Blizzard: Diablo 3 Internet Requirement Prevents Hacking
Blizzard doesn't want the rampant hacking as seen with Diablo 2.
Despite recent talk that Diablo 3's required Internet connection was all about the player's character and Battle.net's feature set, game director Jay Wilson made it clear that the requirement is also to prevent the same amount of hacking as seen with Diablo 2. The revelation was made while explaining why it's a bad idea to have an offline mode for the upcoming action-RPG game.
"If we allow an Offline mode, it changes the structure of the data that we have to put on the user’s system," he told PC Gamer during Gamescom. "Essentially we would have to put our server architecture onto the client so that it can run its own personal server. Doing that essentially is one of the reasons why Diablo 2 was a much easier game to hack than obviously any other game you’d mention and so it’s what led to extensive cheating and item dupes and things like that."
"I would never guarantee that we’re never going to have those things in Diablo 3, but it’s one of the things that our community has been the most vocal about, wanting this fixed, and if we essentially are putting the server out there…we’re not really going to be able to better than Diablo 2," he added.
But with the piracy issue aside, Diablo 3 was designed from the ground up to be an online, multiplayer game. "The game’s not really being played right if it’s not online," he said. He indicated that it wasn't designed for players to opt out of the cooperative experience, to opt out of the trading experience. And at this point in time, essentially everyone is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi networks or a local broadband connection, so there was no reason why they couldn't create an online-only game.
Still, what about those people who have faulty, unreliable connections? "Erm… upgrade the wiring in [the] house?" Wilson said. "I mean, in this day and age the notion that there’s this a whole vast majority of players out there that don’t have online connectivity – this doesn’t really fly any more." He then pointed out that he could access nine networks just from his hotel room alone.
"You’ve got to make choices about what you want to do, and sometimes those choices are going to make some people unhappy, but if you feel like it’s what is the right thing to do to making a better product then you have to do it," he said.
To read the full interview, head here.
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Guy seems to be a bit of a...
Upgrade your wiring... that's a pi** poor excuse. All the wiring in my house is perfect but my internet (virgin media 50 meg) has already been down multiple times this month should I also go buy a couple miles of fiber optic cable and some backup systems for virgin media while Im fixing my house.
Also good for him that his city centre hotel has wireless networks in range there are 4 that show up in my house, 2 of them being a BT service, the other is a neighbours and passworded last one is mine. Pretty much same goes for my cousins house which is in the city centre.
I would rather not try to hack my neighbours wi-fi or resort to playing in McDonald's 4 days a month.
I'll admit I don't really know that much about it, but really? You cant create a secure and separate multilayer mode because the way you would do it is to create a virtual server for single player, can't that be done in a different way?
Cool, he can access 9 networks from the hotel, are any of them his? Does he have passwords and permission to leach the bandwidth of said 9 networks. No, oh, guess he's out of luck then.
What if people want to play on there laptops while they travel from place to place, no stable connection there, and if there is it'll probably cost you to use it. And there will be allot of other people using it, so you'll probably loss connection by virtue of not having enough bandwidth.
Luckily for me Diablo 2 was never a game I've played or wanted to play, so Diablo 3 isn't one I was even considering getting. Besides, I don't buy that they are forcing people to play with other people, other people can be real buggers you know.
And all this assumes you can actually access their servers or they don't go bust or they don't lose interest in the game and no longer run the servers.
All of which leaves you with a useless product, as console players experienced in the recent past.
They should fear about their own servers being hacked, rather than our characters.
Not so long ago the half world was hacked within 2 weeks, and Sony couldn't get its sh1t straight for a long time and all PS users were doomed. What if the same happens to battle.net?
SKIDROW, you know what's your job
I totally agree with Wilson. Gaming is coming towards online only games and people need to evolve with it. People do not complain about WoW being online only. Get over it and understand why they're doing this