Blizzard Fumbles Diablo III’s Launch, and the Consequences It Could Have

Although its actual development time was considerably shorter, in the minds of most fans, “Diablo III” has been no less than 12 years in the making. That’s how long it’s been since the release of “Diablo II,” and that’s how long it’s been since gamers have been craving a true follow up. 12 years.

And after just two days of release, some gamers are already more excited about “Diablo IV.”

This is mostly due to Blizzard’s controversial decision to have gamers log-in to its servers in order to play the game. What’s irksome is that it doesn’t matter if you’re playing single player or multiplayer; you have to be online. Ideally, this allows for a range of features that should allow the gamer to be in a constantly networked world where gamers can aid each other in their quest, and friends can drop in at any time to do battle by your side, as you smote your enemies with joyful ease.

In reality though, the servers have been having nothing but trouble since launch. The battle.net network has appeared so far to be insufficiently capable of handling the mass numbers of users “Diablo III” has added without doing that annoying crashing thing and rendering the game unplayable in any form. It’s almost as if Blizzard didn’t anticipate that the sequel to one of the greatest selling and most acclaimed games of all time might actually sell a few copies itself, and that a mandatory online account coupled with that could lead to serious server problems.

Of course, the conclusion that just about everyone who isn’t a Blizzard employee has come to is that the game shouldn’t require a mandatory online account. It’s so ludicrously unnecessary, in fact, that as I was booting up the single player for the first time and it asked me to create an account, I couldn’t help but think of the Kramer line from Seinfeld. “Why does Radioshack need your phone number when you buy batteries?”

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Blizzard still updating Diablo II

Diablo 2 werebear.While you’re waiting for Diablo III, Blizzard’s been hard at work updating the game’s predecessor. There’s a new patch coming for Diablo II, and it’s available for beta testing right now.

Why patch a nine year-old dungeon masher, you ask? Well, apparently people needed the ability to respec their characters. It’s a nice addition, even if you only get to do it once. Really, spending the 20 minutes it takes to get rushed to Hell is just so much work.

There are also some bug fixes and spell tweaks associated with the patch, pretty run of the mill stuff. Anyone out there still playing this game? I picked it up for about a day a few weeks back and remembered quickly why I quit.

Source: Battle.net

  

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