official Diablo III

[freedonX]

Also queues are acceptable ? sorry no, if I buy a game, a single player game which I intend to enjoy as a single player game frst before I ruin it with idiots online, I intend to play it right away without waiting because everythign I do in my single player game has to be handled somewhere else for some idiotic reason with no sensible or satisfactory explanation. queues for a game like this is absolutely not acceptable, I don't find them acceptable for MMORPG's either, but more so than in a game like Diablo 3 where's it would be absolutely inexcusable.

I mentioned Queues for WoW. I'm not aware if there will be queues for D3. Again I wasn't there for SC2 launch so don't have non-MMO experience for launches.

[Kirkburn]

I mentioned Queues for WoW. I'm not aware if there will be queues for D3. Again I wasn't there for SC2 launch so don't have non-MMO experience for launches.

I imagine it will be very unlikely. Queues exist in WoW because servers are generally designed to support a specific level of population. D3 has no reason for any kind of population cap (there's no hub cities, etc.), and any queue would probably be down to a lack of backend bandwidth - and I imagine, for Blizzard, queues (beyond a few seconds) would likely be counted as a critical infrastructure failure.

[nominak]

I imagine it will be very unlikely. Queues exist in WoW because servers are generally designed to support a specific level of population. D3 has no reason for any kind of population cap (there's no hub cities, etc.), and any queue would probably be down to a lack of backend bandwidth - and I imagine, for Blizzard, queues (beyond a few seconds) would likely be counted as a critical infrastructure failure.

I believe they mention that on launch day that they could experience issues logging in, and that a queue could happen, but the longest it would take is 40 seconds.

[HawkMan]

No, no it's not. There is 0 reason to cheat. Cheating/using Exploits is also against the TOS. I feel that the banning of people cheating/hacking single player or not still creates a risk with the group games. As it is all online single player is still online and will have the exact same flaws, so cheating "single player" would be the exact same as cheating "multi-player". It needs to be caught, dealt with, fixed, and stopped.

To re-iterate what was said: "There's a difference between not having reasons, and you feeling they don't have valid reasons." I 100% support the always online. I don't want cheaters, or hackers coming in an ruining my game. I don't want to run that risk just because I want to play online. I am not buying the game for the solo play, in my opinion being able to run through it solo is a bonus, not what the focus should have been on (favoring those who don't want to play online, and those who do getting shafted).

and how would my offline stored character on my computer, affect your online characters at all, whether i cheat or not ? having a completely separate offline mode that doesn't even communicate with the online mode does not in any way cause cheating or hacking. heck, at worst it would in fact reduce cheating as those who cheat to get better gear would just do it on their local characters, as these are people who don't care about being online anyway.

Yes it doesn't affect a lot of people because you/they want to play online with friends and want to trade anyway. but there are just as many who want to just play the game, has no interest in trading and has no interest in playing with others. are these people's opinions worth less than yours ? why shoudln't there be an offline single player mode for them since it doesn't affect your online modes at all anyway ?

No it's not whether I find the reasons good enough or not. it's the fact that their reasons are not valid, AT ALL. in fact they are plain wrong. as having offline characters and play would not in anyway affect what they say it would.

[shakey]

The issues will probably be the same as D2, if not a little worse, as D2 at least had a offline single player option. If they are the same, or somewhat, we can expect games to not allow you to join or create or at least not without a queue, disconnection issues while trying to join or play, and issues with just logging into bnet servers to start up a singleplayer game.

And I'm actually with hawkman on this. I think there should be a offline single player mode. Their orignal method in D2 was perfect. You couldn't cheat because the character for online play was only accessible on bnet servers, while if you wanted, you were free to play singleplayer however you pleased. Games should give the gamer that option.

[HawkMan]

I imagine it will be very unlikely. Queues exist in WoW because servers are generally designed to support a specific level of population. D3 has no reason for any kind of population cap (there's no hub cities, etc.), and any queue would probably be down to a lack of backend bandwidth - and I imagine, for Blizzard, queues (beyond a few seconds) would likely be counted as a critical infrastructure failure.

