LOL! Yeah show them videos like this and ask them if they want to grow and be like that?
IF you read a bit more from one of the youtube movies (the description) there is quite a lot of story about that the guy in the video was acting
he has said that "people don't understand my humor" etc.
There are a lot of countries that don?t offer exactly average or below average connections, like for example 500kb download and 200kb upload, those people would be better off playing over lan than over battle net.
Lol thats totally fine connection for multiplaying.. 512/256M you mean? I used to play D2 with modem D3 might not use much more bandwidth since there isn't really huge amount of people in the game at the same time.
^ yeah and well a decent internet connection. I have no idea how will blizzard handle the communication to their servers.. how much communication is required.. but if it's not much and you have quite slow internet it might be ok if most of the traffic goes trough your own switch where your LAN mates are connected to.
My guess is that D3 won't go above 100 Kbps maximum. And 100Kbps isn't much at all.
So if we could do 28.8 Kbps 10 years ago, then we should be able to handle 0.1 Mbps now. Easily if you have broadband (which pretty much is a standard for most games today).
Bandwidth isn't always the issue though, you can have good bandwidth and still have high latency issues, you could have an OC192 at your door and still have lag. If the connections response time is around 200ms + your gaming experience is going to suck wind. Getting around the world on the Internet still has delay issues not unlike international phone calls. Not all countries have a good mesh of backbone routers. Self recovery isn't perfect and without problem, that's why companies like Akamai exist providing global presence for content. I don't see any good reason for not providing a LAN option in D3.
OK the usual responses, from the Blizzard fanboys to the concerned parents and a lot of guys who know a lot about multiplayer. All good points, all make some sort of connection except for ONE offensive character (no names given) BUT it's not just me and the other guys who agree LAN should be part of the game.
Check this out...
I don't know how D2 handles the information transfers, but it sure gives a visual feeling of zero delay (your actions) and the feeling of zero delay + packet loss when looking at allies.
Sorry there I go ASSuming stuff :D, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a connectionless protocol with low over head used often for streaming video or playing games because it does not require retransmission of of lost packets. That's also partly why streaming video buffers so it can compensate for errors.
The flip side of that is Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which is connection oriented and attempts redelivery of lost or dropped packets. To do that though adds overhead in the protocol and makes it not optimal for games or video. Think of TCP/IP as being like sending a series of packages in the mail, if you needed to send 5 boxes at the same time to someone in the mail to the same address you would lable the boxes 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5 etc. so the mail person would be able to keep track of them. TCP essentially has a tracking number so it can be found and redelivered if needed. UDP has no tracking number, it makes a best effort to deliver but if it gets lost, oh well.
They are both part of the Internet Protocol (IP) suite. So when I say UDP over TCP/IP suite, (you will see it written like that in doc's a lot) more accurately it is UDP/IP meaning UDP over IP, the IP portion is basically the addressing portion of the protocol (a gross over simplification, but good enough definition for here).
Blizzard knows removing LAN doesn't reduce piracy and they won't change anything despite the petitions with upwards of 60k signatures. They don't even pretend to care, instead they blame the folks who don't have high speed internet access. I'd be less annoyed if they just outright said they don't want to commit the development dollars instead of trying to bullshit us.
Their bright idea is to spout nonsense about piracy reduction and cheating? Cheaters always find a way and I don't know a single person who pirated Diablo 2 despite the fact that LAN is apparently the ultimate evil. Hell I know people with 3 copies just for LAN use in their own house! Only have a 60kbps connection? No worries, TCP/IP to the rescue! D2 is a great game, it has all the bases covered, and it was well worth my $60. Purposefully handicapping play styles in D3/SC2 will not get them my money. Congrats Blizzard on your membership to the elite club of halfass game development; founded by none other than Electronic Arts.
The only hope we have is there are some very skilled people out there who may take it upon themselves to rectify this atrocity for the sake of multiplayer mods. BNET1 was cloned, I expect the motivation this time is much greater now that the LAN features don't even exist.
