Not me. Getting ready to push myself through the last two episodes of Chuck on the DVR. Have had a strange lassitude about getting around to finishing the series. Might wait until tomorrow, since I am trying to get to bed earlier.
6.
Villago Delenda Est
The servers seem to be, um, unstable?
7.
mattH
Popped Alpha Centauri back in, been terraforming my way to a win.
As much as I’d love to play Diablo III I refuse to ever purchase any game that has “always on DRM”. The moment they announced that they lost me as a customer. I can still play Diablo II no problem but from what I hear you guys can’t even reliably play single-player D3 because of server connectivity issues. I’m a customer, I pay their bills. They want to treat me like a criminal and make me jump through hoops to use their product?
Thanks but no thanks.
10.
SectarianSofa
@Pen:
Yeah, I was excited about DiabloIII until I heard about that bit. Sheesh.
This is most likely while I’ll be a former gamer in a few years. As far as I’m concerned, Mass Effect 3 was my last major purchase and the nail in the coffin for video games.
I spent a long time and fought hard for video games to be accepted as a farm of art in the English department at U of M (in any way I could–it didn’t spread beyond maybe Eric Rabkin–I managed to convince him, I think, because of my encyclopedic knowledge and arguments for a unique type of academic artistic criticism for games–to be honest, a form of Russian formalism is what it amounts to).
I lost my desire to continue this line of thought after the assholes at BioWare tried to defend the mess they created and passed as a conclusion for an epic three-part sci-fi story as “artistic vision.” When you have a recalcitrant company defending their pile of shit as art–it’s hard to get people to take it seriously.
13.
John Weiss
Connectivity issues. Login problems. Really slow customer service. No single-player option. I think I’ll send the game back to Amazon tomorrow. I’m disappointed.
14.
BethanyAnne
I got it with the buy-a-year-of-Warcrack deal. But, I’m still playing Skyrim at the moment. Thinking about starting Fallout soon – don’t know whether 3 or New Vegas.
I know a lot of people who sent back their copies of Mass Effect 3 because of the issues with the DLC, face import, and the terrible ending.
And it’s not like they don’t have a point. They were promised a product that they didn’t get.
And you know what’s funny? The video game newsmedia is just as bad the the political newsmedia. They’re in the pockets of big-games and will suck EA’s collective cock instead of actually doing their jobs.
18.
freelancer
Watching Sunday’s Up with Chris Hayes. Never played any Diablo games, and the closest I got to strategery is Worms 2. I’m currently making my way through Red Dead Redemption for the second time. Rockstar is pretty amazing in their consistency.
19.
Hill Dweller
The NYT is saying the JP Morgan loss is up to 3 billion.
@John Weiss: You can play single player but you still need to login. It is not a lag issue on single player as much as the fact that they are currently pumping out the fixes. So this afternoon I am just about to reach the end of the first true quest (not the go talk to so-and-so kind) when the side bar started counting down the time they were going to kick everyone to do an update. I assume this will get better over the next couple of weeks.
Yeah! Make sure you explore the Museum of Natural History before you explore the Lincoln Memorial when you get to the Mall. That’s where you find Lincoln’s hunting rifle. Then go have some fun clearing the monument of the slaver bastards.
Between ME3 and DA2, I’m not preordering another Bioware title again.
I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition of ME3, and apart from the aforementioned issues, I love it. I won’t send it back, and I’ll play it because it’s fun. The game is great until the end–and I think that Indoc Theory is a good way for me to deal with it.
But I won’t be pre-ordering from BioWare again.
27.
MikeJ
@Jeff Spender: I’ve played Fallout 3 and the DLCs through two or three times now, and would have no problem doing it again. A really great game.
28.
Bago
Pfft, I got my third Shepard, to survive all three games. This shep lost Tali, but made Garrus a very happy Turian. People seem to have this misconception that the ending starts at the last cutscene. That is incorrect. The ending begins after you defeat Kai Leng and go to London. The rest is having some final words with the survivors, and choosing how things move forward. Play your games right, and shep will live.
29.
Cliff in NH
well, I played thru till I was a level 9 wizard and its been fun so far, then I died at some boss surrounded by pillers and decided to take a break (there were a few other deaths in there while I figured out stuff, like how to heal… =) the stats thingy says I played 4 hrs, so that’s not bad so far, can’t wait to play some more… maybe later tonight..
That’s not nearly the point about the ending being terrible. Based on my experience with science-fiction, I expected, and wanted, Shepard to die (I am also of the opinion that Han Solo should have died in the carbonite).
Anyway, the ending is bad because it breaks all of the conventions of storytelling. It introduces a major antagonist (the Star-Child catalyst) at the very end–and you have to make a major decision without any knowledge of the consequences. Shepard doesn’t even put up a fight, but just accepts the logic of the star-child with space-magic.
I could go on, but it’s just illogical and unsatisfying (not to mention that one of the choices is a science-fiction trope that only the hackiest writers employ).
31.
Bago
Honestly, I was happy with the synthesis ending, where EDI and Joker do their thing, but the nagging of indoctrination bugged me.
32.
srv
You probably call it the ipad 3 too. The Puss in Boots sequel is The Three Diablos, not Diablo 3.
And you know what’s funny? The video game newsmedia is just as bad the the political newsmedia. They’re in the pockets of big-games and will suck EA’s collective cock instead of actually doing their jobs.
QFT.
The game media is basically a PR arm of the game companies. They are dependent on the companies for ad dollars to keep themselves going, and thus they will hype everything the vile marketing slime of the game companies want them to hype.
There is no self-respecting science-fiction writer that would overuse the Deus Ex Machina ending and try to pass it off as a serious conclusion. It’s just ridiculous.
How does it work? How does this robo-DNA get injecting into all life, and how does organic DNA get injected into all inorganic life? It’s a new technology that is introduced that literally breaks all of the logic and rules of the universe without having any explanation.
Sorry, when you introduce a new character and several new technologies that break the logic and rules of the story universe (without explanation!) that play on old discredited sci-fi tropes, you have nothing but a pile of shit.
Here’s the golden rule of science-ficiton and fantasy lit that must never be broken: you can make a number of impossible propositions in a story, but they have to be adhered to–you have to follow the logic and rules in the story. If you break them, it invalidates all of the other things you’ve created because the laws that the universe operates on in the story aren’t reliable and are prone to change.
This happened in ME3. The star-child controlled the Reapers, which wiped out all life so that life wouldn’t…get wiped out. The technology to make the endings work is not explained, and it destroys the Mass Relays (which we know has dire consequences from ME2 DLC). That rule is broken. The narrative cohesion just breaks apart–suddenly the Reapers aren’t really the enemy and you’re mission is not to destroy them.
I agree with that, but it’s repetitiveness is a weak spot. It got to the point where I could reliably come in first place with more than 20,000 points more than the person who came in second. Once you knew the timing of the waves and where they spawned and how the spawning system worked…
J.K. Rowling was careful to establish RULES for magic for the Harry Potter series. It had to have an internal consistency, or you wind up with Calvinball storytelling, and that’s a surefire turnoff, especially with a target audience of kids. They’ll rip you to shreds unmercifully if it does not adhere to the established internal logic.
46.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Not me, I never buy a game at release. I’ll leave the frustrations of a new game beta testing to you fools.
In the meantime, I stick to the games with well established bugs!
Quick! Hire that guy to Rmoney’s foreign policy team! By gosh, they’ll work out a solid plan to deal with Austro-Hungarian expansionism that will make Obama look like he’s utterly puzzled.
@Jeff Spender: Between ME3 and DA2, I’m not preordering another Bioware title again.
I haven’t done the ME series, but I certainly hear you on DA2. The only reason I wasn’t more disappointed was because after playing the demo, my expectations were so low there was no place to go but up.
