First UbiSoft, now Blizzard

Taking you last point, first, any system that starts from the point of accusing me that I'm a thief is automatically a BAD SYSTEM from my point of view. I do not appreciate the stance that these companies are taking in that they are actively hostile towards me as a gamer, customer and consumer of their product. . .So, even above and beyond the whole, calling paying users thieves (and remember, ONLY paying users will be afflicted with this horrible system--the pirates actually get to play offline) thing, there's still a large number of folks that don't have the dedicated internet that this system requires.
While I completely agree with you on people having limited connections should still be able to play games, I think taking the stance that you are a thief is a bit more common than you may realize. Actually, it's not so much considering you a thief as it is considering you a potential threat. You will note that stores have scanners at their doors to determine when a product has been taken without being paid for. Do stores consider everyone who shops in them a thief? No, but they do consider everyone a potential threat. They need to protect themselves to produce a profit, remain competitive, and keep prices low for you as the consumer. By the same token, banks do not leave huge stacks of money sitting on the counter till you need to withdraw some. Instead, for every customer's protection, they lock the money in a vault and have security guards.

Gaming companies are no different. They provide a product. When that product is stolen or changed in a malicious way not only does the company suffer, but so does the consumer. Prices go up, cheaters proliferate on online games, etc.

As I said, I believe that games with a single player mode should be able to be played without an internet connection. But the company creating the game has the right to protect their product/investment which in turn provides protection to their consumers.
 
Kidan - great point, and I considered those. Except for you carrying a Strongs concordance and all those others - that's just weird, but whatevs.

Also, it's not about the company accusing you or any other honest player of being a thief; they're merely trying to protect your playing experience from hackers and those that would manipulate the markets and items. Blizzard admitted years ago that DRM doesn't work.

Btw, I'm not totally on board with the always-connected play. I don't really care either way, I just think that the reaction here is way stronger than it needs to be.
 
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While I completely agree with you on people having limited connections should still be able to play games, I think taking the stance that you are a thief is a bit more common than you may realize. Actually, it's not so much considering you a thief as it is considering you a potential threat. You will note that stores have scanners at their doors to determine when a product has been taken without being paid for. Do stores consider everyone who shops in them a thief? No, but they do consider everyone a potential threat. They need to protect themselves to produce a profit, remain competitive, and keep prices low for you as the consumer. By the same token, banks do not leave huge stacks of money sitting on the counter till you need to withdraw some. Instead, for every customer's protection, they lock the money in a vault and have security guards.
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Here's a funny story regarding those things. A true on at that, which happened to me. I don't know how many of you have been to WalMart the past few years, but in those few years, it's become common for them to stop and paw through your belongings when you're leaving the store.

This is a degradation which I refuse to participate in.

About to two months ago, I went to the plase of lost souls... more commonly known as WalMart, I had my purchase and was walking out the door. The Walmartion working the door that evening asked me to stop.

I turned, looked at him and asked why.

His response was that he needed to look through my bags.

I asked why.

His response was 'it's store policy."

to which, I replied, that doesn't concern me at all. I'm not an employee.

He insisted.

I asked, "Do you think I stole something?"

To which he replied "Well, maybe you are."

At which time, I told him to call the cops then. After all, I'd enjoy suing walmart for false arrest--though I didn't tell him that.

And I wasn't exactly quiet about it. In fact, I repeated it even more bluntly for the benefit of a large group of customers just walking in the door-- and I did it much the same way I point out the logical fallacy in this theft accusing DRM.

The door greeter backed down, and let me on my way. I went to the truck, and called the manager and chewed him out for the the false accusations. Then called the District manager and did the same. Then wrote a letter to a couple Regional managers I knew from my days when I worked at walmart.

Low and behold, these past few months, I've not seen the door accusers out trying to paw through my belongings.

Remember, those bag checks at doors are legal only as long as you voluntarily submit to the smearing of your character. You always have the right to just walk on past. That said, when you sign up for the private stores (i.e. Costco & Sam's Club) you sign an agreement that you will submit to those searches. You don't sign any such agreement when you go to walmart or any other store.

Additionally, I have a pronounced tendency to ignore requests for me to stop if those RFID scanners go off while I'm leaving a store. Again, because those searches have to be voluntarily consented to.


