I guess that its money driven decision primarily, but also having something to do with their security suite, Warden.
Seeing how Closed Alpha was released publicly, cracked, hacked and continued (and its still) working just fine long after Alpha window is gone with ability to create LAN games i guess that they had a flashback to old Diablo 2 era.
Back in the day Diablo 2 used to be cracked and played locally all over the world, in internet cafes or vial TCP/IP (locally), since cracked game is not able to connect to old battlenet.
Basically you used to be able to game multiplayer just fine as long as other members of your party knew your IP (which was conveniently displayed in upper corner of your screen) and connect to your game.
D2R leaving TCP/IP (local) would have exact same problem, as it was proven just few months back, which would primarily impact game sales i guess.
Because why would you spend 40/60e for the game and play it via in multiplayer TCP/IP or Online when you can grab cracked version and play it in multiplayer just over TCP/IP (local)?
You practically just lose ladder content (few very powerful runes, runewords and parts of gear)
You also lose ability to mod the game, to make funky items that you and your buddies can find - like Whirlwind Necro, etc etc and keep them only for single player or TCP/IP.
Removing that feature and going trough battlenet kinda FORCES you to buy the game if you want to play it in multiplayer (and maybe play it at all).
I dont mind it gameplay wise, but tbh with everything thats going on with Blizzard lately i just feel let down a lot and like my trust is betrayed once again.
As someone who was ultra-mega-giga-super fanboy of Blizzard since Lost Vikings and Rock-n-Roll Racing and used to preorder EVERYTHING that they announce it came down to not believing A SINGLE word that comes from them and waiting for last day before i buy anything, if at all.
Last edited by Gurg; 2021-08-12 at 01:26 AM.
Damn, an actual redone cinematics instead of the usual upscaling Remastered games typically do...
The cinematics look cool at least.
Even if the game itself seems meh and my faith in Blizzard is at an all time low, I can at least compliment those that worked on that.
They're only doing this because they think it's gonna curb piracy. Pretty obvious.
Nah that's a terribly poor excuse for Blizzard just simply not wanting to support the feature as they have no mechanism to control it
And just another reason NOT to pre-purchase any product and not to buy it in general. First was the terrible character models and the changes they made to the Amazon, Assassin and Sorc. Second is removing TCP/IP support. Fuck them
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Happily playing LOD now. The remaster can get fucked
Damn, those new Diablo II cinematics are looking incredible, if only warfraft 3 reforged had gotten such love...
Last edited by javierdsv; 2021-08-12 at 04:40 AM.
translation:
"a 20 year old game is, as you'd expect, a security hazard on the internet. we could fix that, of course, but could and would are very different things, as this would take way too much of our precious harassment time, so we chose to simply scrap it from the features list."
Kotaku is anything but a reliable source, but if this is true, then either Blizzard's fucked or they are going for some REAL OVERHAUL for the company and staff, since those are big names that might be hard to replace.
I guess it's nice of them to be upfront about removing features before releasing their product, instead of going the WC3 reforged route.
Really the only security risk here is their own job security. They are so scared for the profitability of their product they are willing to sacrifice the user experience to hit those big numbers for investors. It's a real shame Blizzard keeps pushing this games as service agenda upon its player base. No LAN in starcraft 2, destroyed custom games in Warcraft 3: Reforged. Removing LAN from D2: Remaster now; what a joke. This company is so out of touch with what their fans want its laughable. Gotta boost those MUs lol; meanwhile all their games are hemorrhaging players; some of that can be attributed to the sexual harassment scandal, but lets be honest, the games and decisions Blizzard makes now genuinely suck.
Diablo 2 is a dead game, they abandoned it with no content patches for 16 years... now they revive it, and STILL add no new content to the game. Its dead, its done. The game has been played out, if you want to play D2 you can do it now; this remaster literally ads nothing of value to the core experience of the game. I can't believe people have nostalgia for D2 anymore / get hyped for reskin.