On the other hand, what I’ve heard about the ending of ME3 almost makes me glad that development on DA2 was abruptly halted. I shudder to think of the DLC they’d have thrown together to attempt to wrap up the ugly mess of Act 3.
Hey, I’m not the only one! Though I really need to stop gaming and faffing about online and write. Hopefully, having a machine I can’t game on will help with some of that.
It’s a good thing the people pushing the GOP to reject re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act don’t include convicted wife-beaters. Oh, Wait.
52.
joel hanes
Still waiting for Half-Life 2 Episode 3
Will spend $2500 on a new Windows box to play that one game when it comes out. If it comes out.
(I have a Black Mesa parking permit and a WWGFD? What Would Gordon Freeman Do? bumpersticker, but ordered too late to get the plush headcrab)
If Gray Matter and id ever did a single-player sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I’d buy that and the new computer.
I no longer have time for single-person-shooters where you can’t run and you can’t jump.
53.
Elias
Kind of proud to be too poor to play video games myself. It’s always good news when your 20-something, have a decent job, but all of the money goes to guitars and booze. At least I have nice guitars. Sure, I have multiple keys on my keyboard that don’t work. Hooray on screen keyboard.
“This is a known issue. Our development team is working on a resolution”
59.
NotMax
Hmm.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has opened a “preliminary investigation” into JPMorgan’s massive trading loss, the agency’s director confirmed Wednesday. Source
60.
John Weiss
@cthulhu: I am so annoyed! Maybe, after I’ve returned the game and calmed down, I’ll wait a couple of more months and buy it again. I loved the previous game. I hate the internet connection part, though. Perhaps Blizzard will see the light and release a stand-alone version. In the meantime there’s GOG.
The star-child controlled the Reapers, which wiped out all life so that life wouldn’t…get wiped out
The ending to ME3 had a lot of artistic and storytelling problems, which you rightly point out. But this argument is garbage; population culling is well known and accepted wildlife management technique. It cheapens your otherwise strong argument to be act as if this is a nonsensical idea.
I guess I was being somewhat unclear. The main problem is that for two and a half video games, you’re under the assumption that the Reapers cull life for some evil ulterior and self-serving purpose. As a gamer, you grow to despise them because of the needless slaughter for their own advancement. In Mass Effect 2 you learn that they are actually constructs made of organic life–potentially billions of minds all melded into one being.
“We are each a nation, invincible…”
The issue I have, which I didn’t really make clear, is that at the end of ME3 it turns out that the Reapers are not actually acting independently and for their own self-serving purposes. I mean, best case scenario: they’re puppets of a machine overlord built into the Citadel and don’t actually have their own free will, which completely contradicts the first two games.
So–the purpose of the Reapers is to cull galactic populations so they don’t build dangerous AI and get wiped out. That makes no sense given what the trilogy builds up in the first two installments.
That’s essentially what I was making fun of in my own smart-assed way.
64.
Patricia Kayden
So the Righties are bringing up Jeremiah Wright again? Because it worked so well in 2008.
The trend doesn’t look good for the white-hood crowd.
66.
Humanities Grad
In the course of my web ramblings yesterday, I came across what I’m told is an indispensable Beginner’s Guide to Diablo III. It certainly does seem like this would be extremely useful to people who have purchased the game. I myself haven’t taken the plunge yet, and probably won’t, but consider this my public service to the BJ community…
Been playing whenever I can since the 3 AM EST release.
Level 29 Demon Hunter, probably a bit more than half way through Act 3.
Loving it!
70.
salvage
When the servers are nice enough to allow me.
I guess this is the first always online game Blizzard has ever done.
71.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t know that I want to get involved in something like this. I hear that some guy named Cole from West Virginia is trying to round up Diablo III players for some kind of “experiment.” I mean, WTF? “Science experiments” in West Virginia? The mind reels. No good will come of this, I swear to dog.
72.
kerFuFFler
Current game of choice: Portal community test chambers. Portal basically open-sourced a user-friendly editor and Portal enthusiasts are creating wonderful puzzles. (If you have not played Portal 1 or 2 yet, you should check them out.)
73.
Marc
There is a real problem in the game industry. The reviewing system is hopelessly compromised. We’ve had a number of high profile releases in game series(Civilization 5 , Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, Portal 2, Call of Duty 2) with glowing reviewer praise and extreme discontent on the part of users. There have been exceptions, where the fans and reviewers agree (Skyrim, for instance) – but the reviews are always glowing whether the games are good or not.
What is the most deadly is that the reviews don’t even catch, or value, major problems with game releases. Fallout: New Vegas had crippling bugs. Civilization 5 had incompetent AI, which is a major issue in a single player game – at release you could conquer the world at any difficulty setting with 4 horsemen. Dragon Age 2 had deeply lazy design and two difficulty settings: trivial and tedious. Pay-to-play addons have become almost universal.
Diablo 3 smells like a disaster to me. They are enforcing constant internet communications so that they can sell in-game gear for real money in the store. People completed a 60 dollar game in 7 hours (and 12 hours at the harder settings.) It’s (again) drastically simplified, easy, and will come with lots of ways to soak players for extra cash.
74.
mattH
Oh, and I’ve picked up with a group of board gaming geeks, just got done playing Arkham Horror, we actually beat the last boss after he awoke; gotta love 12 dice and 8 hits. One of them just got Mage Knight, I hope to be playing that soon.
75.
BethanyAnne
I fell asleep, sorry for the no replies :) Yeps Darkrose, I love Skyrim. But looking at Dead End Thrills, and realizing how important addons are is making me itch to buy a gaming PC again instead of just using my xbox. And wooobooy was the ending of ME3 a stinker. just… dayam. I keep wondering how you go from such a wonderful game to that ending. What the hell changed?
The demo for ME2 aside, Mass Effect 3 was my introduction to the series, and I just wrapped up my first run through the game. I get that people are dissatisfied with the ending, but I’m accustomed to lame endings in games (I was underwhelmed by Fallout 3 in this regard, too). What I don’t get is the intensity of rage. Is Mass Effect really a franchise with such a rabid following? I guess I had no idea. Is this akin to the feeling of rage I felt when R2D2 sprouted rockets in “Attack of the Clones”?
Anyway, my problems with the game are probably more with the mechanics of the game. I’m just not sold on this cover-based combat all the games these days use. It feels like cheating to be able to simultaneously take complete cover and see over that cover at the same time, and it took me the entire game to start to get the hang of entering and exiting cover. But then, maybe this is just what designers have to do to compensate for the clumsiness of the dual-stick controller as an input device.
Also, why are the baddies in these space epics so often essentially zombies? The same went for Halo and the Flood, which also involved a plot element (or series of gaping plot holes, to be precise) about massive relics of an ancient civilization and cleansing the galaxy of sentient life, hmm…
78.
deep
Not interested. Recettear is what I’m on these days.
People had built up an interest in a story line over multiple games and they didn’t even maintain internal consistency. It didn’t help that they massively simplified the game play and minimized the role-playing aspects of the earlier games. Mass Effect 1 was closer to an RPG, while 3 was really a glorified shooter.
80.
kerFuFFler
@Marc: As far as Portal 2 goes, I have heard only good things from fellow players. I loved it though I always played in the single player mode. And judging from the volume of submitted player generated community test chambers for Portal, I think they have a dedicated and enthusiastic fan base.
I don’t know what the reviews said, but I thoroughly enjoyed Portal 2 (and Portal 1) and love the new open-sourced content!
The issue with Portal 2 wasn’t the design, it was having a game that took about 5 hours to play. The original was a delight.
82.
gaz
I won’t even consider it, until they decide to actually finish the game.
You can’t play this game on a LAN. FAIL.
