8 ms·

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

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.
alickz 5y ago
Consumers need to demand better refund systems from the big console makers. On Steam if you don't like a game, or if it doesn't work for you, you can get a full refund no questions asked as long as it's within 14 days and with less than 2 hours playtime. In certain circumstances they even give refunds after 2 hours playtime (e.g. you spend 2+ hours debugging the game and trying to get it to run) This should be standard in games, including console games. It benefits the user AND the developer, as I've taken way more risks on games on Steam knowing if I don't like the game I can always return it, which leads to more devs getting my money and me playing games I otherwise wouldn't have.
- darkteflon 5y ago
  Honestly all of the refunds I’ve done on Xbox have been completely painless.
  - alickz 5y ago
    That's great to hear. From their website[0] it seems they have a very similar policy to Steam, except their playtime criteria is a bit more vague. But still good to see. Sony on the other hand void any refund once you _begin downloading the game_[1], which is ridiculous. [0] https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/subscriptions-billing/buy-games-apps/refund-orders https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/subscriptions-billing/bu... [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/support/store/ps-store-refund-request/ https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/support/store/ps-store-ref...
  - JadoJodo 5y ago
    On the other end of the spectrum is Sony. Of the several times I've called in seeking a refund due to a game's (lack of) performance, only twice have I reached a live person within the 60-minutes I allotted to wait in the phone queue. Their chat support is also terrible, responding with generic "We don't offer refunds"-type messages regardless of the issue.
    - moepstar 5y ago
      While that is only one datapoint, this only reinforces my absolute motivation to not give Sony another €, ever, again... They've done themselves in, imho starting with their CD rootkit fiasco and, since then, they've time and again proven that Sony is a company that is not sincere, to say the least. Sony TV? nope.. Sony camera? not for me... Sony whatever? yeah, no...
juanse 5y ago
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.
pixel_tracing 5y ago
Just a note I had an amazing experience with D2: Resurrected after they fixed their shit a bit.
sph 5y ago
Stop giving these hacks money, it's fucking easy. I love Diablo 2, but the current Actiblizzard can go bankrupt before I enable their shitty practices and my purchase figures on some MBA's slide as a positive signal that customers are happy, let's keep doing what we're doing. Yes, that's what your $50 you've written off are doing. It's not rocket science, especially in the current golden age of gaming, where there's plenty of excellent choice on indie, AA and some AAA publishers portfolio. Yet people keep complaining and then lining up to buy the latest Battlefield and CoD and shitty remaster.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Exactly, it’s like Frog And Toad. “These game companies must be punished so they stop abusing customers!” cried Toad as he bought another game.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  if you're looking for a good alternative to diablo, I highly recommend the torchlight series

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.

alickz 5y ago

Consumers need to demand better refund systems from the big console makers. On Steam if you don't like a game, or if it doesn't work for you, you can get a full refund no questions asked as long as it's within 14 days and with less than 2 hours playtime. In certain circumstances they even give refunds after 2 hours playtime (e.g. you spend 2+ hours debugging the game and trying to get it to run) This should be standard in games, including console games. It benefits the user AND the developer, as I've taken way more risks on games on Steam knowing if I don't like the game I can always return it, which leads to more devs getting my money and me playing games I otherwise wouldn't have.

darkteflon 5y ago
Honestly all of the refunds I’ve done on Xbox have been completely painless.
- alickz 5y ago
  That's great to hear. From their website[0] it seems they have a very similar policy to Steam, except their playtime criteria is a bit more vague. But still good to see. Sony on the other hand void any refund once you _begin downloading the game_[1], which is ridiculous. [0] https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/subscriptions-billing/buy-games-apps/refund-orders https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/subscriptions-billing/bu... [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/support/store/ps-store-refund-request/ https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/support/store/ps-store-ref...
- JadoJodo 5y ago
  On the other end of the spectrum is Sony. Of the several times I've called in seeking a refund due to a game's (lack of) performance, only twice have I reached a live person within the 60-minutes I allotted to wait in the phone queue. Their chat support is also terrible, responding with generic "We don't offer refunds"-type messages regardless of the issue.
  - moepstar 5y ago
    While that is only one datapoint, this only reinforces my absolute motivation to not give Sony another €, ever, again... They've done themselves in, imho starting with their CD rootkit fiasco and, since then, they've time and again proven that Sony is a company that is not sincere, to say the least. Sony TV? nope.. Sony camera? not for me... Sony whatever? yeah, no...

juanse 5y ago

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.

pixel_tracing 5y ago

Just a note I had an amazing experience with D2: Resurrected after they fixed their shit a bit.

sph 5y ago

Stop giving these hacks money, it's fucking easy. I love Diablo 2, but the current Actiblizzard can go bankrupt before I enable their shitty practices and my purchase figures on some MBA's slide as a positive signal that customers are happy, let's keep doing what we're doing. Yes, that's what your $50 you've written off are doing. It's not rocket science, especially in the current golden age of gaming, where there's plenty of excellent choice on indie, AA and some AAA publishers portfolio. Yet people keep complaining and then lining up to buy the latest Battlefield and CoD and shitty remaster.

ryandrake 5y ago
Exactly, it’s like Frog And Toad. “These game companies must be punished so they stop abusing customers!” cried Toad as he bought another game.
cultofmetatron 5y ago
if you're looking for a good alternative to diablo, I highly recommend the torchlight series