Blizzard knows removing LAN doesn't reduce piracy and they won't change anything despite the petitions with upwards of 60k signatures. They don't even pretend to care, instead they blame the folks who don't have high speed internet access. I'd be less annoyed if they just outright said they don't want to commit the development dollars instead of trying to bullshit us.
Their bright idea is to spout nonsense about piracy reduction and cheating? Cheaters always find a way and I don't know a single person who pirated Diablo 2 despite the fact that LAN is apparently the ultimate evil. Hell I know people with 3 copies just for LAN use in their own house! Only have a 60kbps connection? No worries, TCP/IP to the rescue! D2 is a great game, it has all the bases covered, and it was well worth my $60. Purposefully handicapping play styles in D3/SC2 will not get them my money. Congrats Blizzard on your membership to the elite club of halfass game development; founded by none other than Electronic Arts.
The only hope we have is there are some very skilled people out there who may take it upon themselves to rectify this atrocity for the sake of multiplayer mods. BNET1 was cloned, I expect the motivation this time is much greater now that the LAN features don't even exist.
+1 rep man, I agree completely.
Speaking of not having high speed, I don't, and have had to rely on LAN for quite some time to take the place of Bnet, and it's made D2 much more better.
There was also a post a while back about developing countries, where they cannot afford/obtain high speed, and are missing out on multiplayer now that LAN is gone.
Heh... I was one of those people with several copies for my house, fuck I miss those days.
And about EA.... they're definitely my least favorite developer, I fucking hate them to be honest. Selling out fans is just what they do, along with shitty development. I'm still pissed off about the dungeon keeper series, they sold it to some fucking Korean company, which is now making an incredible looking version of it not available in North America.
Honestly, this is their worst move yet. This will fucking PROMOTE piracy, do they honestly know how many people are going to be downloading LAN capable versions from torrents ?
Pissing off the fans, bullshitting about the reasons, and causing more piracy. Grats Blizz.
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I think that you have to have some trust that blizzard are trying to do the right thing by their fans. Not every need can be satisfied. They must have put a lot of effort into the new battlenet system to make it easy for people to use. I don't think they would intentionally leave something out just because they could not be bothered to put it in. I think for any game there are pros and cons that affect some people more than others.
They could have said "ok this game is going to require a really high end machine because we feel the need to showcase some cool graphical techniques" That would have made the game pretty much out of my leuge but I would have tried hard to save for a new pc (despite the fact i owe the government tens of thousands of pounds in student loans) there are always people who are going to miss out, thats just life. I think Blizzard ususaly tries to make that as small a group as possible.
Not every need can be satisfied. They must have put a lot of effort into the new battlenet system to make it easy for people to use. I don't think they would intentionally leave something out just because they could not be bothered to put it in. I think for any game there are pros and cons that affect some people more than others.
Easy use of BattleNet doesn't magically reduce the overhead to allow an ARPG to run on analog connections. I'm sure if they thought it would yield them enough sales they'd put it in. I said they didn't want to spend the money. They are gutting a feature to reduce time and cost. There is no other upside that isn't propaganda no matter how much rhetoric Bashiok throws around. It's amazing to think that anyone would buy that hogwash.
It's funny you mention the graphics. So not only are you endorsing that they take out a core component of D3, and even more importantly SC2, but it's okay that they recycle graphics? They might as well use the Warcraft engine for everything they make in the next 40 years, apparently they can do no wrong. Is Blizz borrowing the Apple kool aid mix?
If they could guarantee multiplayer will function on a 32kbps connection I'm sure this would matter a lot less. They said D2 would and everyone knows what a croc that is. 15 minutes and you'll start black mapping on 48, 56, or 68, little lone 32.
Easy use of BattleNet doesn't magically reduce the overhead to allow an ARPG to run on analog connections. I'm sure if they thought it would yield them enough sales they'd put it in. I said they didn't want to spend the money. They are gutting a feature to reduce time and cost. There is no other upside that isn't propaganda no matter how much rhetoric Bashiok throws around. It's amazing to think that anyone would buy that hogwash.
