Okay, then PC gaming is dead and you can leave now.
Never mind the companies who are refusing to use it are seeing their sales rise, while Ubi’s tank, on the PC. Darn pesky reality thing again.
Do we really need to emulate the music business and permanently lose a significant proportion of a generation?
Can we back up a moment and agree that there is an actual difference between mere “always-on DRM” and an “online game”?
The former is a game whose actual functions do not come from a server, but it still requires a connection to one. Such as Driver or Assassin’s Creed 2.
The later is a game with major functions that come from a server. Obviously MMOs fit into this category.
I think Diablo 3 fits into the “online game” category as well. Blizzard has made a game where they feel you should, at all times, have access to your friends list and the auction house. Where you should be romping along by yourself, and be able to invite a friend to just drop into your game if you want them to. Or to receive an invite to their game and join up, without having to quit and fire up some lobby to do so.
Now, reasonable people can argue about whether the game needs that. It’s perfectly legit to feel that the game should have an offline mode that offers no access to your friends or the AH at all. But regardless of how we feel about whether or not that could or should be a part of the game, Blizzard does not. Blizzard feels the full game experience necessitates access to these online features.
To me, that’s very much different than simply saying it’s always-connected DRM. Yes, obviously it has the same benefit to the publisher, but it also supposedly benefits the gamer: you get a set of features that only an online game can give you. You can say “I don’t care about those features” (perhaps prematurely until you’ve tried them out), but you can’t say “it’s just DRM.”
No they don’t. You can trade items for free. You can sell items on the AH that uses the game currency for “free” (there will probably be an in-game currency listing fee as there is in WoW and most MMO AHs, to prevent certain abuses).
They want to charge us fees to sell our items in Diablo 3. For real monies. Frankly, I kinda think that’s better than them charging us a fee to play the game online, which is probably the alternative.
Plus, it’s not like there wouldn’t be venues to buy and sell stuff one way or another – Blizzard is ensuring that it’s all above board, minimizes support headaches/risk, etc, plus they get some extra $$$.
The demand and market for the stuff would be there anyway; I don’t have a problem with them stepping up and handling it directly, at least in concept.
Lorini
1605
Wonder where you’ll going to be the day after Blizzard announces that yet again one of their titles broke sales records for the first day/week/month of release. You really think no one is going to buy this? Most people don’t even care about this shit, they just want an updated fun D3 experience.
Mordrak
1606
Most people don’t stop long enough to think to care about this shit. I was on a boat in Vindictus fishing with some free cash shop poles handed out during an event. The poles fully automate the fishing process. I can buy a stack of poles, leave my character AFK, watch a movie, comeback and reap my rewards.
In discussing this on the fishing boat with other players I jokingly said, “Hey, you’re paying Nexon not to play their game.” To which people responded, “I didn’t think about it that way.” Most people don’t think about it.
And Talisker, by going with a complex system, run by themselves, for moving money between players and third party payment processors, you think they are going to minimize support costs?
Why do people believe that?
Minimize support costs due to people yelling and bitching about sales/trades through other channels gone wrong due to swindling, miscommunication, or other, for which they get no benefit. Any support costs related to the RMT auction house will be WAY more than offset by the proceeds.
Remove support headache, replace it with a significant additional revenue stream. I’d say that’s a definite improvement to their bottom line.
Lorini
1608
They’ve already said that part of the fees they are taking will go into anticipated increased support costs. I’m sure they expect the fees to exceed the costs and if they don’t, they’ll just increase the fees. Naturally if the fees get too high that could be a problem, but I doubt that will happen.
8 minutes of Diablo 3 gameplay:
Not really, no. We can agree that there’s a difference between an always-online DRM scheme and a multiplayer game (which MMOs are even if you never directly play with anyone). That difference is that the latter has gameplay which fundamentally requires the presence of other players. “Online features” do not justify an online requirement for singleplayer gameplay. Every company that’s done always-online DRM has had “features” like that, for precisely that reason - an attempt to justify a restriction that nobody would consent to without any sort of sweetening.
But I did not ask for those features, nor do I want them at such a cost, and I pretty much guarantee there’s a way to implement them without forcing an online connection, because there are plenty of games with such features that don’t. (A good example, imho: Demon’s Souls. Despite being a singleplayer game, Demon’s Souls has online functionality in the form of ghost replays of other people’s deaths, short messages you can leave on the ground, and limited crossing into other games as an ally or foe. It’s cool stuff, and it adds significantly to the game. BUT, and this is the crucial part: if your PS3 is not connected to the internet? It keeps playing. You just don’t get the online bits.)
Mordrak
1611
The support cost of the above is saying, “Too bad,” likely not over a telephone, and maybe not even by a real person. Most MMOs and online games don’t have telephone support anymore that I’m aware. Shit, Valve runs an actual store and its support is abysmal from all accounts I’ve heard.
No one spends real money on person to person support, except when it comes to billing and even then it’s pretty thin these days. The overall support cost of idiots being swindled on third party sites is relatively minuscule and representing it as something that’s going to be minimized by this as if it’s some great added bonus, while overall support costs will actually rise with the addition of new functionality and points of contact for problems to arise that Blizzard will have to deal with, is being disingenuous.