Anyone that purchased Diablo III got suckered.
So while you all wait for them to fix their servers, I’ll be doing something productive, meaningful, and fun. Like plucking my eyebrows.
cheers.
83.
Nina
I’m loving Diablo. I’m exploring every corner, and I think I’m almost to the end of Act 1 but I can’t tell since there aren’t a lot of walkthroughs on the net yet. I started a wizard and a barbarian but I wasn’t feeling comfortable witht the playstyle of either. My Demon Hunter is level 15 or so.
I don’t like her artwork at all, but her voice and attitude are fun, especially paired with the Scoundrel. He keeps trying to romance her, she keeps shooting him down, literally and figuratively. I probably would have more survivability with the Templar, but I like the interplay with the Scoundrel enough to keep him active. I’d love to have them both in the party, though – I wonder if that’s an unlock later on?
84.
Steve in DC
It’s OK, did a Demon Hunter.
@gaz
You are aware lack of LAN play is pretty common now? Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you. I want LAN play, I want to be able to own dedicated servers, I want the editing and modding tools when I buy a game. It’s just not done anymore. All online through the companies servers makes the game more profitable for them and helps cut down on cheating. Most game companies have moved to that model.
I don’t especially like it, but it is what it is.
PC gaming has changed.
85.
PaulB
I pre-ordered Diablo III months ago; got it Tuesday afternoon. Once I realized that Blizzard had not actually sold me the game but was instead licensing the content, licensing server access, would retain control of my characters and control of my information (you cannot delete Battle.Net accounts once they are created), and once I realized that I couldn’t play because the servers were down, it took me all of 10 seconds to decide to return the game.
Finding out that Blizzard could stop supporting Diablo III at any time and that I would have no recourse and no way to play once that happened, or that if I left my account dormant for a couple of months, Blizzard could simply terminate my access without notice or recourse, thereby preventing me from ever revisiting the game, just confirmed my decision.
Fortunately, Amazon has a liberal return policy and I’ve got an open-and-shut case for return because none of the above was presented in the game description, so I used the “merchandise not as described” reason for return.
86.
cthulhu
@NotMax: Fantastic game. I wish there were more quality pure adventure games out there.
87.
Steve in DC
@PaulB
I don’t understand why people are shocked this happened. Blizzard did this with Starcraft 2 as well, which caused a huge fiasco because professional Star Craft is on LAN now. This is also how most PC games are, and it’s where consoles are going as well.
They have good reasons as well. Consumers are assholes when it comes to this shit. Piracy is rampant. If the consumer can they will steal anything that isn’t bolted down given half a chance. Second cheating is rampant as well. Given half a chance people will cheat like shit and screw everybody else over.
Like it or not, this is the future of gaming. It’s the best way to avoid the problem. But the truth is most people will be thieves and cheats as soon as they think they can get away with it, and so the rest of us suffer for it.
Did quite a bit of dungeon crawling yesterday, while blowing off most of my work. I have a Monk up to level 21, and am in the middle of Act 2.
Server problems have been annoying, but I guess I was not very surprised that they were getting hammered pretty hard on release.
Not much of a gamer, myself, but I like the Diablo series. Also, I love the zombies that get ripped in half AND THE TOP HALF KEEPS CRAWLING AT YOU! Patriots, every one.
89.
Sloegin
D3? Meh. Like I want to pay $60 to a company so I can sit at a login screen banging away with my log&passwd over and over.
Not my idea of a fun game.
Nor is playing a rehash of D2 with all the worst of the WoW class balancing and talent tree clown games thrown in.
90.
Steve in DC
@Sloegin
The point of it was to be a rehash, give the fans what they want. Name one other series blizzard has that isn’t a constant rehash of the prior game with new tweaks thrown in.
Hell if Starcaft 2 wasn’t a rehash South Korea would have gone to war wit us.
Nor is playing a rehash of D2 with all the worst of the WoW class balancing and talent tree clown games thrown in.
You do realize Diablo III doesn’t have skill trees, no? The skill system is light years beyond what it was in II, which makes it hard to call it a rehash.
Also, why are the baddies in these space epics so often essentially zombies?
Because you can give them crappy AI and explain it as “duh, they’re zombies”.
93.
Steve in DC
Because there are two things you can kill in games that nobody will give a crap about, zombies and Nazis. You shoot anything else and somebody will eventually throw a fit.
94.
Gromit
Neither of those answers get at the truth, I think. In Halo and ME3 you also fight non-zombified enemies who do things like flank and use cover, and some of the zombified creatures also use the same sort of AI. In ME3 a lot of the bad guys are humans, too.
Oh, and now that I think of it I guess Half-Life has zombies of a sort, too, doesn’t it.
95.
Steve in DC
They aren’t zombies in HL but they might as well be. Keep in mind the first true FPS was all about zombies and nazis as well…. and mecha Hitler.
96.
Sentient Puddle
I think Ravenholm comes close enough to say that Half-Life has zombies.
97.
MosesZD
What happened to SWTOR… LOL. You one of the (over a million) people who walked away from that dog?
@Sentient Puddle: All Ravenholm did was take the existing zombies and remove the combine. It was meant to be homage to the survival horror genre.
Then Episode 1 introduced the suicide-bombing Zombine. Those are funny because you can steal their grenade with the gravity gun and throw it back at them. There’s even an achievement for that called “Hot Potato”
My big problem with the ME3 ending had less to do with its content than the fact that it simply wasn’t led up to except by a couple of very enigmatic warnings by the reapers that “we are your salvation”. No elucidation beyond that, unlike the conversation you have with Sovereign on Virmire in ME1.
That and it was a total failure as pacing goes. ME1 and ME2 end with a boss fight after a long firefight. Cliche, but at least there was action. ME3’s ending is 15 minutes of limping with the world’s strangest Mexican Standoff intervening.
@Nina: Nope, you can only have one “follower” at a time. However, you don’t lose your first one when you get another; the original waits for you in town. Great game, I’m having a lot of fun with it (lvl 9 monk, as of last night) and anyone who doesn’t understand the complexity of maintaining the servers/Internet with millions of users trying to log on at the same time…doesn’t understand how the Internet works. Notwithstanding that I may disagree with Blizzard’s choice to make it online only, it’s their property. If I don’t like it, I’ll just stop playing. There’s no crying in Diablo III!
Not me. I played the hell out of Diablo II on Bnet back in the day, and I love ARPGs, but D3 lost me the picosecond they made the horrible mistake of creating a pay-to-win real money market for game items.
Because what a genre full of drama over loot drops, trading, dupid and scammers really needs is to institutionalize the exchange of game content for real-world money and bake it into the game. That’s going to turn out well.
Also, this:
Finding out that Blizzard could stop supporting Diablo III at any time and that I would have no recourse and no way to play once that happened, or that if I left my account dormant for a couple of months, Blizzard could simply terminate my access without notice or recourse, thereby preventing me from ever revisiting the game, just confirmed my decision.
Whereas if I wanted to I could still install my 12-year-old copy of Diablo 2 that I bought and play it locally. No, fuck D3. I’ll pass.
I’ve been sick with the flu for most of the last week, but I’ve been passing the time with the Perpetual Testing Initiative, the new free Portal 2 DLC that Valve released that allows anyone to create their own maps and upload them to Steam.
Fans of the original Diablo and Diablo 2 might want to check out Torchlight, if you haven’t already. It has the same feel and was done by some of the original designers. It came out in 2009, so it’s a little dated, but it doesn’t have the bogus DRM.
Yeps Darkrose, I love Skyrim. But looking at Dead End Thrills, and realizing how important addons are is making me itch to buy a gaming PC again instead of just using my xbox.