Frankly, by having employees accost me as I'm leaving the store--and I'm not talking loss prevention employees, but just the standard run-of-the-mill employee--I take it that they believe I'm a thief. They think there are threats, because they have multiple Loss Prevention employees and video cameras watching everywhere. By constantly stopping and demanding I consent to a search, that's when they take it to the next step and actively believe I'm a thief.


Banks are a different matter. They're designed to protect your valuables, if they weren't protecting your property, you would take it to another bank that was. Additionally, they don't demand to search your bag as you're leaving to ensure you didn't hold up the bank while you were cashing a check.


bowser said:
Kidan - great point, and I considered those. Except for you carrying a Strongs concordance and all those others - that's just weird, but whatevs.

Also, it's not about the company accusing you or any other honest player of being a thief; they're merely trying to protect your playing experience from hackers and those that would manipulate the markets and items. Blizzard admitted years ago that DRM doesn't work.

Btw, I'm not totally on board with the always-connected play. I don't really care either way, I just think that the reaction here is way stronger than it needs to be.
See, that's the thing, I own a Kindle, and I have the Kindle app on my phone. As such, I constantly carry a library with me at all times. And yes, I do routinely break the DRM on my kindle so that I have a valid, off-line copy that I can format-shift to epub or whatever format I want.

Now, as for the playing experience and in-game hackers, DRM does not deal with that at all. Consider VALVE, they have VAC to protect users in-game from cheaters/hackers and then they have the STEAM DRM to protect their games. DRM has absolutely zero to do with anti-cheating measures.

As for my reaction being stronger than needed (which is fundamentally I won't buy games that use this DRM), I have a few quotes, the first from Thomas Paine:
The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.
the second from Thomas Carlyle
Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct
and finally, Justice Louis D. Brandeis
The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.
I don't stand for these acts which accuse me of thievery and demean my character, and question my honor. I don't take it from stores. I don't take it from software companies. I may be a lone voice against such acts, but, as Andrew Jackson said, "One man with courage makes a majority."
 
It's all about the Cost-Benefit Analysis. For a single player game there isn't any real benefit for the consumer to always have an online connection, because being connected while you play generally has no positive effect on your gameplay, while it could potentially provide many negative effects.

For a multiplayer oriented game it becomes a different matter altogether. The whole idea for Diablo III is that it will be a social experience, hence my statement that it is being designed as a pseudo-MMO. There is another game that people vehemently insist isn't an MMO: Guild Wars.

Sure I can go out and spend my time all by myself in Guild Wars, soloing it up like nobody's business, filling my party with NPCs and rockin' the instanced world and dungeons. But that's not the way the game was designed, and I've never heard anyone complain that there isn't an offline mode for that game...
 
Sure I can go out and spend my time all by myself in Guild Wars, soloing it up like nobody's business, filling my party with NPCs and rockin' the instanced world and dungeons. But that's not the way the game was designed, and I've never heard anyone complain that there isn't an offline mode for that game...

Theres a difference between an MMO and an MMO-ish (note the -ish) dungeon crawler. It's expected that you're always online for an MMO.

The only reason Blizz is mandating that you can only play D3 while you're connected to the internet is because of the RMAH. If people go offline, hack the game to give themselves 2352340897 awesome epics, they can then turn around and sell them for real money, making the RMAH worthless. Them hiding behind "ensuring the game quality is top notch" is hilarious.

With this, my question is why have the RMAH? People pay and have paid for WoW with no help from the game itself for years (some since the game debuted in 2004). The answer is greed.
 
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And why wouldn't it be expected that one would be online all the time in an MMO-ish dungeon crawler whose main draw was the community/friends in the first place? (I know from my own personal experience I got tired with Torchlight far far faster than I did with Diablo II or even Sacred)

Blizz didn't just tack on some code that says you gotta authenticate with a server before you can play, they specifically designed it as a client/server architecture very similar to their WoW. By doing it this way they aren't constrained by what they can do later on down the road in terms of multiplayer and community improvements (think along the lines of what they did with adding the Dungeon Finder in WoW), as well as providing the ability for live hotfixes, or whatever they can think up to do.

Any form of Auction House, not just RMAH would require an always-on component or it would be worthless (economy? what economy?). Any attempt at a solid, enjoyable, and competitive multiplayer experience where character progression and persistence matters, pretty much demands this.
 