Queues are in WoW because of restrictions on how many people can be online at one server at a time. But then again, this restriction of how many people can be online on the server at a time is there because the server cluster itself can only handle so many clients before it starts server lagging (that is not regular lag, but the server having to much to do and unable to do each operation as fast as it should, resulting in at best rubberbanding, at worst clients not being able to do anything).

guess what, D3 server can't handle any more clients than the WoW servers as they perform the exact same service. so there will be a limit to how many clients they can handle at any one time. granted you're nto limited to one specific server, but then again, at launch day even the low pop server have queues, just shorter, the difference here is that it would all be spread out, so you're have shorter queues than high pop but longer than low pop servers in WoW. unless Blizzard got more server than they did for WoW and scaled thir servers for launch day traffic. which is highly unlikely as a few weeks down the road, they'd only need half the capacity, a few more 25%.

And there's another thing. on launch day, a lot of the time the Login server crashes due to heavy traffic (effectively DDoS'ed) this would be just as much a problem with D3. slow login servers and possibility of crashing due to high traffic. as there are far fewer of these and harder for them to handle peaks.

[HawkMan]

Also they can offer offline mode single player and still have always on DRM like Ubisoft likes to do. afterall the always on is just their method of DRM while they can still claim to be the good guy with no DRM :rolleyes:

[Razorwing]

Do you guys know if I can pre-download right now? I want to get home and just validate my key and then play.

I prefer not lagging in my single player games.

Why would it be a problem to do what they did in Diablo 1 and 2 and what they did in Hellgate. have offline characters that are stored locally and can't be used on the internet, and online characters that you can play with online where everything is done online whether you play solo or in a group.

There's is absolutely no reason for them to not have offline characters and offline mode.

Well I don't think you will lag when you play SP.

[Knightwolf20024]

Do you guys know if I can pre-download right now? I want to get home and just validate my key and then play.

you can just login to your battle.net account there will be diablo 3 starter edition download the full client and wait till the installer unlocks on monday.

[nominak]

Do you guys know if I can pre-download right now? I want to get home and just validate my key and then play.

Well I don't think you will lag when you play SP.

You can pre-download now yes.

[Xilo]

Not having an open ladder/offline single player with no AH is dumb.

What if you want to play when you don't have Internet? What if you want to have hacked duels like in D2 (which was what I ended up spending a lot of time on after beating the game several times)?

Lame...

[HawkMan]

Do you guys know if I can pre-download right now? I want to get home and just validate my key and then play.

Well I don't think you will lag when you play SP.

Except it will, that's the point, everything you do, is done ONE the server, just like as if you where playign a game, every monster is server generated and controlled, everythign happens on the server. you just render the game and send the controls to the server.

[mad_onion]

you can just login to your battle.net account there will be diablo 3 starter edition download the full client and wait till the installer unlocks on monday.

There's no Starter Edition listed on my account and Blizzard have never confirmed that one will be out on release day. Maybe a few months down the line.

[_neutrino Veteran]

There's no Starter Edition listed on my account and Blizzard have never confirmed that one will be out on release day. Maybe a few months down the line.

the digital download links are out there, take a look at reddit and you might find the link (im not posting it)

[Knightwolf20024]

There's no Starter Edition listed on my account and Blizzard have never confirmed that one will be out on release day. Maybe a few months down the line.

i have one on my account

[Kirkburn]

Queues are in WoW because of restrictions on how many people can be online at one server at a time. But then again, this restriction of how many people can be online on the server at a time is there because the server cluster itself can only handle so many clients before it starts server lagging (that is not regular lag, but the server having to much to do and unable to do each operation as fast as it should, resulting in at best rubberbanding, at worst clients not being able to do anything).

That's what I said, basically. Classic MMO servers have relatively specific population limits.

guess what, D3 server can't handle any more clients than the WoW servers as they perform the exact same service. so there will be a limit to how many clients they can handle at any one time. granted you're nto limited to one specific server, but then again, at launch day even the low pop server have queues, just shorter, the difference here is that it would all be spread out, so you're have shorter queues than high pop but longer than low pop servers in WoW. unless Blizzard got more server than they did for WoW and scaled thir servers for launch day traffic. which is highly unlikely as a few weeks down the road, they'd only need half the capacity, a few more 25%.

And there's another thing. on launch day, a lot of the time the Login server crashes due to heavy traffic (effectively DDoS'ed) this would be just as much a problem with D3. slow login servers and possibility of crashing due to high traffic. as there are far fewer of these and harder for them to handle peaks.

You have no idea whether D3's servers can handle more, and tbh, it's not even directly comparable.