Last time I counted, I have around 70 mods through Skyrim Nexus, and another 15 or so from the Steam Workshop. I wouldn’t be able to play without mods. If nothing else, I’ve become sufficiently arachnaphobic that I have to be able to mod out giant spiders. (The mod that replaces the Frostbite Spiders with bears also changes the loading screen text: “The Frostbite Spider was one of Skyrim’s most loathed and feared natural predators. Then bears ate them. All of them.”)
Believe it or not, my gaming machine is a Dell XPS laptop. I haven’t had any problems running anything on the highest graphics setting. The one downside is that I’ll need to completely replace it in a couple of years, but it’s been great so far.
I’m still enjoying the hell out of Bethesda’s offerings – no network play but at least they don’t offer a must haz internetz to play option.
Skyrim apparently does; or at least, if there’s a way to play without having to log into Steam, I haven’t figured it out yet. It pisses me off, but not enough to quit gaming. Yet.
but D3 lost me the picosecond they made the horrible mistake of creating a pay-to-win real money market for game items.
I don’t get this either. You can completely ignore the real money auctions, and with that key feature removed, the game plays…essentially the same as Diablo II. That’s not pay-to-win. Maybe if PvP were a significant component of the game, sure. But it’s not, nor will it be.
Fans of the original Diablo and Diablo 2 might want to check out Torchlight, if you haven’t already. It has the same feel and was done by some of the original designers. It came out in 2009, so it’s a little dated, but it doesn’t have the bogus DRM.
Indeed, although with one caveat: the art style. If you can’t stand the cartoony art style of WoW, you probably won’t like Torchlight, despite the ridiculous number of great ideas and gameplay innovations it has.
IMO the true spiritual successor to the gameplay of D2 was Titan Quest and its so-awesome-it’s-mandatory expansion, Immortal Throne. Think D2 with updated graphics, a rich and deep class system and Greek mythology.
Unfortunately the development studio folded, but a couple of the core developers and artists reformed as Crate Entertainment and are now developing a worthy follow-up in a new universe, called Grim Dawn.
They have good reasons as well. Consumers are assholes when it comes to this shit. Piracy is rampant. If the consumer can they will steal anything that isn’t bolted down given half a chance. Second cheating is rampant as well. Given half a chance people will cheat like shit and screw everybody else over.
I know people pirate games. But I also know that out of my office, where 10/10 of us are gamers to some degree, only one of us pirates them on a regular basis–and now that he’s working here and has actual money, he’s buying games legitimately now.
In my experience, serious gamers want to buy games, because that’s the only way for the studios making said games to survive. If you like a game, then you buy it so they can make a sequel. If the sequel sucks, then why waste time pirating the third? I just won’t play it. We vote with our dollars. And using product support as leverage–for example, requiring a valid key to access the forums–is a better strategy than starting from the assumption that your customers are all potential criminals.
I know people pirate games. But I also know that out of my office, where 10/10 of us are gamers to some degree, only one of us pirates them on a regular basis—and now that he’s working here and has actual money, he’s buying games legitimately now.
This has been my experience as well. I used to download games all the time. I did so because I was usually broke and wasn’t about to spend the industry’s ridiculous asking prices for something that might or might not suck. More often than not if I really liked a game I then went and bought it.
Now I buy just about everything, but only from studios I like and respect. I no longer like or respect BioWare or EA (I think we had this discussion, you and I), and Blizzard went on my shitlist a while ago and D3 didn’t exactly help that.
Valve, on the other hand, has demonstrated time and time again that they produce quality products (when they actually produce them–finish Episode 3 already!) and have customer-friendly business practices. The map editor DLC they just released for Portal 2 is a really sophisticated piece of work and generated over 45,000 community maps in under a week–and it was completely free.
It’s not that I think they can do no wrong, but they’ve generated a lot of goodwill from me over the years and have yet to do anything to lose it.
We have prominent examples (such as the Witcher series) of games that have sold very well without DRM. All of the claims about piracy assume that every pirated copy is a lost sale, which is extremely dubious. More to the point, treating all customers as potential criminals has costs too – e.g. I won’t buy games like D3. Skyrim I can tolerate (but it’s annoying.) The bigger sins to me are making games boring and repetitive (because interesting puzzles are too hard for most people, and the suits are convinced that there is a vast casual audience out there) and the transparent cash grabs (pay 5 bucks extra for this and that.)
As far as the online store goes, you can expect that the leaderboards will demand people with the best gear, and that players without it will be booted out of groups. And it will be true that the best things cost extra cash. Once you’ve run through often enough the competitive ranking are the reason to continue, and cash purchases are very likely to simply end up as required to do well there. SO, yep, it’s a problem.
On the bright side, I probably shouldn’t be bothering with these things anyhow. If they drive me away from computer games they’re probably doing me a favor.
Not touching that garbage as long as it has DRM. I’ve bought every Blizzard game and expansion (except for the weird viking one) since WC1. And I’m not encouraging this BS.
I will however be playing more mass effect 3 MP on PC if anyone is interested.
Don’t the headcrabs take over the bodies of their victims? That’s basically zombification, in my book.
119.
Arclite
Not going to pick it up. I hate always on DRM for single player games. I will wait for torchlight 2.
120.
TheDeadlyShoe
Headcrabs kill their victims then operate their bodies, so they count as zombies in my book.
Because what a genre full of drama over loot drops, trading, dupid and scammers really needs is to institutionalize the exchange of game content for real-world money and bake it into the game. That’s going to turn out well.
Every person in a game sees their own loot (and not anyone elses), so there can’t be drama over loot drops. Concerns about duping are why the game requires always-on and runs on Blizzards servers – and the auction house eliminates scamming and coopts gold selling (which would exist no matter what) by legitimizing it.
Skyrim apparently does; or at least, if there’s a way to play without having to log into Steam, I haven’t figured it out yet. It pisses me off, but not enough to quit gaming. Yet.
all steam-games require is that you be logged in to steam, but that just requires that steam be running; it can work in offline mode.
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MikeJ
Nobody. Error 37s all around, except for the Korean kids who have already finished in 7 hours.
LongHairedWeirdo
I’m not. But only because I’m at work. Sigh.
cthulhu
When the damn servers are up. I liked it better when you could at least do single player offline if need be.
JenJen
I dunno, but I just started World of Tanks.
Steeplejack
Not me. Getting ready to push myself through the last two episodes of Chuck on the DVR. Have had a strange lassitude about getting around to finishing the series. Might wait until tomorrow, since I am trying to get to bed earlier.
Villago Delenda Est
The servers seem to be, um, unstable?
mattH
Popped Alpha Centauri back in, been terraforming my way to a win.
Richard
Clearly, this villain is a Republican.
Pen
As much as I’d love to play Diablo III I refuse to ever purchase any game that has “always on DRM”. The moment they announced that they lost me as a customer. I can still play Diablo II no problem but from what I hear you guys can’t even reliably play single-player D3 because of server connectivity issues. I’m a customer, I pay their bills. They want to treat me like a criminal and make me jump through hoops to use their product?
Thanks but no thanks.
SectarianSofa
@Pen:
Yeah, I was excited about DiabloIII until I heard about that bit. Sheesh.
delphi_ote
@Pen:
I’m with you. The public needs to quit accepting this bullshit!
Jeff Spender
@Pen:
This is most likely while I’ll be a former gamer in a few years. As far as I’m concerned, Mass Effect 3 was my last major purchase and the nail in the coffin for video games.
I spent a long time and fought hard for video games to be accepted as a farm of art in the English department at U of M (in any way I could–it didn’t spread beyond maybe Eric Rabkin–I managed to convince him, I think, because of my encyclopedic knowledge and arguments for a unique type of academic artistic criticism for games–to be honest, a form of Russian formalism is what it amounts to).
