No more digging around for your disc with the worn off sticker that had the CD key.
While I wish they would have been able to incorporate a segregated offline mode, kind of like what they had with Open battlenet and Closed battlenet for D2, they absolutely need authentication for any character which will produce items for sale on the RMAH. Because once you have people paying real money for stuff, you need to make certain it isn't duped or hacked or whatever.
And the prime benefit of the RMAH, is that it gives a sanctioned avenue for people to do what they would have done anyway. Instead of paying money to some guy on eBay, hoping that he's not gonna take it run, (or vice versa, someone paying you, getting the item, then claiming product was never delivered), or worse, steal your credit card info or hack your account, there is an game process where the trade is enforced and legit.
I'm eagerly awaiting seeing what impact the RMAH has on the 'black market' of digital goods. If it does impact it, hot diggity DAMN is that going to be rad. And the key aspect of this is that players are selling to other players - the developer isn't the one people buy from. That's the whole point. If the RMAH was instead "buy stuff from Blizzard's store" it wouldn't counteract that market one bit. Okay, so scratch my statement from earlier wondering why Blizzard didn't make a Sanctuary Marketplace.
And yeah, the cloud thing is another feature of this online play thing. I'm not sure if it benefits a terrible lot amount of people, but it's still there. Bammo. And it works this way for security reasons (I'm sure someone was going to snipe this statement and say, "JUST UPLOAD WHEN YOU CHOOSE TO RATHER THAN BE ON ALL THE TIME" - that would defeat the purpose).
By the way, another aspect of the always-online - Punishing assholes. The new Battle.net has created this realm on the internet where people actually have something to lose for gross misconduct. If someone is caught cheating, they don't just have their little whimpy account banned. You have to buy a whole new goddamn key, even to enjoy the game by yourself. It enforces good behavior. Even if it's out of fear, I am so for that when it comes to internet jerkoffs. I'm sure someone is going to swoop in on this statement talking about, "WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONGLY BANNED, LOOK AT STEAM," and y'know, that's true. No law or system is perfect. The innocent are wrongly accused, the guilty sometimes walk free. But it's a step in the right direction, and as long as you don't act like an asshole, you really have nothing to worry about. And if someone is giving you trouble, document what goes on so that if you get slighted by Blizzard, you can make a case to them. But really, nothing to worry about if you obey the golden rule of the internet.
Edit - This page of the thread has gotten much cooler by the way. Thanks Rehab, Opty, and Tofys.
Guys seriously, the idea that Blizz could have avoided server load issues with more forethought is wrong on its face. Even with Blizzards resources, you cannot test for those loads. If you weren't expecting these kinds of issues on day one, you are the wrong person.
Blizzard definitely tried to make sure they were ready for the demand; they didn't simply throw their hands up and go "it's unknowable, so we shouldn't even try to keep the servers up day one." They failed to overanticipate demand.
In other news, the battle.net website appears to be down right now.
I guess I thought "auction house with real money" meant that people were using real money to buy in game stuff. I apologize if I was wrong.
I think what people are maybe not getting is that I am the sort of person who plays games years and years after their "fresh by" dates. Only a few months ago I played my first Prince of Persia game. It was really good. How much would it suck if that single player game was tied to Ubi Soft servers that had long ago closed down because it's no longer profitable to run them? When I'm objecting to this model, I'm not just objecting to day one problems, I'm objecting to all the problems that will continue to exist as long as single player games being tethered to internet connections remain a thing.
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
This is actually an interesting phenomenon of the digital era. At no time in the past could you purchase something and then be mad when it didn't work perfectly 10, 20, 50 years in the future.
Only digital goods seem to be immune to entropy. Once purchased, they are expected to last for eternity. Which sort of makes sense. I mean scarcity doesn't apply naturally either. It has to be imposed artificially.
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
Right, because they wouldn't have one final patch to deliver to unlock an offline mode, or whoever owns the assets would just let it fall on its ass. I'm eyerolling right now, you just can't see it.