The fact that the proceeds of this will cover the added support costs is just called being in business, it’s not called, minimizing support.
Lorini
1612
They’ve always had phone support. They still have phone support. And what difference does it make anyway? And why can’t they get their support costs back? It is called being in business, but not in any way you think.
(Hours: 7 a.m. - 8 p.m. Pacific Time, seven days a week)
Support
[ul]
[li]US Account & Technical Services: 1-800-592-5499[/li]> [li]Brazil Account & Billing : 0800-892-1630[/li]> [li]Australia Account & Billing: 1-800-041-378[/li]> [li]New Zealand Account & Billing: 0800-452-520 (7 A.M. - 5 P.M. NZST)[/li]> [li]Mexico Account & Billing: 001-888-578-7628[/li]> [li]Argentina Account & Billing: 0800-333-0778[/li]> [li]Chile Account & Billing: 1230-020-5554[/li]> [/ul]
Mordrak
1613
I’m not saying they can’t get back the support costs, I just don’t think any of their moves with this will actually minimize their support costs or that was even a particular goal. To paint it as such, is pure rhetoric.
Sure, an added benefit is that a certain subset of support cases will be minimized, but that’s traded for an increase in new cases for new functionality.
Second, you’ll notice I said, “except for billing” and in your list the US is the only country that has a technical support line. And it’s really not even support, it’s “Technical Services.”
Edit: Let’s put it this way, do you think the per user support costs for the Diablo 3 product would be substantially higher if it was an offline and online game? Do you think the per user support costs for Diablo 3 would be substantially higher if they didn’t have this RMT Auction house?
If minimizing support costs was a significant factor in their decision making, then in both cases, that answer should be yes. I think in reality, it’s more likely, “No.” The per user support costs are probably going to be higher with both of these decisions.
Blizzard may make more money, but that’s not minimizing support costs.
I actually would say that multiplayer shouldn’t require you to be online with their servers in most cases either - LANs and direct IP connection and dedicated servers are perfectly viable also, from a consumer standpoint. I just tend to forget that it’s an issue because I hardly ever play multiplayer and never locally.
Pretty much sums up my opinion about this whole thing:
Diablo 3 AH:
Sebmojo
1616
‘Joy’ is a strong word and not one I’d necessarily use in the context of that clip, CVG.
I’m comfortable enough with the amount of computerised entertainment that doesn’t require me to be connected to the Internet against my wishes that I’ll pass on D3. Torchlight 2, now… I think their projected sales just got a nice bump.
I’m sure Torchlight 2 is going to be doing just fine regardless. Everyone will need something to play while waiting for Diablo to be released.
I can’t wait to try out the new auction house system. People love their knee-jerk reactions and all, but really, they system sounds pretty damn cool. It’s not gonna be a huge cash cow for any but the most dedicated, but the idea that the crazy-rare unique you just found could actually make you a little cash is really neat. Another addictive layer in what’s sure to be the most addictive game in years.
All that being said though, I can’t believe how greedy Blizzard has become. I’ve been anticipating this game since the day it was announced, but after hearing this news, I won’t be buying.
Boycott time!
If the screenshots of the interface are any indication, the exchange rate seems to be $1 U.S. Dollar to 1.000 Sanctuarian Gold.
It would be neat if that was the initial conversion rate but then they used a Supply/Demand model to balance the rate of real$ -> game$ and vice versa so they were equal. As long as their percentages for transferal weren’t too prohibitive you could treat it like an investment one way or another and play it like a mini stock kind of.
Some random thoughts that have occurred to me while watching this discussion.
Not being permitted to participate in the RMT AH is bad news for hardcore players. It removes them from the extremely lucrative addressable market for RMT AH transaction fees and effectively converts them into one-time-payers. Around about the time the first major DLC goes live, you can expect one of two things two happen. Either hardcore players will be allowed into the RMT AH, or hardcore play will be removed from the game. Blizzard isn’t going to let you keep playing on their servers if there’s no chance they can convert you to ongoing revenue.
It’s one thing for Blizzard to say that they don’t owe you a thing if you spend $1500 on the flavor of the month uber widget and Blizzard nerfs its damage output by 75% and its monetary value by 99% in a live update six hours later. It’s another thing entirely to make that statement really stick, click throughs requiring binding arbitration or no. The court battles are likely to be more entertaining than the game. Just wait until a player claims that Blizzard knowingly drove up the value of certain items by overpowering them with the intent of driving up RMT AH transaction volume.
I find it curious that Blizzard are coming right out and saying that they won’t limit per-player RMT AH transaction volume. I haven’t put a great deal of thought into it, but it doesn’t seem to me that the 24 hour cooldown before reselling purchased items prevents a sufficiently well funded cartel from cornering the market. Even if I can’t resell your lower priced item immediately, I can still remove it from competition with my items that are priced 10x higher and then resell it at my leisure and at a markup of my choosing. With real money on the table, why wouldn’t an investor group be willing to risk a few million dollars for a chance at controlling the supply of this patch’s most overpowered items? I expect the no-limits-on-transaction-volume policy to get a hasty update about the time the Chinese sweatshops figure out that it’s a better use of their money to have their laborers playing the RMT AH market 24x7 than it is to have their laborers farming items 24x7.