I lost my desire to continue this line of thought after the assholes at BioWare tried to defend the mess they created and passed as a conclusion for an epic three-part sci-fi story as “artistic vision.” When you have a recalcitrant company defending their pile of shit as art–it’s hard to get people to take it seriously.
John Weiss
Connectivity issues. Login problems. Really slow customer service. No single-player option. I think I’ll send the game back to Amazon tomorrow. I’m disappointed.
BethanyAnne
I got it with the buy-a-year-of-Warcrack deal. But, I’m still playing Skyrim at the moment. Thinking about starting Fallout soon – don’t know whether 3 or New Vegas.
Narcissus
@Jeff Spender: GOG.com gives me hope.
BethanyAnne
or maybe I’ll just make more time for books. I’ve been slowly doing more of that this year, and I’m pretty happy about it.
Jeff Spender
@John Weiss:
I know a lot of people who sent back their copies of Mass Effect 3 because of the issues with the DLC, face import, and the terrible ending.
And it’s not like they don’t have a point. They were promised a product that they didn’t get.
And you know what’s funny? The video game newsmedia is just as bad the the political newsmedia. They’re in the pockets of big-games and will suck EA’s collective cock instead of actually doing their jobs.
freelancer
Watching Sunday’s Up with Chris Hayes. Never played any Diablo games, and the closest I got to strategery is Worms 2. I’m currently making my way through Red Dead Redemption for the second time. Rockstar is pretty amazing in their consistency.
Hill Dweller
The NYT is saying the JP Morgan loss is up to 3 billion.
Jeff Spender
@BethanyAnne:
FALLOUT 3. Hands down. New Vegas is buggy as all hell and isn’t anywhere NEAR as good.
Get all of the DLC and treat yourself to a 150+ hour sandbox experience exploring the 200 year-old ruins of DC.
It’s great to take Lincoln’s hunting rifle and kill slavers with it. It’s just poetic.
BethanyAnne
@Jeff Spender: Between ME3 and DA2, I’m not preordering another Bioware title again.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Pen: Do you own a console gaming system?
cthulhu
@John Weiss: You can play single player but you still need to login. It is not a lag issue on single player as much as the fact that they are currently pumping out the fixes. So this afternoon I am just about to reach the end of the first true quest (not the go talk to so-and-so kind) when the side bar started counting down the time they were going to kick everyone to do an update. I assume this will get better over the next couple of weeks.
BethanyAnne
@Jeff Spender: Cool, that does sound fun :)
The prophet Nostradumbass
So far, I’m enjoying Diablo 3. I’m only up to level 7 or so on the Wizard I created, but it’s been fun.
Jeff Spender
@BethanyAnne:
Yeah! Make sure you explore the Museum of Natural History before you explore the Lincoln Memorial when you get to the Mall. That’s where you find Lincoln’s hunting rifle. Then go have some fun clearing the monument of the slaver bastards.
@BethanyAnne:
I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition of ME3, and apart from the aforementioned issues, I love it. I won’t send it back, and I’ll play it because it’s fun. The game is great until the end–and I think that Indoc Theory is a good way for me to deal with it.
But I won’t be pre-ordering from BioWare again.
MikeJ
@Jeff Spender: I’ve played Fallout 3 and the DLCs through two or three times now, and would have no problem doing it again. A really great game.
Bago
Pfft, I got my third Shepard, to survive all three games. This shep lost Tali, but made Garrus a very happy Turian. People seem to have this misconception that the ending starts at the last cutscene. That is incorrect. The ending begins after you defeat Kai Leng and go to London. The rest is having some final words with the survivors, and choosing how things move forward. Play your games right, and shep will live.
Cliff in NH
well, I played thru till I was a level 9 wizard and its been fun so far, then I died at some boss surrounded by pillers and decided to take a break (there were a few other deaths in there while I figured out stuff, like how to heal… =) the stats thingy says I played 4 hrs, so that’s not bad so far, can’t wait to play some more… maybe later tonight..
Jeff Spender
@Bago:
That’s not nearly the point about the ending being terrible. Based on my experience with science-fiction, I expected, and wanted, Shepard to die (I am also of the opinion that Han Solo should have died in the carbonite).
Anyway, the ending is bad because it breaks all of the conventions of storytelling. It introduces a major antagonist (the Star-Child catalyst) at the very end–and you have to make a major decision without any knowledge of the consequences. Shepard doesn’t even put up a fight, but just accepts the logic of the star-child with space-magic.
I could go on, but it’s just illogical and unsatisfying (not to mention that one of the choices is a science-fiction trope that only the hackiest writers employ).
Bago
Honestly, I was happy with the synthesis ending, where EDI and Joker do their thing, but the nagging of indoctrination bugged me.
srv
You probably call it the ipad 3 too. The Puss in Boots sequel is The Three Diablos, not Diablo 3.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeff Spender:
QFT.
The game media is basically a PR arm of the game companies. They are dependent on the companies for ad dollars to keep themselves going, and thus they will hype everything the vile marketing slime of the game companies want them to hype.
It’s pathetic.
Michael G
Did anyone mention this story yet?
Rep. Joe Pitts Thinks Arafat and Sharon Need To Get to Work
“Arafat has been dead for eight years and Sharon has been in a coma for six.”
Jeff Spender
@Bago:
There is no self-respecting science-fiction writer that would overuse the Deus Ex Machina ending and try to pass it off as a serious conclusion. It’s just ridiculous.
How does it work? How does this robo-DNA get injecting into all life, and how does organic DNA get injected into all inorganic life? It’s a new technology that is introduced that literally breaks all of the logic and rules of the universe without having any explanation.
It’s just poor writing.
Boxer Beater
@mattH: Greatest game ever made, bar none.
Jeff Spender
@Villago Delenda Est:
The icing on the cake was putting an actual IGN reporter in Mass Effect 3.
That’s like a Republican politician putting Steve Doocy in the Pledge of Allegiance.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Michael G: and, Romney campaign people keep referring to the USSR.
Bago
Get the galactic effective readiness +4000 renegade ending in addition to the synthesis ending and tell me it’s not debatable.
Geoduck
The really important video game news of the month: The newest version of Dwarf Fortress now features mine carts.
Bago
Reapers. How the F do they work?
MTiffany
As bad as the “choice” of magic space cupcake endings for ME3 were, the multiplayer is kind of enjoyable.
Jeff Spender
@Bago:
It’s not debatable.
Sorry, when you introduce a new character and several new technologies that break the logic and rules of the story universe (without explanation!) that play on old discredited sci-fi tropes, you have nothing but a pile of shit.
Here’s the golden rule of science-ficiton and fantasy lit that must never be broken: you can make a number of impossible propositions in a story, but they have to be adhered to–you have to follow the logic and rules in the story. If you break them, it invalidates all of the other things you’ve created because the laws that the universe operates on in the story aren’t reliable and are prone to change.
This happened in ME3. The star-child controlled the Reapers, which wiped out all life so that life wouldn’t…get wiped out. The technology to make the endings work is not explained, and it destroys the Mass Relays (which we know has dire consequences from ME2 DLC). That rule is broken. The narrative cohesion just breaks apart–suddenly the Reapers aren’t really the enemy and you’re mission is not to destroy them.
It’s rubbish.
Jeff Spender
@MTiffany:
I agree with that, but it’s repetitiveness is a weak spot. It got to the point where I could reliably come in first place with more than 20,000 points more than the person who came in second. Once you knew the timing of the waves and where they spawned and how the spawning system worked…
It was too predictable.
But it is enjoyable in small doses.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeff Spender:
All true.
