Preorder = Posting Rights?

General Discussion
1

Are you kidding me? You can only post in these forums, if you preorder the game? People are playing this game for 20 years and can’t participate in all the community discussions about the remaster, because they don’t preorder a game, which they could never play before?! We have not even officially seen every class ingame!

That’s… interesting… I ofc do understand the financial motivation behind it. But splitting the community and especially excluding these people from the forums, which serve as a feedback channel, is beyond business decisions imo. That’s allocating rights to people, based on “who guarantees us his/her money first?”, which I hope is going to be fixed.

I don’t like the direction, this is going.

2

If WC3R hadn’t just come out to disastrous reception, I’d fight you on this.

However, you’re probably right.

In an odd twist of fate, wouldn’t it be funny if this was the source from which they gathered the least?

3

You realize that Blizzard does have people that not only check through this forum, but the Diablo 2 (2000) forum, and the Diablo 3 forum for feedback on the franchise? These community managers also have a presence on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, as well as streaming platforms. Forum posting privileges by pre-order I would assume is to try to limit troll spamming from people that just wish to grief Blizzard/the communities, as well as having a place for discussion where people have already made a commitment to the game.

4

Yes, I see that and that is probably, what some people from Blizzard thought, when they decided this. And sure, on first sight, this does not look like an issue, because preorders commonly give people little gifts, like ingame cosmetics etc.

But I am saying, that this is ethically different, because it is splitting the community in two classes, having different rights. And that is a completely different scenario, than distributing little gifts. Giving rights vs giving gifts.

Now this is not an issue if these rights

  1. are trivial, such that there is no meaningful difference between having the rights and not having them

or

  1. are obtained in the same system, in which the prerequisites for having these rights are met.

Example for 1): you do whatever (like preordering the game), to be able to enter a secret sheep level in D2R, but you can literally not do anything there, but looking at friendly sheeps. Also you can’t meet other players in there. Or you just get cosmetics or whatever.

An example for 2) would be: You achieve something ingame and gain access to an area of the game, which others don’t. Here you can meet only players, which achieved the same ingame.

Or example for 2): you are exceptionally well behaving and supportive in the forums and gain access to more forum rights.

But mixing it up has the exact same problem, that underlies real money trades in games: people get advantages over others, from things, that happen in a completely different environment and are subject to completely different rules. That’s like getting a job promotion as a game developer, because I made a half court shot in basketball. Or getting good items in D2R, because I beat Dark souls. Or getting rights to socialize in a forum, because I preordered a game.

5

When you don’t buy a fridge from fridgecompany you don’t get to use their support line just because you bought some other fridge

you bought their fridge?
Alright, now you can use their support line

Hope it makes sense to you, otherwise if you didn’t buy their fridge you could also go somewhere on the internet that offers help beside the fridgecompany itself

6

If that’s the case, the whole thread is a mistake and I will be punished by feeling stupid. But I have read otherwise in the D2 forums and I think, it’s ethically questionable.

7

it’s a privilege as a perk for pre-ordering

8

I mean, heh. Tell us how you really feel?

Us purists will sit over the smoldering carcass of D2R and say to ourselves, “look how they massacred my boy.”

:laughing:

9

But it’s not about support, right? It is the official possibility to exchange opinions and ideas about the product. It’s mainly an interaction between community members, not between a client and the company. If these D2R forums were empty, it would not be a problem either. But by having a very active forum, excluding people from here is the same as excluding them socially.

10

This forum is hosted by the company itself, if you want to keep it maintained and functional, providing a reason to said company to do so would be necessary(supporting their game), this forum wouldn’t have been here otherwise

as people before me have already said, there are ample of other examples of where we can use our voices and thoughts and still be heard which are not on this specific forum, which doesn’t exclude you from your right to sound your opinion

These are the official company forums and it makes sense that it will work this way

11

Yes and the people, playing D2 for 20 years are the reason, why there is a remaster, which will server as a nice little income for this company. If the D2 servers were dead, no one would think, a D2 remaster would actually be worth it.

That being said, I do see, that a commitment to the game filters the trolls, which would make it even more difficult, to read the actual communtity’s opinions and feedback from the forums.

But imo, this does not outweigh the decision to exclude some of the people, who supported this game the most.

12

I am glad only people who preordered can post here so we had actualy chance to have some good discussion without hundreds people spamming topics if you would allow players with d2 cdkey to post here.

13

Well, I think, especially those with a D2 CD key should be given a voice in the official forums, not the people, who preordered, but never played D2.

14

They have voice on D2 forums. Why should anyone have right to post in forums for games they didnt buy.

15

Because they supported the game over 20 years and neither this remaster, nor this forum would exist, if al these people didn’t support that game so well.

Examples are:

  • modders: without them, there would be no PlugY, no PD2, no PoD.

  • streamers: a whole lot of people picked up D2 every now and then again, because MrLlamaSC and others keep playing it and keep Ming D2 interesting with new content.

  • other “veterans”, who are still coming up with fancy builds or do PvP

16

And these people in the places you specified are able to converse about it to their hearts content and let me correct you by saying that this remaster is here because blizzard decided to make it(D2R)

and the people who indeed back the game will be able to post here.

17

Please explain to me how for example guy playing 2 years with bot supported game for 20 years.

Even if you played 20 years, thats not anywhere near to supporting the game. You werent supporting, you were just playing product. Unless you did more, idk like creating mods to keep D2 more interesting all these years.

But anyway, as i said anyone who is playing d2 have their own forum.

D2R isnt D2, its not the same, its new product.

18

Yes, but the decision to remaster a game is a financial one of course. And it’s financially only worth the effort, if people play it. If D2 had been as dead as D1, there would have been no D2R now.

19

What exactly is the problem here? If they didn’t do this, then the forum would be open to thousands of people who do not own the game and likely would have no plan to and as such would add zero value to D2 discourse.

20

That also does not happen in the D3 and D2 forums… the problem imo is, that people are excluded from this “social place”, even though they supported the game significantly.

That makes the underlying ethics questionable to me, because you split an existing community, by giving rights to some of them and not to others. And who gets these rights, is decided by a financial support, not by a support for the actual game for the last 20 years.