Nowadays it isn't used very often, but for those that expected to LAN Diablo III or just singleplayer offline... It's not happening. The game is fully online.
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2011/08/01/50572/

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This isn't news. This is the modern age of online pc games.

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CAUTION: Would anyone tell me if I was getting stupider?

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My Steam
||The soul sheds light and death is it's shadow. When the light dims, life and death embrace.||

Yeah SC2 paved the way for how future blizzard games are handled, and since it made a shit load of money that is just how it is going to roll. The digital sales alone were 2 million units, and because of the nature of digital sales Blizzard got the entire amount as opposed to the %45 of the profit from a retail sale. So 2 million units at 60 bucks is a 120 million dollars to blizzard versus 2 million units at %45 which is 54 million dollars. It simply makes sense for them to keep their current business model. They can sell half the games and come out way ahead. I really think that this is going to be the way future PC games are going to be sold.

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Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

Crap, so it's like Play 2 be Paid then?

EDIT: Holy crap, that's genius! Blizzard's playing it smart here.

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Grivous.

Crafty swine, they knew my one weakness. MICRO TRANSACTIONS.

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"But when one of it's baby chicks is in trouble, Momma comes a run'nin' and a squawkin and a run'nin''." -General Treistar

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My Steam
||The soul sheds light and death is it's shadow. When the light dims, life and death embrace.||

I forsee everyone trying to make a profit (and even living) off it, possibly driving down prices in the short term until people realize they can't, at least not while it's flooded.

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No matter how much you play, you won't be able to make a living with this. Just the amount of items you'd have to find would be ridiculous.

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Oh trust me, the Chinese will find a way.
Even if they ARE in a different zone, they're find a way.

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Guys this is the WORST FUCKING THING THAT COULD FUCKING HAPPEN.

BLIZZARD IS ENCOURAGING GOLD (item) FARMING.

Blizzard is basically saying, "Hey, we know you're going to be grinding and clicking all day long like a retard, but while you do that, make some more money for us, my dear cash-cow-consumer-base."

Also, only online play? That's fucking bad.

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I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but no, what they're doing is recognizing that something is going to inevitably happen and making it benefit them. People are going to farm the shit out of stuff and then sell it via a third party anyway. This way they cut out the shady middleman and at least take some of the profits that are being made off of their game.

If you want to blame anyone, blame the people who are stupid enough to pay real money for fake items in a videogame.

It's a shitty situation either way but I don't blame them for taking that route. Besides what does it affect you, really? It's not an MMO so it's not like you're going to be forced to play with a bunch of people who just bought all their items and earned none of it. I also don't think it'll turn normal people into item farming robots because the effort and time it takes to get items that sell for any reasonable amount will probably be too much effort for the average person.

The online-only stuff is pretty lame, though. Diablo II used to be one of my go-to games when my Internet was out.

I find it morally repulsive because Blizzard is fucking leaching the life out of its players.

I know some people want that and are willing to subject themselves to mindless repetitive gameplay where leveling up is more important than actual skill, but I'm sure as hell not going to praise Blizzard for being willing to take advantage of such people.

This kind of game leads you on with the false belief: "Oh, the more time you spend with the game the more money you can make! So play a lot! Yay!" It's such an alluring idea, too. It's so fucking tempting. Cause you have a choice between playing let's say TF2 and Diablo III. Replace TF2 with whatever your favorite game is as this is a hypothetical situation. You come home and sit down and ask yourself, "What should I play? TF2 which I enjoy a shitton or Diablo III which I enjoy a lot, but could possibly make a few bucks in?" You take a second and go with the obvious answer, "Diablo III, it is."

THAT IS THE INNOCENT SORT OF ISSUE THAT IS SO FUCKING TEMPTING. IT SEEMS SO INNOCUOUS BUT THAT'S THE SORT OF THING THAT WILL CONSUME ALL OF YOUR FREE TIME. BLIZZARD WILL SUCK YOU DRY AND YOU WILL LOVE THEM FOR IT.

"Hm, do I try out this new awesome game... or play Diablo III which I've played for 9999 hours, but could possibly make a few bucks in?" "

"Hm, do I spend 2 hours to watch this movie everyone's talking about... or play Diablo III and possibly make money?"

It's the same fucking thing as going to a casino and playing on the slot machines. You are doing repetitive work for the chance to make money even if the actual gameplay has grown stale.

You may claim immunity from the lure of a chance at money, but you'd be fucking wrong. No one is fucking immune. Sometimes it's subconscious, but your decision-making on how to spend your time gets twisted by the possibility of winning the virtual lottery. It's similar to how advertising affects people, it gets past your conscious mind and plants this idea that festers. Companies would not spend billions on TV commercials if there weren't proven studies that they work just the same way Blizzard wouldn't be going through all this trouble of real-cash auction houses if they weren't sure that it'd consume more of a player's life and give them massive profits.


