17 ms·

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

232 points by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
I recently setup pihole, which subsequently went down while playing PS5, Effectively taking out my internet. My PS5 basically refused to play the most recent Star Wars after about 30 minutes. Next time I’ll just pirate the bloody thing.
- kmlx 5y ago
  > I recently setup pihole, which subsequently went down while playing PS5 i think this is the issue right here.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
    The issue is their toxic drm.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    A game should work in single player mode no matter the network quality or censorship by any of the layers in-between. It's one thing (and annoying enough) if multiplayer servers are shut down after a couple years without opening the source of the server or at least distributing VMware images. But single-player functionality should always work, because why should I otherwise buy a game for 50+ €?!
    - BlueTemplar 5y ago
      No, no excuses for no real online multiplayer either : even on PC Diablo 2 Resurrected sucks, because (AFAIK ?) they added always online DRM requirement (via Battle.net launcher), but especially removed real online multiplayer (leaving only their walled garden Battle.net) play, and finally removed (most) modding potential. Which were the main reasons why Diablo 2 classic was still played in the first place !
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        The problem with multi-player is that there is an immense amount of cheaters and trolls. It already was a problem fifteen years ago, nowadays game providers don't have another (realistic) choice. Cheating morons ruined the fun for everyone else.
        HideousKojima 5y ago
        The original Diablo 2 had a simple solution for this: Open Battle.Net and Closed Battle.Net. On Open Battle.Net you could use your offline characters in online play, meaning you would run into a lot of hackers, but you could also play together with your friends online (there was also a LAN option). Closed Battle.Net meant your character was stored on Blizzard's servers, which prevented the most blatant cheating. But starting with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (and arguably WoW) Blizzard decided they could make more money by shitting their games up with always online DRM.
        BlueTemplar 5y ago
        This is patently false since plenty of games (including (modded, "classic") Diablo 2) still have real online multiplayer, with multiple anti-cheater/troll solutions : passwords, (unofficial) game admins, (potentially official DRM-backed) player whitelists & blacklists (potentially shared across hosts), not advertising your game-hosting IP on popular matchmaker servers... Please don't buy the "invasive DRM is good for you" corporate advertising - when (not if) the official servers shut down, these games will be crippled ! (We already had a taste of that with GameSpy, and it was only matchmaking servers !)
        mschuster91 5y ago
        For what it's worth I agree with you that there should be a legal mandate for game companies to make their online servers available for public download once the official servers get shut down. For the time in-between though... self-hosted servers are a niche market, and that is why companies don't care any more. Not enough players care to justify the expense, and ever since Hot Coffee and school shooters game companies have gotten pretty paranoid about moderation and fighting modders or bad press from raging cheaters. Again, there is no hope for the industry to fix that on their own, this is something that must be done by law.
daveroberts 5y ago
It seems almost self evident the game would not have been greenlit without a form of DRM. Most of the comments here are lamenting the game having DRM, but they're comparing having the game with DRM vs having the game without DRM, not having the game with DRM vs not having the game at all.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
At this point I'm just not buying anything by the dumpster fire that used to be Blizzard.
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  Most of us don't care and we just want to play vidya games.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    You are responsible for your actions. What you fund, you encourage.
    - ddtaylor 5y ago
      Pretty sure then as a tax paying citizen that I'm responsible for drone assassinations etc., so by comparison the entire Blizzard drama would be pretty low on the priority list by that logic.
      - acdha 5y ago
        It’s low, sure, but also much easier to do: you’re legally required to pay taxes and political change takes years, but you can simply choose to save money.
        fsflover 5y ago
        > to save money Or to spend them elsewhere: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v12/ https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v12/. (No games there yet, but I hope they can be added.)
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        The logic remains valid, and according to your interpretation stealing a car seems "not a big deal" because it comes after a murder. (They are disconnected events, so to relate them is just a mental perspective - their gravity is independent. There is no «priority» forgiving your actions, it is no excuse).
fsflover 5y ago
We really need to fight against DRM: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/ https://www.defectivebydesign.org/.
- mattl 5y ago
  DBD doesn't really have any solutions to any of this other than "free software"
rjzzleep 5y ago
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 switch games unless you're in North America. I had already forgotten about it, but I get angry just reminded of that. Yeah, it's just 50 bucks, but when you got cheated on those 50 bucks that leaves a bad taste in ones mouth.
- iqanq 5y ago
  I don't understand. Have the servers been down ever since?
  - kmlx 5y ago
    > Have the servers been down ever since? no, it works just fine. the issues the original poster highlighted had to do with launch problems.
    - aqme28 5y ago
      Launch problems that lasted for about a month on a decades-old game. It's still absurd.
  - jug 5y ago
