Bashiok: MMO's are generally categorized as being able to support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous players in a persistent world.
While Battle.net can certainly support that many players at one time, the lack of a persistent world and restrictions on how many players can be within each "world" (game) would keep Diablo III from being categorized as an MMO.
One of the larger things to think about when balancing game sizes is that with mechanics that encourage players to stick together, only so many players can be doing these huge over-the-top type abilities without it turning into a visual mess.
We'll settle on a group size that allows for the most amount of players while still keeping the games fun, and sane.
Dayum that's true, huh? It would feel a little claustrophobic constantly playing with the same people. The only beef I have with that is bumping into say, the next act that's been cleared by another party, like in D2. I guess that's where lvl restriction comes in handy. ;o
Plus less players means less intensive PVP and maybe a little annoying to find potential traders. I can't think of anymore reasons why having more people would be bad... mmm.. o.O
MMO's are limited in size by how many people that particular server(world) can hold, they are not an endless stream of players all on one server. WoW has lots of servers: http://www.wowrealmstatus.net/. For example, let's say one WoW server can house around 9,000 people. I for one would like to see games with large amounts of players but a limited party size that would vary upon what tasks you were taking up or what part of the world you are in at that time. That way you would have balance. Out of the three franchises Diablo is certainly the most similar to an MMO, not an RTS like Warcraft. The biggest difference between Diablo and any MMO is due to player size in an instance of the world.
While I know Diablo 3 certainly won't be an MMO having a bigger game would make things more interesting and would certainly help for Dueling/Trading games. As far as going into a game and finding out that somebody else has already completed a quest or what have you if Diablo 3 had a significantly higher player size per game Blizzard could just allow those quest requirements to "respawn" after a certain period of time so that you can also complete them in that game. I really am hoping that Diablo 3 will do so well financially they will make that next MMO to be World of Sanctuary or Diablo or whatever you want to call it. That would be awesome.
For technology to make x feature possible in Diablo 3 Multiplayer you have to remember we are talking about a whole new battle net (hopefully). I'm not sure if they are redoing Battlenet from the ground up but if they are that would be as massive of an undertaking as making one of their games. I don't think lag issues are as much of a concern as they were in Diablo 2, at least I certainly hope not.
On a final note, I've been seeing a lot of complaints of diablo 3 not being like diablo 2 in this way or that way. Just take a moment and look at the changes that happened from Diablo to Diablo 2. Weren't most of those positive changes? So while some of these new radical ideas might seem foolish to you now, give Blizzard a chance to show you, you've barely even tasted the game yet.
so, im glad they are sticking with the same old Diablo gameplay.
Even though that was a problem on the old B-net, I doubt it would be now. With the insane upgrades in technology and the fact that B-net could hold tens of thousands of people at once, I think the lagging will be minimal.
I hope that they decide to keep at least 8 per game and if not at least 6 but 4 seems way to small for a diablo game.
it all depends on yur computer and yur connection now
Lets just hope they find a way to make sure this game doesnt get mods or hacks... We dont need to ruin this game like Open Bnet on D2.
Also. If we get to create games. Please at least let it be based off of their server. Remember in D2 how you could join a laggy game from the creator of the game? We all got pissy when someone from dial up invited people to a server lol.
Actually, he is. Thats the point of single player.
i love single play too... when i found some Everquest games that were not MMORPG, and i can play them in single player offline i got them fast... very rare do i play online with others... the only game i love to play multi on is UNO on my Xbox 360... that is fun playing that game with others...
Let's keep the awesome effects promised in D3 and be happy with small parties where we can enjoy the SFX and cool PvM interactions.
This is one area that Blizzard hasn't changed in D3 and I'm happy. God I hope we don't get another petition about this too!
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My party games are about 2 or 3 people only. All good buddies / family and yet after all these years we still argue incessantly over gold and item drops, especially full rejuves. Imagine parties of 10 or 20 playing D2 or D3 - we'd spend more time arguing over sharing the green set pieces and so on than actually playing the game.
D2 never was an MMO, thankfully. D3 never will be. Amen.
I for sure don't want a party cap of 4-5 because I had about 5 rl buds playing d2 with me, and 12 people in one diablo game, Idk lol, doesn't seem like 12 would make it work.
6-7 would work pretty well with mob amounts and such.
Double digits jsut seem too much if you try to imagine it
But maybe that is me
I have to agree, item looting in D2 with teams is a pain; and that's just with three or four people. If 10 to 20 people were playing...it just dosn't make sense.
WoW was build for huge groups because so many people are playing in a huge world with different quests, etc. etc. That game was designed as an MMO and plays like one --- with lots of people playing ( in sometimes ) really large groups. ( i.e. raid parties, etc. )
But Diablo was never designed for that game play; the world may be huge from a certain persepctive ( randomly generated maps help ), but since its isometric, on a certain scale, most levels are condensed, so having 20 or so people flow through that tight space would be insane.
Plus, the monsters. You have to look at it like every other Diablo game; there could be a horde of monsters, but 1 hero could wipe them out, or at the most, 2 people. Some monsters are easier to kill and sometimes die in 1 shot. To have anymore than 10 people take on the world of Diablo all at once wouldnt be fun...because there wouldnt be enough hacking and slashing to go around.
Yeah, basically what I mean is that the system will be like it was in Diablo II. Players will host games, and the maximum number of players that can join will be somewhere around 5-7 people (Since you'll be the 6-8 person total). Minimum will always be 1 I should think lol. Aside from that I agree with ya on Hellgate, it did prove pretty disastrous.