Diablo 3 - Preview @ StrategyInformer
 

Another day, another Diablo III preview - this time from StrategyInformer:
More information.

This drm thing's really a bad move. I like the solo mode and want to save my games on my hdd. Plus I don't understand if we'll have stil passive and active abilities and we'll be forced to choose what to keep active (instead of having all passive skills always on)

I'm hoping they'll change their minds sometime in the future. Maybe after six months to a year has gone by and they don't need to worry about their sales being affected by pirates. I doubt it, but who knows?

Perhaps I'm a malcontent, but the flurry of previews for Diablo 3 are like salt in the wound since they delayed the release. At first they light at the end of the tunnel, but now I get cynical and fear the game will not even be released until late 2012 if then. For just about any other title I would not be this patient.

I doubt it as well. 1) They have stated (it was a PR guy, so who knows) that it would take about 6 months of reworked architecture to switch back to offline play (though the hackers seem to be making pretty quick work of it already), and 2) only half the story is about piracy; the rest is about keeping people online so Blizz can rack up RMAH transaction fees and Blizzard Item Store revenue. Since people have already created speed hacks, it's unlikely that their "we do it to stop exploitation hacks" mantra will continue to hold any water, if it ever did. No, I think we're stuck with it. And the shit is really gonna hit the fan if the game constantly lags, as a result.

I agree that they are unlikely to change it back midway through piracy or no, but I don't think it has anything to do with racking up online sales. It's just been Blizzard's vision to make gaming more of a social network where you can catch up with your friends. And social networks only work when people are online to use them. Not sure that I agree with that vision, but that's what they have been promoting for years now. Starcraft 2 has never been changed to be playable offline, and there are no item sales or transaction fees to promote there. I doubt they are worried about piracy any more either.

As for the delay, it's entirely possible that it could be delayed to late 2012. Other then SC2, every one of Blizzard's major titles has been massively delayed. Blizzard is not shy about making major changes and scrapping ideas during the delay period either.

All this talk of Diablo has got me thinking that I'll just be playing the first two from now on. Pity, but I'm not a "social" gamer.

With that thought in mind I was wondering if anyone got the first Diablo running on Win7? I've done some searches and it seems Diablo 1 is a pain in the rear to get working in Win7. Does anyone know of a patch, trick or whatever to get it running?

It has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with making money off the RMAH. No offline play means no way to modify your game to increase rare drops. No /players 8 or increase of finding rare eq. They will probably make the chance of rare loot dropping lower than in D2 so people are using the RMAH more. It's not about fighting piracy, it's about making money. Whatever makes the most money is how they are going to set it up in the game. They're just using piracy as an excuse to push their RMAH so they don't piss people off and people blame pirates instead of the them for their crappy design decisions.

I bet they stick to their guns. They know they are pissing some people off but their goal is to keep this online service model for all their games. I don't see them giving in.

A console release seems obvious at this point and a console game cannot be online only, so my current plan is to either play it on console or buy the console version and play a cracked PC version.

I can't give them my money for the PC version with this online only auction house scheme.

Well first off they never even said it was about piracy, that's just a conclusion that people here are drawing. But secondly if you think the only reason they would make it online only is because of the RMAH, then how do you explain SC2 which was also online only and had no RMAH?

People blame pirates because it's the industry biggest excuse for this nonsense. I thought that maybe after some time had passed they might throw us singleplayers a bone.

It was just a hopeful thought. Though it's probably more likely that I'd grow wings and fly before that happens.

@Doctor Yea, I'm pretty much on the same page. It was just a wish of mine.

So enough about my idle musings, has anyone got Diablo 1 running on Win7?

SC2 isn't online only. You could play single player offline. Your achievements were tracked online. They just made it so you had to be online to play multiplayer.

I stand corrected. So that means this is a more dramatic move by Blizzard then I had thought.

@doctornarrative
I agree. I was thinking to buy the pc version to play online with my brother and use a crack to play it offline in solo mode. But I don't like the idea to spend my money for a game I'll be forced to crack (because they'll release a crack to play it offline and Blizzard probably left this part of the work to their external "unofficial" team) making it impossible to play in a "legit" way