    It had severe launch issues that was long ongoing even for 1-2 months. It's much better now though and they are still optimizing it with the latest row currently in testing, which I think may solve these issues for good. The problem as I understand it was an architectural decision to remove the realms (regional groups of servers like USEast/West/EU/Asia) of Diablo 2 "Classic" so that everyone can play with each other. More fun that way, right? However, Diablo 2 has pretty lousy netcode (consider it's two decades old!) and turns out that one does not simply rewrite it to sync your heroes regularly to a centralized location as you played, turning out to cause a terrible bottleneck. Many such sync requests seem to have just straight out failed at peak hours, with characters losing hours of gameplay or even losing the characters altogether! This is, again, much better now thanks to more or less emergency mitigations. But it took them a few months and it's of course a major goof up to not think this through better. By the time it was fixed, many had started losing interest in the game. It's hard to extrapolate networking from testing to massive scales, I understand that, but these are network architects with years if not decades in the business of launching games and MMORPG's. _Someone_ should have been waving a little red flag here and told "hey, you do realize we're centralizing a core part of the game that was never planned to be centralized, and if these sync requests fail it's going to ruin their gameplay. So we're taking a risk and with very real fallout as well." But maybe someone did... Maybe many in fact did. Such warnings may not be the end of the story unfortunately.
anthk 5y ago
Get a libre engine to play Diablo I and II. Also, try Flare RPG.
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  DevilutionX is awesome (and I'm a contributor!) but D2R is on an entirely different level.
- pqb 5y ago
  I also recommend FlareRPG [0] to try out. It has way more pleasant navigation than Diablos, reminds me a bit of the Divine Divinity [1], which is also awesome single-player game. [0]: https://flarerpg.org/ https://flarerpg.org/ [1]: https://www.gog.com/game/divine_divinity https://www.gog.com/game/divine_divinity
  - kroltan 5y ago
    It's an entirely different game (more of a CRPG than action), but the more modern Divinity Original Sin games are excellent too. DOS2 is my favorite RPG, and it can be played by itself (its story has basically no links to DOS1)
    - pixel_tracing 5y ago
      Divine Divinity != DOS
      - kroltan 5y ago
        Which is why I said "it's an entirely different game"! :D It has little to do with DD or BD, but it's still a very fun game.
girvo 5y ago
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.
- kmlx 5y ago
  > Blizzard is long dead. i'm still in somewhat of a denial since i really like their IPs. and diablo 4 is still very much on my radar. if that one tanks then I hope something changes as their IPs are just too good...
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    AAA development slog like what is apparently happening with D4 rarely bodes well for fun. Dev work apparently began in 2014 and it's not likely to be released until 2023 at the earliest.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Most of their IP is dead at this point; Warcraft is a dead horse they’ve been beating for the last decade, StarCraft is effectively abandoned, and Diablo 3 was a blatant cash grab from day 1 with a mediocre game behind it. Hearthstone and Overwatch are doing ok as esports but those aren’t the Blizzard IP I actually like. To think that any future games will be better than what we’ve gotten over the last decade is just being in denial that they’re Activision now. They have continued to mine the nostalgia of the player base with mediocre remakes and retread content and, combined with the fact that it’s now public knowledge how toxic Blizzard culture was during the “golden era”, it has destroyed most of the cultural value that IP had.
    - pfraze 5y ago
      Overwatch league is kind of hosed right now because of the weird shenanigans around OW2. Last I heard, they were planning on dropping team sizes by 1 (so a bunch of pros are getting fired) and they also planned to have next years league play the unreleased OW2 beta (??). It’s in a weird place.
Jyaif 5y ago
> It serves no real purpose Oh common. You may not like it, but DRM was invented for a reason.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  To frustrate those who legally purchased the game? It doesn't stop piracy, it makes the pirate version higher quality.
  - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    Probably to restrict secondary markets, not to stop piracy.
  - trinovantes 5y ago
    Need to boost that MAU number
  - ddtaylor 5y ago
    It really depends on how you define piracy. With movies and music it doesn't work at all because they don't evolve and change over time. Once that 4K BluRay content hits The Pirate Bay it's game over. But, with games, it's a very different story. Many games have intricate design with their servers that make ripping them apart and creating standalone pirated copies extremely difficult. Even some single player games, while pirated, don't get as much adoption from the pirate community because of the ongoing patch support they receive that is usually lacking in the pirated versions.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    It doesn’t stop piracy, but it decreases it by making it much more difficult and higher-friction. Claiming DRM does nothing is a bit like anti-vaxers claiming the Covid vaccine “doesn’t work” because the virus can still spread…
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      It doesn't do that either. Once a copy is out there, it's out there - there's no "scarcity" just because creating a pirated copy takes work. Only few individuals need go through the trouble.
olsgaarddk 5y ago
This reminded me of a recent experience on WeChat. I hadn't used it for a few years and recently tried to log in. I was told, that my account had been deactivate due to inactivity and that it was against my agreement with Tencent not to use WeChat regularly. After that I had to check a checkbox promising to log in regularly. Luckily I haven't paid for WeChat, and I don't need it anymore to keep in contact with friends, so I was far enough removed from the situation to laugh at it.
- oefrha 5y ago
