Araya @ US East: I am torn between getting online and havin fun and playing single player...i mean i looove multiplayer, but if one of those guys has any lead time in game play he better not rush through and spoil the boss fights and areas...
I started d2 backup havent played it in like 2 years and i joined a game and some idiot just waypointed through and beat the bosses and left the rest of us stuck with nothing to do... I would tend to play with a group of friends over random people i guess... i found d2 to be irritating because whoever started the game the quests revolved around them so if they had beat some then you cant get them even though you can defeat the bosses, etc.
Bashiok: One thing that seems to be a fairly consistent experience for a lot of people when they first picked up Diablo II was their introduction to Battle.net. And it wasn't generally a positive one.
Most people, including myself, went home and installed the game and started playing. Over maybe a few weeks or months they've finished the game maybe a few times, they had a ton of fun, but they keep playing and trying to find more items.
One day while loading up the game they notice the "Battle.net" button and decide to click it... and, their characters aren't there. They have to start over. Any of us would have gladly played on Battle.net (in passworded games if necessary) just to have that online/trading option for their character available to them. It felt like a lot of wasted time to find the actual game, which was on Battle.net.
While "starting over" is something almost every Diablo II player is going to do any way, the lack of on-screen instruction or indication as to what the different systems meant left a bad taste.
To help avoid that type of situation we're going to try to find ways to encourage Battle.net character creation first and foremost
I want to play single player and if I have time and I find it interesting then maybe online play.
So no thanks to online encouragement.
Most of the issues of this thread are irrelevant for me, the ONLY REAL WORRY i have is about the anti cheat system of b.net2 (particularly the anti dupe system).
Dupes are the most annoying cheat that ever existed in b.net, totally ruins the economy of the game and its quite ridiculous to see so many people with expensive runewords like enigma, call to arms, LAST WISH etc.
I know its impossible to get rid of cheaters, but if blizzard doesnt commit themselves to avoid cheating after a few years of D3 launch (when the game stops to give a nice profit) i won't even think in buying D3.
Recently, after D3 announce and the ladder reset, i started playing D2 again but didnt took a month for me to quite playing for the same reason, DUPES. Whats the point of playing fair if u have to play for a whole month and sell ALL the gear you found in this period to get a rune that is probably duped?
I bet my D2 account that its the cheating that makes the most people dislike online playing.
I would like to type a little more but i dont speak english very well, i'm sorry if i was a little
incomprehensible :confused:
They are much better at managing servers and people on the servers now. I think their experience with WoW will allow them to be much more pro active against cheating. I'm willing to bet that Bnet will have strict rules against cheating and will be enforced. They will most likely make it impossible to cheat/dupe, hopefully anyway.
In the middle of this game, a few buddies came on, and we were going to continue for rank, 4v4 AT - we were already near 100.
In excitement, I rushed right to them.
I realized, 15 seconds into the game, I left my maphack on.
I barely built my Altar.
I turned it off at probably the 16-17 second mark.
I was banned.
I would be shocked if all of these ideas aren't implemented.
Anywho back on subject:
As for SarenBow and your dislikes...
Dislikes:
-no real party options - I have since played games where you can choose the way drop get picked up. Something like this would be nice even if not used.
* It would be nice but it's Diablo...huge part of game is all about the loot, not about being cozy and friendly and giving gear away. About getting as much and as good gear as you can. I highly doubt anyone would use that.
-tough economy - Anyone else remember the all powerful SOJ! Yea in all my years of playing I never found one on any of my 9 different high lvl chars. No real solution here, playing with game economy is a case specific problem that needs to be monitored and adjusted accordingly as it progresses.
* Um the SOJ was a huge reason that people even magic found. Diablo 3 NEEDS items that are so rare that it just makes people want to keep playing and looking for it.
-no booting abilities -if a PK came or a high lvl player was messing up my world there was no way to stop them besides closing off your world to everyone or hoping you have a char to PK them. A boot button would have been nice.
* A boot option should ONLY be allowed in PRIVATE games, even then I would dislike it. The kids on Diablo would abuse that power so much its retarded. Only in Private games for the small selection of people who wouldnt abuse it. They should go back to Diablo 1 style online where you can only see games near your level but make it like 10-15 level difference if that.
Well, i doubt its better, at least in D2. WoW has montly fees so blizzard is forced to act against cheaters.
Diablo 2 servers are free and them blizzard dont care about the players. D2 dont have ANY kind of protection right now, people can dupe and hack freely.
I fear that the same will happen with D3 after some years.
