Maybe I'm just being touchy, but it truly irks me when a gaming company admits it was wrong all along about a particular decision, yet doesn't recant its proud proclamations that it'll keep doing that wrong thing as if everything was OK in the world. I believe that may be called hubris... or bullshit... or some other term directing my nerd rage directly at the heart of Blizzard-Activision.
Dan Stapleton over at GameSpy has a fantastic digest of the latest Diablo 3 blog post over at Blizzard. Specifically, Senior Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng drops a little info-bomb on the fanbase:
OK, so all you gamers who proclaimed your love for single-player hacking 'n' slashing have been officially validated by the powers-that-be. That should mean that gameplay (and connectivity, dammit) should be re-addressed to cater to your needs. Say... offline play allowing on-demand soloing whether or not your Internet (or Blizzard's for that matter) is working properly? Well, Cheng mentions nothing about taking care of the demand of the fans, but Stapleton reminds us all of Blizzard's stance that online-only is the way the game is designed to play and you should go play something else if you don't like it... or can't play at all."At the moment though playing solo is the clear choice, even for those who would prefer co-op with some of their friends."
Well, at least this squelches the Blizzard apologists who shout that Diablo 3 is purely a multiplayer game and that's how the majority of gamers will play, right? Fat lot of good that will do.
Come on, Blizzard. You've clearly slain the piracy boogeyman while simultaneously invalidating your "Online-only is the most secure method" claims, reducing online-only to just another way to keep gamers from owning the games they bought. How about giving gamers a little latitude in playing your games the way they want to?
I guess not. That money isn't going to print itself, you know.