  To be fair, there is a known problem of social media / messaging accounts being hacked and reanimated by botters / scammers long after the actual account owners have stopped using them. But it makes no sense at all for games.
ddtaylor 5y ago
D2R at launch was bad. Everyone, including Blizzard, admits that. But, after launch it's been pretty good. They are releasing the first balance/content patch in over 10 years and everyone is pretty hyped about it. With regards to the whole "30 days offline" thing - this was well known way ahead of launch. This is how all Blizzard games have worked for many years now. When they cancelled TCP/IP local play support the community asked them about it and they put an questions and answers segment out that included information about how you would need to connect to servers every once in a while to unlock game files. If that's not your thing then don't play or grab a crack. shrug
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > the whole "30 days offline" thing - this was well known way ahead of launch "The clause about the rights to dating your sister was well known way ahead of launch"
  - ddtaylor 5y ago
    It's actually explained in the FAQ section of this post: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23658118/diablo-ii-resurrected-technical-alpha-experience-the-legend https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23658118/diablo-ii-r...
    - Majromax 5y ago
      I don't see any explanation about 30-day online requirements at your link. However, you may have provided the wrong link: the FAQ is about a technical alpha build rather than the full release.
      - ddtaylor 5y ago
        > PLEASE NOTE: Although the Technical Alpha is single-player, an internet connection is still required to download the client and play the single-player in the test. The final game will permit off-line play in single-player mode, but you will be required to connect to the internet periodically to check for updates.
ezconnect 5y ago
Microsoft just bought them I am sure they will be more convenient for the gamers now.
ladyattis 5y ago
This is why I'm glad I still have my old copy of D2 to play Median XL and the like. Blizzard can kiss my butt if I'm gonna pay for their DRM'd copy of the game I already own.
gfd 5y ago
Do people not remember losing their characters/mules after 90 days of inactivity in the original diablo 2?
- aerique 5y ago
  Yes :-(
charlieyu1 5y ago
You can still play the old D2x that only expires your account after 90 days of inactivity, which is three times as good
throwawaysea 5y ago
I can believe the introduction of frustrating DRM. But I can’t believe they changed all the characters’ appearance to fit to their new woke sensibilities. There’s no reason these give these guys your money.
danlugo92 5y ago
Not your code not your software.
bradhensen 5y ago
What absurdity did the developers make? This is why I stopped supporting their games years ago. It's this rollercoaster of experience that I had, and it's not worth it.
daneel_w 5y ago
What is the actual effect? Are your characters deleted? Is your legally purchased copy (license) of the game forfeited?
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Yeah, the post is so low on information it really doesn't seem like its worth taking seriously. Not even the screenshot supports the claim.
- robrtsql 5y ago
  I assume it's sensationalized, and that the truth is that "You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline (until you go online again to re-affirm your ownership of the game)". I still very much do not like this, given that someday the server which affirms your ownership of the game will be taken offline.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Doesn’t the Xbox require this for all games?
    - kevingadd 5y ago
      No. https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect-network/using-xbox-one-offline https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect...
- Linosaurus 5y ago
  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 https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/298306
- KyleBerezin 5y ago
  This is the kind of question that should be the top comment on HN. I'm surprised to see so much jumping on the bandwagon for an obviously exaggerated claim. note: I am not defending what blizzard is doing.
Pinegulf 5y ago
As consumer use our power. Vote with your wallet.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
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 lose the tiny fraction of sales from people who care about this issue to prevent the buy-offline-return pattern that some folks might opt to use without this check in place. Yes, it won't prevent all piracy, but it's probably a net positive for revenue.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  The problem isn't requirement of being online. The problem is forcing people to be playing the game regularly or loose whatever they have "accomplished".
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    > The problem is forcing people to be playing the game regularly or loose whatever they have "accomplished". That problem isn't the one documented in the link we are discussing. Can you point me to some kind of citation that shows this is happening? I've not heard about it and a brief google search does not reveal anything.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    That's the worst part of playing Diablo 2 "classic" over Battle.net (rather than open Internet) : after 6 months of inactivity, your character and all the items you had stored on them are deleted from Blizzard's servers ! (And you don't get to keep an open copy of them.)
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  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 a no.
akeck 5y ago
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.
Groxx 5y ago
There is zero usable information here. Just a claim with no details whatsoever and a link to a petition.
Shadonototra 5y ago
i'm glad i didn't buy a copy, even though i loved the original diablo 2 blizzard is dead, diablo is dead, it'll be very challenging for microsoft to make profits with that company
Koiwai 5y ago
D2R is a disgrace, local LAN multiplayer is removed. Even D3 on consoles had that.
beaugunderson 5y ago
Ugh, wasn't aware of this and it's an issue because I now live on an RV and thus won't have Internet access all the time. Just opened a chargeback because of this.

