DiabloFans

Quote from hawkeyenick

Quote from Illythia

Quote from hawkeyenick

Operating a lottery or sweepstakes without a license is illegal.
Qualifying better chances with any form of payment makes it gambling.

Not really.

Existing premium members didn't pay to be entered into the draw, they paid for access to the premium section of the site. The same goes for you. If you're buying a premium membership just so you have a chance to be in the beta, that's cool, but you're not just getting entered into a draw, you're being given a 3 month premium service to their site. Whether or not you'd actually use it, doesn't matter. They're selling you a premium membership, but they're holding a draw for premium members to get a beta key. If the Beta drawing was the only thing being offered for 10 bucks, you'd have a point.

Shady/cheap for advertising the premium membership in order to generate subscriptions, rather than keeping the announcement within a members only area? Sure. But definitely not illegal. They're covered.

A someone who actually worked in the gaming industry in the US, I can assure you that you're completely wrong.
A better example would be when mcdonalds has the monopoly game, you can get entries for free by mail if you ask, but purchasing more things increases your odds. They have to register with the gaming commission on their state and operate with a sweepstakes license. This keeps them from scamming people by making them report any and all winners to the commission so there's a record of someone actually winning the prize instead of them just making up a sweepstakes and collecting money and never paying out to anyone.
Any purchase that can increase your chances falls under a lottery or sweepstakes depending on the jurisdiction.

The particular statutes in violation can be found here:
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/GV/htm/GV.466.htm

You make a comment on "depending on jurisdiction" and link a Texas site. Are you certain the same law applies to California? Also, possibly a more important question... are you sure that it applies to something like a beta key, that has no actual monetary value?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I don't think it's quite the same thing as the McDonalds example because there's real money at stake, not a worthless beta key (by worthless I mean, has no real world value)

Quote from hawkeyenick

Operating a lottery or sweepstakes without a license is illegal.
Qualifying better chances with any form of payment makes it gambling.

Not really.

Existing premium members didn't pay to be entered into the draw, they paid for access to the premium section of the site. The same goes for you. If you're buying a premium membership just so you have a chance to be in the beta, that's cool, but you're not just getting entered into a draw, you're being given a 3 month premium service to their site. Whether or not you'd actually use it, doesn't matter. They're selling you a premium membership, but they're holding a draw for premium members to get a beta key. If the Beta drawing was the only thing being offered for 10 bucks, you'd have a point.

Shady/cheap for publicly advertising the premium membership draw, rather than keeping the announcement within a members only area? Sure. But definitely not illegal. They're covered.

Using that logic, one could argue that Blizzard is doing the exact same thing by only allowing people with active Blizzard accounts (ie: paid money) to be entered into the opt in. It's essentially the very same thing. You buy a subscription/account, you're entered to win. Same logic, difference source. While I understand that Blizzard is the source of the keys, the principle of what constitutes "gambling/lottery/sweepstakes licenses" is the same, and Blizzard would need to adhere to the law.

I have a feeling development has been so long because mechanics and ideas have been changed. Diablo has a pretty hardcore following, and I don't doubt that they've gone through many iterations in an attempt to preserve the mechanics and systems that made Diablo 2 so great. Unfortunately, it's 2011 and the gaming population and their perception has matured.

Look most recently with Monk and DH changes. Those are pretty significant, regardless if Bashiok wants to play it off as "some changes to a spreadsheet". And these were done quite late into development. I don't doubt that there have been several things that have ultimately been scrapped and gone over countless times in order to preserve the integrity, but modernize the systems.

On top of that, like mentioned in other posts here... Blizzard is all about quality. Their development cycles are much longer than other games due to small development teams and such a standard of high quality. I'm not saying that Skyrim and those examples won't have quality, but nobody can say with a straight face, that any of those games will meet the refinement and overall quality of gameplay that Blizzard puts out. Blizzard could also do a service to their communities and stop announcing games 3 years in advance. Though, I attribute that to the fact that Blizzard has a very, very small library so keeping people interested with a carrot on a stick is nothing more than a PR move, as annoying as it can be as a gamer.

Quote from DeathsAngel

Good luck people! It's sad that I lack good imagination for the DiabloFan contest

Oh I do too, but I entered once anyway

Quote from Kiserai

One wonders if the mods can really get through all those submissions. More and more as I various community sites hold contests I wonder if anything other than a random drawing is really practical, heh.

I have to agree. When you're up to 2000 submissions, it becomes less fair. Human beings grow tired and impatient and nobody is going to look at submission 1750 with the same "fresh" eyes they looked at submission 15. But on the other hand, a random draw for a caption contest doesn't make sense either.