It's funny you mention the graphics. So not only are you endorsing that they take out a core component of D3, and even more importantly SC2, but it's okay that they recycle graphics? They might as well use the Warcraft engine for everything they make in the next 40 years, apparently they can do no wrong. Is Blizz borrowing the Apple kool aid mix?
If they could guarantee multiplayer will function on a 32kbps connection I'm sure this would matter a lot less. They said D2 would and everyone knows what a croc that is. 15 minutes and you'll start black mapping on 48, 56, or 68, little lone 32.
Shatner might be a little overly passionate, but the point is made. It's like Blizzard hired some modders to fiddle with WoW to make SC2 and D3. Probably why there isn't any LAN. The part that scares me is what happens when they decide they need to charge us for multi? It's easy to say you won't, but the Hellgate guys said you'd be able to play forever as a founder and look how that turned out. If that happens we have no alternatives.
Also keep in mind just because you assume few people are stuck behind narrowband doesn't mean it's true. If the digital TV switch has taught us anything it's that a large portion of the world still can't get a wide line. My area alone had 200,000 people lose TV service with no alternative aside from satellite, and anyone who's had internet satellite knows what a total wank that is.
Destrel you make a great point, and beyond all the tech reasons we have tossed around here that is largely why I only play LAN when I do. Mostly I play single player mode, but I like LAN once in a while. I don't play B.NET for several reasons which I'll just number down.
Your bnet account gets waxed after 30 days of non-use, I like being able to take a few months off and come back and know my game is there.
Unless you are playing with your friends (but then I'm doing LAN), people on bnet try to rush through the levels. Annoys the hell out of me as I like to clear each level before moving on so I get all the exp points possible. Often they want to challenge you, which just doesn't interest me, probably because I remember the macro losers of D1 who had nothing better to do than tricking people to let them into their games so they could screw it up.
If I have a LAN party where I invite friends over it's seems kind of ridiculous for all of us to have to connect to a central server on the Internet just to play each other. If you have a slow link, despite the fact it is bandwidth friendly I have a rough time believing 4 or more connections all piping out across the same slow link won't start see some issues. Not to mention what if their is a local issue with my ISP and my service falls off for some reason, (an accidental fiber cut example). Poof! there goes our game, for all of us!
If I have high latency or excessive errors in my connection, then my game is going to be choppy and less enjoyable.
If Blizzard does away with LAN, yeah I still buy the game and enjoy the single player mode, I certainly won't lose any sleep over it. That said Blizzard's logic for nix'ing adding LAN is very weak.
Destrel you make a great point, and beyond all the tech reasons we have tossed around here that is largely why I only play LAN when I do. Mostly I play single player mode, but I like LAN once in a while. I don't play B.NET for several reasons which I'll just number down.
Your bnet account gets waxed after 30 days of non-use, I like being able to take a few months off and come back and know my game is there.
Unless you are playing with your friends (but then I'm doing LAN), people on bnet try to rush through the levels. Annoys the hell out of me as I like to clear each level before moving on so I get all the exp points possible. Often they want to challenge you, which just doesn't interest me, probably because I remember the macro losers of D1 who had nothing better to do than tricking people to let them into their games so they could screw it up.
If I have a LAN party where I invite friends over it's seems kind of ridiculous for all of us to have to connect to a central server on the Internet just to play each other. If you have a slow link, despite the fact it is bandwidth friendly I have a rough time believing 4 or more connections all piping out across the same slow link won't start see some issues. Not to mention what if their is a local issue with my ISP and my service falls off for some reason, (an accidental fiber cut example). Poof! there goes our game, for all of us!
If I have high latency or excessive errors in my connection, then my game is going to be choppy and less enjoyable.
If Blizzard does away with LAN, yeah I still buy the game and enjoy the single player mode, I certainly won't lose any sleep over it. That said Blizzard's logic for nix'ing adding LAN is very weak.