232 points by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago

I recently setup pihole, which subsequently went down while playing PS5, Effectively taking out my internet. My PS5 basically refused to play the most recent Star Wars after about 30 minutes. Next time I’ll just pirate the bloody thing.

kmlx 5y ago
> I recently setup pihole, which subsequently went down while playing PS5 i think this is the issue right here.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  The issue is their toxic drm.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  A game should work in single player mode no matter the network quality or censorship by any of the layers in-between. It's one thing (and annoying enough) if multiplayer servers are shut down after a couple years without opening the source of the server or at least distributing VMware images. But single-player functionality should always work, because why should I otherwise buy a game for 50+ €?!
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    No, no excuses for no real online multiplayer either : even on PC Diablo 2 Resurrected sucks, because (AFAIK ?) they added always online DRM requirement (via Battle.net launcher), but especially removed real online multiplayer (leaving only their walled garden Battle.net) play, and finally removed (most) modding potential. Which were the main reasons why Diablo 2 classic was still played in the first place !
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      The problem with multi-player is that there is an immense amount of cheaters and trolls. It already was a problem fifteen years ago, nowadays game providers don't have another (realistic) choice. Cheating morons ruined the fun for everyone else.
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        The original Diablo 2 had a simple solution for this: Open Battle.Net and Closed Battle.Net. On Open Battle.Net you could use your offline characters in online play, meaning you would run into a lot of hackers, but you could also play together with your friends online (there was also a LAN option). Closed Battle.Net meant your character was stored on Blizzard's servers, which prevented the most blatant cheating. But starting with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (and arguably WoW) Blizzard decided they could make more money by shitting their games up with always online DRM.
      - BlueTemplar 5y ago
        This is patently false since plenty of games (including (modded, "classic") Diablo 2) still have real online multiplayer, with multiple anti-cheater/troll solutions : passwords, (unofficial) game admins, (potentially official DRM-backed) player whitelists & blacklists (potentially shared across hosts), not advertising your game-hosting IP on popular matchmaker servers... Please don't buy the "invasive DRM is good for you" corporate advertising - when (not if) the official servers shut down, these games will be crippled ! (We already had a taste of that with GameSpy, and it was only matchmaking servers !)
        mschuster91 5y ago
        For what it's worth I agree with you that there should be a legal mandate for game companies to make their online servers available for public download once the official servers get shut down. For the time in-between though... self-hosted servers are a niche market, and that is why companies don't care any more. Not enough players care to justify the expense, and ever since Hot Coffee and school shooters game companies have gotten pretty paranoid about moderation and fighting modders or bad press from raging cheaters. Again, there is no hope for the industry to fix that on their own, this is something that must be done by law.

