The Diablo III farce

Diablo III is what the newest gaming craze is all about. And no wonder – the first two installments of the game were amazing and successful. (I still think the original Diablo had a better ambiance, while the second one was better at… well, pretty much everything else.)

Of course the graphics got updated, and of course it looks like WoW. Everything from Blizzard does, these days. A lot of people bitched about that, but I have a different bone to pick with D3. It was known from the very beginning it wouldn’t have any support for local (LAN) games. Why? So they could deliver better customer whatevers and shit.

Like I care.

What I do care about, however, is my ability to play my games even when my faulty Internet connection dies. When I read that particular exciting piece of info, I immediately lost any interest in the game. And it seems to have been the right decision.

Maybe you’re one of the few (millions) who bought the game right when it came out. And what did you get?

• Overloaded servers. Since you can’t even play singleplayer when the servers are busy, and no game this big has ever withstood the initial DDoS of eager gamers, it seemed quite obvious some people simply won’tbe able to play as soon as they wanted to.
• A half-baked game. I saw a queston on the Gaming.SE site (now Arquade) recently, asking how to turn PvP on, or at least increase the friendly fire damage. The answer? You can’t. The developers didn’t manage to implement those features in time for release.
• The possibility to get banned from single player. Enough said, I guess. (Even though they have some reasonably sounding arguments, this is just wrong.)
• And no possibility to play over your local network.

And all that just for some meager $50 – $60! What a bargain! That shouldn’t be too much for an unfinished game lacking features, right? It’s not like you’d notice it, anyway. Because even if you’re lucky enough to have a stable broadband connection – have fun waiting for Blizzard’s servers to free up a slot for you. Finally, now that the real money auction house for in-game items has been opened, you won’t have a chance against people who are willing to spend more money than you, so the circle comes complete.

This post was originally posted ca 2 months ago on a tumblr blog I deleted.