Well I am not for LAN and I am not against it, I see the pros and cons of both. As for your 4 points however:
1) We have no idea how the new Battle Net 2.0 is going to work and I highly doubt Blizz is going to keep the 30 day no use policy especially since everyone is going to have to get a Battle Net Account which is going to look over all of Blizzards games, not just Diablo 3 so they can't possibly wipe anything out.
2) No one ever said you have to play with people online that are not your real life friends, and there were already ways of keeping people you do not want to join your game out of your game by password protecting it. And if your real life friends do not play, you can probably find a guild with people who have the same game play ideals as you do.
3) LAN: the two reasons I keep seeing for people wanting LAN is because their internet sucks(ok valid reason, and probably the only reason I see as being worthy of mentioning) and the second is to be sociable. Now if your internet is pretty decent and the only reason you want LAN is so you can talk to your friends, I would just like to point out the wide assortment of programs like Ventrillo and TeamSpeak that people can use to talk to each other over the internet while they play a game. Plus Blizz will probably have something like one of these programs directly built into Battle Net 2.0(they already have it for WoW) and that one will be free.
4) Everyone has to deal with this happening to them, not just yourself. I have had many instances where my cable would go out for days(yes days) it sucks and I know how you feel.
3) LAN: the two reasons I keep seeing for people wanting LAN is because their internet sucks(ok valid reason, and probably the only reason I see as being worthy of mentioning) and the second is to be sociable. Now if your internet is pretty decent and the only reason you want LAN is so you can talk to your friends, I would just like to point out the wide assortment of programs like Ventrillo and TeamSpeak that people can use to talk to each other over the internet while they play a game. Plus Blizz will probably have something like one of these programs directly built into Battle Net 2.0(they already have it for WoW) and that one will be free.
+ you can still put up a LAN and all connect to battle.net.. but anyways if the connection limits you then it doesn't really help
Last
The GAME is pretty harmless. I don't think that Diablo is going to put the make on anybody's daughter.
The creeps are the problem - and there's no way Blizzard is going to be able to filter them out. Whatever they may claim it's always better to be safe. Blizzard doesn't have the responsibility for my kids. I do.
I don't have to justify anything. My kids - my decision.
while i understand concern for your kids, i think it's misplaced here.
i played D2 on open Bnet starting when i was about 13 years old, and i was never in any danger. and in all the time i've spent on there, i've never been exposed to anything worse than some swearing and getting screwed over/having my stuff stolen by random s.o.b.'s.
i've also never heard of any creeps getting a kid's info and abducting them because of association on Bnet.
it's not like they're on some shady internet romance chat room.
not to mention the fact that you're obviously a good parent, devoted to your children's safety. if they're old enough to be playing Diablo games and knowing how to have LAN parties, they should know by now not to give personal info out to strangers over the internet and endanger themselves anyways.
i've also never heard of any creeps getting a kid's info and abducting them because of association on Bnet.
it's not like they're on some shady internet romance chat room.
I don't trip too heavy with this yet since my little guy isn't old enough to go out and just meet folks across town just yet. And we keep a close tab on his chat friend list and ask him a lot of questions. However, pedophiles go where kids go, granted a Diablo game or chat room probably isn't their first choice :D. Yet my wife stays up on this stuff religiously, she searches the web for ped's in our area. We have like a almost a dozen sexual offenders within 1 mile radius of where we live about 1/3 are level 3 ped's, and we don't live in bad part of town. Bluntly their are some sick freaks out there.
I can understand from your perspective why a parent might appear overly paranoid, but as a parent, it's not over kill to be that worried because the story always is the same when a kid disappears. I just turned my back for a second, I thought I knew them better, and on and on. So a good parent is going to be a little over the top. Having a little one changes you, it's hard to understand until you do. I think the closest feeling to it would be your first pet, for the first few days you just check on it all the time and want to make sure it's OK, but then you finally relax. With a kid theough it takes years to relax.
Its a worthy concern to be sure, I think every parent worries about their children but not necessarily for the right reasons if you catch my meaning. Its all over the news when a child is abducted / paedophile ring is busted because it is so out of the ordinary.
