I think it all boils down to this. Hell, at least Steam and even SC2 have an offline mode.

I think what really killed it for me was the interview where that guy from Blizzard told us to just go play another game if we wanted offline play so badly. Sheesh.

If it is anything like WoW, you won't need to worry about it.

I've been thinking about this a bit. I remember seeing $100 and $200+ items for Diablo 2 on ebay. I believe it was carried by some media as well. But this was a few lucky people taking advantage of an opportunity. I consider this to be very different from the game endorsing sold items. NOW, every item drop will be seen through the eyes of someone looking at their income. If mobs drop too much of something or not enough... either way it is the makers of Diablo controlling the REAL economy. I think they KNOW people will buy this game with the sole intent of making money. You will see whole new levels of cutthroat. and the game will dwindle to very little other than REAL gold farmers competing with each other.

In short... I predict doom and gloom. I don't see those folks wanting to make a quick buck being able to decently co-exist with casual gamers. If I could truly play offline, this wouldn't matter to me. But since online is forced, I don't care to be a part of that potential catastrophe.

Honestly when I read this kind of interview I don't know what is worse :

That the guy is really a big enough moron to actually believe what he is saying and that he was genuinely surprised of the negative reaction...

...or that they perfectly knew what would happen and simply hope it will be the players that will be stupid enough morons to actually believe them when they say they had no choice and that the always online "feature" is not a DRM.

Well, we know at least this guy's not happy

Just don't f***ing throw this hammer at Princess Leia! Tons of Blizz-stuff on the wall and what is he hitting? Nerd rage makes you squint o.O

No. Everything you see is yours and yours alone.
You can, obviously, give it away after picking up but no one will be able to take that stuff beforehand.

Welcome to the future of pc-gaming: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-10-id-software-on-always-on-internet-debate

[i]Famed first-person shooter developer id Software would love to force gamers to connect to the internet while playing its games.

It would be "better for everybody", creative director Tim Willits told Eurogamer at QuakeCon last week.
...
"Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected," he said. "If you have a juggernaut, you can make change. I'm all for that. If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome."[/i]

Yes and no. When loot drops, it drops for yourself and no one else. However, if you throw something to the floor, its free for all. There will be a trade window to prevent the D2 issues with trading though.

And his excuse is even sillier than the Blizzard one :

"In the end, it's better for everybody," he said. "Imagine picking up a game and it's automatically updated. Or there's something new you didn't know about, and you didn't have to click away. It's all automatically there.

What a game that automatically update... now that's a revolutionary idea nobody ever had... that's pretty pathetic, Rage is supposed to use Steamwork and this dude speak like it has no idea how it works.

What makes me sad is that after Epic, Blizzard and now even Id, it looks like that a lot of what used to be some of my favorite PC gaming companies have turned into complete ass###es who represent probably now a bigger threat to PC gaming that piracy ever will.

It's moments like that that I am kind of glad that Sierra (at least in it's older form), Origin and Bullfrog are long dead; at least I can still have fond memories of them.

That Willits quote shows exactly why accepting this with Diablo 3 is a terrible idea. Please singleplayer gamers, do NOT buy Diablo 3.

I would be even tempted to say that he also shows why buying Rage would be a terrible idea...

It was off my "To buy" list the moment this was announced.

Alright, thanks for the replies!

At least Blizzard has some kind of 'excuse'. Look at what Willits said in contrast:

"If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome."

He knows that we gamers don't want to be online whenever we play. But he doesn't matter. Willits just thinks that it would be 'awesome' if they could force us gamers to accept this always online bs. Thats even worse than this whole DRM-system itself... You can't tell your customers that you would love it to force them to accept things they don't want. Try this at your job... Well... No, better don't try this at your job. Stupid idea...

If Blizzards system works out, we'll have to live with always online DRM in most new games. This reminds me of something, seven years ago... It's just happening again... Nobody wanted Steam. But Half Life 2 was a must have. And today? Today Steam has it's own Hammer Legion...