BUT.


Regardless of my protests millions of fucking people will buy Diablo III and those millions will probably make use of the Auction House at some point and Blizzard will become as rich as all fucking hell. Or rather Blizzard will become as rich as all of hell, earth and heaven combined because they already have WoW and Starcraft.

Then every other game company will be like, "hey that's a good idea, but it really only works if we make a RPG-style game, gogogogo diablo-ripoff, final fantasy-ripoff, othershittygame-ripoff."

And then my video-game Hell scenario will be complete. We will only ever have micro-transaction RPG games and companies will only focus on how to make the most money by taking advantage of our neurosis and complexes and disorders and addictions. Twenty years from now, there will be no real "games" left, just timesinks with possible monetary bonuses and cool level-up screens.

And it will be all your fault.

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That's quite the slippery slope scenario you've conjured up there. You're right that it's an alluring concept. I'm not immune and I didn't say I was. Hell the first thing I thought when the thing was announced was "Cool, if I get a super rare item I don't want maybe I can sell it."

To play a video game and make money off of it sounds amazing, but you really have to look at the reality.

And that is that the money you will potentially make off of your efforts is so miniscule verses the time you put in that it will be barely worth it at all even you devote your life to farming, because if you don't then you will always be beat out by the people who do. Chinese gold farmers, etc. For them it is literally their job. They get paid like shit and they do nothing but farm. Because of this they can sell things for "cheap" or at least cheaper than Joe Everyman is willing to sell stuff that took him 30 hours to get.

So once Joe realizes this the allure is going to go away quickly. My estimate will be the prime Diablo 3 shit might go for like... 100 bucks, if you're lucky. As in, the rarest of the rare. Let's be a bit crazy and say one item is even worth 500 dollars. So by getting it you spent a lot of time in the game and also probably got extremely lucky. Knowing these games you may as well take that 500 dollars to Vegas because you have a better chance at making more money there than getting that super rare item again.

When I played Everquest and quit I sold my very well equipped character. Probably the top of his class on the server at the time. I got 1200 dollars. Sounds pretty good right? Well that was after pretty much a literal year put into the character. Not year including breaks and logged off time. A year logged on. You divide that up and it's not exactly a high paying job. You'd make more per hour picking up pennies off the street. So it's not as if I was suddenly addicted to selling Everquest shit.

You could be selling WoW items right now. It's very plausible. But you're not.

Ultimately my point is this sort of thing already exists if you already really want to do it. The ease of the new AH will indeed make it easier to sell items, but ultimately it will not exactly make it any easier to actually make money. You're creating some sort of gaming doomsday scenario that just isn't realistic.

Additionally "Then every other game company will be like, "hey that's a good idea, but it really only works if we make a RPG-style game, gogogogo diablo-ripoff, final fantasy-ripoff, othershittygame-ripoff.""

That won't happen, because the only real reason this is going to make any money in the first place is because it is Diablo. It has an established fanbase already. Someone cloning Diablo and making their own auction house isn't going to rake in the cash, unless their game is, you know, awesome. Which would kind of contradict your point that people would only be making these games for quick cash with no care toward the quality.

I mean, some might try to do it and probably fail, just like most companies do when they try to compete with WoW because they're allured by the crazy money a subscription based game can make. They're not gonna beat WoW unless they make their game good, because even if you hate WoW you have to admit it's still very polished for the type of game it is. The only thing that has a chance at competing is The Old Republic because it's fucking Star Wars and is milking one of the biggest established fanbases in the world.

We're already past the peak of the slope, we're fucking sliding our way down already.

Time Spent/Level up > more guns, better skills, better farms, cool hats

Game-to-Player Microtransanctions > better guns, better skills, better farms, cool hats

Player-to-Player Microtransanctions > better guns, better skills, better farms, cool hats

I'm not saying you could make a job out of this. I'm saying it's fucking addicting and people will fall for it.

Having this shit implemented within the game removes all the barriers and stigmas goldfarming has. Now it's just "ooo cool item, get some cash for it". And that sounds too fucking perfect for anyone to pass up. Making whatever small bits of money is going to be a part of the game, it's going to reach the mainstream. It's going to be the hardcore market's farmville.

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And I'm saying they will pass it up when they realize it's a shit way to make money. At least most people will. I guess if some kid is in high school and doesn't have a job it might seem appealing, but for anyone who has a legitimate job and has to seriously manage their free time, spending that time making a few extra dollars might not be worth it if it isn't any fun. Most people do not work 2 jobs unless they have to.

To elaborate:

The scenario you presented, which was "play TF2 or Diablo 3, both of which I enjoy but maybe D3 will make me money!" is valid. Someone might indeed do that. If the guy is legitimately having fun then what exactly is the problem here? There's no guarantee he would have chosen TF2 anyway.

