Poll:How many of you are with the "always online" policy for D3 and how many against?

[thejunglegod]

Okay, i'm starting this poll because I'm finding it hard to believe that for every person who is against the "always online DRM" for Diablo 3, there is atleast 1 supporting it, which I find staggering.

The poll is basically a check to see how many, are with the always online shit and obviously, how many against. Personally, I feel that there should be a separate online element with support for offline single player, which means I am against the "always online" policy.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

The launch was so messy that it is going to be a landslide against for D3.

 

[Elcs]

My internet connection is stable.
I would have played Diablo 3 online (closed battle.net principle) anyway
The fact that I am forced to be online to play doesn't bother me...

... Except when I am unable to play my Single Player game when their servers go down for 8 hours for a 4mb patch and the like.

Also I've been disconnected a few times when being afk and looking at the menu to preserve my Nephalem Valour which would never happen in an SP game.

TLR. I am neither for nor against the always online thing for Diablo 3 as I'd play online anyway but it is really annoying when they take down the servers and leave me unable to play.

For other games, I'm not sure it works too well or whether there is any necessity/benefit to doing so.

 

[borisvodofsky]

I am perfectly OK with the always on connection.

What's the big deal.

My internet drops maybe twice a year.

If their servers go down, that's alright too, since I can go do something else for a whole day, OMG.. a whole day without diablo.. think of the possibilities, maybe one can even be productive.. LOL

 

[Borealis7]

ok boris, i want to sell you a car but i get to decide when you're able to use it. still want to buy?
if i don't let you use the car, you can just go do something else all day instead of going to work, visiting relatives or go shopping. who needs that anyway?

and may i remind you that you are in the PC Gaming forum? if you prefer doing something other than gaming go find a forum for that, and stay out of ours.

 

[styrafoam]

Voted against.The online requirement may somewhat help with duping possibly, but for everyone who never participated in ladder play then wtf is the point? Now everyone gets to have lag, everyone gets to lose playtime to server maint. , everyone risks losing their character/gear to a compromised account in what would have otherwise been something in the neighborhood of fun. If you think blizzard had the player's best interest at heart when they designed the game this way then you should play their other always online game WoW, where exploits go unacknowledged and unaddressed for years.

 

[KAZANI]

Relegating one's right to decide when and how they play their games to a 3rd party sets a bad precedent for consumer rights. Vote with your wallet first, don't buy this game.

 

[Cerb]

If there is a single-player option, against.
If the downtime can't be kept to a minimum and planned, against (Blizzard should know by now how to create and maintain high-availability game server farms).

 

[lamedude]

I might have tolerated always online DRM but doing just about everything server side and getting lag and even desynced in a single player game is too much.

 

[Majes]

I understand why they did it... I am okay with it... Otherwise I would not have purchased the game...

However, the choice to do this took a lot of fun out of the game for me. I loved that D2 had a single player where you could mess around with character editors and such. I always enjoyed seeing what I could figure out. Then I would get online to build characters with that knowledge.

They put so much effort into the game-play of Diablo 3. You can see it in how well the spells are pulled off and how the destructible terrain works in with battles. It's really a masterpiece. However, the team that made it really missed what made Diablo 2 great with the items and the ability to make your character godly... They also had no idea what they were doing with the auction houses and their servers...

This all being said I am having a really good time with this game. Every elite pack feels like a boss battle in Inferno, and its worth it to get the bonus gold and magic find. I actually explore levels now instead of just killing the boss at the end. Don't get me wrong! I still run bosses, but it's a more roundabout pursuit where I actually spend time in the game rather than repeating the same run again and again.

So overall it's a mixed bag for me. I think they really dropped the ball on some things, but if I look at it as a brand new game instead of a sequel it's really quite good. Just wish the servers were a bit more stable...

