Diablo3 Launch, amateurish work? Yes idd

[riftstalkerboss]

You could play now, it's off hours! I admit it is busy in the evenings and I get a lot of error 37.

[MasterHamster]

Yeah why spend an extra 0.0001% of the games revenue on a temporary increase of your server park?
Not doing it saves you money, yes, but it also points a big middle finger towards the customers.
Customers that might not buy a future game because of this. I wonder what is more cost effective in the end…

That's totally how easy and quick it is brah

[Deleted]

Problem is this isn't an MMO.

And for the record SWTOR, a real MMO, had no launch-downtime at all. Blizzard screwed up that's all.

You know the Total number of people who played at all for weeks after it launched is probably lower than the amount of people who tried to log into D3 in the same minute at launch right ?

[Shiny212]

I love Diablo 3 and all, but you're right this launch was worse than I expected. I was fine with it and expected it on launch night, but the day after I'd like to be able to log in without problems..and should. Especially when a company such as blizzard is supervising it. Millions of wow players play simultaneously, whats the big deal with d3?..

[Deleted]

This is more like...you buy a car and then 10 million people use it all the time. You should probably expect your car to break down once in a while if so many people are going in and out of it.

it is more like : if you know 10 million people will use it, then you should have had more cars. Yes we can extent this logic into the absurd...

[MasterHamster]

interesting question, is Blizzard liable for factors outside of their control, such as customers computers, connection speeds, firewalls and such?

Reading this thread you'd think they were.

I love Diablo 3 and all, but you're right this launch was worse than I expected. I was fine with it and expected it on launch night, but the day after I'd like to be able to log in without problems..and should. Especially when a company such as blizzard is supervising it. Millions of wow players play simultaneously, whats the big deal with d3?..

It was better than expected. Considering the popularity and amount of people getting it within minutes of the servers allowing people to connect, it was very stable.
You don't need to agree. You only have to consider global traffic a bit.

Also, there's a few major reasons as to why D3 is unavailable offline.

It allows private servers. Yup.
It's a layer of DRM.
Most people have stable internet connections at all times. This is not the year 1999.
Offline characters can be altered.
Players would complain about being unable to connect to online servers on these offline characters. (oh you know they would, because people are stupid, and they'd yell about it being Blizzards fault if players were able to boost their characters using 3rd party software)

Like really, why would you want a character that can only be played offline. Oh no, your internet provider is having some problems for a few hours.
And no, people going to their summer cottages for a couple of days is NOT a target audience.

it is more like : if you know 10 million people will use it, then you should have had more cars. Yes we can extent this logic into the absurd...

More servers is not the answer to everything.
Christ, be realistic.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Based on their subscriber numbers and the monthly cost of a sub, reaching that amount of income from WoW alone isn't difficult. Of course, that is before you even figure in mount/pet purchases, etc or even other games like SC2 and D3 purchase income (also soon to add RMAH income)

Considering that most people do not know the exact numbers and make huge generalizations, it is in fact hard.

The best way to check Blizzard's income is to read their reports every quarter.

[MasterHamster]

WoW expansions don't suffer from the same issues with more players?

Yes they do... numerous disconnects, incredible lag and server restarts are very common the first 48 hours.

[valcrist]

I love how you guys just sit here and bash blizzard and act like this mishap bad launch is a simple fix, oh just add some more servers oh there an MMO company they should of expected this.. Are you there? could you do better? do you even know what kind of infrastructure it fing takes to support millions of people all hitting the servers right at 12:01 constantly let alone all the intigration with there other games? GFG give them a break already had enough presure getting the game out after 8 freaking years I really hate the blizzard community these days i swear ANY little fing mistake they do people bitch and whine and troll nonsince about them when all they try to do is produce a fun game for everyone let alone support the PC community that little to NO companies do these days and all they get in return is BS and complaining. Shit happens, every single fing company has a launch mistake/recall w/e.. Just sickens me how much people bash blizzard and acuse them of all this bs that most likely was pulled out of there ass to begin with just to complain or just run off asumptions instead of real facts. Oh and one more thing people that judge games strickly off content restricted betas are idiots..

[MasterHamster]

I love how you guys just sit here and bash blizzard and act like this mishap bad launch is a simple fix, oh just add some more servers oh there an MMO company they should of expected this.. Are you there? could you do better? do you even know what kind of infrastructure it fing takes to support millions of people all hitting the servers right at 12:01 constantly let alone all the intigration with there other games? GFG give them a break already had enough presure getting the game out after 8 freaking years I really hate the blizzard community these days i swear ANY little fing mistake they do people bitch and whine and troll nonsince about them when all they try to do is produce a fun game for everyone let alone support the PC community that little to NO companies do these days and all they get in return is BS and complaining. Shit happens, every single fing company has a launch mistake/recall w/e.. Just sickens me how much people bash blizzard and acuse them of all this bs that most likely was pulled out of there ass to begin with just to complain or just run off asumptions instead of real facts. Oh and one more thing people that judge games strickly off content restricted betas are idiots..

Answer to all your answers is "NO". No one knows.
They just expect flawless launches, which is nigh impossible.

