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[Soulwynd]

One more game I will not be buying.

This entire past week my isp has been going up and down, since they're having internal issues with their equipment. I wouldn't accept some asshole game saying I couldn't play the offline mode because I wasn't online.

No monies for you diablo, see you in warez form.

[supermalparit]

True gamers (like me) doesn't like micro-transactions to gain game advantatge. I'll never will use it, but...... look at Diablo 2, for example, there are a lot of web pages that sell items. I played recently, and 5 seconds after I create a game a lot of bots join it and fill my screen with spam. So, Blizzard micro-transactions maybe will remove that problem and also fake pages that steal passwords to users.... well, we'll see.

[Darkmere]

I couldn't care less if people with more money than sense want to throw cash at a game. I'm more interested in the endgame NOT being over 9,000 Baal runs with a teleporting full-duped hammerdin bot. If the game is even remotely balanced long-term it'll be a huge improvement over all the crap that bogged D2 down. This remains to be seen, of course, but by and large the gameplay improvements all sound solid to me.

[Astral]

I'm kinda looking forward to being able to sell my random drops that I don't need for real money, to be honest. The fact that they're taking initiative over the kind of websites that sold Diablo 2 items (making Blizzard lose money on their own game in a non-piracy sort of way) as well as giving a form of balance between the people who have time and no money, and those with money but little time to play.

If I put enough time into a game I enjoy and can make real money off of it (minus the "nominal fees," despite this costing Blizzard little to nothing to actually implement, in comparison to their advertising budget...) then why not?

[Graven]

Astral, because ... you won't be making money. I'm tempted to say "ever", but I won't.

The reason is because there will always be farmers/grinders whose sole purpose is to get items and sell them, and because of the sheer man...well, not manpower, let's call it man-uselesseffort and time involved, will be getting a lot of items. Supply and demand will take care of the rest. Consequently, all but the rarest items will be flooding the market, and because there aren't, for now, any regulatory mechanisms in place to prevent such stuff, end up at a price so low it's not worth bothering.

Of course, if you DO get one of the (expected) amazingly rare items, you might succeed in selling it. But because there will always be people wasting their lives in front of the computers, now with the "NO MOM I MAKE REAL MONEY, SEE" mindset, there will always be items such as yours, for most likely lower price.

This is not taking initiative over the websites who sell Diablo 2 items. This is just legalizing them and their practices. They still get money, Blizz still doesn't, and technically never did lose money, because they didn't do anything worth the reimbursement. This is just a way to make their product generate revenue out of thin air for them from content that is already there. In a way it's even worse than the DLC craze that's been going on for quite some time, because they aren't even adding new items which people to buy. They're just letting people exchange money for time, and gaining a share of the money.

I can't say how objectively bad or good it will end up being, I can just say I personally despise it. But what I do (think I) know is that the average user is not likely to make a single dollar out of this.

[Krelian]

the kind of websites that sold Diablo 2 items (making Blizzard lose money on their own game in a non-piracy sort of way)

how in hell are those websites making blizard LOSE money?? :S

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Blizzard knows how to make a buck. Thats for sure.

This whole item auction house thing will be a bread winner for sure. People have always sold items out of the game and idiots have always bought them. So Blizzard makes a system where the items are traded ingame where they get a cut of the profits.

All of a sudden, in the horrizon; a wave of item farmers are spotted. They buy the game, farm up the items using their bots, they sell it to idiots, Blizzard takes a cut of the profits. All they need now is an in game charactor trader for real currency and they'll have the perfect profit generating machine.

Throw in a couple reskin dlcs every few months, a monthly subscription, an expansion pack or six and then Blizzard will offically own all the mass in the universe.

Though I'm sure this was all done for the player's benefit [canned laughter]... oh and to fight piracy. 

[Niveras]

So, Blizzard micro-transactions maybe will remove that problem and also fake pages that steal passwords to users.... well, we'll see.

Hah. If anything, legitimizing items-for-cash is going to bring phising/keylogging in with a vengeance. WoW doesn't even have it (excluding vanity items) and it's a huge problem there. It was a problem in Rift before the game even went live! It's a huge problem in every MMO, virtually every online game. I bet only console shooters are exempt, but I bet if you looked deep enough you could find some place selling TF2 items.

As far as mods and the no-offline are concerned, remember when you could buy a game and do whatever the fuck you wanted with it - even reselling it! - short of profiting? It didn't seem like so long ago... But nope, you'll play the game in the manner that We, Your Betters, intend for you to play. Too bad for you if this includes insulting methods to make sure you're legit.

[Denzi]

All they need now is an in game charactor trader for real currency and they'll have the perfect profit generating machine.

Actually I think the real money auction house will allow for the sale of characters. I think I read it in an article on gamespy or some such. Thankfully it sounds like hardcore characters will not be allowed to have access to the rmAH, though with the 'shared stash' I've heard about it'd be easy to circumvent unless the item itself gets flagged as being from the rmAH or something.

If anyone wants I'll dig that article up, think it was on the front page though.

---

As for the always online deal that's incredibly lame... Means I won't be able to get a LAN going with all my mates and have some awesome D3 goodness.

[IronyOwl]

Huh. I honestly didn't think there was any way I wouldn't be getting this, but now I'm not so sure. Nice save there, Chief.


