Error 37.

[Yrzuli]

You don't own the game. It is merely rented at $60. Once the servers shut down the game is no longer yours. All you have is 16 GB of junk. Blizzard knew ahead of time how much server load this was going to be with the presales. They have the money to make the process seamless. Unlike some I refuse to accept shady launch days because "it is expected". I refused to be programmed by corporate monkeys.

What made no sense is the various amount of strange errors people were getting on the Americas servers which forced the shutdowns when Asia was flying free. The game is essentially the same save for language packs and voice overs. Asia, which has far more people then us in the Americas, were able to take a server hit then there is no reason why Americas went down for so long.

Someone fucked up or else Activision just didn't care. Either way there is fail here.

Considering people, everyday, purchase games for 60$ that they will play for 1-2 months before ignoring, if the servers were randomly shut down next year I think that we'd have certainly gotten our money's worth. That said, D2 servers are still alive and well; and they even updated the game... last year? After having not updated it in many years?

As for the server load and the fact that the Asia servers remained live... Welcome to North America, home of third world rated internet service and providers; especially when compared to Asia, who is on widespread true broadband. When you have companies such as AT&T in the mix, of course servers are going to crash and burn. You cannot truly blame Blizz for something that they too ultimately rent (bandwidth, if not the server farms as well).

Today seemed pretty flawless on D3 aside from one or two minor lag-hiccups during the short time I was playing (which could very well have been our internet rather than the servers). I'm still annoyed that I (and Anaie) lost some achievements last night when the servers nose-dived on us, but I'm slowly getting them back. (zomgachievements!)

[Krinathalasa]

The difference between D2 and D3 is that when Blizz shuts down the D2 servers you can still play single. You will never be able to do that with D3.

I totally blame Blizz for the server issue. Happening once or twice OK. But every launch? Yea no. There is no excuse for a billion dollar company to have shit performance on launch day when expecting such a gigantic load of players. People are used to this shit service and accept it. I don't.

[Bartantalus]

Considering their reasons for making it require online for play, why not make the single player completely and utterly separate from the online portion.?
And making it impossible for any item or gold transition between the two modes. That should solve their so called issues they had with it in the first place.

[Ashenfury]

If they shut down the servers they will probably release the server side software to us or at least whatever portion that is ran server side that we need to play. Same thing for the WoW client. Bart that's a huuuge step backwards.

[Greebo]

Ash - no it isn't. If I wanted to play solo I should be able to play solo with no internet connection. Steam can do it, Blizzard should be able to do it.

[Ashenfury]

I agree with THAT Greebo. But keeping my solo character apart from my online character (no trading no showing your friends cool shit, no taking your 120hour character online just go start over) is a hold back from the 90s.

[Bartantalus]

My point ash was that WAS their reason for doing it online only, cause people would hack offline stuff into online.

[Ashenfury]

I would rather have a rough couple of days and then a smooth 12 years than split my characters... that was my point.

[Bartantalus]

True that ash, was a pain in d2, but i never did play d2 very much.

[Greebo]

Nah. I think that there should be non-server and server modes and never the twain shall meet. Of course I also think there should be LAN play but again, no official achievements.
I'm not concerned about a rough launch, I'm concerned about requiring an always-on internet connection for my essentially solo pass-time.

[Abric]

I almost doubled the amount of damage my level 36 barbarian did by spending about 6,000 gold on the auction house.

You can sort by the buy out price - so it allows you to scope out the more reasonable priced gear. Just sort by your primary stat (Strength for me) and vitality and chances are you'll find something oh so very special for your ass kickery into forced online play.

[Anaie]

I almost doubled the amount of damage my level 36 barbarian did by spending about 6,000 gold on the auction house.

You can sort by the buy out price - so it allows you to scope out the more reasonable priced gear. Just sort by your primary stat (Strength for me) and vitality and chances are you'll find something oh so very special for your ass kickery into forced online play.

Second this. I got geared out today doing the AH shopping.

I do dislike that you can't kick someone or lock a group. One of my buddies (not you Ash, you were appropriate level!) joined me while I was soloing, which took away some of my gold gain of my follower, and was like level 4 to my 16. He died a ton of times in one shot, and I had to deal with the extra mobs for 2 players. It was not amusing!

[Greebo]

i was pretty sure i saw a private game option.

[Canaie]

I think the private game will still let your buddies join in. You can, however, disable the quick join functionality in the social options.

[Abric]

Yeah, I disabled the quick join option. It's not that I don't like people doing the drop-in/drop-out ... it's just a little warning would be nice.

High Heavens forbid you're in the middle of a wall/molten champion-unique and a guy decides to show up and increase the ass-kicking you are receiving.