The open beta weekend was worse than I imagined in terms of how badly the forced online single player damages the game. I experienced rubber banding in single player, as well as getting disconnected and kicked back to the main menu from pausing the game too long.
I know Blizzard's excuse is that they have to authenticate everything that goes on in a single player game in order to allow players to take those characters, items and gold online. But their real reason is a misguided attempt at combating piracy. There's absolutely no reason they couldn't have had an offline single player mode in addition. They'd just have to make it so the spoils can never be taken online.
Far from discouraging piracy, these measures will force paying customers to also track down cracks, server emulators or whatever is needed to fix the game.
This comment was edited on May 2, 2012, 04:02.