daveroberts 5y ago

It seems almost self evident the game would not have been greenlit without a form of DRM. Most of the comments here are lamenting the game having DRM, but they're comparing having the game with DRM vs having the game without DRM, not having the game with DRM vs not having the game at all.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

At this point I'm just not buying anything by the dumpster fire that used to be Blizzard.

ddtaylor 5y ago
Most of us don't care and we just want to play vidya games.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  You are responsible for your actions. What you fund, you encourage.
  - ddtaylor 5y ago
    Pretty sure then as a tax paying citizen that I'm responsible for drone assassinations etc., so by comparison the entire Blizzard drama would be pretty low on the priority list by that logic.
    - acdha 5y ago
      It’s low, sure, but also much easier to do: you’re legally required to pay taxes and political change takes years, but you can simply choose to save money.
      - fsflover 5y ago
        > to save money Or to spend them elsewhere: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v12/ https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v12/. (No games there yet, but I hope they can be added.)
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      The logic remains valid, and according to your interpretation stealing a car seems "not a big deal" because it comes after a murder. (They are disconnected events, so to relate them is just a mental perspective - their gravity is independent. There is no «priority» forgiving your actions, it is no excuse).

fsflover 5y ago

We really need to fight against DRM: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/ https://www.defectivebydesign.org/.

mattl 5y ago
DBD doesn't really have any solutions to any of this other than "free software"

rjzzleep 5y ago

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 switch games unless you're in North America. I had already forgotten about it, but I get angry just reminded of that. Yeah, it's just 50 bucks, but when you got cheated on those 50 bucks that leaves a bad taste in ones mouth.

iqanq 5y ago
I don't understand. Have the servers been down ever since?
- kmlx 5y ago
  > Have the servers been down ever since? no, it works just fine. the issues the original poster highlighted had to do with launch problems.
  - aqme28 5y ago
    Launch problems that lasted for about a month on a decades-old game. It's still absurd.
- jug 5y ago
  It had severe launch issues that was long ongoing even for 1-2 months. It's much better now though and they are still optimizing it with the latest row currently in testing, which I think may solve these issues for good. The problem as I understand it was an architectural decision to remove the realms (regional groups of servers like USEast/West/EU/Asia) of Diablo 2 "Classic" so that everyone can play with each other. More fun that way, right? However, Diablo 2 has pretty lousy netcode (consider it's two decades old!) and turns out that one does not simply rewrite it to sync your heroes regularly to a centralized location as you played, turning out to cause a terrible bottleneck. Many such sync requests seem to have just straight out failed at peak hours, with characters losing hours of gameplay or even losing the characters altogether! This is, again, much better now thanks to more or less emergency mitigations. But it took them a few months and it's of course a major goof up to not think this through better. By the time it was fixed, many had started losing interest in the game. It's hard to extrapolate networking from testing to massive scales, I understand that, but these are network architects with years if not decades in the business of launching games and MMORPG's. _Someone_ should have been waving a little red flag here and told "hey, you do realize we're centralizing a core part of the game that was never planned to be centralized, and if these sync requests fail it's going to ruin their gameplay. So we're taking a risk and with very real fallout as well." But maybe someone did... Maybe many in fact did. Such warnings may not be the end of the story unfortunately.

anthk 5y ago

Get a libre engine to play Diablo I and II. Also, try Flare RPG.