J.K. Rowling was careful to establish RULES for magic for the Harry Potter series. It had to have an internal consistency, or you wind up with Calvinball storytelling, and that’s a surefire turnoff, especially with a target audience of kids. They’ll rip you to shreds unmercifully if it does not adhere to the established internal logic.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Not me, I never buy a game at release. I’ll leave the
frustrations of a new gamebeta testing to you fools.In the meantime, I stick to the games with well established bugs!
Villago Delenda Est
@Michael G:
Quick! Hire that guy to Rmoney’s foreign policy team! By gosh, they’ll work out a solid plan to deal with Austro-Hungarian expansionism that will make Obama look like he’s utterly puzzled.
The prophet Nostradumbass
On another subject, Lawrence O’Donnell Rewrites Fox News’s attack on Mario Batali for pointing out how hard it is to live on food stamps.
I have an enhanced admiration for Mario Batali after that. My contempt for Fox News, which I thought couldn’t get any lower, did.
Darkrose
@BethanyAnne:
I haven’t done the ME series, but I certainly hear you on DA2. The only reason I wasn’t more disappointed was because after playing the demo, my expectations were so low there was no place to go but up.
On the other hand, what I’ve heard about the ending of ME3 almost makes me glad that development on DA2 was abruptly halted. I shudder to think of the DLC they’d have thrown together to attempt to wrap up the ugly mess of Act 3.
Darkrose
@BethanyAnne:
Hey, I’m not the only one! Though I really need to stop gaming and faffing about online and write. Hopefully, having a machine I can’t game on will help with some of that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
It’s a good thing the people pushing the GOP to reject re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act don’t include convicted wife-beaters. Oh, Wait.
joel hanes
Still waiting for Half-Life 2 Episode 3
Will spend $2500 on a new Windows box to play that one game when it comes out. If it comes out.
(I have a Black Mesa parking permit and a WWGFD? What Would Gordon Freeman Do? bumpersticker, but ordered too late to get the plush headcrab)
If Gray Matter and id ever did a single-player sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I’d buy that and the new computer.
I no longer have time for single-person-shooters where you can’t run and you can’t jump.
Elias
Kind of proud to be too poor to play video games myself. It’s always good news when your 20-something, have a decent job, but all of the money goes to guitars and booze. At least I have nice guitars. Sure, I have multiple keys on my keyboard that don’t work. Hooray on screen keyboard.
Tim in SF
I keep getting booted every five minutes with an error 3007.
https://us.battle.net/support/en/ticket/thread/26870799
I think I may need to configure the ports in my router, but it’s too dark to monkey around in the closet right now. I’ll do it in the morning.
What’s John Cole’s RealID?
NotMax
Would you believe Grim Fandango?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@joel hanes: I wouldn’t mind having the plush headcrab. Loved Half-Life. The two expansions were pretty good too. Enjoyed HL2 as well.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Elias: If you have “nice guitars”, you’re not too poor to enjoy video games. You just choose to spend your money on something else.
Tim in SF
Make that Error 316704.
“This is a known issue. Our development team is working on a resolution”
NotMax
Hmm.
John Weiss
@cthulhu: I am so annoyed! Maybe, after I’ve returned the game and calmed down, I’ll wait a couple of more months and buy it again. I loved the previous game. I hate the internet connection part, though. Perhaps Blizzard will see the light and release a stand-alone version. In the meantime there’s GOG.
Jeff Spender
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I have a plush headcrab. It glowers at me miserably from its lofty perch.
From what I hear, Valve is just going to skip Episode 3 and make a full blown Half-Life 3.
Here’s hoping…
Walker
@Jeff Spender:
The ending to ME3 had a lot of artistic and storytelling problems, which you rightly point out. But this argument is garbage; population culling is well known and accepted wildlife management technique. It cheapens your otherwise strong argument to be act as if this is a nonsensical idea.
Jeff Spender
@Walker:
I guess I was being somewhat unclear. The main problem is that for two and a half video games, you’re under the assumption that the Reapers cull life for some evil ulterior and self-serving purpose. As a gamer, you grow to despise them because of the needless slaughter for their own advancement. In Mass Effect 2 you learn that they are actually constructs made of organic life–potentially billions of minds all melded into one being.
“We are each a nation, invincible…”
The issue I have, which I didn’t really make clear, is that at the end of ME3 it turns out that the Reapers are not actually acting independently and for their own self-serving purposes. I mean, best case scenario: they’re puppets of a machine overlord built into the Citadel and don’t actually have their own free will, which completely contradicts the first two games.
So–the purpose of the Reapers is to cull galactic populations so they don’t build dangerous AI and get wiped out. That makes no sense given what the trilogy builds up in the first two installments.
That’s essentially what I was making fun of in my own smart-assed way.
Patricia Kayden
So the Righties are bringing up Jeremiah Wright again? Because it worked so well in 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/us/politics/gop-super-pac-weighs-hard-line-attack-on-obama.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Randy P
Can we talk about non-game stuff now?
This is going to trigger some interesting and amusing frothing at the mouth. NY Times reporting that last year for the first time, white births were outnumbered by non-white births
The trend doesn’t look good for the white-hood crowd.
Humanities Grad
In the course of my web ramblings yesterday, I came across what I’m told is an indispensable Beginner’s Guide to Diablo III. It certainly does seem like this would be extremely useful to people who have purchased the game. I myself haven’t taken the plunge yet, and probably won’t, but consider this my public service to the BJ community…
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/05/15/the-beginners-guide-to-diablo-iii/#more-15396
amk
@Patricia Kayden: That means they got nuthin’.
Jamey
“Alcoholics, the unemployable, angry loners.”
Bizono
Been playing whenever I can since the 3 AM EST release.
Level 29 Demon Hunter, probably a bit more than half way through Act 3.
Loving it!
salvage
When the servers are nice enough to allow me.
I guess this is the first always online game Blizzard has ever done.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t know that I want to get involved in something like this. I hear that some guy named Cole from West Virginia is trying to round up Diablo III players for some kind of “experiment.” I mean, WTF? “Science experiments” in West Virginia? The mind reels. No good will come of this, I swear to dog.
kerFuFFler
Current game of choice: Portal community test chambers. Portal basically open-sourced a user-friendly editor and Portal enthusiasts are creating wonderful puzzles. (If you have not played Portal 1 or 2 yet, you should check them out.)
Marc
There is a real problem in the game industry. The reviewing system is hopelessly compromised. We’ve had a number of high profile releases in game series(Civilization 5 , Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, Portal 2, Call of Duty 2) with glowing reviewer praise and extreme discontent on the part of users. There have been exceptions, where the fans and reviewers agree (Skyrim, for instance) – but the reviews are always glowing whether the games are good or not.
What is the most deadly is that the reviews don’t even catch, or value, major problems with game releases. Fallout: New Vegas had crippling bugs. Civilization 5 had incompetent AI, which is a major issue in a single player game – at release you could conquer the world at any difficulty setting with 4 horsemen. Dragon Age 2 had deeply lazy design and two difficulty settings: trivial and tedious. Pay-to-play addons have become almost universal.
Diablo 3 smells like a disaster to me. They are enforcing constant internet communications so that they can sell in-game gear for real money in the store. People completed a 60 dollar game in 7 hours (and 12 hours at the harder settings.) It’s (again) drastically simplified, easy, and will come with lots of ways to soak players for extra cash.
mattH
Oh, and I’ve picked up with a group of board gaming geeks, just got done playing Arkham Horror, we actually beat the last boss after he awoke; gotta love 12 dice and 8 hits. One of them just got Mage Knight, I hope to be playing that soon.
BethanyAnne
I fell asleep, sorry for the no replies :) Yeps Darkrose, I love Skyrim. But looking at Dead End Thrills, and realizing how important addons are is making me itch to buy a gaming PC again instead of just using my xbox. And wooobooy was the ending of ME3 a stinker. just… dayam. I keep wondering how you go from such a wonderful game to that ending. What the hell changed?