2.No maphack
3.No TMC
4.Hell NO HACKS AT ALL!!
5. Don't talk about fight club.
I don't think i've ever played D2 offline >.> battle.net2 is hopefully a complete overhaul.
The lag is Bnet-based. It's Blizzard's Lag. It's the server lag. IT'S NOT THE GODDAMN ISP ALREADY.
Agreed 100%.
I hope they don't go too far focusing on multiplayer to the point that it takes away from siolo. I played online for a bit but it really sucked in comparison to the single player. Now I only play solo and lan.
Funny, in 2 years of playing D2 & LOD, the only lag I ever remember was when bosses would die and I would miss the loot. Im Know every once in a great while I would get de-synced, and when I realized it I would just quick exit (I played mostly HC after realizing how pointless SC was), but I dont ever remember it being a regular thing, especially in private games with my friends.
Oh, and if people want quality servers and quality support, your going to be paying for it. Get used to it. Customer service is great in WoW compared to many ggames, its in their interest to keep their customers satisfied. Whenever costs(prices) go down, the first thing thats seems to go with it iis customer service.
I cant believe, and am quite impressed truthfully, that blizzard still pays for WC, SC, and D2 servers to operate when those games havent delivered any real revenue in years. Can anyone tell me if they run banner adds or something to offest the costs? Or mabey the addiction known as WoW is the reason our servers are still up. However Blizz is paying, you have to admit that they do spend some coin running those servers to keep all us old-school gamers satisified.
i dont like playing online, i rather play offline. i always play D2 offline by myself. if i wanted to play with someone, it would only be with someone whom i personally know IRL. thatd be thru LAN or TCP/IP which i hope they still have.
i dont mind being able to bring my offline single-player guy online (Open Bnet) if i felt like it, but i dont want to strictly be online.
Diablo series isnt an MMO, dont force us to play online.
You still don't add up very well.
$400 on food for 4 people? I highly highly doubt everyone lived off of $3.33 for food everyday.
20hrs
X $8/hr
X 4 weeks in a month
%20 in taxes
$520 that you earn in 30 days.
300 for ISP(1,200/4)
+150 AT least for food
450
$520 your earnings
-450 your costs
$70
70$ left over not including any of your rent/utilities/extra activities?
Still doesn't add up very well. You spend more than you earn. I'm not sure where your math is.
I havn't played Diablo II for several months. I don't remember there being much lag, if any. That was just from my experience. Maybe they've lessened their support for the game. The way you talk about the lag though, it sounds like it's much more of a burden for you than most people. Maybe you should be a little more acceptive of the possibility that it's a network thing on your side. I think that's a reasonable thing to suggest.
You do realize Diablo II and Starcraft are still one of the top selling retail games? That is REAL revenue. As of Jan 2006 Starcraft is the #3rd best selling PC game EVER selling 8 million units. As of May 2007, Starcraft has sold 9.5 million copies globally. That's 1.5 million units sold in a year and a half or so. So.. yeah.. wrong. Sources:
http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1252-Starcraft-Total-Sales-How-long-is-the-Long-Tail.html
http://www.gamefactsheet.com/home.php?id=bestselling_pc_games_ever
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft
For me, multiplayer is one of the most addictive aspects of Diablo II. If I actually look at the game as a whole, it's really not that great of a game. It's a very simplistic limited experience. Multiplayer opens up an entire realm of possibilities. Co-Op is one of the only things that has kept me playing Diablo II for as long as I did. Single player would bore the hell out of me. The length of the game is very very short.
Owned.:thumbsup:
Another example is StarCraft. It lags in a different way, it doesn't "black out" like Diablo does, leaving you totally clueless of what's going on. Or make it so that you have to wait 5 minutes before selling something. And that's in solo multiplayer games.
I played Lan Diablo II games, the lag is nowhere near as comparable. It's not me, it's the server. I don't know where it comes from or why people get it or not get it, but it's there, and, because of it, you cannot say that SP DII = MP DII in a private game.
OT: and why did you stop replying to my PM's?
Well as I stated before, maybe things have changed dramatically in the last year. I've never had such issues. I could see hardcore being a problem, for there are problems where the lag could potentially kill you. I guess I didn't think of it from a HC aspect. The laggiest part in the game is with Baal's minions from what I remember.
OT (what's OT?) Sorry, I will get right on the PMs. It just takes so much concetration for me to type e-mails or PMs to people. I sort of stress myself out typing them. You know me, always trying to figure out what to say. Expect 8 pages tomorrow
<3