Edit - Essentially, who's to say they don't have the same idea in mind as Valve with Steam products, to give out one final master unlock?
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
The "point" seems to be based on some irrational fear.
If the U.S. government fails and anarchy breaks out and I don't have power to my home anymore, I won't be able to play Prince of Persia anymore! COMPLETELY WORTHLESS PURCHASE!
If it works the way I think it does (data being stored on the server vs just dialing home), that probably won't fly Henroid.
Of course, they could release the code for the server and let people set up their own...
You'd lose your characters in this hypothetical cataclysmic event, yes, but at least you could play offline.
But hypotheticals are dumb. Doubly so on the internet, and doubly so in video game discussion, so this is some exponential shit here.
Right, I'm just saying that if data is stored on the server, they can't just "release an unlock patch." They would have to patch the game to store all of that data locally, and look for it locally. Which may or may not be a trivial thing to do.
Always online being used as DRM is easily fixable with a patch to make the check always return a success no matter what or a lightweight server replacement that does the same. The problem comes when you've got data stored up on those servers that are being shut down and so far the answer is "too bad, it's gone." No MMO that's shut down their servers has offered any official dedicated server download to let people outside the company run their own servers and even if they had I doubt any would offer a full character data download service in tandem. Plus you've signed a EULA and ToS that basically says you acknowledge they own your data and can do whatever with it, so you're legally (until someone successfully challenges) in a bind when it comes to demanding your characters live on forever.
Most of the Diablo III discussion that is relevant here is during the first half hour or so. They keep the discussion pretty low key and reasonable, nothing overzealous said or anything remotely resembling a knee jerk reaction, and they make some good points. Especially Brad.
NNID: Rehab0
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited May 2012
Listening right now. Past the movie talk finally and down to the nitty gritty. But I gotta say, whoever it was that said that sever queues for a singleplayer game is fundamentally insulting? He's right. Also they were right about the midday downtime being unexpected; I'm glad they mentioned that the midnight / early traffic was a bad idea to try and login to. Because it WAS A BAD IDEA.
Edit - AH! And there's the magic phrase I was looking for - Blizzard has a good track record with their games, and they're not being aggressive with the negative aspects of this (as in, that they're intentional) - they want a product that works. Yes yes, LOLZ IT DUSNT but the point is that they're going to fix what doesn't work.
Guys seriously, the idea that Blizz could have avoided server load issues with more forethought is wrong on its face. Even with Blizzards resources, you cannot test for those loads. If you weren't expecting these kinds of issues on day one, you are the wrong person.
Blizzard definitely tried to make sure they were ready for the demand; they didn't simply throw their hands up and go "it's unknowable, so we shouldn't even try to keep the servers up day one." They failed to overanticipate demand.
In other news, the battle.net website appears to be down right now.
You are correct that they did not do zero stress tests. 300,000 is a small fraction of Diablo's preorders though. ( http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders/ and that's just the U.S.)
Aurich on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
This is actually an interesting phenomenon of the digital era. At no time in the past could you purchase something and then be mad when it didn't work perfectly 10, 20, 50 years in the future.
Only digital goods seem to be immune to entropy. Once purchased, they are expected to last for eternity. Which sort of makes sense. I mean scarcity doesn't apply naturally either. It has to be imposed artificially.
It's an interesting concept though.
Ehhhh. There are musical instruments that have lasted hundreds of years. They work even better than modern instruments, which is one of the reasons professional musicians continue to play them. A lot of paintings have lasted a long time, too. And I expect the car I bought in 2007 to last until 2017. Different items run on different time scales of usefulness.
"excuse my French
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
They are going to make a metric fuckton on the Auction House when that gets up and running. The amount that makes will make a fuckton look incredibly small by comparison, let alone the distance it will put between itself and a shitton.
Edit: Also, in buying the game they are also setting you up for purchasing an expansion pack. At least one of those is all but guaranteed.
Thank you Rehab for stepping in, I knew someone was going to eventually.
