And the DIII Collector's Edition contains an English copy of Diablo II in stand-alone Installer format, btw.

This, it's "too little, too late" for me.

Great, no RMAH, but there's still no offline mode which the console versions have already managed right out of the box somehow (different/competent dev studio working on the ports?).

They say they are making this change in conjunction with the next expansion pack and also mention the date 18th of March, 2014. Again too little, too late. I won't stick with a game that doesn't really interest me for 2 years before I see an expansion pack or DLC, 6 months is tops for things like that.

Thanks, that's worth a look. I own the retail editions of StarCraft and WarCraft III as well so it will be a bonus if they all have downloadable installers available.

Even if the installers still need to be patched to the latest versions, all three of these games had really small patches so that's not an issue for me, so long as they're compatible. My retail edition of Sacred 2 is patched to 2.65.2, but my DRM free Gamersgate version is only patched to 2.65.1 but doesn't like the patch that updates 2.65.1 to 2.65.2. I believe that the difference between the two patches is only relevant to multiplayer though, so no loss to me. And I really just wanted to be able to test if Sacred 2 ran well on my Windows 7 64-bit notebook (which it does) without wasting a retail activation that I might not get back: apparently Blood & Ice has limited activations.

This is still pretty hilarious. Trying to imagine the shock by avid Auction House users on announcement and their reactions hahahahahha

What you get off battle.net (regarding pre-Starcraft 2 games) is as close to GOG as you're going to get without it actually being GOG. While there's a key to enter on installation, there's no online requirement for either installing or playing singleplayer/LAN, and the installers have the latest patch built in.

You get both Windows and OS X versions, and while the Windows versions run well enough on recent Windows (I believe Windows 8 handles them better than Vista and 7 does, the latter suffering from colour issues for Starcraft and Diablo II), the same is not true for OS X. Starcraft and Diablo II are PowerPC-only and so requires the Rosetta emulation layer on Intel, which was discontinued with OS X 10.7 Lion (Warcraft III is an Intel/PPC "Universal Binary" and runs native on both PowerPC and Intel systems).

I think it's more about keeping control than sales. But even if you consider sales alone you have to admit that always-online was successful for Blizzard. I mean, 12 million units sold for a PC exclusive is not bad, is it? Like i said countless times before, there is no way to measure how many people refused to buy the game because of DRM vs how many people bought it because they couldn't pirate it. The only thing we have is sales data which says that D3 was a success.

How on earth are technical efficiency and commercial success linked? Nobody broke D3's always-online DRM very well, and people have tried quite a bit. That's a fact. I have no idea how would sales factor into this, unless they'd be terrible and there was no interest in the game - which is untrue.

Not that it matters, but I'd still be curious to know how many of those 12 million sales were due to the 1 year WoW sub. My guess would that many of the millions of WoW subscribers probably jumped on that promotion, which means that essentially Blizzard could have potentially gave away millions of copies of D3 and counted them as sales, which is highly misleading. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the number of actual sales is *at least* half of that.

Almost everyone I know that played it disliked it overall (and most of them got it for free through the WoW sub promotion. Literally everyone I know that plays WoW took advantage of that deal), but I'd still buy it on sale to try it out if they'd strip the online requirement.

DRM is all about sales. DRM wouldn't exist if not for concern about sales. Publishers see it as a means of boosting them - or at least stop them being heavily impacted. Always online is certainly the most bulletproof form of DRM yet. But then that's not saying much, given that most DRM is cracked before the game is released. So, really, the only concern publishers should have about always online is how counter-productive it is given their original objective.

As for Diablo 3, I've already stated that it's a bad example and a possible exception to the rule. We'll probably never be able to measure the impact on future sales because by the time Blizzard release anything else it will be the kids of the generation that bought Diablo 3 who will be buying that distant future title. So more points to Blizzard on that one - avoid impact on future game sales by hardly ever releasing anything (that's not an expansion). That, coupled with the fact that Blizzard have their own fanatical cult means they can do little wrong in the eyes of their following.

Ubisoft on the other hand have released loads since the dawn of UbiDRM, and after AssCreed 2 their PC sales took a massive nosedive. Ubisoft are therefore a much better example of what I'm talking about

I wonder if even Blizzard themselves don't have a clear idea as to the extent always online has really hurt them, assuming they do want to release another title in the near future.

I hope they poll all the people who bought Diablo 3 and ask them if they're happy with their purchase.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong and the only people who still buy PC games live in first world countries and have uncapped, cheap, reliable, and super fast internet connections... and don't use their computers for anything else but gaming and thus don't mind the security risks (which shoud be unnecessary for single players) presented by cloud computing... which is a whole topic on it's own.

Well as long as you're in the minority, it's a good idea. Just saying.

I am sorry - I don't understand what you mean?

Well, if majority of D3 players feel auction house is bad for their gaming experience, removing it is a very good idea by Blizzard - and they would not remove it if that wasn't the case. And it makes me more likely to buy it - not likely enough to look past always-online, but as it was there to make sure auction house can't be cheated, that might eventually go as well.

I understand that you are a part of the self-proclaimed 'majority'. Could you please explain to me how a completely optional system ruins your personal gameplay experience?