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You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

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Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#101

Post by juanse »

rjzzleep wrote: post #3

Diablo 2 resurrected was the most infuriating experience I have had. I bought it in the Switch store against my better judgment, partly because in their support forum they said that offline mode would of course always be offline. For the first few days people could hardly even start the game, I tried to return it right away, because it's basically a bricked game at this point, but Nintendo doesn't want to refund swit…

Thanks for sharing this. Diablo 2 was an amazing experience back in my youth. I was decided to make the purchase. But this is a no deal.

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#102

Post by Linosaurus »

daneel_w wrote: post #90

What is the actual effect? Are your characters deleted? Is your legally purchased copy (license) of the game forfeited?

Neither, but the game refuses to run until it can call home. (Edit: after which you can enjoy it for another 30 days without Internet access if you want to)

For some official confirmation of the policy:

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/298306

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#103

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

salamandersauce wrote: post #99
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #94

I know folks on this site don't like it, but in the wider gaming community, there is essentially no demand among legitimate buyers for an always offline gaming option. We have access to the internet almost no matter where we are, or can easily get it. Why should we care if a game needs to check in periodically? What harm is it likely to do to any given legitimate buyer? It's almost certainly worth it to Blizzard to l…

What happens when Activision decides its no longer worth keeping the server up? Or some other problem occurs keeping it from checking in, e.g. death of Nintendo Switch Online. I can still play Gameboy games I bought 20+ years ago with no problems besides maybe replacing the save battery and the occasional contact clean. Will I be able to do the same with Switch games I bought? For some titles that already seems to be…

For the tiny tiny tiny fraction of users who will still be playing the game at that point, it will be a sad day. Most gamers do not make purchasing decisions based on something that might happen twenty years from now, since >99.9% of them will have moved on from the game by that point.

> I can still play ...

But do you? I mean, perhaps you do, but most folks don't. That's why I emphasized the question of harm a gamer is likely to suffer.

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#104

Post by akeck »

This reminds me of the 100 Rabbits folks having to ditch their standard creative software (Adobe) and Apple hardware during their Pacific Ocean traversal. After a month or two offline, every single token timed out and those apps and hardware stopped working.

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#105

Post by mrits »

girvo wrote: post #10

Blizzard is long dead. Such a shame. I’ll never pay for another of their games until… actually I’m not sure when, or what they could do to bring me back. They’ve poisoned their brand so completely, and their latest releases have been either somewhat mediocre or mismanaged into the ground over time.

I don't like the game but they are just a hand full of years off from creating a huge success in Overwatch

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#106

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #100
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #94

I know folks on this site don't like it, but in the wider gaming community, there is essentially no demand among legitimate buyers for an always offline gaming option. We have access to the internet almost no matter where we are, or can easily get it. Why should we care if a game needs to check in periodically? What harm is it likely to do to any given legitimate buyer? It's almost certainly worth it to Blizzard to l…

The problem is OBVIOUSLY that it tethers you to servers or some such application somewhere that needs to validate your game. And it could (and will) be turned off at some point. So the game is CLEARLY not yours. We can run games from the 90s and 2000s, because there is no need for servers.

> So the game is CLEARLY not yours.

What's important to me, and to most gamers, is whether I can play a game for the duration of time that I desire to do so. So when I'm looking at D2 resurrected, I'm thinking something like this:

"If I buy this game, the longest I'd probably play it for is about a year. In future years I may return to it for briefer and briefer windows, asymptotically decreasing toward zero minutes per year as time approaches infinity. I think it's likely that Blizzard will keep the servers running for at least 20 years based on past performance. What is the area under the curve outside of twenty years proportional to the total value I intend to extract from the game?"

For me, I estimate the area at around 0. Even if I thought that a tenth of my total playtime would occur outside the initial 20 year window (extremely unlikely and generous estimate -- probably nobody exists like this), what is the present value of that future enjoyment? At a 4% discount rate and a fifty dollar initial purchase, the present value is $3. There's just not enough there for most people to be bothered about.