Now then, real money auction house vs. the in-game auction house. Obviously we haven't seen them compete, so will the former end up being "required" to getting certain kinds of objects / items? Who knows.
But again, I point back to what I've said already - optional fees are optional, you don't have to spend money to progress. In fact, when you pit the Real Money AH against freemium MMOs, it's a fucking joke in terms of making the argument that you have to pay to succeed. Like hell you do! It's the most player-friendly thing to happen. In that players have a free version that has all the same benefits anyway.
The point is that the RMAH is most likely the primary reason they went with the always online model. If you feel that is the most likely truth, which I certainly do, then this whole thing comes across as them making things worse for people who want to play single player, specifically to profit off of the RMAH.
Basically, we have to put up with shitty DRM so they can leech as much profit off the player base as they can. Why can't I play by myself when the server is down or my Internet is acting up? Why do I get fucking LAG when I'm playing single player? Because they value additional profit over giving me the best game experience possible.
Good for them on figuring out a way to make more money, I guess. But for a good chunk of people, the advantages of always online do not cover up the disadvantages. I will never be able to play Diablo III without the threat of lag spikes getting me killed. That sucks.
You can still play Diablo, a 15+ year old game, online on the official servers.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
This is actually an interesting phenomenon of the digital era. At no time in the past could you purchase something and then be mad when it didn't work perfectly 10, 20, 50 years in the future.
Only digital goods seem to be immune to entropy. Once purchased, they are expected to last for eternity. Which sort of makes sense. I mean scarcity doesn't apply naturally either. It has to be imposed artificially.
It's an interesting concept though.
Ehhhh. There are musical instruments that have lasted hundreds of years. They work even better than modern instruments, which is one of the reasons professional musicians continue to play them. A lot of paintings have lasted a long time, too. And I expect the car I bought in 2007 to last until 2017. Different items run on different time scales of usefulness.
Ok, so there are a certain class of items that are meticulously maintained so that they last. People are putting a lot of resources into storing (and restoring) those items though. At that point, it's not just <some thing I bought for a particular purpose>. It's an investment.
I suspect that Taaarkoth wants it to "just work" like I expect any old thing I pick up from WalMart to just work, and he wants it to stay that way for the foreseeable future with no additional input of resources on his part. That's the part that seems unique to digital goods.
Btw, the musical instruments thing is a myth. Well not a myth necessarily, but science hasn't been able to verify the claim. There have been double blind studies where no one could tell the difference between the old and the new. The amazing thing about them is that they still sound that good hundreds of years later. Musicians want to play them because they have history and there is prestige in doing so.
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How often does WoW go down and how long? I know it's an MMO, but humor me. Actually, answer that question for Dungeon Fighter Online too, a Korean made game of way smaller proportion / renown.
The answer is that online games aren't down constantly. They target their known downtimes to affect the least amount of people. Yes, I get it, singleplayer shouldn't be online, but again, how often is that actually going to matter? WoW goes down no more than 52 times a year, once for each week, and that's kinda including weeks in which they go down for fifteen minutes for a simple reset rather than a few hours of maintenance. All of those times are known. And with 365 days a year, guess what? THATS NOT TOO FUCKING SHABBY.
I said they created a model meant to break by design. Because they are tethering to something that breaks by design. They have decided that the trade off in favor of whatever the return is, is worth it. I disagree.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
People don't build things to break. I mean, they do, but you know what I mean. You are so goddamn awful.
Sure there are plenty of funtimes ahead, but there are also going to be issues.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Why do we build in the gulf of Mexico when things are going to be ripped up by hurricanes? MADE TO BREAK BY DESIGN.
Sometimes we do things that are necessary knowing the risks. waaaaaah
That isn't cool.
This is perhaps getting a bit to heated, much like that pit Diablo himself calls home.
Some people get very emotional when you tell them that you won't play a video game.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Oh wait, is that it? You hate purchasing things at all?