Its like a plane crash is only on the headline news because its so rare. If they happened all the time like car crashes did then no-one would put it on the news. You probably don't think twice about your child travelling in a car yet it is possibly one of the most dangerous things he will ever do in terms of chances of death/injury, second only to climbing the stairs ;).
My point is that I think people worry about the worse case scenario far to much. If you think about maybe 35-45 years ago (when my mum was growing up) All children played outside all the time unsupervised and unchecked. She said the only thing that was different back then were the number of cars on the roads. People haven't changed since then there were still abductions etc but the rate was pretty much the same as it is today.
I can understand however about getting paranoid about unlikely scenarios. I worry that my heart will stop (granted I do have a heart condition) but it is statistically unlikely that it will do so. I worry about dying in a plane crash and yet you are more likely to be killed by your trousers than on a British plane! I think that everyone has these worries but parents seem to focus them on their children (sometimes to the child's expense and sometimes not).
We live in a world where if its digital its hackable!! So your attempt to remove lan is futile because someone will simply hack it and make a way for lan.
All you have done is cause more reason for people to pirate the game. U should always make a game as diverse as possible, let your gamers have more options. As soon as u limit people thats when you loose sales.
I don't know who you are talking to when saying "U" or "you", Blizzard isn't reading.
Remember that if LAN is added by a hack, then it is most likely going to be visible by scanning the game or something. So I'm guessing that a new system would have to be made for almost every new patch of D3.
Unless this hack is for personal use, which wouldn't affect Blizzard alot, it is going to spread. And when Blizzard gets their hands on it they can simply block it in the next patch. Since they will have complete access to all codes it shouldn't be that hard for them.
Well it seems u figured out that it was blizzard i was refering too.
No matter how much "they" try its still futile, someone will simply hack that patch too.
I'm not saying I support piracy, im completely against it and would like to buy a copy of Diablo 3, its just Blizzard assumes that not having a LAN option will prevent piracy where i believe it will have the opposite effect.
Blizzard are you there?? speak to meeeeeeee!!!!! :P:P:P
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IF you read a bit more from one of the youtube movies (the description) there is quite a lot of story about that the guy in the video was acting
he has said that "people don't understand my humor" etc.
Lol thats totally fine connection for multiplaying.. 512/256M you mean? I used to play D2 with modem D3 might not use much more bandwidth since there isn't really huge amount of people in the game at the same time.
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
Bandwidth isn't always the issue though, you can have good bandwidth and still have high latency issues, you could have an OC192 at your door and still have lag. If the connections response time is around 200ms + your gaming experience is going to suck wind. Getting around the world on the Internet still has delay issues not unlike international phone calls. Not all countries have a good mesh of backbone routers. Self recovery isn't perfect and without problem, that's why companies like Akamai exist providing global presence for content. I don't see any good reason for not providing a LAN option in D3.
Check this out...
http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/fans-outraged-at-starcraft-ii-s-missing-feature/1331696
So it's Starcraft not Diablo. Does this make any difference? Wake up Blizzard. Go find out about something called 'Client focus'.
Please don't tell me Blizzard doesn't read this forum. They do. Why wouldn't they because as far as I know they own the site (may be wrong here)?
It uses plain old UDP over TCP/IP
The flip side of that is Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which is connection oriented and attempts redelivery of lost or dropped packets. To do that though adds overhead in the protocol and makes it not optimal for games or video. Think of TCP/IP as being like sending a series of packages in the mail, if you needed to send 5 boxes at the same time to someone in the mail to the same address you would lable the boxes 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5 etc. so the mail person would be able to keep track of them. TCP essentially has a tracking number so it can be found and redelivered if needed. UDP has no tracking number, it makes a best effort to deliver but if it gets lost, oh well.
They are both part of the Internet Protocol (IP) suite. So when I say UDP over TCP/IP suite, (you will see it written like that in doc's a lot) more accurately it is UDP/IP meaning UDP over IP, the IP portion is basically the addressing portion of the protocol (a gross over simplification, but good enough definition for here).
