A member on the Battle.net forums recently inquired about whether or not people would have to pay fees in order to play Diablo 3 online. Bashiok responded with the following information:
"Mike mentioned it in an Activision Blizzard investor meeting [paraphrased] "A player that buys Starcraft 2 at retail will have the ability to play on Battle.net with no additional fee."
I'll point out that this is a very carefully worded statement."
Bashiok then went on to discuss how some pay-for ideas could possibly work for the game.
"One pay-for idea that specifically relates to Diablo that I thought was kind of interesting was the chance to resurrect a fallen hardcore character.
I think this was mentioned by a fan, as far as I know we're not even thinking about these types of pay-for options yet. But, I think it's kind of interesting. I'm not sure if I like the idea or not, which is probably why I like thinking about it. There are some obvious pros and some obvious cons, but I'm not sure there's a clear cut answer as to whether it would work well or not."
Obviously, none of us would like to have to pay additional fees in order to use Battle.net. If nothing else, I believe anybody who buys the inevitably pricier "Collector's Edition" of Diablo 3 when it comes out should never have to pay Battle.net fees to play the game.
However, this does raise the question: What special features would you pay Battle.net fees for with Diablo 3 other than the chance to resurrect a fallen hardcore character? Is there anything that you feel would be worth spending a little extra cash on to make the online gameplay more interesting?
Ummm I dont want to spend cash on the game except to purchase it lol.
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aww that would be lame for hardcore.. its not about surviving anymore.. its about whos willing to pay some real cash
Yea the richest people would rule hardcore...lol
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If you want to arrange it
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If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
1. Some things that I think people would pay for (not that I necessarily want to happen):
2. Changing their characters realm: Europe to Asia for example.
3. Resetting all skill points back to zero and crediting your skill point bank so you can completely redo without a character remake. I know they have already announced some kind of system like this but with no details on the extent of changing and how.
4. Being able to customize your weapons/armors to a look that only you have.
5. Creating your own title: Sir, Baron, Lord, Duke, Retard, etc
6. Having all the waypoints after you've beaten the game.
I don't think they'll allow resurrection of hardcore characters for a fee. It would mess up the ladder ranking, assuming there is a ladder. The people with the most money to spend would rank highest, and that's not how it should be.
Yeah, I'm doubting that they would charge money to resurrect your character in hardcore; wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of HC anyways?
My guess is that the fee's for things will be purely cosmetic, think the horse armor from Oblivion. They are not going to implement something that will sway player advantage in the game; that would totally screw any type of system they had going and the community.
But no, there is no way in hell we should pay for B-net.
It started out as a free service bundled with their games so that players could connect with eachother, and it should stay that way, not turned into another (as much as it pains me to sound like the typical complainer) WoW style pay-to-play game.
Buuut, then again, they would pretty much be forced to take a more active role in Battlenet if we did pay, but hopefully they will be more motivated to update it frequently since both SC2 and D3 will be running on it, probably even WC4 when and if it's announced.
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Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
my opinion on this will change or stay the same. it really depends on how good the new bnet will be. if blizzard pulls off something amazing and inconceivable then i will gladly pay.
plus, when you pay monthly for WoW, youre paying monthly for ONE game. when you pay monthly for bnet, youre paying for MULTIPLE games.
Good point, if they make it good enough I'd probably be willing to pay.
Not as much as other games though, since it is only a tool to connect to other players.
That depends if you're into the other Blizzard games though, a player who only wants to play D3 should not be paying full fees, since they are not making use of the other games offered with Bnet.
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Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
But no, there is no way in hell we should pay for B-net.
It started out as a free service bundled with their games so that players could connect with eachother, and it should stay that way, not turned into another (as much as it pains me to sound like the typical complainer) WoW style pay-to-play game.
This all depends on how far theywill be taking B.net.
In light of the recent announcement that LAN will not be supported for any of their new games, and the fact that Battle.Net is going to be much better, more stable, safer and faster (or so they claim), Blizzard will have a situation on their hands. Especially if, as they probably predict, a larger amount of byers will be logging on to their servers with this generation of games as opposed to previously in their history.
I don't know what their economic calculation are for this, but it doesn't seem all too far-fetched that B.net will become too expensive to remain entirely free. Now if that turns out to be the case, we'll have to pay. Either that will come out as a monthly payment (certainly below WoW costs), or in the form of micropayments, such as namechanges, realmtransfers, special visual effects for your character and likely features. How exacly that all turns out remains to be seen though.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
Very good point... never really considered that given all the new things to be included, B-net may become too expensive.
If this does happen, I'd MUCH prefer micropayments, but I'd be fine with monthly payments (hopefully small) if it meant that Battlenet would actually have time and effort put into it.
Which brings me to the next point... if Bnet 2.0 turns out like the previous one, and by this I mean neglected, and full of hackers/spammers, I would have a serious problem with paying for the service.
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Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
Which brings me to the next point... if Bnet 2.0 turns out like the previous one, and by this I mean neglected, and full of hackers/spammers, I would have a serious problem with paying for the service.