Never before have you had to be constantly connected to the internet to receive patches. The original StarCraft was last updated in January of 2009 - you don't have to be constantly connected utilize its single-player mode... even multi-player while we're at it. SC2 can also be played offline, but with certain limitations. Additionally, SC2 has a large community surrounding it, just as you say D3 does, but it still offers offline play. I'm sorry, but I think the only reason D3 players must be connected 24/7 is to protect the RMAH. The RMAH is simply additional income for Blizz, as you need to pay a fee to place an item on the AH, and a fee once the item is sold. It just boils down to Blizzard trying to make even more money off of a very popular and undoubtedly already lucrative game.

I find the term MMO-ish confusing. When someone says a game is "MMO-ish", I take it to mean that some of it must be available offline. Even in MMOs (as some of you have pointed out) you can play all by yourself and have absolutely no contact with other players - so the "-ish" mustn't be denoted by the single player abilities, it must be something else.
 
I might be more inclined to agree if you took the RM off the AH. There are two versions of the Auction House, and both would be rendered completely useless if it tied into an offline singleplayer.

Hotfix does not necessarily mean patch, nowdays any MMO with a half decent client/server architecture (except for EVE Online for some odd reason, but they at least have plans for it) can do things like minor bugfixes on the fly -while the player is still playing their game, and often without them even having to know (due to the change being on the server and not on their machine). Patches and client patches can then be reserved for large scale tweaks, polish, and fixes on a much less frequent basis giving a more polished feel overall.

SCII can get away with its limited offline mode because there is no way that anything done offline can affect the multiplayer (there is no character progression). Technology is moving relentlessly forward, and is reaching the point where the advantages of being always connected are tilting the balance of offline convenience for almost everyone involved. If you look at Blizzard's past, you can see their constant push for improvement and innovation into the social realm. They don't want games so much as they want social experiences, with friends playing together from pretty much anywhere and on multiple games within their system, being offline and playing by yourself doesn't fall into that development paradigm, and that is why I can understand (and to some extent share) their confusion to the negative reaction it caused.
 
Technology is moving relentlessly forward, and is reaching the point where the advantages of being always connected are tilting the balance of offline convenience for almost everyone involved. If you look at Blizzard's past, you can see their constant push for improvement and innovation into the social realm. They don't want games so much as they want social experiences, with friends playing together from pretty much anywhere and on multiple games within their system, being offline and playing by yourself doesn't fall into that development paradigm, and that is why I can understand (and to some extent share) their confusion to the negative reaction it caused.
As a technologist, I can't quite agree with this. You're getting more and more online apps that have offline components, and as stated earlier the KINDLE Web App has an awesome offline mode, while still providing a great experience.

Additionally, you have the larger ISPs (at least here in the States) that are trying their best to go to limited access architectures on their data plans. They only want you online for roughly ~200/250 GB/month. And that's not a whole lot, when you factor in a family of 4, who are all online accessing digital content (especially videos). Or developers like me, who will have to push projects up and down my pipe. I, on average, eat up roughly 150 GB a data myself alone. That's just MY desktop. Not my wife's laptop. Not my laptop or tablet. Not my Wii. Just my desktop. And as a general rule, I don't play MMOs--mainly because I like to play RPGs by myself.


What it ultimately comes down to, is that I'm not going to approve this attack on my character (and draconian, invasive DRM is just that, an attack on my character)--and as such I'm not buying Diablo 3. In fact, Blizzard is now added to my list of publishers that I will not support at all, ever again. This made my considerations on getting SC2 really easy to decide, just as it made my consideration on D3 crystal clear. In fact donating my old Blizzard games as I don't even want them in my house.

As for social systems? No, Blizzard doesn't care about social events or games. They don't care about you playing the game with your friends. If they did, they wouldn't have removed LAN support from SC2. No, what they want, is total control over the experience and for you to give them large gobs of money in their auction house. That's all they care about.

The sad thing is, is that users would have done it with out them demeaning the character of those who would buy the game. Because, let's be clear, this DRM will be broken. The game will be pirated. And only those who play the pirated version will not play a hobbled version of the game.