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#107

Post by Kalium »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #103
salamandersauce wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when Activision decides its no longer worth keeping the server up? Or some other problem occurs keeping it from checking in, e.g. death of Nintendo Switch Online. I can still play Gameboy games I bought 20+ years ago with no problems besides maybe replacing the save battery and the occasional contact clean. Will I be able to do the same with Switch games I bought? For some titles that already seems to be…

For the tiny tiny tiny fraction of users who will still be playing the game at that point, it will be a sad day. Most gamers do not make purchasing decisions based on something that might happen twenty years from now, since >99.9% of them will have moved on from the game by that point. > I can still play ... But do you? I mean, perhaps you do, but most folks don't. That's why I emphasized the question of harm a gamer…

It's pretty rough for historians, archivists, and curators too. Can you imagine if books became unreadable twenty years after publication because >99.9% of readers will have moved on from the book by that point? Or if every painting, sculpture, photograph, or musical recording self-destructed in the same time period?

At this point I think it's fair to say that games are cultural artifacts. We should be at least a token amount of interested in making it possible to preserve them.

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#108

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

Kalium wrote: post #107
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the tiny tiny tiny fraction of users who will still be playing the game at that point, it will be a sad day. Most gamers do not make purchasing decisions based on something that might happen twenty years from now, since >99.9% of them will have moved on from the game by that point. > I can still play ... But do you? I mean, perhaps you do, but most folks don't. That's why I emphasized the question of harm a gamer…

It's pretty rough for historians, archivists, and curators too. Can you imagine if books became unreadable twenty years after publication because >99.9% of readers will have moved on from the book by that point? Or if every painting, sculpture, photograph, or musical recording self-destructed in the same time period? At this point I think it's fair to say that games are cultural artifacts. We should be at least a tok…

I suppose. I can't say that the interests of these groups are particularly close to my heart. Certainly if I was a game dev I wouldn't be willing to pass up a chance to substantially increase revenue to make life easier for an archivist.

To the extent that there is any value in the history of this game, I think most of it will be sufficiently captured in the large amount of video content being produced about it.

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#109

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Fnoord wrote: post #80
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it depends on what the purpose of the refunds are. For example, many online clothing retailers will encourage you to buy more clothing than you need so you can try it on at home, and return whatever you don't like. A lot of people definitely treat Steam's refund system this way, and Steam's automated refund process seems built to encourage it. You could also make a strong case that this is better for everyo…

When Rocket League, a game I never played, ditched support for macOS I asked for a refund. I described how I disliked that they removed support for macOS. I wouldn't play Rocket League on my MBP, mind you, but I do have Steam installed on it. I got a refund, no questions asked (though I did buy it on sale, judging by the amount I got refunded). Steam doesn't need DRM to figure out how long a game is being played, btw…

> Steam tracks that without DRM, too.

Yes and no. They can track play time when you launch a game through the Steam client, and they can use DRM to enforce launching games through the Steam client. If you launch one of the few DRM-Free Steam games without using Steam, your play time won’t increase.

GOG also tracks play time if you launch a game via GOG Galaxy. The difference is, every single-player game in their catalog can also be played without GOG Galaxy (and indeed, this is explicitly why I buy games from GOG—I don’t like clients, I just want an executable).

Re: You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline

#110

Post by FreeFull »

Fnoord wrote: post #80
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it depends on what the purpose of the refunds are. For example, many online clothing retailers will encourage you to buy more clothing than you need so you can try it on at home, and return whatever you don't like. A lot of people definitely treat Steam's refund system this way, and Steam's automated refund process seems built to encourage it. You could also make a strong case that this is better for everyo…

When Rocket League, a game I never played, ditched support for macOS I asked for a refund. I described how I disliked that they removed support for macOS. I wouldn't play Rocket League on my MBP, mind you, but I do have Steam installed on it. I got a refund, no questions asked (though I did buy it on sale, judging by the amount I got refunded). Steam doesn't need DRM to figure out how long a game is being played, btw…

I believe Rocket League was a special case, in that they offered refunds for everybody who bought it to play on Linux/Mac, no matter how many hours of it they have played.
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