All good demons go to... um... sequel? - Diablo 3 Announced

[Teiman]

Companies are not on charity. Wen don’t get any more money from a game, and theres a server that cost money, just close the server.

EA usually do this routinelly after 1 year or 2. Other companies will probably have a higuer restraint.

Thats not really the biggest problem on depending on servers.

This would be the experience with the average game with forced server need:

1. Servers have the capacity of 200% the normal demand.
2. The release day, the capacity needed will be 4000%. So the servers will be overfloweed and fail.
3. The first two weeks bugs and capacity problems will make playing a misery.
4. After 3 weeks, 90% of people will stop playing the game.
   So 90% of the people in a game that depend on servers, have a horrible experience: bad release day, lots of problems the first 2 weeks, with 1 good week.

Diablo 3 is not the average game, so maybe we will not see points 2. or 3.

[Tony_M]

MMOs get shut down because their playerbase has declined to a fraction of what it once was, and there aren’t enough ppl to justify the effort/cost/time to keep the server going. IOW, you’re only affected if you’re one of the small number of diehards who refuse to move on like everybody else.

I’m a turn based gamer. The very definition of “one of the small number of diehards who refuse to move on like everybody else.”

Tony

[hong]

I’m a turn based gamer. The very definition of “one of the small number of diehards who refuse to move on like everybody else.”

Last I checked, Diablo 3 is not turn-based.

[Cormac]

Here’s a poll from a german pc mag (gamestar) about the AH. At present 12000 people have voted…

What is your opinion about the Diablo AH?

translation:
(blue) 1.8% - Great idea, that way I can save time and can easily get my ideal gear.
(red) 13.8% - Awesome! Now I can earn some money selling items.
(green) 25.9% - The auction house will destroy the game balance.
(yellow) 36.5% - I will not pay additional money for a game that I’ve already bought.
(cyan) 10.4% - I don’t care, I have zero intention of making use of the AH.
(white) 11.7% - Diablo 3 does not interest me.

In conclusion, only 16% of the readers appreciate the introduction of the store…

[Teiman]

Germany is country with high standards in culture. You will see a different poll results in other country, but probably still losing these that like this.

[Tony_M]

I don’t plan to use the auction house, but I also know that what people say they’ll do, and what they actually do are very different on issues like this (see the Modern Warfare boycott).

Its one thing to proudly state you’d never dirty your hands with Auction House goods. Quite another to stand on principle when your best friend is waving his Lightsaber of Awesome +10 in your face.

The PC Gamer UK podcast summed up my feelings on Auction Houses nicely. “When fans are watching football, they get really excited when someone scores a goal, so lets just sell goals!”

Tony

Lets just organize ourselves into two factions. House Lannister and House Greyjoy. Nerd points if you make the connection.

[Dawn_Falcon]

So 90% of the people in a game that depend on servers, have a horrible experience: bad release day, lots of problems the first 2 weeks, with 1 good week.

There’s absolutely no excuse for it these days for major releases. There are plenty of cloud services where you can load additional instances of your matchmaking servers, if you designed the front-end correctly…

[Murbella]

There’s absolutely no excuse for it these days for major releases. There are plenty of cloud services where you can load additional instances of your matchmaking servers, if you designed the front-end correctly…

And yet basically every mmorpg, and many games that are “online only” (similar to diablo 3 is sounding), has these problems and claims to act surprised when the exact same thing happens to them. They might not have any excuse for it, but they almost all do it anyway.

Blizzard for example had them with wow and had serious server problems when most expansions were released too if i remember correctly.

I don’t think it is as devastating as previously mentioned though. Gamers have been trained to accept that their game is unplayable on release week or patch day or expansion release day.

[Sir_Digby]

Lets just organize ourselves into two factions. House Lannister and House Greyjoy. Nerd points if you make the connection.

I’ll never sow, ya bastard!

[hong]

I don’t think it is as devastating as previously mentioned though. Gamers have been trained to accept that their game is unplayable on release week or patch day or expansion release day.

Of course. The only ppl who will be affected will be those who insist on buying it on day 1. These are the same ppl who will pay $N,000 for a set of night vision goggles or something.

[malkav11]

Which by your definition, is, in fact, a single player game. We can also say “Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game where you can shun all other people on the server if you’re desperate”, which is the same as what Diablo 2 closed battlenet was. It was, btw, because of immunities, difficult to beat Diablo 2 Hell going solo, and incredibly hard to hit level 99.

It is here too.

Are you basically crafting your definition of “Multiplayer game” based on the end goal of proving your point?

You don’t see the difference between playing a game by yourself and playing a game with AI-controlled standins for other human players that would normally be required by the game’s design? (And no, being very difficult to solo on the third of three difficulties doesn’t count.) And the existence of PvP doesn’t define the entire game as multiplayer unless the PvP is the entire game. I have never claimed that there is no multiplayer component to Diablo III, only that it is ridiculous to define it as that multiplayer only.

[Murbella]

With preorder exclusive content for almost every game these days and it becoming bigger and bigger, that number is bigger than you would think.

[hong]

With preorder exclusive content for almost every game these days and it becoming bigger and bigger, that number is bigger than you would think.

In that case, you get the aforesaid night vision goggles, so don’t complain.

[Tony_M]

I’m engaged in a life and death struggle with the Dark God Diablo. My axe is dripping with Diablos acidic blood, Diablos scourge shines with my own red blood.

Suddenly a wizard teleports into our midst. “Yo Highlander, I’ll give you $10 for those pants”.

“Silence mage! I’m here to slay the evil one and save the world from eternal darkness. Help me or begone!”

“$20”

“ok, ok, just distract him for a minute while I get them off.”

Tony

[hong]

I’m engaged in a life and death struggle with the Dark God Diablo. My axe is dripping with Diablos acidic blood, Diablos scourge shines with my own red blood.

This was going great guns until your name was noted to be “Xxx Phyre Slayr Xxx”

[DeepT]

Just an FYI: There is a new version of the system survey program that Blizzard wants you to download, run, and submit so they get your system specs. You have to run the new version to be eligible for the Diablo beta.

Where did you hear this at? I went to the blizzard site and didn’t see anything about it.

[Dawn_Falcon]

And yet basically every mmorpg, and many games that are “online only” (similar to diablo 3 is sounding), has these problems and claims to act surprised when the exact same thing happens to them. They might not have any excuse for it, but they almost all do it anyway.

Pretty much. I wince every time I hear about it though. And, frankly, recent costings for a browser-based MMO I’m working on means we’re likely to go entirely cloud-based. While it’s still slightly cheaper to buy and run servers, we end up with much better SLA’s (since we’d need to place the servers in a data centre and pay rent on the space anyway, of course) AND we don’t need to pay up-front server costs on credit.

[Ninyu]

Where did you hear this at? I went to the blizzard site and didn’t see anything about it.

Official Forums

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27822632904&sid=3000

[DeepT]

Ill have to do that when I got in home. In other news, my BNET account has been suspended until I changed my password, which I did.

What I want to know, was there some general, “everyone change your password” thing in the pass I missed? I get so many wow / battle net account letters even though I have not had an active WoW account for years, I figured they are all just scams and delete them. Maybe it did come through.

On the other hand, if it did get hacked. Id really like to know how. I mean I don’t run third party apps (although someone used that curse mod manager on my box once). Its a unique password to BNet. I just do not understand how I can be any safer.

[Razgon]

Are you SURE that was a blizzard mail you got about changing your password?? I never got that one, but I do get a few mails each week from “blizzardd” or the like, claiming all kinds of weird stuff that requires me to use a link in their mail