Their bright idea is to spout nonsense about piracy reduction and cheating? Cheaters always find a way and I don't know a single person who pirated Diablo 2 despite the fact that LAN is apparently the ultimate evil. Hell I know people with 3 copies just for LAN use in their own house! Only have a 60kbps connection? No worries, TCP/IP to the rescue! D2 is a great game, it has all the bases covered, and it was well worth my $60. Purposefully handicapping play styles in D3/SC2 will not get them my money. Congrats Blizzard on your membership to the elite club of halfass game development; founded by none other than Electronic Arts.
The only hope we have is there are some very skilled people out there who may take it upon themselves to rectify this atrocity for the sake of multiplayer mods. BNET1 was cloned, I expect the motivation this time is much greater now that the LAN features don't even exist.
+1 rep man, I agree completely.
Speaking of not having high speed, I don't, and have had to rely on LAN for quite some time to take the place of Bnet, and it's made D2 much more better.
There was also a post a while back about developing countries, where they cannot afford/obtain high speed, and are missing out on multiplayer now that LAN is gone.
Heh... I was one of those people with several copies for my house, fuck I miss those days.
And about EA.... they're definitely my least favorite developer, I fucking hate them to be honest. Selling out fans is just what they do, along with shitty development. I'm still pissed off about the dungeon keeper series, they sold it to some fucking Korean company, which is now making an incredible looking version of it not available in North America.
Honestly, this is their worst move yet. This will fucking PROMOTE piracy, do they honestly know how many people are going to be downloading LAN capable versions from torrents ?
Pissing off the fans, bullshitting about the reasons, and causing more piracy. Grats Blizz.
They could have said "ok this game is going to require a really high end machine because we feel the need to showcase some cool graphical techniques" That would have made the game pretty much out of my leuge but I would have tried hard to save for a new pc (despite the fact i owe the government tens of thousands of pounds in student loans) there are always people who are going to miss out, thats just life. I think Blizzard ususaly tries to make that as small a group as possible.
"One does not simply rock into Mordor."
"There's no I in Team America!"
Easy use of BattleNet doesn't magically reduce the overhead to allow an ARPG to run on analog connections. I'm sure if they thought it would yield them enough sales they'd put it in. I said they didn't want to spend the money. They are gutting a feature to reduce time and cost. There is no other upside that isn't propaganda no matter how much rhetoric Bashiok throws around. It's amazing to think that anyone would buy that hogwash.
It's funny you mention the graphics. So not only are you endorsing that they take out a core component of D3, and even more importantly SC2, but it's okay that they recycle graphics? They might as well use the Warcraft engine for everything they make in the next 40 years, apparently they can do no wrong. Is Blizz borrowing the Apple kool aid mix?
If they could guarantee multiplayer will function on a 32kbps connection I'm sure this would matter a lot less. They said D2 would and everyone knows what a croc that is. 15 minutes and you'll start black mapping on 48, 56, or 68, little lone 32.
Shatner might be a little overly passionate, but the point is made. It's like Blizzard hired some modders to fiddle with WoW to make SC2 and D3. Probably why there isn't any LAN. The part that scares me is what happens when they decide they need to charge us for multi? It's easy to say you won't, but the Hellgate guys said you'd be able to play forever as a founder and look how that turned out. If that happens we have no alternatives.
Also keep in mind just because you assume few people are stuck behind narrowband doesn't mean it's true. If the digital TV switch has taught us anything it's that a large portion of the world still can't get a wide line. My area alone had 200,000 people lose TV service with no alternative aside from satellite, and anyone who's had internet satellite knows what a total wank that is.
Well I am not for LAN and I am not against it, I see the pros and cons of both. As for your 4 points however:
1) We have no idea how the new Battle Net 2.0 is going to work and I highly doubt Blizz is going to keep the 30 day no use policy especially since everyone is going to have to get a Battle Net Account which is going to look over all of Blizzards games, not just Diablo 3 so they can't possibly wipe anything out.