AnnaN
Husband and I are. When the servers are up.
Gromit
@Jeff Spender:
The demo for ME2 aside, Mass Effect 3 was my introduction to the series, and I just wrapped up my first run through the game. I get that people are dissatisfied with the ending, but I’m accustomed to lame endings in games (I was underwhelmed by Fallout 3 in this regard, too). What I don’t get is the intensity of rage. Is Mass Effect really a franchise with such a rabid following? I guess I had no idea. Is this akin to the feeling of rage I felt when R2D2 sprouted rockets in “Attack of the Clones”?
Anyway, my problems with the game are probably more with the mechanics of the game. I’m just not sold on this cover-based combat all the games these days use. It feels like cheating to be able to simultaneously take complete cover and see over that cover at the same time, and it took me the entire game to start to get the hang of entering and exiting cover. But then, maybe this is just what designers have to do to compensate for the clumsiness of the dual-stick controller as an input device.
Also, why are the baddies in these space epics so often essentially zombies? The same went for Halo and the Flood, which also involved a plot element (or series of gaping plot holes, to be precise) about massive relics of an ancient civilization and cleansing the galaxy of sentient life, hmm…
deep
Not interested. Recettear is what I’m on these days.
Marc
@Gromit:
People had built up an interest in a story line over multiple games and they didn’t even maintain internal consistency. It didn’t help that they massively simplified the game play and minimized the role-playing aspects of the earlier games. Mass Effect 1 was closer to an RPG, while 3 was really a glorified shooter.
kerFuFFler
@Marc: As far as Portal 2 goes, I have heard only good things from fellow players. I loved it though I always played in the single player mode. And judging from the volume of submitted player generated community test chambers for Portal, I think they have a dedicated and enthusiastic fan base.
I don’t know what the reviews said, but I thoroughly enjoyed Portal 2 (and Portal 1) and love the new open-sourced content!
Marc
@kerFuFFler:
The issue with Portal 2 wasn’t the design, it was having a game that took about 5 hours to play. The original was a delight.
gaz
I won’t even consider it, until they decide to actually finish the game.
You can’t play this game on a LAN. FAIL.
Anyone that purchased Diablo III got suckered.
So while you all wait for them to fix their servers, I’ll be doing something productive, meaningful, and fun. Like plucking my eyebrows.
cheers.
Nina
I’m loving Diablo. I’m exploring every corner, and I think I’m almost to the end of Act 1 but I can’t tell since there aren’t a lot of walkthroughs on the net yet. I started a wizard and a barbarian but I wasn’t feeling comfortable witht the playstyle of either. My Demon Hunter is level 15 or so.
I don’t like her artwork at all, but her voice and attitude are fun, especially paired with the Scoundrel. He keeps trying to romance her, she keeps shooting him down, literally and figuratively. I probably would have more survivability with the Templar, but I like the interplay with the Scoundrel enough to keep him active. I’d love to have them both in the party, though – I wonder if that’s an unlock later on?
Steve in DC
It’s OK, did a Demon Hunter.
@gaz
You are aware lack of LAN play is pretty common now? Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you. I want LAN play, I want to be able to own dedicated servers, I want the editing and modding tools when I buy a game. It’s just not done anymore. All online through the companies servers makes the game more profitable for them and helps cut down on cheating. Most game companies have moved to that model.
I don’t especially like it, but it is what it is.
PC gaming has changed.
PaulB
I pre-ordered Diablo III months ago; got it Tuesday afternoon. Once I realized that Blizzard had not actually sold me the game but was instead licensing the content, licensing server access, would retain control of my characters and control of my information (you cannot delete Battle.Net accounts once they are created), and once I realized that I couldn’t play because the servers were down, it took me all of 10 seconds to decide to return the game.
Finding out that Blizzard could stop supporting Diablo III at any time and that I would have no recourse and no way to play once that happened, or that if I left my account dormant for a couple of months, Blizzard could simply terminate my access without notice or recourse, thereby preventing me from ever revisiting the game, just confirmed my decision.
Fortunately, Amazon has a liberal return policy and I’ve got an open-and-shut case for return because none of the above was presented in the game description, so I used the “merchandise not as described” reason for return.
cthulhu
@NotMax: Fantastic game. I wish there were more quality pure adventure games out there.
Steve in DC
@PaulB
I don’t understand why people are shocked this happened. Blizzard did this with Starcraft 2 as well, which caused a huge fiasco because professional Star Craft is on LAN now. This is also how most PC games are, and it’s where consoles are going as well.
They have good reasons as well. Consumers are assholes when it comes to this shit. Piracy is rampant. If the consumer can they will steal anything that isn’t bolted down given half a chance. Second cheating is rampant as well. Given half a chance people will cheat like shit and screw everybody else over.
Like it or not, this is the future of gaming. It’s the best way to avoid the problem. But the truth is most people will be thieves and cheats as soon as they think they can get away with it, and so the rest of us suffer for it.
zombie rotten mcdonald
Did quite a bit of dungeon crawling yesterday, while blowing off most of my work. I have a Monk up to level 21, and am in the middle of Act 2.
Server problems have been annoying, but I guess I was not very surprised that they were getting hammered pretty hard on release.
Not much of a gamer, myself, but I like the Diablo series. Also, I love the zombies that get ripped in half AND THE TOP HALF KEEPS CRAWLING AT YOU! Patriots, every one.
Sloegin
D3? Meh. Like I want to pay $60 to a company so I can sit at a login screen banging away with my log&passwd over and over.
Not my idea of a fun game.
Nor is playing a rehash of D2 with all the worst of the WoW class balancing and talent tree clown games thrown in.
Steve in DC
@Sloegin
The point of it was to be a rehash, give the fans what they want. Name one other series blizzard has that isn’t a constant rehash of the prior game with new tweaks thrown in.
Hell if Starcaft 2 wasn’t a rehash South Korea would have gone to war wit us.
Sentient Puddle
@Sloegin:
You do realize Diablo III doesn’t have skill trees, no? The skill system is light years beyond what it was in II, which makes it hard to call it a rehash.
The Other Chuck
@Gromit:
Because you can give them crappy AI and explain it as “duh, they’re zombies”.
Steve in DC
Because there are two things you can kill in games that nobody will give a crap about, zombies and Nazis. You shoot anything else and somebody will eventually throw a fit.
Gromit
Neither of those answers get at the truth, I think. In Halo and ME3 you also fight non-zombified enemies who do things like flank and use cover, and some of the zombified creatures also use the same sort of AI. In ME3 a lot of the bad guys are humans, too.
Oh, and now that I think of it I guess Half-Life has zombies of a sort, too, doesn’t it.
Steve in DC
They aren’t zombies in HL but they might as well be. Keep in mind the first true FPS was all about zombies and nazis as well…. and mecha Hitler.
Sentient Puddle
I think Ravenholm comes close enough to say that Half-Life has zombies.
MosesZD
What happened to SWTOR… LOL. You one of the (over a million) people who walked away from that dog?
Or you gonna just fanboy us? :)
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
Everything the right-wingers are doing right now is to get the base into peak-frothing-wing-nut form come the first Tuesday in November.
If more of their guys go to the polls than our guys, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the country thinks: THEY WIN.
The Other Chuck
@Sentient Puddle: All Ravenholm did was take the existing zombies and remove the combine. It was meant to be homage to the survival horror genre.
Then Episode 1 introduced the suicide-bombing Zombine. Those are funny because you can steal their grenade with the gravity gun and throw it back at them. There’s even an achievement for that called “Hot Potato”
The Other Chuck
My big problem with the ME3 ending had less to do with its content than the fact that it simply wasn’t led up to except by a couple of very enigmatic warnings by the reapers that “we are your salvation”. No elucidation beyond that, unlike the conversation you have with Sovereign on Virmire in ME1.