And when the error 37s are sorted out, the whiners will go silent until some other bullshit catches their attention

[riftstalkerboss]

It was a lot of error 37 and 75 last night but what do you expect - 2 million sales and 4 million guest passes.

[Flaks]

When Blizzard has clear experience with WoW and basically for all intents and purpose resolved the issue (as in Cataclysm did NOT have this issue at launch) followed by SC II which ALSO did not have this issue at launch there's actually even LESS of a reason for Diablo III launch to be this rough especially when they could have entirely avoided it by allowing single player offline where dupes/hacks would have absolutely no effect whatsoever on online play if the handled it right.

[Frozen Death Knight]

it is more like : if you know 10 million people will use it, then you should have had more cars. Yes we can extent this logic into the absurd...

What if then a ton of people stop using the cars and they need to be scrapped because too little people use them? Launch day will usually be the highest peak of any game and after that, the need of those servers will be diminished. It's a temporary problem that will be solved and since companies do not like to waste money by using temporary fixes to solve such an issue it will be hard to argue that it's what's best for the company as a whole.

[Keosen]

Bottom line and without a tiny bit of rage they should really evaluate their decision of always online feature, re-evaluate their server infrastructures as well as the qualifications of their technicians/network managers.

[MasterHamster]

What if then a ton of people stop using the cars and they need to be scrapped because too little people use them? Launch day will usually be the highest peak of any game and after that, the need of those servers will be dimished. It's a temporary problem that will be solved and since companies do not like to waste money by using temporary fixes to solve such an issue it will be hard to argue that it's what's best for the company as a whole.

^
And before the "they got money" is brought up yet again, you have no idea how their infrastructure works. or how long it takes to set up "another log in server derp"

Bottom line and without a tiny bit of rage they should really evaluate their decision of always online feature, re-evaluate their server infrastructures as well as the qualifications of their technicians/network managers.

Do you want a character that can be only played offline?

They have the infrastructure to handle WoW and StarCraft 2 (both having issues during major releases, including Cataclysm), but no amount of preparation can fully prevent the minor (yes, minor) issues we've had.

[Cassidin]

because there totally won't be server emulators^^

There may well (well probably are already) emulators, but as the loot data is stored on a server running on an emulator is never going to affect what blizzard think you have access to and their own AH.

Talking of emulators though, as an emulator will never affect what happens on Blizzards own servers, it would have been good for them to have actually included a single user server emulator for the sole purpose of "offline" play. Making a "proper" offline mode would require two versions of the game really (as loot / gold data is not stored on your computer), but providing an emulator that only allowed YOU to connect to it for offline play would solve that issue.

---------- Post added 2012-05-16 at 09:42 AM ----------

What I don't understand is how online games like Modern Warfare can work at launch while a game like Diablo can't.

I really think Blizzard did an amateurish work. They are supposed to be the best in the industry. They are also the richests.
Now, people that were against being online for a single player game like Diablo have even more munitions.

Its probably because most other new games do NOT have the same mass of people trying to log in all at the same time. Dont forget that blizzard "sold" well over a million annual passes. Add to that the people that have bought the game and you are talking a LARGE number. I am sure this is a larger "first day" number than other games that have gone off without a hitch.

[BenBos]

An anwser to the above:

Fact: it was the FIRST TIME EVER that a game with ONE server (cluster) took million + players in at the same time ...

In a "normal" MMO you log into different servers. Some 900 or so across the world in WOW.

SO it was a world first with this number and on just one server per continent.

Oh there ARE other games that also use this "one server cluster" structure ... but IN NO WAY they ever had 1 million people banging on ONE door to get in.

--- Perhaps the above explains it all.

So ... see the bright side of this in the future : ... NO space platforms with ... 6 other STRANDED people trying to form a group to do content in this game for 3 hours....

Next.

[Cassidin]

The funny part is that for playing the game single player, the pirated version (I would be surprised if there isn't one already) would likely be smoother and offer a better experience without the need for an always on connection. Unfortunately this is becoming more and more prevalent in the gaming and entertainment industries, where ever-increasing draconian DRM tactics are being used that screw over the paying customers while hardly making a dent in bootlegs...

I find if very unlikely that anyone will be making a pirated "true" single player "non server" version of the game because its the server that deals with loot drops etc. What we will get is server emulators that will try and emulate those parts of the blizzard servers. Some may be very good, but a lot will be "flaky" to say the least. I remember getting a wow emulator working (only for my own use - looking what effects different upgrades would have etc). It worked, but was horrible to use. So I am not convinced that most server emulators that are likely to spring up will be problem free at all.

[Zebraz]

I couldn't care less about the server problems if it was any other gaming company, it's a popular game and many people are gonna try and login at once, But it's Blizzard, they manage the most popular MMO in history, they should've seen it coming.

[Deleted]

It's like snow in britain. We get disruptive snow here for a couple of days every year or 2, it happens so rarely that it's cheaper to just put up with it than it is to invest in all these massive unnecessary purchases to deal with it.

It will all be forgotten within a week, the cata launch was just as frustrating but how often do you see that mentioned nowadays?