While they're both on Battle.net, that doesn't mean they're running the same hardware or software. WoW is also different, because - besides that you're not logging onto a specific server (e.g. the Stormrage server), you're logging on to a continent (meaning it's far more easily balanced) - the servers themselves are not running the same code, nor are the same actions occurring on that server. I would imagine D3 has a far simpler set of activities to look after, in general. It doesn't have 300 player characters in a single area, nor a massively complex professions system, nor a per-server AH, etc. It might even be a completely different log in system (the log in server being different to the game servers). An even then, Diablo 3 does not have massive contiguous landscapes, it's much more easily instanced.

Basically, it may or may nor be an issue - but it's far more likely to not be an issue than with any classic MMO.

[Razorwing]

i have one on my account

I don't have it either. Gonna look for some links.

Is this legit?

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?824402-Diablo-III-FULL-RETAIL-BY-BLIZZARD-PRE-DOWNLOAD

[_neutrino Veteran]

Its showing up just fine for me (did not notice it until just now)

[mad_onion]

i have one on my account

I've got no idea then, I searched and there are a couple of forum threads from a few hours ago saying that they see it on their accounts too. Maybe it's only appearing on some accounts. I didn't take part in the beta so....

[spacer]

In theory, the "always online" architecture bothers me for the reasons that Shakey and Hawkman are stating. If my internet goes out, I still want to be able to play single player. And if I'm primarily playing single player, I shouldn't have to wait in a queue and deal with all the other stuff that comes with online gaming. (lag spikes, server maintenance, etc.) I should really be able to play single-player games when I went, no matter what.

However, in practice when my internet goes down, videogames aren't usually the first thing that come to mind.

Other than the usual "find out why my internet is down; is it my computer, router, or something on the provider end?" anger/panic stages that we all go through; I use the time to do other stuff I normally wouldn't do. I stop procrastinating on my chores and bills, do something outside, spend more time with the girlfriend, etc.

Generally speaking when the internet goes out, you either lost power all together or your provider has an outage. Except for some extreme cicumstances, both of those scenarios only last for a few a little while. I can certainly live without playing a videogame for that short amount of time.

So, while I can sympathize with some people's aversion to the "always online" paradigm, it really isn't that big a deal when you think about it. So it doesn't bother me as much as I would have thought.

[_neutrino Veteran]

I can understand why it would put people off however, the main demographic that will be playing this game have always on connections anyway. So for blizzard it was a story like, better updates/performance/hotfixes over offline mode.

[Razorwing]

So is my link legit or not? http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?824402-Diablo-III-FULL-RETAIL-BY-BLIZZARD-PRE-DOWNLOAD

Just want to make sure.

[+ir0nw0lf Subscriber²]

In case anyone is curious, the pre-download is around 7.6 GB, not bad, 1 DL DVD or 2 SL DVDs. I'll be dropping my install onto a spare 8 GB thumbdrive to sneakernet between my gaming boxes (at different locations).

[episode]

In case anyone is curious, the pre-download is around 7.6 GB, not bad, 1 DL DVD or 2 SL DVDs. I'll be dropping my install onto a spare 8 GB thumbdrive to sneakernet between my gaming boxes (at different locations).

The actual install is a bit bigger than the download. Won't fit on that 8GB stick ... actually if the 7.6 is accurate, that won't fit either.

[HawkMan]

You have no idea whether D3's servers can handle more, and tbh, it's not even directly comparable.

While they're both on Battle.net, that doesn't mean they're running the same hardware or software. WoW is also different, because - besides that you're not logging onto a specific server (e.g. the Stormrage server), you're logging on to a continent (meaning it's far more easily balanced) - the servers themselves are not running the same code, nor are the same actions occurring on that server. I would imagine D3 has a far simpler set of activities to look after, in general. It doesn't have 300 player characters in a single area, nor a massively complex professions system, nor a per-server AH, etc. It might even be a completely different log in system (the log in server being different to the game servers). An even then, Diablo 3 does not have massive contiguous landscapes, it's much more easily instanced.

Basically, it may or may nor be an issue - but it's far more likely to not be an issue than with any classic MMO.

I already answered all of that in the other post, explainign how just because you're not logging into specific servers, you will have a situation where with the same amount of servers, some will have lower queues and some will have higher. as for server traffic and resources it is pretty much exactly the same use as WoW, no less no more. it's the same stuff being handled on the servers in both cases and it's not done any "simpler" in D3 than WoW. And as has been said before. the servers don't care if you are surrounded by 300 people or not. How many peopel you can see is irrelevant to the server.

So either way, in order for there not to be launch day queues, D3 will need to have a bigger server park than WoW. much bigger, which would mean they would scale the server park based on launch day peaks. which is not something you do.