They are going to make a metric fuckton on the Auction House when that gets up and running. The amount that makes will make a fuckton look incredibly small by comparison, let alone the distance it will put between itself and a shitton.
Edit: Also, in buying the game they are also setting you up for purchasing an expansion pack. At least one of those is all but guaranteed.
You are not alone. Eleven years has been a long time in the ageing of the gaming taste-buds (for me anyway).
I am intrigued by some of the gameplay changes though, cool-down times on health-chugging and no more town portal seem like they would detract from the fast paced loot farming extravaganza that I always enjoyed about diablo.
For all of those who raged about the launch day downtime (some of the user reviews are amusing) it may have presented an opportunity to cure a vitamin-D deficiency, bringing such health benefits as improved temperament. [/high_horse]
Thank you Rehab for stepping in, I knew someone was going to eventually.
Now then, real money auction house vs. the in-game auction house. Obviously we haven't seen them compete, so will the former end up being "required" to getting certain kinds of objects / items? Who knows.
But again, I point back to what I've said already - optional fees are optional, you don't have to spend money to progress. In fact, when you pit the Real Money AH against freemium MMOs, it's a fucking joke in terms of making the argument that you have to pay to succeed. Like hell you do! It's the most player-friendly thing to happen. In that players have a free version that has all the same benefits anyway.
This in turn creates other benefits from being online (not having to worry about characters not working in the other mode of play), but it also creates some obvious disadvantages (single player lag, server issues). Undoubtedly the disadvantages are being felt to a greater extent right now then they will be in June, let alone months and years past that, but it is an annoyance for those who want to do some good old demon slaying solo.
Back to the Auction House, the comments that I made about it stem from what I've seen from other games and MMOs that offer content to users that require real currency. And that is, that no matter what the game or items, there will be people to make those credit card transactions and make the trade off between time and effort in the game and their own personal assets (I've always thought this to be personally amusing because you are still trading your time anyway, given that you had to give your time to make that money being used in the first place). There was an article posted awhile back in the Video Game Industry Thread that you and I frequent about the paid content in Zynga games and its attach rate vs the user base for those games. On average, ten percent of the people playing those games paid for optional items which required payment in real money. Now think about the userbases for those games and then take into consideration that the average purchase was said to be around 50 dollars (I think that is what it was offhand, something like that). That is a lot of money. Blizzard is looking at a similar scenario, one could easily assume.
Honestly though? I think they are looking at a much better scenario. A large contingent of the people playing MMOs are lazy. They will buy entire characters from other people and pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to make these transactions. I have a relative who used to play Everquest a lot with a group of friends. Eventually they tired of the game and they decided to sell off their characters to other people in-game. They each made a pretty small fortune doing that. My cousin himself turned around and purchased, what was at that time, a very powerful personal computer. The scenario really isn't all that different from all of those times that you heard about people buying PS3s and other consoles from e-Bay scalpers for absurd amounts of money. Blizzard would be foolish to not allow themselves to take advantage of these people. And the thing is, they want to be taken advantage of! That's the beauty of it. I have a feeling this thing is going to be huge and that its revenue will eventually pass that from the game itself over a long enough timeline. There is no real consistent frame of reference for how much these things should cost, and its either play the game and get the items, trade with another person to get the item (binding of items was done for the benefit of the Auction House as much as it was to prevent things like duping, I would guess), or pay what is required in real money or in-game money at the one of the Auction Houses. The former scenario requires you to spend hours playing the game, the latter requires you to have a credit card nearby. More people will probably vouch for the first scenario, but there are going to be lots and lots of people that will simply pay up and take their loot the easy way, but the costly way. Costly in a much more personal and potentially harmful way then a number you have in a videogame, as these numbers will apply to those peoples bank accounts. But again, there are a lot of lazy people out there.
Does all of this make the Auction House as evil as Diablo himself? No, of course not! The only thing that it says is that Blizzard is a very smart company and they would love for you to stop by and take a look at their wares. Thanks so much for shopping with Blizzard Auction Houses, and have a nice day!