For those who do give into the urge to buy this travesty, I just hope that after you spent the $60 on the game, their authentication servers don't go down, leaving you with a very expensive coaster for a few hours or days. After all, that too will happen, as surely as the DRM will be broken.

http://gaming.icrontic.com/news/shocking-ubisofts-new-drm-scheme-has-failed/
http://www.gossipgamers.com/ubisoft-drm-stops-australian-gamers-playing-settlers-7-again/
 
Without getting into the different view points too much, and rehashing the statements, much as I liked Diablo, and D2, even though I was looking forward to D3 it will not make an appearance on my comp. Why? Because there are times, more often than not, that I enjoy doing an RPG solo. I love GW because I can either team up and do dungeons, vanquishing, or what have you, or spend a few lazy hours playing in the sandbox by myself. I am looking forward to GW2, but it will be a stretch for me because of a lack of instanced play areas. D3 is just plain draconian in the way they do their security and grab for cash. At least GW gives you an option on micro transactions, and they do not affect your advantage ( or lack of advantage) in game. Blizzard is finally on my no no list, I will stick with Sacred, GW, and maybe eventually GW2.
 
As a technologist, I can't quite agree with this. You're getting more and more online apps that have offline components, and as stated earlier the KINDLE Web App has an awesome offline mode, while still providing a great experience.

Additionally, you have the larger ISPs (at least here in the States) that are trying their best to go to limited access architectures on their data plans. They only want you online for roughly ~200/250 GB/month. And that's not a whole lot, when you factor in a family of 4, who are all online accessing digital content (especially videos). Or developers like me, who will have to push projects up and down my pipe. I, on average, eat up roughly 150 GB a data myself alone. That's just MY desktop. Not my wife's laptop. Not my laptop or tablet. Not my Wii. Just my desktop. And as a general rule, I don't play MMOs--mainly because I like to play RPGs by myself.


What it ultimately comes down to, is that I'm not going to approve this attack on my character (and draconian, invasive DRM is just that, an attack on my character)--and as such I'm not buying Diablo 3. In fact, Blizzard is now added to my list of publishers that I will not support at all, ever again. This made my considerations on getting SC2 really easy to decide, just as it made my consideration on D3 crystal clear. In fact donating my old Blizzard games as I don't even want them in my house.

As for social systems? No, Blizzard doesn't care about social events or games. They don't care about you playing the game with your friends. If they did, they wouldn't have removed LAN support from SC2. No, what they want, is total control over the experience and for you to give them large gobs of money in their auction house. That's all they care about.

The sad thing is, is that users would have done it with out them demeaning the character of those who would buy the game. Because, let's be clear, this DRM will be broken. The game will be pirated. And only those who play the pirated version will not play a hobbled version of the game.

For those who do give into the urge to buy this travesty, I just hope that after you spent the $60 on the game, their authentication servers don't go down, leaving you with a very expensive coaster for a few hours or days. After all, that too will happen, as surely as the DRM will be broken.

http://gaming.icrontic.com/news/shocking-ubisofts-new-drm-scheme-has-failed/
http://www.gossipgamers.com/ubisoft-drm-stops-australian-gamers-playing-settlers-7-again/

As a technologist I can't agree with your statement. More and more apps exist and work because of a constant connection (social networking apps on smartphones for example), and I'll take your Kindle and raise you OnLive. I'm not saying that great experiences can't be had in today's climate without being connected (hey there Bethesda), but rather that the proliferation of internet connectivity is enabling things beyond doing stuff by yourself.

ISPs either see/feel the shift towards the always-on paradigm or they are resisting it with the same effect of higher prices and tiered payment systems. Interestingly enough, this goes all the way back to 1886, and will hopefully be something that will fade away as well (I consider it growth pains as people and companies adapt to a new way of life).

And I don't understand how you can call a client/server architecture 'invasive' DRM since no third party software (Punkbuster, SecuROM) is being installed in addition to the game.

Of course it can and eventually will be broken, there are Private servers for WoW after all, and I anticipate private servers for Diablo III. But is it really worth the hassle of setting up your own private server just so you can play by yourself in a little corner? If you think so, knock yourself out, I'm perfectly happy as is.

And my lunch break's over. I might respond more in depth about the difference between Ubisoft's DRM servers and Blizzard's design, or you can look it up yourself.
 
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