ddtaylor 5y ago
DevilutionX is awesome (and I'm a contributor!) but D2R is on an entirely different level.
pqb 5y ago
I also recommend FlareRPG [0] to try out. It has way more pleasant navigation than Diablos, reminds me a bit of the Divine Divinity [1], which is also awesome single-player game. [0]: https://flarerpg.org/ https://flarerpg.org/ [1]: https://www.gog.com/game/divine_divinity https://www.gog.com/game/divine_divinity
- kroltan 5y ago
  It's an entirely different game (more of a CRPG than action), but the more modern Divinity Original Sin games are excellent too. DOS2 is my favorite RPG, and it can be played by itself (its story has basically no links to DOS1)
  - pixel_tracing 5y ago
    Divine Divinity != DOS
    - kroltan 5y ago
      Which is why I said "it's an entirely different game"! :D It has little to do with DD or BD, but it's still a very fun game.

girvo 5y ago

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.

kmlx 5y ago
> Blizzard is long dead. i'm still in somewhat of a denial since i really like their IPs. and diablo 4 is still very much on my radar. if that one tanks then I hope something changes as their IPs are just too good...
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  AAA development slog like what is apparently happening with D4 rarely bodes well for fun. Dev work apparently began in 2014 and it's not likely to be released until 2023 at the earliest.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Most of their IP is dead at this point; Warcraft is a dead horse they’ve been beating for the last decade, StarCraft is effectively abandoned, and Diablo 3 was a blatant cash grab from day 1 with a mediocre game behind it. Hearthstone and Overwatch are doing ok as esports but those aren’t the Blizzard IP I actually like. To think that any future games will be better than what we’ve gotten over the last decade is just being in denial that they’re Activision now. They have continued to mine the nostalgia of the player base with mediocre remakes and retread content and, combined with the fact that it’s now public knowledge how toxic Blizzard culture was during the “golden era”, it has destroyed most of the cultural value that IP had.
  - pfraze 5y ago
    Overwatch league is kind of hosed right now because of the weird shenanigans around OW2. Last I heard, they were planning on dropping team sizes by 1 (so a bunch of pros are getting fired) and they also planned to have next years league play the unreleased OW2 beta (??). It’s in a weird place.

Jyaif 5y ago

> It serves no real purpose Oh common. You may not like it, but DRM was invented for a reason.

ipaddr 5y ago
To frustrate those who legally purchased the game? It doesn't stop piracy, it makes the pirate version higher quality.
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  Probably to restrict secondary markets, not to stop piracy.
- trinovantes 5y ago
  Need to boost that MAU number
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  It really depends on how you define piracy. With movies and music it doesn't work at all because they don't evolve and change over time. Once that 4K BluRay content hits The Pirate Bay it's game over. But, with games, it's a very different story. Many games have intricate design with their servers that make ripping them apart and creating standalone pirated copies extremely difficult. Even some single player games, while pirated, don't get as much adoption from the pirate community because of the ongoing patch support they receive that is usually lacking in the pirated versions.
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  It doesn’t stop piracy, but it decreases it by making it much more difficult and higher-friction. Claiming DRM does nothing is a bit like anti-vaxers claiming the Covid vaccine “doesn’t work” because the virus can still spread…
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    It doesn't do that either. Once a copy is out there, it's out there - there's no "scarcity" just because creating a pirated copy takes work. Only few individuals need go through the trouble.

olsgaarddk 5y ago

This reminded me of a recent experience on WeChat. I hadn't used it for a few years and recently tried to log in. I was told, that my account had been deactivate due to inactivity and that it was against my agreement with Tencent not to use WeChat regularly. After that I had to check a checkbox promising to log in regularly. Luckily I haven't paid for WeChat, and I don't need it anymore to keep in contact with friends, so I was far enough removed from the situation to laugh at it.

oefrha 5y ago
To be fair, there is a known problem of social media / messaging accounts being hacked and reanimated by botters / scammers long after the actual account owners have stopped using them. But it makes no sense at all for games.