What I don't think is cool is inconviencing those of your customers who aren't interested in the extra thing that you are selling. Sell it to the willing - there are plenty of them! - and leave the rest unmolested. Like remember that thing in Dragon Age Origins, where if there was a dude in your camp trying to sell you DLC? Yeah, you didn't have to click on the guy, and he never even so much as annoyed me because the version of the game I bought was the Ultimate edition (I'm the type who buys games months or years later, remember), so I never even knew about this guy until later on. He's a quest giver who stays in your camp through basically the entire game, unless you buy the DLC he's shilling. That sort of thing, that is not cool.
Forcing single players to remain online so that they have access to your equivalent of the $7.99 DLC quest giver, yeah I don't agree that that is a good thing.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Apart from ranting about the Auction House itself and stating that I agreed with the optional fee position, that is actually the crux of what I was trying to get across (well, that and that the Auction House is going to make a fuckton of money). My third and fourth sentences in that wall of text which escalated past the character limit that I originally was intending to make actually attacked exactly that, so we're on the same page.
I don't particularly care for the whole day one DLC thing we see more and more often, but I'm also pretty indifferent because I'm a Wii owner and it doesn't effect me. Some people will also often accuse me about being apathetic about things in general. Meh, whatever.
(And I know this is an impossible thing to expect, but if Blizzard did for some reason offer a version of the game with offline single player, I would oh so happily buy that the moment it became available)
That makes a ton of sense now that you've said it. I mean, in this fashion. I've already said that one of the benefits of being online is that you have access to the auction house anyway, but I wasn't thinking about the business side. Exposure to the real money system was probably part of, but not a major factor of, deciding to make online play compulsory.
Still though, the RMAH isn't operating in that you pay Blizzard for items. Blizzard takes a cut of transactions, as does Paypal (who I think is helping to manage it), but the bottom line is people interacting and trading with other people. And from what I remember when they unveiled it, you'll have an account balance, and you can simply make money off the game into your balance. I don't know what the rules are regarding taking money out of your B.Net balance though. I'm sure the info is out there, but it's kinda beside the point; the point is, you aren't making flat out transactions with Blizzard on that market.
I'm really treating it with the same regard as Starcraft 2. So many people were shit-canning that game about the pre-announced expansion packs and the single-race campaigns. But when the product came out, a lot of that rhetoric not only stopped, but people realized and noted they were mistaken. And a more direct comparison is the online-check for Starcraft 2 - it hasn't hurt that game one bit, despite the objections being just as loud as Diablo 3. That doesn't make the actions on Blizzard's part okay, but it does mean taking the negative stuff with a grain of salt and getting some perspective.
I must have missed that article, that's so weird. And it says a lot of bad things for Zynga in particular, because we've had articles in the same thread about how the freemium model has big optional purchase rates, and I think it was in the high-40 percentile that people were involved with buying stuff on any level. But given what I outlined above about the RMAH and how the transactions work, I disagree that either study example applies to Diablo 3. The game's optional-money-making for Blizzard is kind of a different thing than any other game has done before. I'm shocked really, because the typical freemium marketplace is easy to imagine for a game like Diablo 3, and Blizzard would make gangbusters on it. Kinda makes me wonder why they didn't go for it. They totally could have. Maybe they figured they had enough negative stigma from the always-on DRM solution.
That's a little harsher than I would say at all. <_<
Speaking from experience, absolutely true about the consistent frame of reference. One game's "pay for 2 extra character slots" is another game's "pay for this hat." It's a super weird business model and it's why people aren't getting involved yet. I don't blame them, but when I can I try to offer the perspective of why something is a deal or worth getting, if they're thinking about it.