The scenario "Play TF2 or play Diablo 3, the latter of which I am bored to tears of but maybe I'll make 5 dollars tonight" is less likely. The amount of money it would take would have to pass a certain point for Joe to work through the boredom, and I'm saying 9 times out of 10 that won't happen, because a lot of people cherish that free time and don't want to spend it farming shit if it's no fun.

The point is while it's possible it might happen to some people, the idea that it'll ensnare the entire community surrounding the game is pretty preposterous. Amusingly if everyone who played the game did go that route then the market would just get over-saturated and things would be worth even less. Too much of a supply and not enough demand.

BobSagat: You do have a legitimate point, but the psychological hold that you are looking at is is already established and used in almost every game you have ever played. It is known as the skinner box mechanic. Money is just one aspect of this mechanic that blizzard is using. It is based on psychological conditioning. I could elaborate further, but as opposed to reinventing the wheel I'll link you a flash video that will sum up your slippery slope and you will say AHA!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... kinner-Box

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Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

I'm sure he's aware of that, just saying the allure of real money is even more effective than just the allure of virtual items and progression that other skinner box games like WoW offer. I agree with him in that aspect, just not to the severity of which he's describing. At least not in this particular case.

Pretty much.

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I still fail to see why everybody is so butthurt about the constant online thing, or the item selling.

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It's straight up annoying to have to be online all the time if you're interested in playing it single player. I said above how Diablo 2 was my choice game when my connection would go down, but I wouldn't be able to do to that this time. You don't think it would be irritating to have your game interrupted because your connection went out, even if you were just minding your own business with single player?

The reason they're doing it is because of the auction house. They feel that if you could farm shit offline and sell it online, there wouldn't be much to stop people from hacking while offline just for stuff to sell later.

This is really the best argument I could see against the AH. That their inclusion of real money to the whole thing is making the game just more restrictive in general. I don't know. I find it hard to believe there isn't another way to stop offline hacked items being sold. Couldn't they just make it so any item acquired offline couldn't be sold or traded? Couldn't they just make a separate single player mode that has no connection to the online portions at all?

Obviously another reason is to prevent piracy, so they think they're killing two birds with one stone. The problem with that sort of DRM is it basically assumes everyone is a criminal right off the bat, which isn't the best way to treat customers.

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I think the top comment is far more significant.

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Zeph do you ever tire of being perfect? ~Dave
Zeph is still awesome though. ~Rival
I love you so much right now Zeph. ~Yoshi
I love you Zeph. You and your simple yet humorous topic-breakers. ~Coos
Zeph has left me inspired. ~Mathias
Zeph is so awesome even soulless bits of binary worship him. ~Wizard
Curse YOU ZEPH! CURSE YOU! ~JesusChrist
WE ARE SORRY THAT WE ARE NOT AS PERFECT AS YOU, ZEPH! ~Stufflikehearts
Zepherin for forum queen and writer of the best seller "how to screw your brethen up for dummies". ~ The Mirak

Because it restricts your freedom to do what you want with a product you bought and paid for.

Starcraft 2 sucks. But I have nothing else now since so many people abandoned WC3 for it. It just flat out sucks. I can find massive issues with the UI just anywhere I look; I do not exaggerate, I could easily write up a giant list about my issues with it. And on occasion, one's internet does go out. Especially on really hot days for me.

So when it's so hot that you can do nothing else but sit in the house and play a game...
your internet goes out..
And you can't play a game you paid for just because Blizzard doesn't want you to.
Plus, there's still plenty of areas in America (the rural areas) that still have spotty/slow coverage.

Imagine being forced to always eat food in your kitchen. To only be able to play music on CDs. To only be able to read in a library. The restrictions are ludicrous. Just because you are online most of the time is not an excuse to make it so you always have to be online to play it. It's entirely regressive and goes completely against what the past few decades have been about in promoting freer access to content consumers paid for. Hey, maybe even sometimes I want to play a game offline whilst retaining full access just so I'm not bothered, but that isn't a possibility. I like being able to do that with Xbox Live. Sometimes I'll be online, sometimes I won't. It should be entirely up to me whether or not I want to be online while I play my game. I genuinely take advantage of this so it is entirely a problem for me with Blizzard games.

Honestly, if anyone else tried to place restrictions on what you could do with something after you bought it, you would think they're an idiot.

I did not expect Starcraft 2's system to suck as much as it did. The only way I'm playing Diablo 3 is if my brother buys it. But even then, I could only play it offline, because you can't even share games with your own family under their system.

I guess if its the singleplayer you're after, just get a cracked version. They did it with Starcraft II, I'm sure they'll also do it for Diablo III

I personally still don't see anything wrong with the system. If I cant play it, because my internet might be down for that one day of the year, big deal, I'll play something else instead.
But that's just my opinion about it.

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