2012 report: D3 sold 12 million copies

[BenBos]

There is no defense for the always online on a player side. People have real lives, and, yes, while the internet is a thing, not everyone has an equal ISP, nor is their connectivity always a surety. If you get home, and games are your hobby, and your internet is out, but those games requires an always online addition - your hobby doesn't pan out. And that's just people that stay at home, people that travel, for any reason, are a market that such requirements ignore entirely. If we lived in a world where we could easily transfer from service area to service area with no blips or lapses, and we didn't have to deal with this regional ISP 'its mine no its mine pay me no pay me' nonsense then it would be one thing, but the internet - and how it's provided - in this day and age just prevents such things from being a proper possibility.

It really only benefits the company in question, and not even universally so, as anything that hurts the consumer potentially hurts sales. Sure sales are great, but consider - they can always be better, you can always stand to make more money.

What you just mentioned .... applies to ALL MMORPG games, almost ALL e sports games and DOTA games and 50% of ALL I pad games...

So I have NO idea why a Diablo 3 game with a centralised AND controlled IN game trading system should not have it.

And WHY you would want a non internet game in an era where you are on the internet the moment you push 'on' on your PC.

Diablo 3 is NOT exactly an I pad (transportable game system) either.

D3 needs to be played on a PC with a mouse: have fun trying to play a game with a mouse while on the road.

Seriously.

---------- Post added 2013-02-01 at 01:24 PM ----------

So because the duping that occurs isn't 'massive' it's acceptable? And you are the one who determines what is acceptable and what isn't? What is your threshold, your majesty, for when it has exceed acceptable levels? Possibly never, since you are holding on to a straw man argument even though your own words admit it doesn't work.

You can't just backpedal everytime you get pointed out wrong. It doesn't prevent duping, so it's not advantageous to be always online. Especially since the stated goals (which we all know are BS anyways) aren't met by always being online.

Insert 25c to try again. You still haven't given a solid benefit that couldn't be accomplished offline that is worth all of the disadvantages it brings. Instead of merely admitting it's a poor system because they can't fix all of the problems, you continue saying it's pure gold.

Sorry, not falling for that illogical style of argument.

What a bunch of crappy remarks.

it is NOT that 3 bank accounts were cracked that the other 10.000.000 bank accounts should no longer use the internet and the whole world would explode.

With uncontrolled LOCAL clients tampering with their bank accounts ... this WOULD be the case though: 9 million of the 10.000.000 would dupe their bank accounts and the bank system (and economy) would blow up.


Not with a server controlled D3 system. Proof is there: NO long term massive duping of 1 item getting copied into oblivion. Simple: because the server controls and stores your item, which makes for a pretty secure security in 99.99999 % of the cases.

By your theory there shouldn't be an internet at all... because somewhere in the world someone is trying to break into some SQL server system...

What an attitude. It simply shows you are hanging in there on some straws.

You simply can't offer a solution of a local client copy of D3 that would not kill the game (by being copied, cracked, duped) before it would even launch. Bad for Blizzard and even worse for players as the game would be total meaningless.

[Kelimbror]

My mother of 81 copies Frasier on her PC and watches it on TV

Awesome. Maybe one day she'll be sentenced for her crimes. Also, totally irrelevant

it is NO coincidence that Diablo 3 OUTSOLD every other PC game in that price range by a factor of 10 to 1

So the reason why it outsold all these games is because it has always online play? That's a load of bullshit. Not to mention that those other games are played mostly on consoles. You are making less and less sense as you go on.

The big extra advantage is that you assemble all players as TL is a perfect example of a complete DEAD game (in group play) already. It is just a matter of a few more months to say the same about TL2.

Dead game? Do you know how many copies that has sold on steam? Truckloads. Did I say I wanted to play in groups ever? No. I want my single player game without the damn internet when I want, which is exactly why that game is superior in that respect.

Simple AND logical.

Not even close.

---------- Post added 2013-02-01 at 09:09 AM ----------

What a bunch of crappy remarks.

What an attitude. It simply shows you are hanging in there on some straws.

Says the person who keeps putting words in my mouth, inferring points I haven't made, and can't respond to simple questions. Instead must go on the defensive and try and flip situations instead of giving answers. I don't need to give you a solution because I proved the one we have is faulty. You claim it's the best thing in the world ever. You still haven't given one unrefutable piece of why it is as you claim.