I do think that it should be limited to 1 submission though. Less submissions to have to weed through on their part (because let's face it, unfunny/unclever people are unfunny/unclever regardless if they put in 1231820931 submissions), It's a week long contest, if someone changes their mind or comes up with a better idea they have plenty of time to revise their submission. But that's just my opinion and it's their contest I know my (only) submission won't win, but I'm glad to be given the opportunity to beat the opt in odds.

Quote from NeciFiX

1/5000 shot to get in.

Not gonna get my hopes up.

Tons better than your chances with opt in

Sorry, I copy pasted the wrong link and now it won't let me delete my above post

edit: oh apparently it's gone. Cool. Here's mine!

Your active account(s) needs to be in "good standing".

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume a banned account, for whatever reason, is not in good standing.

Quote from DieHardDiabloFan

Great, thanks. Now all that's left is actually getting a beta key.

As per your question above, while you don't need a game to make an account, you do need a game to be eligible for a beta invite. Any game on their store will suffice.

BF3 is a whole different beast. How many online RPG's, ARPG's, MMO's etc have done an open beta? Not a whole lot, and for good reason. They're not FPS games that are largely client based.

If they did an open beta, they would have no control over the system specifications they want to focus test on. Gradually increasing the load and focusing on specific parameters puts less pressure on the servers all at once (remember, this is a new game and system for Blizzard), and if they notice an anomaly, it's (generally) easier to troubleshoot.

People need to stop treating a Beta test as a free preview. I know that's why 95% of us want in the Beta, but they aren't obligated to even provide us with one. Pretty sure Blizzard has weighed the marketing strength of a limited beta vs a public beta. As someone that's worked in marketing and promotions for 7 years, I'd go with limited as well especially if I was behind something so anticipated (very little risk in loss of confidence). The carrot on a stick is one of the oldest marketing tools we know of

I'm also sorry to say, business isn't quite that simple. As a "business manager", you absolutely can't be that naive to think they take pure profit like that from box sales, or even digital sales.

Quote from SFJake

Quote from Prosthesy

Please explain to me how a 1 to 4-player game is MMO. The only thing in the game resembling any Massive Multiplayer is the Auction House, which is a. Optional and b. Indirect.

Ever played Rakion? I was classified as a MMO.

Doesn't matter what specific term you want to use. Its in the same categories than MMO, even if its not -exactly- an MMO. Its a game that forces you to be online to play and is promoted as such to play with people. Oh hey, its a MO, then. Presents the same damn problem as an MMO and brings alongs the same limit and gripes, and controls of the masses.

Your last sentence doesn't even make sense. Just because it shares similar traits, doesn't make it the same.

Who classified this Rakion game as an MMO? The community? Or the developer trying to jump on the hottest game genre for the last 6 years to sell more units? (Honestly, I've never even heard of it so I have no idea)

MMO implies one very important thing, multiple simultaneous player connections in a single persistent world. Diablo does not have persistent worlds, nor is multiplayer even required to experience the entirety of content provided. Honestly, it's a stretch to even call it a multiplayer game. Sure, it has "online multiplayer functionality", but to blanket that with MMO, is pretty much dead wrong. Using that logic, Counter Strike is an MMO, right?

Diablo is a single player ARPG, with 2-4 player co-op. Nothing more. Just because it's an RPG made by a company that did an MMO, doesn't entitle it to be given the tag.

Hecate Enthroned - An Ode For A Haunted Wood

(give it a minute to get into it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1IgLAO0IoQ

Quote from Gravenkal

Now if only I can get a beta invite ._.
I've never gotten a blizzard beta invite. Is it because I live in Canada? Blizzard has come off as rather discriminative towards Canada in the past, while not meaning to.

I have received beta invites before.

Coincidental that the day after Blizzard makes this announcement, SWToR gets a release date?

Seems to me one of them was waiting to make a move lol.

Quote from Deventh

I don't get it.. why are people still hyped about the damn beta invites ? Everything about the starting of the closed beta was for a reason and that reason was that the game would release this year. You will play 1 hour or 1/3 of act 1 and u will get bored with it fast if they delay the game then big fu*king deal about the shitty beta.

People were not excited for beta invites because it meant a 2011 release.

It is because people want to play the game. This announcement, while it sucks, doesn't change that and I'd argue actually makes people want to play it even more if they have to wait longer. Maybe you'd get bored in an hour, but a lot of us wouldn't.