I have a spare 486 around here if they need another server.
You know what would have been a good idea? Releasing some version of the game for free and letting everyone jump on to test out if their servers could handle the load. I think something like that would have solved all their problems. I wonder why they didn’t do that?
It’s now “emergency maintenance” on their Twitter. Awesome. I look forward to the server crash in an hour and subsequent “apocalyptic maintenance.”
They had 5 million retail preorders as of 2 weeks ago, and digital preorders aren’t counted, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 10 million people all trying to get on at once. With that sort of demand, it can be hard to anticipate the things that go wrong. I can’t really blame them too much.
It’s probably to fix the paladin shield equip bug.
Sorry I was clicking too fast in our game, I didn’t know how the quest text worked for other people!
I’m enjoying this “righteous indignation” over the choppy launch.
People, where have you been the last 8 years? Every Blizzard launch since (and including) WoW (and maybe even WC3, I seem to remember player matching being busted at launch from overpopulation back in the day) has seen the Battle.Net servers get overwhelmed (due to sales overshooting projections.) Yeah, it sucks for the first few days. But then things settle down and we’re left with great games that people play for years - no exaggeration.
/just relax, is all I’m saying. No reason to write off D3, or SC2, or even WoW at launch. It will settle down.
//Was able to play D3 for about 3 hours tonight, then a server down. No biggie. I was in the beta, so what I played was stuff I had mostly already seen.
///Highly pleased - the beta difficulty was “timid” at best. D3 normal seems to be a bit more challenging. Plus there was the recent vid from Blizz developers on how Inferno difficulty will kick our asses. I’m also liking the DH skill progression MUCH better in retail than I did in beta.
Honestly, I don’t actually mind too much the servers being down. I’d just appreciate an estimate of when they’re going to be back up. Should I keep on trying tonight, or should I just grab a book and head to bed?
@BlizzardCS says 11:45 PM Pacific so I am going to bed.
Well, actually managed to play last night for around 2 hours. I believe I’m within a level or two of the first major boss. Then I got the Templar helper and the game booted me (thought they had fixed this) and wasn’t able to get back in.
It’s a pretty good game, but for the life of me I don’t understand why they would make the game unplayable unless you are online and connected to their servers if you are just playing single player. Couldn’t they do an offline mode like, well, every Steam game I have??
At any rate, hopefully it will be more stable tonight. Hell, I went out and bought a freaking gaming laptop just so I could play this game on my current trip so it would be nice to actually PLAY it. 
-XT
They say always-online is to prevent duping and other exploits.
Sure, but they could have a completely separate offline mode where characters and items can’t be transferred to the online mode at all, like they did with D2.
I was wondering about that as well. (And I didn’t know items were untransferrable from pve to pvp characters in D2–so that makes it even more plausible that they could have done the same for this game…)
Wow a lot of haters slagging on D3.
Does it suck that the servers are having issues? Yes. Just live with it for now.
There are millions of users accessing these servers. Millions!. I’m in IT and support a online gaming website and I have a hard time fathoming the horse power required to support this. Even with virtual/cloud computing you can’t just flip a switch and add more servers if you don’t have hardware. They aren’t charging a recurring fee to play on the servers so there is no extra revenue coming in from this.
Does it suck to have to be online to play single player? Not really. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Diablo 2. I’ve probably played less than 10 of those hours in a situation/location where I didn’t have a live Internet connection.
My Collectors Edition of D3 is waiting for me at the post office, so I’ll install it tonight and play a few hours (hopefully).
If it works great, if not I’ll try again tomorrow. I’ve waited 12 years since D2, what’s another few days?
Everybody just needs to take a deep breath and relax!
MtM
[QUOTE=McDeath_the_Mad]
There are millions of users accessing these servers. Millions!. I’m in IT and support a online gaming website and I have a hard time fathoming the horse power required to support this. Even with virtual/cloud computing you can’t just flip a switch and add more servers if you don’t have hardware. They aren’t charging a recurring fee to play on the servers so there is no extra revenue coming in from this.
[/QUOTE]
I’m a network engineer, so I’m well aware of the problems and issues. I’m also aware that if I promise a service (and sell it to millions of people at $50+ a pop) then I need to deliver. Thus far, they haven’t delivered, which is why people are frustrated. I have no doubt that eventually they will smooth things out, but just talking about the technical challenges aren’t likely to sway anyone. As you should know if you are in IT, users don’t care about the details…they care about the results.
Personally, I think heads should be rolling at Blizzard over this cluster fuck. I don’t know who’s decision impacted what’s happening here (poor testing? engineering? over sold or poor marketing decisions? diversified locations, more pipe, more VMs/servers needed?), but someone should take it in the chops over this. If it wasn’t ready for prime time then the launch should have been pushed. Certainly, that would have riled people as well, but to my mind that’s more understandable than pushing something out that obviously wasn’t ready for the sheer number of folks trying to use it. I think people are rightfully frustrated here. If this was a beta and no one had paid a dime for it yet, they yeah…all this whining would be ridiculous. But people paid good money (and quite a lot of it) for a service that, thus far, hasn’t delivered. I got to play for a whole 2 hours last night before it crapped out and I couldn’t get back in for over an hour (before I gave up and went to bed), for a game I paid $59 for. That’s not making my own bunny jump, despite understanding exactly what Blizzard’s challenges are in making this all work.
-XT
i think this is one of the reason why they did what they did - to ease the transition from offline to online by getting rid of it in the first place. you might be coaxed out to try their auction house if it didn’t mean having to abandon your offline characters.
The thing with offering an offline play mode is that there’s really no reason for them to do so. They might sell a few more copies, but they’d lose those sales (and more) to piracy. Plus, always online means that more people will play multiplayer, which increases the engagement of the game and helps sell more copies, and more people contributing to the auction house, which increases engagement and helps sell more copies.
Basically, you wanting the ability to play offline only translates into a business incentive for Blizzard if you’re willing to not buy the game because it lacks offline play. And so many people want to buy the game that this is a non-issue for them.
Regarding network issues… Heads should not roll over this, unless Blizzard is a lot dumber than I think. Launch day traffic is outside of the normal curve in a really big way, and no matter how much modeling and stress testing they did, failing under extreme load is always a possibility. You hit boundary conditions that are unexpected and things go sideways.
It sucks that things did not go smoothly, but I didn’t pay $60 for one day. I paid $60 for a game that I intend to play for many hours. If network issues are a regular thing, that’s a problem. Launch day issues? Meh. I’ll live.
Well, I expected all sorts of problems when I downloaded it last night, but it installed in less than an hour, and I got a good 2 hours of gameplay in. So far I LOVE it. I only dabbled in Diablo 2, but it seems Diablo 3 fixed all the things I didn’t like about 2.
I’m playing a barbarian (dual weild! Woo!) I haven’t met the Templar yet, but I’m making a mental note not to give him a shield.
My poor husband is working on his dissertation and wisely has chosen not to download it until after his defense on June 4th. The poor fellow is in the meantime living vicariously through me.
Need answer fast!
I am downloading my digital purchase and it’s at 35% Apparently I can play now because the play button is lit up. If I play now, will it continue downloading or is this a trap? I really want to play but I don’t want to have to re-install from scratch later!
Much more solid experience last night. At first the positioning of my character was odd (that was after the previous crash), but after that I got in about 4 solid hours of gaming last night, taking me through the first act and into the second. It was a hell of a lot of fun. In another thread a posters said it was too easy, but I had some fairly harrowing experiences with boss mobs where I was on the edge of death and just managed to pop a few caltrops and get away long enough to finish them off. I found it about the same difficulty as I recall Diablo II was on the first play through.
-XT