[Leonard McCoy]

Awesome. Maybe one day she'll be sentenced for her crimes. Also, totally irrelevant

So the reason why it outsold all these games is because it has always online play? That's a load of bullshit. Not to mention that those other games are played mostly on consoles. You are making less and less sense as you go on.


Dead game? Do you know how many copies that has sold on steam? Truckloads. Did I say I wanted to play in groups ever? No. I want my single player game without the damn internet when I want, which is exactly why that game is superior in that respect.


Not even close.

---------- Post added 2013-02-01 at 09:09 AM ----------


Says the person who keeps putting words in my mouth, inferring points I haven't made, and can't respond to simple questions. Instead must go on the defensive and try and flip situations instead of giving answers. I don't need to give you a solution because I proved the one we have is faulty. You claim it's the best thing in the world ever. You still haven't given one unrefutable piece of why it is as you claim.

You realize how absurd conversing with him is right? He's not even arguing from a consumer or fan of d3 perspective anymore. He knows that from a consumer perspective their is absolutely NO WAY to justify online only. He's now taken the absurd defence of defending Blizzard and sounding like an employee without actually being an employee as far as we know. Hes now arguing from the perspective of Rob Pardo and the executives as if their ends and benefits are naturally the same as ours and his. Their is no day light between him and Blizzard. He's been absorb by them, like some massive amoeba without actually as far as we know been employed by them. It's insanity.

[Kelimbror]

You realize how absurd conversing with him is right?

Sadly, yes. Almost as absurd as anyone trying to talk to me, or you, or Alyssa, or a handful of other people when we have our feet down. At least we present logical evidence the majority of the time, even if we're insulting to eachother or completely entrenched in our views.

I don't think any of us would ever sink to this though. God if I ever do, for any game or company, please delete my account. Maybe battle.net has overtaken his consciousness? Mabye he is The Battle.net? Scary.

The cylons are coming.

[Leonard McCoy]

Sadly, yes. Almost as absurd as anyone trying to talk to me, or you, or Alyssa, or a handful of other people when we have our feet down. At least we present logical evidence the majority of the time, even if we're insulting to eachother or completely entrenched in our views.

I don't think any of us would ever sink to this though. God if I ever do, for any game or company, please delete my account. Maybe battle.net has overtaken his consciousness? Mabye he is The Battle.net? Scary.

The cylons are coming.

Absolutely. I can admit to being unreasonable about alot of things, it's just human nature. But that isn't even human. That's just... He's the borg collective. He's just been absorbed by Blizzard and is almost a literal mouth piece for them. Like who cares what Rob Pardo says? or how Blizzard benefits? We've said that online only benefits them tremendously but he can't argue about it from the consumer perspective. I hope he's not a Blizzard employee...

[Howard Moon]

this never designed to be a game that you sink 100s of hours into.

Incorrect. It was designed for exactly that. Just as D1 and D2 were.

[Iamanerd]

Honestly Diablo 3 is a huge let down. It's balanced around using the fucking AH which gives blizzard money and most of the time the loot absolutely sucks. I mean when I first started I thought "oh this looks cool" but now I'm happy I stopped in the summer because it's not the true sequel to Diablo 2. In fact Path of Exile is what Diablo 3 should have been and I'm enjoying it immensely with the build diversity and the endless possibilities for builds, there's just so much to do and to little time. I haven't been this invested in a game like PoE in years.

[Bigbazz]

The hate comes from a few things, even though it's a great game. I'l leave some pointers... I like pointers.

1. When it was released the game just didn't work, all the hype and record sales but for what seemed like almost the majority of time you couldn't log on and half the time when you could the auction house wasnt working. So all that hype turned into bad tempers and pissed off people who had paid money for a game they couldn't play when they wanted because it didn't work.

2. Length of the game - Blizzard talked of a game that was a lot bigger/longer than Diablo 2, people were expecting a game that would have a lot of content and last a decent ammount of time, have many places to explore. The reality was that Diablo 3 is probably smaller than Diablo 2 was, or at best the same length as Vanilla Diablo 2. When people took the D2 reference for the length of the game they were likely thinking all 5 acts. Now Diablo 2 even with 5 acts wasn't a long/big game in itself, not by todays standards... But it is still longer than Diablo 3 by quite a bit.

When you realise that there is so little content to the game it's hard to be happy about something you expected you might play over and over, it does not have the same randomisation feel as Diablo 2 either which leads you to feeling you're just seeing the same thing over and over.. because well, you are.