 

[Fire&Blood]

I oppose always online DRM. My connection is rather stable and I rarely get stuck waiting for a patch or a server downtime. Yet I don't consider those as valid arguments pro always online DRM. If laptop gaming didn't exist, I would consider the issue as small but I would still argue against being locked out of single player modes. Also, even the possibility of of launch week/maintenance/patch server issues causing players to be locked out of game for the duration is unacceptable. After spending $60 bucks on Max Payne 3, I would have been furious if I had to wait to play because of server down time.

That's not even accounting for tying gaming laptops to locations where internet is available, I think that's a big blow against mobile gaming. Crossing the line between "expected to have internet access" and "obligated to have internet access" is a bad thing for the consumer.

 

[gorcorps]

The launch was so messy that it is going to be a landslide against for D3.

against for?

you just broke my brain...

 

[darkewaffle]

For. My online experience is exponentially more important to me than my offline experience and I far prefer game resources being kept server side for purposes of security and longevity.

 

[dud]

You buy it ... you own the right to use it. You shouldn't need to be online to use it. Also, the lack of a single player capability pretty much guarantees that I will never purchase it.

 

[Railgun]

Against anything that causes as much of a restriction as this.

I would tend to argue that if this wasn't the implementation, you'd have no issues moving your char from server to server. As it is, you start a char on one, you have to use a seperate for another. Pretty stupid if you ask me.

There's no guarantee that your ISP is going to be up 100% of the time. And as we've all seen, there's definitely no guarantee that their servers will be up either. That said, another argument against it.

DRM, while I appreciate the reason for doing it, has other methods that are just as easy. How about a hashed key file? Periodic online checks? Physical media checks (for those that have hard copies)? For single player, while I appreciate there's an insta-option to open it up for multiplayer, there's no reason for it.

 

[DrunkenSano]

I've had no problems since launch playing Diablo 3. There was once a shutdown restart where I had to wait a little bit to play again but it is no problem. Especially when Diablo 3 was announced to be always online, not offline singleplayer. Now if they didn't announce that and surprised everyone, then it wouldn't be okay.

 

[EDUSAN]

I would vote for "i dont really care" if there was that option.

 

[sigurros81]

How about a 3rd option for people who don't gives a shit and just care about playing the game.

 

[Stuka87]

Blizzard could have offered an offline mode. But then people would be stuck with either offline only, and never play online, or online only, and never play offline. And you know what, most people would still complain about this system.

Personally I although I have been playing solo, the AH makes the always online bit well worth it.

 

[Mem]

I voted offline,bad enough with "server busy try later" when I want to play the game in single player mode.

 

[AMDZen]

I should have to connect only if I'm playing with others or for the Auction House. The fact I need to be connected the whole time I'm playing it is retarded.

I had to download Max Payne 3 on Steam which was like 35 gb, the whole time it was downloading, I couldn't play D3. I had to either download or play, not both. My connection isn't the greatest so I chose to play and then download while I slept so I could play Max Payne the next day. Decisions like this are just retarded.

Luckily, I haven't had any server issues after the first two weeks, but the Auction house is still randomly down sometimes for no reason, or horrendously slow. Yea, I guess I'll just wait hours to equip that 1 million dollar weapon I just bought because I really needed it

 

[PowerYoga]

How about a 3rd option for people who don't gives a shit and just care about playing the game.

add this in the poll please.

 

[Ferzerp]

I always played Diablo 2 online so that I could use the same character in SP and MP, so yeah, don't really care as long as they keep their servers up.

That and it's a client/server app, not "DRM" per se. In fact, you can install it on any PC in the world that you want. Sure, it's a different design choice, but it's not what I'd call "DRM"

Is ATF "DRM" because you have to be online to connect to the server?

 

[AMDZen]

How about a 3rd option for people who don't gives a shit and just care about playing the game.

add this in the poll please.

The two options cover this, because you guys are obviously OK with it and should pick the option that correlates to that.

 

[sigurros81]

Too early for me to get into semantics, but I'm not "with" or "against" always online DRM. I try not to buy those games (UBIsoft games) if I know they're not worth my time. However, Diablo 3 is a pretty damn fun game, and I think the quality of the game outshines the shitty DRM I have to deal with.