Well the idea is that paying for servers prevents that from happening. WoW does it extremely well, but in addition to a massive amount of servers also has very many GMs, support and extensive developments teams assigned to it for that money. I don't expect Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 to require as many servers or background personell. And either way, you can't charge customers MMO-fees unless you're giving them an MMO. And neither of those games are.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
Exactly my point, paying for servers usually prevents that from happening, but in the odd chance that it does not prevent it from turning out like the first Bnet, I would probably ditch the online capability and just play single player.
I can't see them requiring much manpower either once they are released, maybe some extra maps for SC2 after release, or updates to the random-quest datanbase for D3, but beyond that the only roles I can see the Blizz team filling is Bnet moderation.
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Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
i think bashiok and other blizzard crew members like thinking about it obviously for one reason, there company would make even more money. but the bottom line is.. blizzard has never charged for battle.net and never will, they believe in integrity just as they do a well polished finished product. i think this discussion steems from so many wow players on the forums.
I'm just wondering if anyone played 2moons? They actually had a few things you could purchase that didnt make it un fair in anyway. (reviving a hc char is retarded by the way) xp potions I think would be a cool idea. Id pay 5$ to get dbl xp for an hour or 2. maybe even charge for cows or something lol 1$ an hour. who knows. I like the changing of the sex and hairstyles and stuff. Thats always a plus to be able to change after uve already made a char and decide to change. But I agree with alot of you. Its not really a MMO like warcraft so I don't ever see them charging anyways. BUt I would def fork over 5$ to get 10 lvls in a few hrs.
Assuming leveling is as fast as in Diablo II (which I'm banking on, although no, I'm not talking about grushing and then Chaosing/GUbering) since this is not going to be like an MMO in the slow-paced ways, increased experience for two hours will get you instantly leveled. That would be affecting a game mechanic and makes it unfair.
Things like name changes, server switches, maybe increased storage, and respeccing (just suggestions) are things that do not affect game mechanics and are more fair. They can be, however, invaluable, depending on the person.
Bashiok then went on to discuss how some pay-for ideas could possibly work for the game.
Obviously, none of us would like to have to pay additional fees in order to use Battle.net. If nothing else, I believe anybody who buys the inevitably pricier "Collector's Edition" of Diablo 3 when it comes out should never have to pay Battle.net fees to play the game.
However, this does raise the question: What special features would you pay Battle.net fees for with Diablo 3 other than the chance to resurrect a fallen hardcore character? Is there anything that you feel would be worth spending a little extra cash on to make the online gameplay more interesting?
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
Yea the richest people would rule hardcore...lol
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
2. Changing their characters realm: Europe to Asia for example.
3. Resetting all skill points back to zero and crediting your skill point bank so you can completely redo without a character remake. I know they have already announced some kind of system like this but with no details on the extent of changing and how.
4. Being able to customize your weapons/armors to a look that only you have.
5. Creating your own title: Sir, Baron, Lord, Duke, Retard, etc
6. Having all the waypoints after you've beaten the game.
7. Changing the gender of your character.
8. Perming characters
My guess is that the fee's for things will be purely cosmetic, think the horse armor from Oblivion. They are not going to implement something that will sway player advantage in the game; that would totally screw any type of system they had going and the community.
But no, there is no way in hell we should pay for B-net.
It started out as a free service bundled with their games so that players could connect with eachother, and it should stay that way, not turned into another (as much as it pains me to sound like the typical complainer) WoW style pay-to-play game.
Buuut, then again, they would pretty much be forced to take a more active role in Battlenet if we did pay, but hopefully they will be more motivated to update it frequently since both SC2 and D3 will be running on it, probably even WC4 when and if it's announced.
plus, when you pay monthly for WoW, youre paying monthly for ONE game. when you pay monthly for bnet, youre paying for MULTIPLE games.
Not as much as other games though, since it is only a tool to connect to other players.
That depends if you're into the other Blizzard games though, a player who only wants to play D3 should not be paying full fees, since they are not making use of the other games offered with Bnet.
In light of the recent announcement that LAN will not be supported for any of their new games, and the fact that Battle.Net is going to be much better, more stable, safer and faster (or so they claim), Blizzard will have a situation on their hands. Especially if, as they probably predict, a larger amount of byers will be logging on to their servers with this generation of games as opposed to previously in their history.
I don't know what their economic calculation are for this, but it doesn't seem all too far-fetched that B.net will become too expensive to remain entirely free. Now if that turns out to be the case, we'll have to pay. Either that will come out as a monthly payment (certainly below WoW costs), or in the form of micropayments, such as namechanges, realmtransfers, special visual effects for your character and likely features. How exacly that all turns out remains to be seen though.
If this does happen, I'd MUCH prefer micropayments, but I'd be fine with monthly payments (hopefully small) if it meant that Battlenet would actually have time and effort put into it.
Which brings me to the next point... if Bnet 2.0 turns out like the previous one, and by this I mean neglected, and full of hackers/spammers, I would have a serious problem with paying for the service.
I can't see them requiring much manpower either once they are released, maybe some extra maps for SC2 after release, or updates to the random-quest datanbase for D3, but beyond that the only roles I can see the Blizz team filling is Bnet moderation.
Things like name changes, server switches, maybe increased storage, and respeccing (just suggestions) are things that do not affect game mechanics and are more fair. They can be, however, invaluable, depending on the person.
That, however, is just my opinion.