Diablo 3

[weemadando]

I'd be pretty wary of believing anything that is clearly nerd rage motivated. My understanding of the setup is that in SP it should just be authenticating, and even if you're in an empty MP game the host shouldn't see lag anyway.

Yeah, my primary suspicion was "are you sure you're not trying to run this on your Windows ME" box, more than anything else.

[D.Turtle]

I love how they still haven't learnt from the launch of 3 expansions of WoW and SC2 - login servers are all over the place, especially grateful for this as they have every battle.net login going through the same servers.

I think you simply underestimate the challenge it is to have everything running with the sudden humongous spike in traffic when a new game of theirs launches. Especially since the amount of traffic rapidly dwindles afterwards. Is there even any example of humongous launches of games/media/whatever going off without a hitch?

[White Haven]

The spike is one of their own devising, though. It's this obsession with a to-the-minute launch window across many time zones at once. Launch it at midnight local, everywhere, and you'll get some people jumping the gun via VPNs and shit, but who cares? The important thing is that the majority, the people who can't even spell VPN, are staggered in nice, hour-long packets, rather than bumrushing the login servers all at once.

[bilateralrope]

I've been reading some reports of getting lag in SP games. I want to believe these are incorrect as surely Blizzard wouldn't have been that incompetent with the way they implemented the netcode.

For Blizzard to be confident enough about the item generation rates for the real money auction house to be viable, they need to make sure that all the gameplay code can't be hacked to give someone an advantage. Which means putting it on the server, since any code running on the client can and will be hacked. The only things the client is left with is telling the server what you want to attempt and rendering the result.

So after Blizzard decided they wanted the real money auction house, the only option they had to prevent SP games lagging is to allow people to create characters that could never go online. Which they decided against.

[Sarevok]

Well give it enough time and it is like possible that the server side code may be hacked. I mean thats what happened with Runescape, people managed to replicate the server and there are third party designed servers out there now. Now Blizzards developers are lot more advanced than some tiny MMOs crew but given the money involved I think some real pros could be taking a look at this.

[Stark]

The environment and motive already exists in WOW. I'd say Blozzard are pretty confident.

[D.Turtle]

The spike is one of their own devising, though. It's this obsession with a to-the-minute launch window across many time zones at once. Launch it at midnight local, everywhere, and you'll get some people jumping the gun via VPNs and shit, but who cares? The important thing is that the majority, the people who can't even spell VPN, are staggered in nice, hour-long packets, rather than bumrushing the login servers all at once.

Yeah, but then you have the same nerds screaming about the unfair advantage that people in Japan, South Korea, and Europe have over those poor Americans. Just look at the screeching that happens with every patch for WoW introducing new content. The only ones who get a bit hurt by the spike are die-hard fans. They'll complain no matter what. Sucks to be them.

[Gandalf]

Following two hours of "Ctrl+V and Error 37", we finally got a game going with friends.

It's a fun game. It's fun to punch monsters, and I like being able to tool with my spells as needed.

Although the party limit of four is fucking baffling.

[Losonti Tokash]

If you're going to do a simultaneous worlwide release, you'd think the obvious solution would be to activate everything once it turns midnight at the international date line, instead of in America.

[Stofsk]

Although the party limit of four is fucking baffling.

Not really. It's IIRC the limit in Diablo 1. D2 doubled it to 8, and all it really did was make monsters way more powerful but partying up way more chaotic and unmanageable.

Keeping it to four makes everything smoother so you're not overloaded with too many guys onscreen. It might also have something to do with how the server stuff works, four players in a particular instance being easier to manage I guess than having eight. That said, expect to see the PvP arena content released in the future, which would by necessity increase the number of people in a game to at least six (3v3) or possibly eight (4v4).

[DesertFly]

An eventual console release may also be a factor, since four player support is still the norm for the current generation of split-screen multiplayer.

[Lord Relvenous]

An eventual console release may also be a factor, since four player support is still the norm for the current generation of split-screen multiplayer.

I feel like it's transferred to 2-player splitscreen for the most part. 4 player splitscreen is actually pretty rare I find.

[Stark]

And nobody would play D3 4p split screen anyway. Even 2p dynamic split might bad depending on how long engagement range is.

[Thanas]

Game is pretty fun, but Belial is a mf to beat.

[Gandalf]

Here's some hilarity: the auction house is game breakingly hilarious. People can sell shitty end game weapons to mid level dudes, making the campaign a breeze.

Spending ages looking for chipped gems? Go buy a flawless one for less than 1000 gold.

[wautd]

There are a lot of those small things I like: no more carrying around those town portal and identify scrolls and mercs are free. I also like the crafting/recovery addition.

I do miss the quick weapon swap from Diablo 2 though.

[Thanas]

So apparently, Blizz has decided sunday is a good day for unannounced server maintenance.

[DireApostasy]

So apparently, Blizz has decided sunday is a good day for unannounced server maintenance.

And apparently are using a vastly different server setup for Europe compared to Asia and the US, given the EU server is the only one still down after 4+ hours.

[Thanas]

close to six hours.

Great business decision there, Blizz. After all, it is not like sunday is the only real free day of the week for many in Europe....

[wautd]

Trolling: doing it right

[HeadCreeps]

What is the appeal of this game? It seems like everyone everywhere who plays online games is at least trying it, but isn't it just a dungeon crawler with massive name recognition? Help me out here. What does D3 offer that makes it appeal to you?

Also, they're avoiding piracy by storing a significant amount of data like monster spawns, monster drops, etc. server-side right? So very little is available within the client itself? Or is it just character data and little else?

[Thanas]

Of course it is just a dungeon crawler. Just like any FPS is the same, right?

When it runs, it is fun. The story so far (only up to act II) is serviceable, haven't encountered any bugs yet (big plus) and the game is just fun of you running around and killing stuff. There is very little unnecessary clutter - for example they made normal weapons be worthless, which eliminates the "run back to town to sell stuff" need.

[Lord Revan]

I've not been able to try it yet as my PC is broken and won't run any games newer then DOW, but as a rule of thumb, if you expect all your games to have some new and revolutionary feature or something like that, Blizzard games aren't really for you as they rarely if ever have those but what they do is make really fun games from tried and true methods.

[HeadCreeps]

I've not been able to try it yet as my PC is broken and won't run any games newer then DOW, but as a rule of thumb, if you expect all your games to have some new and revolutionary feature or something like that, Blizzard games aren't really for you as they rarely if ever have those but what they do is make really fun games from tried and true methods.

No. I'm asking because this game is surprising me with its popularity in spite of the type of game it is, as did Diablo 2. I'm looking and wondering what it is that makes it so popular, and all I'm coming up with is name recognition and name branding and the social pressure to play that comes with it. People who don't even like dungeon crawlers are playing Diablo 3. This basically contrasts Starcraft II, which as far as I know, still only appealed to people who would generally like a strategy or a sci fi title. Completely anecdotal.

[Minischoles]

It's an enjoyable game - when you can actually get online. Server has been down more than it's been up and maintenance on a sunday is absolutely fantastic. And still getting Error 37 after the servers apparently are up and running.

It'd be nice if Blizzard had actually learnt from the past four huge game launches they've had.