The scenarios you produced by the way, there's another - Some freemium markets do have things obtainable only via that marketplace. Gunbound and Shattered Galaxy are the two most notorious examples that come to my mind in this context, because that paid for stuff REALLY gave you an edge in games that were purely competitive. They're both the example that people dread, which is the "Buy this awesome gun in an FPS" thing that as far as I know hasn't come to light. Because it's way too bold-faced for any company to get away with it. At least in the two examples I provided, people could be shit at working with the mechanics of firing a turret or shit at playing RTS games, despite having a monetary advantage.
That last paragraph is kinda moot though; that's not happening in Diablo 3.
While I think that it certainly was a major factor, its actually pretty likely that it wasn't the main factor, as I asserted. That may be a bit unfair to say now that you've elaborated on some of the specifics I wasn't aware of.
So basically, I would say now that along the spectrum of "not a major factor to deciding to make online play mandatory" and "the main reason for everyone being online" that it exists somewhere in between. But still a major factor, most certainly sir!
This is you informing me now as I didn't actually look into the specifics as deeply as I should have and assumed a few things. I actually don't know why I hadn't considered the involvement of Paypal, as that is admittedly a pretty obvious thing to overlook. Interesting info there.
I wonder how much Blizzard makes off of each transaction and how that works? Oh, I looked up the Battle Net part just because I was curious about it myself.
Also, to answer my own question:
Transaction fee off the gold-based auction house too? Huh.
Okay, so you were indeed absolutely correct about the not paying Blizzard directly for items thing. I approve of the real-money version of the Auction House a lot more now than I did before, to be sure.
Source for all that: http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-auction-house-general-information#q2
The Starcraft 2 negativity was pretty weird, and mostly uncalled for. I agree that its the same thing here for the most part, even if I don't personally like what they did with the always online bit. How much of a problem that will end up being is of course highly debatable and not really worth trying to predict though. Pachter wouldn't even bother.
It was pretty fascinating and revealing, albeit a bit scary. On a personal and completely unrelated note, I do sincerely fucking hate Zynga.
I bet the sheer amount of transactions will be similar, if not more for Blizzard as I said, but you did clear up how the transactions actually take place and were right about that. With the model they are using they of course won't make quite as much as with what I had envisioned (again, glad that isn't what they are doing though), but it will still be an enormous amount even at 15 percent per transaction.
Heh, I expected that! I just think using real money for items in a videogame on any level (aside from DLC) is a very silly thing.
This could very well end up being the most objectional part of the whole operation, but we'll have to see.
Hopefully the auction houses don't operate at the same prices Wirt did. I always wanted to break that little bastards other leg.
That is definitely the shadiest of practices with these markets: anything that gives you an advantage over other people that cannot be obtained by any other means but paying up. The Farmville ring that cost 50 dollars that made it so your plants wouldn't die I think is one of the worst. Its literally an item to save you from the monotony of clicking, but what those people should realize is that they should just step away from this machination of entrapment that would have them toil in virtual fields for hour and hours on end, slowly depriving them of happiness and giving them the most banal escapism experience for procrastinating at work. Slowly they turn into zombies to create the hive-mind culture that Zynga desires, as everyone bids them offerings compulsively, and then spams their friends so that they go forth and do the same.
Our grandchildren must not be damned to a fate of waving their arms to match human skulls in Zynga sponsored re-education camps, but I fear that this is all but inevitable. Well, its that or the machines take over, what with their eventual superior collective intellect and contempt for humanity and all.
Haha, indeed! While the wares you will be looking at are those of other people, Blizzard will still thank you for that 15 percent though, most assuredly!
Anyway, I'm not even really looking to argue too much. This is just a somewhat entertaining discussion.
2) Let's say the amount of servers Blizzard needs for day-to-day operation is X and to handle the launch traffic is Y (where Y > X). The best amount of servers for Blizzard to pick would be somewhere between X and Y trending closer to X than Y. Why? Because they would waste tons of money if they put together Y servers just to handle a one-time burst of traffic. And that's ignoring the fact that at midnight Diablo 3 players essentially act as a DDoS attack so parts of the internet completely out of Blizzard's control can (and did) go down. If they have at least X servers to handle the day to day load they're good, with maybe a few more to handle bursts such as the weekends and holidays.