3. Elitists vs other gamers. When the game came out it was bloody hard, as soon as most players got to Inferno they hit a brick wall, the gear dropping from act 1 was barely good enough to get you through act 2, meaning that only the most skilled/determined players who were willing to use the auction house were really able to push forward. Now the elitist or more determinned of players pushed through this barrier, but the majority of people were just quitting the game and spouting hate because of how hard the game was and the lack of acceptable gear drops to allow them to progress.

Following that the game got a major nerf, this time the elitists and guys who had built these super survival machines were hatin, because now the game became very easy (though nothing compared to as easy as it is now), some of them turned their chars into dps machines, the others quit and hated on the game.

4. Auction house - Love it or hate it, it makes the game more accessable and it makes trading both safer and easier. The problem is that players who might not of have bothered trading are enticed into using the auction house due to how easy it is, especially when their own frustrations of not getting loot drops (hello it's a diablo game, gear almost never drops!). The game was once balanced making it very difficult to gear up, which meant that in reality you needed to use the AH to aid that, but these days that is definitely not the case. Even so, in Diablo 2 you needed to trade if you wanted the good stuff too, so the only thing that changed was the medium used to trade. Still people will hate on it, because people hate on everything.

5. Online only - I get why they did this, and I get why people are mad. Personally I could not care less, even with Diablo 2 the only place worth playing it was online, where your chars/gear were stored on blizzards side much the same as it is today.

Ultimately I think the biggest issue is that the game is just too small for how big and ambitious it was. A 2012 Diablo game needed to be a bigger game, not based on year 2000 standards. Still it is a great game for what is there, but only the minority are going to have the type of mindset that will keep them playing that same small collection of content over and over.

[Deleted]

You realize how absurd conversing with him is right? He's not even arguing from a consumer or fan of d3 perspective anymore. He knows that from a consumer perspective their is absolutely NO WAY to justify online only.

Path of Exile says Hello! well yeah its FTP, but it's just like Diablo2 but online only, nobody seems to bother.

[Kelimbror]

Path of Exile says Hello! well yeah its FTP, but it's just like Diablo2 but online only, nobody seems to bother.

Here's the thing:

1) Does PoE have the abundant issues just with connectivity that D3 has and had? Does it rubber band you and make HC Characters easily lost through no control of your own?

2) Does PoE have a Real Money Auction House?

3) It's free.

These are just a few reasons why there is a distinction. If the game is working perfectly and there aren't systems designed to force you through an auction house, the only complaints left with Always Online is the abiilty to play it anywhere at anytime. After playing D3, most people feel like a kid at Christmas to have all those other problems fixed that they won't hammer on the Always Online.

It's still a huge disadvantage compared to a game like TL2, which can be played whenever and wherever you well please.

[Deleted]

1) Does PoE have the abundant issues just with connectivity that D3 has and had? Does it rubber band you and make HC Characters easily lost through no control of your own?

All of the above and then some. Rubber banding is monstrous compared to D3.

It all comes down to 3:

3) It's free.

Think POE did a fine job proving that the biggest complaint about always online was in truth that it was a DRM.

[Kelimbror]

All of the above and then some. Rubber banding is monstrous compared to D3.

Uggh...if I played it then I would be just as vocally against it. *Insert Charles Barkley quote*

I think your claim is a bit of a stretch. I think it's more that people are overwhelmingly happy to have something they see as vastly superior to D3 at no cost. I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that it's DRM. That's basically trying to say everyone not criticizing PoE for online are all cheap pirates.

That's not very rational.

[Repefe]

Think POE did a fine job proving that the biggest complaint about always online was in truth that it was a DRM.

I think what D3 proved is if you release average game that does not live up to expectations, that does not deliver anything exciting ppl will find a plenthora of reasons to trash talk it even if the core of the problem is simply that the game is just too average.

The reason PoE online only does not matter is not because it's free ... it does not matter because there are so many awesome things about the game nobody cares. With D3 it's along the lines the game is nothing exceptional, it fails to follow its D2 roots, fails to deliver a worthy successor, so at least don't make it online only etc.

I can guarantee you if D3 was true D2 successor along the lines PoE is ppl would be much more willing to forget about the little things which online only is, a little thing. But since it's overall just an average effort ppl want at least these little things to not bother them. Though I would settle for HC mode not having the ridiculous 10 second timer on log out. Such a ming boggling feature in situation where Blizz can't guarantee 100% connectivity.