2) No one ever said you have to play with people online that are not your real life friends, and there were already ways of keeping people you do not want to join your game out of your game by password protecting it. And if your real life friends do not play, you can probably find a guild with people who have the same game play ideals as you do.
3) LAN: the two reasons I keep seeing for people wanting LAN is because their internet sucks(ok valid reason, and probably the only reason I see as being worthy of mentioning) and the second is to be sociable. Now if your internet is pretty decent and the only reason you want LAN is so you can talk to your friends, I would just like to point out the wide assortment of programs like Ventrillo and TeamSpeak that people can use to talk to each other over the internet while they play a game. Plus Blizz will probably have something like one of these programs directly built into Battle Net 2.0(they already have it for WoW) and that one will be free.
4) Everyone has to deal with this happening to them, not just yourself. I have had many instances where my cable would go out for days(yes days) it sucks and I know how you feel.
+ you can still put up a LAN and all connect to battle.net.. but anyways if the connection limits you then it doesn't really help
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
while i understand concern for your kids, i think it's misplaced here.
i played D2 on open Bnet starting when i was about 13 years old, and i was never in any danger. and in all the time i've spent on there, i've never been exposed to anything worse than some swearing and getting screwed over/having my stuff stolen by random s.o.b.'s.
i've also never heard of any creeps getting a kid's info and abducting them because of association on Bnet.
it's not like they're on some shady internet romance chat room.
not to mention the fact that you're obviously a good parent, devoted to your children's safety. if they're old enough to be playing Diablo games and knowing how to have LAN parties, they should know by now not to give personal info out to strangers over the internet and endanger themselves anyways.
I don't trip too heavy with this yet since my little guy isn't old enough to go out and just meet folks across town just yet. And we keep a close tab on his chat friend list and ask him a lot of questions. However, pedophiles go where kids go, granted a Diablo game or chat room probably isn't their first choice :D. Yet my wife stays up on this stuff religiously, she searches the web for ped's in our area. We have like a almost a dozen sexual offenders within 1 mile radius of where we live about 1/3 are level 3 ped's, and we don't live in bad part of town. Bluntly their are some sick freaks out there.
I can understand from your perspective why a parent might appear overly paranoid, but as a parent, it's not over kill to be that worried because the story always is the same when a kid disappears. I just turned my back for a second, I thought I knew them better, and on and on. So a good parent is going to be a little over the top. Having a little one changes you, it's hard to understand until you do. I think the closest feeling to it would be your first pet, for the first few days you just check on it all the time and want to make sure it's OK, but then you finally relax. With a kid theough it takes years to relax.
Its like a plane crash is only on the headline news because its so rare. If they happened all the time like car crashes did then no-one would put it on the news. You probably don't think twice about your child travelling in a car yet it is possibly one of the most dangerous things he will ever do in terms of chances of death/injury, second only to climbing the stairs ;).
My point is that I think people worry about the worse case scenario far to much. If you think about maybe 35-45 years ago (when my mum was growing up) All children played outside all the time unsupervised and unchecked. She said the only thing that was different back then were the number of cars on the roads. People haven't changed since then there were still abductions etc but the rate was pretty much the same as it is today.
I can understand however about getting paranoid about unlikely scenarios. I worry that my heart will stop (granted I do have a heart condition) but it is statistically unlikely that it will do so. I worry about dying in a plane crash and yet you are more likely to be killed by your trousers than on a British plane! I think that everyone has these worries but parents seem to focus them on their children (sometimes to the child's expense and sometimes not).
"One does not simply rock into Mordor."
"There's no I in Team America!"
All you have done is cause more reason for people to pirate the game. U should always make a game as diverse as possible, let your gamers have more options. As soon as u limit people thats when you loose sales.
Well it seems u figured out that it was blizzard i was refering too.
No matter how much "they" try its still futile, someone will simply hack that patch too.
I'm not saying I support piracy, im completely against it and would like to buy a copy of Diablo 3, its just Blizzard assumes that not having a LAN option will prevent piracy where i believe it will have the opposite effect.
Blizzard are you there?? speak to meeeeeeee!!!!! :P:P:P