That and it was a total failure as pacing goes. ME1 and ME2 end with a boss fight after a long firefight. Cliche, but at least there was action. ME3’s ending is 15 minutes of limping with the world’s strangest Mexican Standoff intervening.
ScoutAbout
@Jeff Spender: You should check out the coverage of the Mass Effect 3 ending here http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/13/mass-effect-3-and-the-pernicious-myth-of-gamer-entitlement/ at Forbes.
mclaren
Is that a board game? Or a card game?
Epicurus
@Nina: Nope, you can only have one “follower” at a time. However, you don’t lose your first one when you get another; the original waits for you in town. Great game, I’m having a lot of fun with it (lvl 9 monk, as of last night) and anyone who doesn’t understand the complexity of maintaining the servers/Internet with millions of users trying to log on at the same time…doesn’t understand how the Internet works. Notwithstanding that I may disagree with Blizzard’s choice to make it online only, it’s their property. If I don’t like it, I’ll just stop playing. There’s no crying in Diablo III!
gaz
@Steve in DC: I guess they don’t want my money.
I’m still enjoying the hell out of Bethesda’s offerings – no network play but at least they don’t offer a must haz internetz to play option.
I gave up on Final Fantasy when they pulled that crap, too.
and for my money Battlefield 1942 is still the best lan party game in existence.
Sentient Puddle
@gaz:
I assume you’re referring to a different franchise here.
Catsy
Not me. I played the hell out of Diablo II on Bnet back in the day, and I love ARPGs, but D3 lost me the picosecond they made the horrible mistake of creating a pay-to-win real money market for game items.
Because what a genre full of drama over loot drops, trading, dupid and scammers really needs is to institutionalize the exchange of game content for real-world money and bake it into the game. That’s going to turn out well.
Also, this:
Whereas if I wanted to I could still install my 12-year-old copy of Diablo 2 that I bought and play it locally. No, fuck D3. I’ll pass.
I’ve been sick with the flu for most of the last week, but I’ve been passing the time with the Perpetual Testing Initiative, the new free Portal 2 DLC that Valve released that allows anyone to create their own maps and upload them to Steam.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/amezuki/myworkshopfiles/
Origuy
Fans of the original Diablo and Diablo 2 might want to check out Torchlight, if you haven’t already. It has the same feel and was done by some of the original designers. It came out in 2009, so it’s a little dated, but it doesn’t have the bogus DRM.
Darkrose
@BethanyAnne:
Last time I counted, I have around 70 mods through Skyrim Nexus, and another 15 or so from the Steam Workshop. I wouldn’t be able to play without mods. If nothing else, I’ve become sufficiently arachnaphobic that I have to be able to mod out giant spiders. (The mod that replaces the Frostbite Spiders with bears also changes the loading screen text: “The Frostbite Spider was one of Skyrim’s most loathed and feared natural predators. Then bears ate them. All of them.”)
Believe it or not, my gaming machine is a Dell XPS laptop. I haven’t had any problems running anything on the highest graphics setting. The one downside is that I’ll need to completely replace it in a couple of years, but it’s been great so far.
Darkrose
@gaz:
Skyrim apparently does; or at least, if there’s a way to play without having to log into Steam, I haven’t figured it out yet. It pisses me off, but not enough to quit gaming. Yet.
Catsy
@joel hanes:
…this is the point where I should probably mention that my car is a white Prius with Aperture Laboratories fleet-car markings.
Yes, I’m beyond help.
Sentient Puddle
@Catsy:
I don’t get this either. You can completely ignore the real money auctions, and with that key feature removed, the game plays…essentially the same as Diablo II. That’s not pay-to-win. Maybe if PvP were a significant component of the game, sure. But it’s not, nor will it be.
Catsy
@Origuy:
Indeed, although with one caveat: the art style. If you can’t stand the cartoony art style of WoW, you probably won’t like Torchlight, despite the ridiculous number of great ideas and gameplay innovations it has.
IMO the true spiritual successor to the gameplay of D2 was Titan Quest and its so-awesome-it’s-mandatory expansion, Immortal Throne. Think D2 with updated graphics, a rich and deep class system and Greek mythology.
Unfortunately the development studio folded, but a couple of the core developers and artists reformed as Crate Entertainment and are now developing a worthy follow-up in a new universe, called Grim Dawn.
Darkrose
@Steve in DC:
I know people pirate games. But I also know that out of my office, where 10/10 of us are gamers to some degree, only one of us pirates them on a regular basis–and now that he’s working here and has actual money, he’s buying games legitimately now.
In my experience, serious gamers want to buy games, because that’s the only way for the studios making said games to survive. If you like a game, then you buy it so they can make a sequel. If the sequel sucks, then why waste time pirating the third? I just won’t play it. We vote with our dollars. And using product support as leverage–for example, requiring a valid key to access the forums–is a better strategy than starting from the assumption that your customers are all potential criminals.
Catsy
@Darkrose:
This has been my experience as well. I used to download games all the time. I did so because I was usually broke and wasn’t about to spend the industry’s ridiculous asking prices for something that might or might not suck. More often than not if I really liked a game I then went and bought it.
Now I buy just about everything, but only from studios I like and respect. I no longer like or respect BioWare or EA (I think we had this discussion, you and I), and Blizzard went on my shitlist a while ago and D3 didn’t exactly help that.
Valve, on the other hand, has demonstrated time and time again that they produce quality products (when they actually produce them–finish Episode 3 already!) and have customer-friendly business practices. The map editor DLC they just released for Portal 2 is a really sophisticated piece of work and generated over 45,000 community maps in under a week–and it was completely free.
It’s not that I think they can do no wrong, but they’ve generated a lot of goodwill from me over the years and have yet to do anything to lose it.
Marc
@Catsy:
We have prominent examples (such as the Witcher series) of games that have sold very well without DRM. All of the claims about piracy assume that every pirated copy is a lost sale, which is extremely dubious. More to the point, treating all customers as potential criminals has costs too – e.g. I won’t buy games like D3. Skyrim I can tolerate (but it’s annoying.) The bigger sins to me are making games boring and repetitive (because interesting puzzles are too hard for most people, and the suits are convinced that there is a vast casual audience out there) and the transparent cash grabs (pay 5 bucks extra for this and that.)
As far as the online store goes, you can expect that the leaderboards will demand people with the best gear, and that players without it will be booted out of groups. And it will be true that the best things cost extra cash. Once you’ve run through often enough the competitive ranking are the reason to continue, and cash purchases are very likely to simply end up as required to do well there. SO, yep, it’s a problem.
On the bright side, I probably shouldn’t be bothering with these things anyhow. If they drive me away from computer games they’re probably doing me a favor.
Catsy
@Marc: Preaching to the choir here. :)
Lee
Not touching that garbage as long as it has DRM. I’ve bought every Blizzard game and expansion (except for the weird viking one) since WC1. And I’m not encouraging this BS.
I will however be playing more mass effect 3 MP on PC if anyone is interested.
Gromit
@Steve in DC:
Don’t the headcrabs take over the bodies of their victims? That’s basically zombification, in my book.
Arclite
Not going to pick it up. I hate always on DRM for single player games. I will wait for torchlight 2.
TheDeadlyShoe
Headcrabs kill their victims then operate their bodies, so they count as zombies in my book.
Every person in a game sees their own loot (and not anyone elses), so there can’t be drama over loot drops. Concerns about duping are why the game requires always-on and runs on Blizzards servers – and the auction house eliminates scamming and coopts gold selling (which would exist no matter what) by legitimizing it.
all steam-games require is that you be logged in to steam, but that just requires that steam be running; it can work in offline mode.