That said, each of these items has some merit to it. Not sure if it balances out the cost, and the current leadership pretty much assures it'll be handled in the most stereotypically evil fashion possible, but I guess we'll see.

[buckets]

I've been wanting this games for years. Years.

I remember when Blizzard were the good guys

[nenjin]

Yeah, I would have called myself a lock for this 6 months ago. Today? I'm seriously questioning how badly I want to play it.

The AH is toxic to me, I can't imagine ever playing Diablo 3 in generic MP now. As if getting loot didn't make people terrible to play with already, now they're trying to make money while they're doing it?

Mods....this is what all companies say now. Supporting modding means supporting the player tinkering around any of their code. They don't want that, so they're not going to greenlight it. Once modders forcibly crack the code, they probably won't prosecute and may even buy the mods, even if the stated policy never changes.

The Internet connection is what really pisses me off though. I expect not to have internet in the future, for one reason or another. I should still be able to play offline and will be looking for cracks expressly for this purpose (although depending on how heavily Bnet is written into the game, it may be beyond the scope of a simple crack.)

I will never care if I play D3 online with anyone. Yet Blizzard demands I be online so they can try to sell me shit, I can get tempted to spend real money at the AH and they can monitor me. Getting sick of AAA developers standing over my shoulder while I play.

And then there's this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-01-diablo-iii-has-real-money-auction-house

By collecting a fixed rather than a percentage fee on auction house sales, Blizzard will have no incentive to manipulate the game design in order to make more money from the auction house, Pardo argued.

This interviewer totally missed the point. If they're doing a fixed rate, it's all about VOLUME. Does he not think they can manipulate gameplay to produce a higher volume of sales? Let's start with what they've ALREADY done. Drops no longer appear to everyone. They appear, in a group setting, on a per-person basis. You also no longer see gear you can't use. Result? More players are driven to the auction house whereas, in the past, they would possibly just farm for a new set of gear for their character. Tinkering with the per-person, per-class drop rate means they can control for how much gear people can get legitimately over a span of time. They're already doing this in WoW. The difference? They're not using the drop rate to drive players into a Blizzard-run item economy. They're forcing people to stay online longer (and pay their sub longer) but this is a revenue stream of an entirely different ethos in D3.

In the end I wouldn't care, if I just had to make my Battlenet account once, activate my game and then never deal with the online portion of the game again. But I won't even be able to do that without a crack.

[SeaBee]

I'm no longer interested in Diablo III. At all.

Torchwood II and Grim Dawn are where it's at for me. Fuck Blizzard.

[Niveras]

There's also Path of Exile, which is going to be perma-online and "free" with a cash shop for vanity items (animations, dyes, spell effects). Pretty much everything D3 is planning to be, short of players selling and buying and profiting from it.

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I'm actually okay when an independent developer is trying it (at least as far as "online only" is concerned). They don't have the gamer goodwill to exploit, or the clout in the industry to actually cause the shift. An independent developer (even financed) has to do what it has to, to stay afloat. Blizzard doesn't need to take risks or toy with a formula that worked - we just wanted Diablo 2: Version 2, with a modern engine and modern graphics. We didn't ask (and vehemently object) to be the guinea pigs in a shift to the developer/player business dynamic, just because you're using a franchise that we loved in a genre that is extremely lacking in quality examples.

[Graven]

Btw I didn't see this gameplay video posted :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSsgs1Q0d3s&feature=player_embedded

It's characters trying out their attacks on mobs on some muted-colour terrain.

What kind of bothers me is how silly some of the attacks look, or sound I really like Blizzard's sound design, especially in WoW - the melee classes (warrior, rogue) have wonderful sound effects which imply brute force and impact. But things like the Demon Hunter's crossbow bolts sound like bottle caps being removed.

And I'll be damned if that tower of zombies isn't the most ridiculous thing I've seen today.

edit : Niveras, actually I'm pretty fond of cosmetic micro-transactions, or things like reduced travel times, resurrection timers and other convenience stuff. If done right (free game/no monthly fee with micro-transactions, or just initial price) they let players determine their own spending limits. Hell, I'm the biggest proponent of completely free stuff and even I'd be tempted to buy at least one dye/interesting looking item for a character I love. It's when we get things like buying powerful and difficulty-destroying items that I get annoyed.

Buying spell effects is a genius thing to do, too. I'd never heard of this before, but ... if it goes BOTH ways - more flashy and more subdued attacks... I'd be all over it. I hate overly flashy spell effects without real impact (for example, the paladin melee attacks in WoW - wtf is this glow-y stuf, give me manly blood splatters dammit!)


edit : re-watching the video I just can't get over the disparity in sound effect quality, I mean seriously. Check out the barb's manly awesome swings and smashes, and then consider the Witch Doctor's firebomb sound which is like hearing someone drop a see-through porcelain cup on a thick rug two rooms away. Even some of a single class's attacks sound this way - like the wizard's electrocute with a nice, meaty zap and the disintegrate ray which I'm fairly certain sounded a lot more visceral in the first videos three years ago. Guess it's really going to be monk for my first character, if only because I'm sick of barbarians. Though that bell does look like something I'd laugh a lot at if playing drunk and/or with friends in the room.