Assemble heroes, it's time to take down DIABLO III (Post Battle IDs Here)

[MadScientist18]

I think they did the online of course for piracy reasons...but I also think they did the always online so that they could create an auction site that worked. If they allowed an offline version of single player, this might have given people access and ease to create players with items that could be hacked and moved to their online character thus disrupting the auction house. Now you may go ahead and say that you want to play this single player and don't care about the auction house one bit. Fair enough...but I am loving the auction house. I've been able to see useless gear for that my Demon Hunter and Monk can't use...and I've been able to find awesome very usable gear for my lvl 48 demon hunter in nightmare difficulty. Without the auction house, I would never have the amount of man hours to weed through grinding and playing to find the random drops that would make nightmare a challenging but still fun experience. I think by making everyone's characters online at all times Blizzard can control the items and the flow of things preventing anyone from hacking and ruining the auction house.

Now I agree with you that the connection issues have been a problem and something that shouldn't really exist from one of the leaders in online play (WoW and Starcraft 2). I have had my fair share of frustration with online connection for D3, but I've also been able to put in around 50 hours of play and a lot of that during peak hours. So far it's my favorite game this year...just stinks that for some people the online issues are worst than others :/

[Shino]

That's the thing Tom... just make the characters separate like they did in D2.
Or they could use the same character and not allow any equipment that was discovered off line. Keep a inventory of the character online so that you can use the same character but not the equipment. Any item that is not in the online inventory is not usable online. And if they keep that on the server, it SHOULD be safe from hacking attempts.

This keeps the online economy safe and makes it possible to use the same character online and offline. The auction house only has items that were found by players online.

[Shadow Hado]

Most of my rebuttal has been covered already, but I will add this: Yep, I really didn't know about the internet connection. I never really paid any attention to any D3 info because I was never all that confident in when it was going to release until it was confirmed by Blizzard "not too long ago." As for it being on the box, well, I pretty much can't tell you what's on any of the boxes for games I play, lol. It's still the best game I've played in a long time, there are just some things I disagree pretty harshly with.

[MadScientist18]

That's the thing Tom... just make the characters separate like they did in D2.
Or they could use the same character and not allow any equipment that was discovered off line. Keep a inventory of the character online so that you can use the same character but not the equipment. Any item that is not in the online inventory is not usable online. And if they keep that on the server, it SHOULD be safe from hacking attempts.

This keeps the online economy safe and makes it possible to use the same character online and offline. The auction house only has items that were found by players online.

I think if they allowed people to have offline characters someone would find a way to export those items from the offline into the online stash...allowing single player items to flood the online auction. I think keeping this online allows Blizzard control over this fact. Mind you I do believe you should be able to play your game you paid for offline if you want...I just sadly think that those days have passed :/

[Shino]

I think if they allowed people to have offline characters someone would find a way to export those items from the offline into the online stash...allowing single player items to flood the online auction. I think keeping this online allows Blizzard control over this fact. Mind you I do believe you should be able to play your game you paid for offline if you want...I just sadly think that those days have passed :/

But that's what I'm saying... if they kept the online inventory online, then it wouldn't matter. Only allow the level and skill build transfer over. if you keep the inventories separate and keep the online inventory serverside (which is what they are doing now) then there's little to no risk of that happening.

[Death roW]

Levelling and exp should be seperate too if they were to do it. People finding ways to power level as they have found a way to farm a certain mob, or even tamper with mob details wouldn't be great for people making new characters to power level through them. Any unintended mob encounters in certain sections of the game that would unbalance the game can currently be fixed immediately without a patch, all server side. They couldn't reach those playing offline, and then once they bring that character back online with those levels and builds, it wouldn't have been earned as Blizzard would have wanted.

Yeah, levels aren't as important in the game, but getting the levels faster so that you can earn Naphalem valor once you're at level 60 increases the amount of rare loot in the game.

[Shadow Hado]

Levelling and exp should be seperate too if they were to do it. People finding ways to power level as they have found a way to farm a certain mob, or even tamper with mob details wouldn't be great for people making new characters to power level through them. Any unintended mob encounters in certain sections of the game that would unbalance the game can currently be fixed immediately without a patch, all server side. They couldn't reach those playing offline, and then once they bring that character back online with those levels and builds, it wouldn't have been earned as Blizzard would have wanted.

Yeah, levels aren't as important in the game, but getting the levels faster so that you can earn Naphalem valor once you're at level 60 increases the amount of rare loot in the game.

Very true. There were Trainers for both of the previous Diablos that allowed all manner of things. I'm familiar with the Trainer for D1 because a friend showed me that you could create your own weapons (stats, name, etc.) and drop it directly into the game, and at the time I had never seen such a thing. Point is, as you said, people could find ways to more or less have lvl 60 chars in minutes, if that. The other thing would be that then Blizzard would have to verify base stats (as though they were completely unequipped) on every single character as it logged into a server, and I'm sure people would find ways to beat that.

Nonetheless, as we have all said, they could have easily kept a single player and multiplayer completely separate with relative ease. While the character, loot, etc. is all saved server side, the maps, models, patches, etc. are stored client side, so the data is already there. I'm already assuming that someone will make a patch that tells the executable to log into private servers instead of Blizzard's servers, much like PSO Blue Burst currently does. They even got around needing an id from Segac (PSU joke), and were even able to tweak server side things like drop rates. Hell, maybe they'll even find a way to run their own AH, but I doubt that. Not to mention that they could never go public with the servers, because Blizzard would come after them with the quickness. If they can find a way to make the .exe to target, say, your own virtual server on your pc, then that's as close to offline as there will ever be, imo. Not sure if that last part is possible though; I'm not familiar enough with the logistics.

Btw, if the older rumors of Diablo 3 coming to console are true, I'd bet the house that there will be offline play. Just sayin'.

[Death roW]

Anyway, I think we have all put our points across as much as we can now. :P

Just done Inferno Skeleton king. Being a wizard with rather low armour is hurting, having to run around a lot more, but I think that improves the game. Makes you think a little more about strategy given all the different simultaneous powers Elite mobs can get when in later difficulties.

[deadward]

Awesome... I was playing tonight and the general chat channel seems to connect automatically now. I've never really bothered connecting till now, and it got annoying almost instantly. As I was getting ready to shut it down, so as not to have to listen to a bunch of racist a-holes yell at people not to type in non-english languages, someone mentioned that it was an EU server.

I dug into the options, and sure enough, the install had set me up on the Euro servers... I don't remember ever being asked for a region, so I'm not sure where it got it to that conclusion from, but that may help explain why it's been such a pain in the ass for me.

The bummer part is, all my dudes are on the EU server... Switching to the NA servers to see if it runs any better, I'm starting from scratch, and it looks like there is no way to migrate your dudes as of right now. At least I have some people on my friends list now, a ton of invites popped as soon as I switched.

[Shino]

Yeah I think they did the Auto connect to general chat as a work around to the "You have been removed from the game" problem I was having. It seems to be a common problem with people and the way they have been solving it was to connect to General chat so I think Blizzard just did that as a quick fix.