Op Ed

The Armchair Empire - An Open Letter to Mike Morhaime.
Ubisoft may have set the precedent, but there is a rather different set of factors involved with Diablo III. The most obvious is that the community was not strictly locked into the PC as the platform for titles like Assassin's Creed II, and public comments in the past from Yves Guillemot and other executives at Ubisoft have expressed a strong desire to divest of themselves of any presence in the PC market. Blizzard does not have that degree of flexibility. The days of The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne are long gone. The PC is the only platform you have invested in, whether that's Windows or Mac, and there is no other place to go. For better or worse, you've tied yourself to a single platform, and forcing this scheme onto the community without the benefit of alternate platforms will not result in millions of fans falling in line like good little sheep to be fleeced. You may get some, but nowhere near what you were expecting. The rest will either forsake the game, and Blizzard by extension, or they will turn pirate.

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7.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 12:00
7.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 12:00
Aug 12, 2011, 12:00
 
I have to say that I think this guy is overstating the impact that it's going to have on Diablo III sales.

Agreed, the Diablo franchise has pretty amazing brand power. That being said Blizzard is more open to listening to community dialogue and editorials than most companies I've observed so I think the author is basically taking a stab at that.

And they got sued and lost and Blizzard took over their domain, although its allegedly being used in other countries. I don't know why you'd want to waste you time, though, except maybe as an exercise or learning experience. Blizzard WILL shut you down, if they can.

There are people running crowdsourced server emulators for various games everywhere from Russia to China, there isn't much Blizzard can do to keep pace with that unfortunately. If the demand is there the pirates will likely find a way. Where Blizzard will really combat them is in making Diablo 3 a much better and more hassle free experience than whatever the pirates come up with. People want to play with their real life friends so that alone will prevent many people from pirating the game. Most people don't even consider pirating Starcraft 2 because the framework is very tight and easy to use plus you get a good value for your money.

This is going to be the future of gaming. I don't necessarily like it, but this is where everyone is going to go. Its just a fact. You, as a gamer, may not like it, but it makes business sense in the end. Even with the "lost" sales. Corporations don't live in your reality. They live in red and black.

This kind of "you don't matter, your opinion doesn't matter" attitude feels more like thinly veiled attempts to shut down discussion. In fact I remember someone saying the same thing about Dragon Age 2's sales and how the casuals were going to make up the difference so the hardcore opinions didn't matter.

Corporations are certainly powerful but in the end they depend on consumers for that power. Bitching gets things changed as often as not so it's always worthwhile for people to at least speak up about what they care about. Some said the same thing about the RealID debacle but people complained and got the changes made that were a reasonable compromise to everyone.

This comment was edited on Aug 12, 2011, 12:10.
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6.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 11:54
6.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 11:54
Aug 12, 2011, 11:54
 
It's interesting, while I've been a fairly outspoken opponent of the "always connected" concept, I have to say that I think this guy is overstating the impact that it's going to have on Diablo III sales. As well as overstating the abilities and motivation of pirates.

I think they'll get the number of sales they are expecting. I don't think they'll get as many as they potentially could, but it'll be a relatively high fraction. And I don't think it'll get cracked, at least not in the first year or so of operation - after that point cracking it would be technologically noteworthy, but the people who wanted to buy it will have bought it.

So while I hope that this open letter has some effect, I don't really have much faith in it accomplishing anything. Especially as the assumptions it's making don't seem grounded in reality.
5.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 11:51
5.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 11:51
Aug 12, 2011, 11:51
 
Verno wrote on Aug 12, 2011, 11:33:
Because the code that actually runs the game will not be available, it would take the creation and distribution of something like an MMO free server in order to play the game offline, and for a fast paced game with complex mechanics, I doubt you're going to see that pulled off anytime soon.

People reverse engineered most of the functionality of the old battle.net, it's certainly possible albeit time consuming. What's more difficult is going to be figuring out character file formats as Blizzard will almost certainly obfuscate that to hell and back. It'll have to come after the former too.

And they got sued and lost and Blizzard took over their domain, although its allegedly being used in other countries. I don't know why you'd want to waste you time, though, except maybe as an exercise or learning experience. Blizzard WILL shut you down, if they can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

Also, I think this open letter is pretty pretentious. Its not like Mike hasn't been doing this for 20 years. I would say he knows what he is doing, and after all the dust settles, nothing is going to change from all the complaints. This has been planned for a very long time, and they are not going to reverse this decision.

Also, I will once again point out that the number of people complaining are, unfortunately, in the minority. Most of the people who will be buying D3, won't know, or won't care about the always on connection. Most of the people who play Blizzard games are used to this by now anyway, even with the offline mode of SC2.

This is going to be the future of gaming. I don't necessarily like it, but this is where everyone is going to go. Its just a fact. You, as a gamer, may not like it, but it makes business sense in the end. Even with the "lost" sales. Corporations don't live in your reality. They live in red and black.

Also, Bridenbecker already said this had nothing to do with piracy. I'll let you decide if you want to believe that or not.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/08/blizzard-surpri.php

This comment was edited on Aug 12, 2011, 12:01.
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4.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 11:33
4.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 11:33
Aug 12, 2011, 11:33
 
Because the code that actually runs the game will not be available, it would take the creation and distribution of something like an MMO free server in order to play the game offline, and for a fast paced game with complex mechanics, I doubt you're going to see that pulled off anytime soon.

People reverse engineered most of the functionality of the old battle.net, it's certainly possible albeit time consuming. What's more difficult is going to be figuring out character file formats as Blizzard will almost certainly obfuscate that to hell and back. It'll have to come after the former too.
Avatar 51617
3.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 11:29
3.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 11:29
Aug 12, 2011, 11:29
 
Mist wrote on Aug 12, 2011, 11:14:
People won't be able to 'turn pirate' in this case.
You know the technical specifications of Diablo 3?
2.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 11:14
2.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 11:14
Aug 12, 2011, 11:14
 
People won't be able to 'turn pirate' in this case. The whole point of Blizzard's setup with no offline single player is that they do not have to distribute a clientside version of the game's server code. Because the code that actually runs the game will not be available, it would take the creation and distribution of something like an MMO free server in order to play the game offline, and for a fast paced game with complex mechanics, I doubt you're going to see that pulled off anytime soon.
1.
 
Re: Op Ed
Aug 12, 2011, 11:07
1.
Re: Op Ed Aug 12, 2011, 11:07
Aug 12, 2011, 11:07
 
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