Also so far the cross-game Auction House is amazing. I haven't bought anything from vendors because generally I can find Rare level items on the AH that have the stats I want for cheaper than a Magic level item from an ingame vendor. Of course I'm behind the curve some so I'm benefitting from that, but still it's great. If its existance was the only reason why the game was always online (which it's not, as already discussed) then I'd still be sold because I've used it so much.
On a side note, man does Diablo III look really darn good.
While I wish they would have been able to incorporate a segregated offline mode, kind of like what they had with Open battlenet and Closed battlenet for D2, they absolutely need authentication for any character which will produce items for sale on the RMAH. Because once you have people paying real money for stuff, you need to make certain it isn't duped or hacked or whatever.
And the prime benefit of the RMAH, is that it gives a sanctioned avenue for people to do what they would have done anyway. Instead of paying money to some guy on eBay, hoping that he's not gonna take it run, (or vice versa, someone paying you, getting the item, then claiming product was never delivered), or worse, steal your credit card info or hack your account, there is an game process where the trade is enforced and legit.
My main grievance is with the fact that latency has a serious affect on gameplay. I knew the game was going to be online-always, but I didn't know that lag was going to be such an issue. Luckily I have not had it happen too many times (though it has gotten me killed once), but I've seen many complaining in the general chat about much more frequent lag issues. This is what seems silly. Not the always online requirement, but that latency (whether it's their servers or somewhere in between) can cause major issues with someone playing solo.
I'd hate to be someone playing hardcore that got killed by getting rubberbanded back into a group of enemies.
I know quite a few humans! And none of them are playing or waiting to play Diablo.
On second thought, I must wonder if it is just an American thing. The online aspect seemed to be what drew may people to Diablo, but at the time the likelihood of people having an internet connection in their homes was very low. I imagine, in some way, that may have hindered the popularity of the game here.
I'm eagerly awaiting seeing what impact the RMAH has on the 'black market' of digital goods. If it does impact it, hot diggity DAMN is that going to be rad. And the key aspect of this is that players are selling to other players - the developer isn't the one people buy from. That's the whole point. If the RMAH was instead "buy stuff from Blizzard's store" it wouldn't counteract that market one bit. Okay, so scratch my statement from earlier wondering why Blizzard didn't make a Sanctuary Marketplace.
And yeah, the cloud thing is another feature of this online play thing. I'm not sure if it benefits a terrible lot amount of people, but it's still there. Bammo. And it works this way for security reasons (I'm sure someone was going to snipe this statement and say, "JUST UPLOAD WHEN YOU CHOOSE TO RATHER THAN BE ON ALL THE TIME" - that would defeat the purpose).
By the way, another aspect of the always-online - Punishing assholes. The new Battle.net has created this realm on the internet where people actually have something to lose for gross misconduct. If someone is caught cheating, they don't just have their little whimpy account banned. You have to buy a whole new goddamn key, even to enjoy the game by yourself. It enforces good behavior. Even if it's out of fear, I am so for that when it comes to internet jerkoffs. I'm sure someone is going to swoop in on this statement talking about, "WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONGLY BANNED, LOOK AT STEAM," and y'know, that's true. No law or system is perfect. The innocent are wrongly accused, the guilty sometimes walk free. But it's a step in the right direction, and as long as you don't act like an asshole, you really have nothing to worry about. And if someone is giving you trouble, document what goes on so that if you get slighted by Blizzard, you can make a case to them. But really, nothing to worry about if you obey the golden rule of the internet.
Edit - This page of the thread has gotten much cooler by the way. Thanks Rehab, Opty, and Tofys.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/24/diablo-3-beta-pulled-300k-simultaneous-players-into-its-special/
Blizzard definitely tried to make sure they were ready for the demand; they didn't simply throw their hands up and go "it's unknowable, so we shouldn't even try to keep the servers up day one." They failed to overanticipate demand.