[Redmage]

I'm in the "its an okay game it just doesn't feel like diablo" crowd.

[skrump]

In short d3 is nothing more than a better looking clone of d2 with
#1 less interesting story
#2 inferior cinamatics
#3 Like it's predecessor it has no replay value outside of the soul purpose of bettering yourself for pvp or to kill ponies faster
#4 The real money auction house negates the need to kill all the ponies so that means the only reason to better yourself is pvp
#5 The pvp really isn't very good

So yeah buy the game clear normal mode and toss that shit in a corner because you have seen everything, continuing on would be a waste of time that could be better spent jerkin your girken or shaving your ass.

Blizzard knew that would be the case which is exactly why a internet connection is required "god forbid you could wait a week and buy it used on ebay after the original owner was bored with it."

[Okacz]

Blizzard, this game sucks! I realised that after completing whole story mode 4 times on different difficulty levels! With two characters! Spending in game at least...

okay, I cannot keep this up. Every time I see a whine about how Diablo III is a bad game because of Inferno loot/gems/randomness/AH (which suggests the player has spent +- half of his life playing the damn game) I just wanna freak out and mindlessly comment it. Which I do.

The game is BAD when you are sick and tired of it after 30 min. The game is medicore if you do after 2 hours. If it feels bad after 2 days of straight playing it's freaking awesome. And of course it will go mundane after a while - Far Cry 3 is an amazing game, and I stopped playing it after some time anyway. Same with Skyrim.

My buddy once commented he hates D3 for the stupidly dumbed down skills setup and graphics - I can understand that. But saying it's a bad game because of AH? Come fucking on.

[gamingmuscle]

D3 endgame is nothing but Act 3 and the Auction House. That's a huge reason for most of the hate, and rightfully so.

See I don't see how grinding in d3 is any different than grinding in d2. I know it's not possible/beneficial to skip 95% of the content and kill a single boss for the phat loots anymore. But you still spend tons of hours farming.

[Kelimbror]

But saying it's a bad game because of AH? Come fucking on.

You do realize the presence of an Auction House in the game removes the direct rewards from playing the game, which in turn literally makes the game feel unrewarding...right? It takes the ability to be rewarded in many different ways and simplifies it to an incredibly boring I'm doing this to get gold and only gold. That is why we work at our jobs.

Additionally, your gold becomes less and less valuable as time goes on because of inflation and the need for higher levels of gear. It removes all personal involvement from you and your character's actions in the game and places it into a completely segregated gear spreadsheet for purchases.

All of this is because they have already admitted the drop rates are based around the AH.

If you can't logically see how that is a problem, then you should probably stop saying ignorant things like what I quoted.

---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 03:16 PM ----------

See I don't see how grinding in d3 is any different than grinding in d2. I know it's not possible/beneficial to skip 95% of the content and kill a single boss for the phat loots anymore. But you still spend tons of hours farming.

One act, one route, for one reward: gold.

Amount of drops are shit, quality of drops are shit, thus reward is shit. Nothing in that sounds like D2 to me.

[Leonard McCoy]

All of the above and then some. Rubber banding is monstrous compared to D3.

It all comes down to 3:

Think POE did a fine job proving that the biggest complaint about always online was in truth that it was a DRM.

That's a load of shit frankly. I was never stuck at error 57 in PoE. I might have had a que but that is much less frustrating than the BS I had to go through with Diablo. I don't like PoEs online either but it has nothing to do with DRM. That's a benbos talking point.

[Okacz]

You do realize the presence of an Auction House in the game removes the direct rewards from playing the game, which in turn literally makes the game feel unrewarding...right? It takes the ability to be rewarded in many different ways and simplifies it to an incredibly boring I'm doing this to get gold and only gold. That is why we work at our jobs.

I did not say AH is a good thing in D3. It kinda sucks. And it's pretty much the reason I stopped playing it, since I would have to finish economical studies to get good gear for my monk. So yes, the AH made me quit Diablo III. AFTER 40 HOURS OF PLAYING.

You can't say a game is bad after you spend so much time with it. It obviously has some flaws, even the major ones, but the fight system, graphics, animation and simplicity make it a really great timewaster. I've never played D2 tho - but it doesn't change a thing. D2 may be a legendary game, D3 remains 'just' awesome.