ddtaylor 5y ago

D2R at launch was bad. Everyone, including Blizzard, admits that. But, after launch it's been pretty good. They are releasing the first balance/content patch in over 10 years and everyone is pretty hyped about it. With regards to the whole "30 days offline" thing - this was well known way ahead of launch. This is how all Blizzard games have worked for many years now. When they cancelled TCP/IP local play support the community asked them about it and they put an questions and answers segment out that included information about how you would need to connect to servers every once in a while to unlock game files. If that's not your thing then don't play or grab a crack. shrug

mdp2021 5y ago
> the whole "30 days offline" thing - this was well known way ahead of launch "The clause about the rights to dating your sister was well known way ahead of launch"
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  It's actually explained in the FAQ section of this post: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23658118/diablo-ii-resurrected-technical-alpha-experience-the-legend https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23658118/diablo-ii-r...
  - Majromax 5y ago
    I don't see any explanation about 30-day online requirements at your link. However, you may have provided the wrong link: the FAQ is about a technical alpha build rather than the full release.
    - ddtaylor 5y ago
      > PLEASE NOTE: Although the Technical Alpha is single-player, an internet connection is still required to download the client and play the single-player in the test. The final game will permit off-line play in single-player mode, but you will be required to connect to the internet periodically to check for updates.

ezconnect 5y ago

Microsoft just bought them I am sure they will be more convenient for the gamers now.

ladyattis 5y ago

This is why I'm glad I still have my old copy of D2 to play Median XL and the like. Blizzard can kiss my butt if I'm gonna pay for their DRM'd copy of the game I already own.

gfd 5y ago

Do people not remember losing their characters/mules after 90 days of inactivity in the original diablo 2?

aerique 5y ago
Yes :-(

charlieyu1 5y ago

You can still play the old D2x that only expires your account after 90 days of inactivity, which is three times as good

throwawaysea 5y ago

I can believe the introduction of frustrating DRM. But I can’t believe they changed all the characters’ appearance to fit to their new woke sensibilities. There’s no reason these give these guys your money.

danlugo92 5y ago

Not your code not your software.

bradhensen 5y ago

What absurdity did the developers make? This is why I stopped supporting their games years ago. It's this rollercoaster of experience that I had, and it's not worth it.

daneel_w 5y ago

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

wodenokoto 5y ago
Yeah, the post is so low on information it really doesn't seem like its worth taking seriously. Not even the screenshot supports the claim.
robrtsql 5y ago
I assume it's sensationalized, and that the truth is that "You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline (until you go online again to re-affirm your ownership of the game)". I still very much do not like this, given that someday the server which affirms your ownership of the game will be taken offline.
- exdsq 5y ago
  Doesn’t the Xbox require this for all games?
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    No. https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect-network/using-xbox-one-offline https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect...
Linosaurus 5y ago
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 https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/298306
KyleBerezin 5y ago
This is the kind of question that should be the top comment on HN. I'm surprised to see so much jumping on the bandwagon for an obviously exaggerated claim. note: I am not defending what blizzard is doing.

Pinegulf 5y ago

As consumer use our power. Vote with your wallet.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

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 lose the tiny fraction of sales from people who care about this issue to prevent the buy-offline-return pattern that some folks might opt to use without this check in place. Yes, it won't prevent all piracy, but it's probably a net positive for revenue.

lmilcin 5y ago
The problem isn't requirement of being online. The problem is forcing people to be playing the game regularly or loose whatever they have "accomplished".
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  > The problem is forcing people to be playing the game regularly or loose whatever they have "accomplished". That problem isn't the one documented in the link we are discussing. Can you point me to some kind of citation that shows this is happening? I've not heard about it and a brief google search does not reveal anything.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  That's the worst part of playing Diablo 2 "classic" over Battle.net (rather than open Internet) : after 6 months of inactivity, your character and all the items you had stored on them are deleted from Blizzard's servers ! (And you don't get to keep an open copy of them.)
salamandersauce 5y ago
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 a no.

akeck 5y ago

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.

Groxx 5y ago

There is zero usable information here. Just a claim with no details whatsoever and a link to a petition.

Shadonototra 5y ago

i'm glad i didn't buy a copy, even though i loved the original diablo 2 blizzard is dead, diablo is dead, it'll be very challenging for microsoft to make profits with that company

Koiwai 5y ago

D2R is a disgrace, local LAN multiplayer is removed. Even D3 on consoles had that.

beaugunderson 5y ago

Ugh, wasn't aware of this and it's an issue because I now live on an RV and thus won't have Internet access all the time. Just opened a chargeback because of this.