In other news, the battle.net website appears to be down right now.
You're missing the point. The point is that Prince of Persia still runs fine despite Ubi Soft servers having gone tits up a while ago. The point is that if, say, Blizzard went completely bankrupt tomorrow and shut their doors forever, Diablo 1 and 2 would still be perfectly playable in singleplayer and LAN modes. Diablo 3? COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
This is actually an interesting phenomenon of the digital era. At no time in the past could you purchase something and then be mad when it didn't work perfectly 10, 20, 50 years in the future.
Only digital goods seem to be immune to entropy. Once purchased, they are expected to last for eternity. Which sort of makes sense. I mean scarcity doesn't apply naturally either. It has to be imposed artificially.
It's an interesting concept though.
Right, because they wouldn't have one final patch to deliver to unlock an offline mode, or whoever owns the assets would just let it fall on its ass. I'm eyerolling right now, you just can't see it.
Edit - Essentially, who's to say they don't have the same idea in mind as Valve with Steam products, to give out one final master unlock?
If the U.S. government fails and anarchy breaks out and I don't have power to my home anymore, I won't be able to play Prince of Persia anymore! COMPLETELY WORTHLESS PURCHASE!
Of course, they could release the code for the server and let people set up their own...
You'd lose your characters in this hypothetical cataclysmic event, yes, but at least you could play offline.
But hypotheticals are dumb. Doubly so on the internet, and doubly so in video game discussion, so this is some exponential shit here.
Right, I'm just saying that if data is stored on the server, they can't just "release an unlock patch." They would have to patch the game to store all of that data locally, and look for it locally. Which may or may not be a trivial thing to do.
Giant Bombcast 05-15-2012
It's the secret cow level of podcasts as we discuss Diablo III, Max Payne 3, game delays, the fate of 38 Studios, and more!
Most of the Diablo III discussion that is relevant here is during the first half hour or so. They keep the discussion pretty low key and reasonable, nothing overzealous said or anything remotely resembling a knee jerk reaction, and they make some good points. Especially Brad.
Edit - AH! And there's the magic phrase I was looking for - Blizzard has a good track record with their games, and they're not being aggressive with the negative aspects of this (as in, that they're intentional) - they want a product that works. Yes yes, LOLZ IT DUSNT but the point is that they're going to fix what doesn't work.
Ehhhh. There are musical instruments that have lasted hundreds of years. They work even better than modern instruments, which is one of the reasons professional musicians continue to play them. A lot of paintings have lasted a long time, too. And I expect the car I bought in 2007 to last until 2017. Different items run on different time scales of usefulness.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
The point is that the RMAH is most likely the primary reason they went with the always online model. If you feel that is the most likely truth, which I certainly do, then this whole thing comes across as them making things worse for people who want to play single player, specifically to profit off of the RMAH.
Basically, we have to put up with shitty DRM so they can leech as much profit off the player base as they can. Why can't I play by myself when the server is down or my Internet is acting up? Why do I get fucking LAG when I'm playing single player? Because they value additional profit over giving me the best game experience possible.
Good for them on figuring out a way to make more money, I guess. But for a good chunk of people, the advantages of always online do not cover up the disadvantages. I will never be able to play Diablo III without the threat of lag spikes getting me killed. That sucks.
Ok, so there are a certain class of items that are meticulously maintained so that they last. People are putting a lot of resources into storing (and restoring) those items though. At that point, it's not just <some thing I bought for a particular purpose>. It's an investment.
I suspect that Taaarkoth wants it to "just work" like I expect any old thing I pick up from WalMart to just work, and he wants it to stay that way for the foreseeable future with no additional input of resources on his part. That's the part that seems unique to digital goods.
Btw, the musical instruments thing is a myth. Well not a myth necessarily, but science hasn't been able to verify the claim. There have been double blind studies where no one could tell the difference between the old and the new. The amazing thing about them is that they still sound that good hundreds of years later. Musicians want to play them because they have history and there is prestige in doing so.