I started playing Diablo III on the free trial version available from Blizzard’s platform at Battle.net. After some character specification, I was plonked into its foreboding world without much explanation, and I got right to clicking on undead monsters to defeat them. A couple of missions in, I remembered that it might be worth trying to disc version of it I have. I lost a little bit of progress, but it switched seamlessly over to the full version of the game, hero intact. It was quite impressive. I got back to killing the same monsters once again. Shortly afterwards, I had some run-of-the-mill momentary internet connection issue, and the game kicked me out. I had to do the same mission a third time. The world had managed to hand me an experience to match that of many a Diablo III player on its release in 2012.
Diablo III was not the first game to require its players to be constantly connected to the internet. Ubisoft implemented the same as a copyright protection measure for their PC games in 2010, including for The Settlers 7, which promptly managed to exclude all of its players in Australia. Diablo III was the most prominent yet though, as reflected by the increasingly rare feat for a PC game of hitting #1 in UK physical sales charts, at least of the individual formats variety. Other companies looked on hopefully. One director at id software, Tim Willits, made a prediction that “Diablo III will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected”, something he thought would be “better for everybody”.
He was basically right about the former, if not the latter. Diablo III servers inevitably crashed on launch, temporarily rendering those physical copies as £50 coasters. The error message, Error 37, became a trending topic on Twitter and the name of an electro band. Who were, again, Australian. Connectivity is not equally distributed. Other companies still rushed in to take up the same approach, with EA contriving to deliver a much bigger disaster with their SimCity release the following year. Eventually, like horse armour before it, it was the norm. Because what were people going to do, stop buying those games?
Diablo III makes for a particularly striking example because the connectivity-related stuff is one of the only parts about it that feels particularly modern. Almost everything else feels like a slickly polished version of the dungeon crawling offered by its predecessor in the year 2000. The distant fixed camera and lack of narrative niceties stand out a lot in 2012. Rich detail, fluid movement and graphical bursts of colour against its bleak backdrops change the impression a bit, but visibly just exist on the surface. They don’t add anything sophisticated to mashing through enemies and watching stats go up in percentage increments as you acquire new Magic Pants.
Right from the beginning, though, the game highlights the opportunities to sign up to things and upgrade them, to make those numbers go up much faster. Here is a personal banner for you to customise, with most of the options greyed out. You could shortcut your way to some extra XP or things you need to change that, though! Alongside the always-on connection, the game launched with an auction house for players to sell their equipment to each other for real money, with Blizzard of course taking a cut.
As someone coming in with a dim view of Blizzard, the obvious selling within all seems repulsive in a sickly kind of way. Maybe that’s part of the point, though, like scam emails with poor spelling that weed out people less likely to go along with the plan. Not to say that I’m above Diablo III’s ways, though, just that it’s particular flavour is not mine. I don’t feel enough about these kinds of numbers or this kind of setting for it to work. Attach the same machinery to something that does work and it could be a different matter.
Top of the charts for week ending 19 May 2012:
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