Tues OCT 12, Server Down/Chars Missing - What to Expect

General Discussion
205

I’m still waiting for you to produce this “advertisment” you claim exists.

There was NO advertising for this feature. Period. It was something some peoiple assumed would still be a thing, and nothing before.

Show me an interview. Show me an actual ad from blizzard. Show me a product page that lists this feature. Show me SOMETHING. all we have right now is your words.

They said they were removing it MONTHS ago. And they spoke nothing of it prior to that.

I’m scouring google myself right now. All I can find is the posts mentioning its removal. Nothing about them promising to include it.

I can find dozens of reports about TCP/IP not being included. I can’t find one where it was promised to be a thing.

206

“Classic gameplay—the same Diablo II you know and love, preserved.”

They don’t have to advertise EVERY SINGLE THING / FEATURE in the game. A generalized statement… As a matter of fact… this phrase is still on the Store page, can still be ‘intentionally misleading’, all the while selling preorders, etc etc. Well, in a nut shell. It is a lie.

Its not the same ‘gameplay’ we all know and love. Close, but close doesn’t cut it.

As for the reason it was cut, which is publicly available to see… its a lie too. But i’m not getting into all the technical jazz. Seems pointless when you are having a hard time just accepting that blizz made some pretty intended changes to purposefully keep anyone from doing anything with their game, but left it until a few months before release to tell the world about it. After blizz cons and all the buzz (promotion ofc). ALL OF THIS WAS INTENDED. Pretty damn shady.

Anyways , go ahead reply with your repeated jargon if you must. Ta ta.

207

It was not in something you would call an “Advertisement”. It was not in commercials, print ads, etc. It was not on the Blizzard D2R purchase page or advertised features.

It was in the Press Q&A panel at Blizzcon 2021. That was a huge and long interview. They were heavy on "bringing it to modern/live Bnet which takes changes, that mods would not work the same way, BUT they have one sentence saying TCP/IP would still exist if it was your thing.

That said, nearly everything they published or said has huge GAME MAY CHANGE BEFORE RELEASE warnings on it.

Here is the relevant interview transcript.
https://diablo.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzconline-2021-diablo-ii-resurrected-press-qa

These two questions and the answers seem to have most of the info related to the topics at hand.

ComicBook (Logan Moore): One thing that’s been big with Diablo II’s history in a lot of Blizzard games in general has been mods. Can you guys talk about how mod support is going to work here?

Gallerani: Awesome. So, first off, you’re absolutely right. Like one of the reasons that the game is still alive and kicking and relevant for 20 years is the mod community; and to be clear, the mod community that exists around Diablo II is still there. That whole ecosystem is untouched. That will keep going. When it comes to mods for Diablo II: Resurrected, it’s going to be a little bit of a different game to mod. :point_right: First off, mods that actually hack the game, that inject things into the DLL… those aren’t really going to be as welcomed anymore.

I mean, don’t get me wrong… you guys will figure out a way to do it. I’m not going to tell you that it can’t be done, :point_right: but with the shift over to modern Battle.net, and us trying to increase security and preventing item duping and bots and other things like that, those types of mods aren’t going to be as easy to do.

However, I have to give mad props to Andre and a lot of our other engineers. We’ve taken a lot of the aspect of the game that used to be hard-coded and we’ve moved them over to Data; and so things that you would use to have to hack the game to do, you don’t know because it’s in Data. We’ve also done some cleanup.

It’s gonna be a little bit easier to read. So, yes, we totally encourage mods and everything like that for Diablo II: Resurrected; but it’s not to say that: “Oh, that mod that I really love for Diablo II is just suddenly going to work for Diablo II: Resurrected.”

DualShockers (Ricky Frech): So kind of on the same topic of mods. Is there going to be any offline play for this new release, or is it all online?

Gallerani: The short answer is yes. All the ways that you used to be able to play the game are going to be the same. We’ve cleaned up the verbiage a little bit.

So right now you either make an online character cause it’s saved on Battle.net, or you make an offline character because it’s saved locally. So you have a local character, you have a Battle.net character. When you go online, you can go online on a game that’s totally private and you don’t invite anybody to it — we’ve made it easier to invite people into your game.

So you’ll have a friends list now. You can just click on your friends list and invite them straight to your game rather than calling them so long as your phone line, isn’t tied up with you being on the internet and telling them the game, name, and password.

You can just pull them right in, and then we now have a game finder. So you can just go on to the lobby and find other games, but you can also play it offline. :point_right:You can also do TCP IP connect if that’s kind of still your thing. So pretty much all the ways you used to be able to play, you can play now.

They’ll probably be some more modern, like verifying that the copy of the game you have is still legit, but that’s not going to prevent you from playing offline. That’ll be like, okay to start a game. Yeah. It’s legit. Maybe some period of time it’ll ask you again, but that’s kind of normal with not just most Blizzard games, all games nowadays.

The interview is huge so worth a read.

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208

TY. I know damn well it was said to be part of the experience at one point.

Appreciate it.

PS ; we can all have our opinion** on this one, but it is mine, that Blizzard intentionally did all of this, just the way they did, for a good reason.

209

They do. If it isn’t listed, you assume it isn’t included. You don’t assume that it’s a 100% per pixel, per byte-code repeduction when they say “the same thing you know and love.”

That is marketing babble. If it was 100% the same, it wouldn’t need to exist, because Diablo II Original still exists and you can still play it, even with online features.

This is what in legal terms is known as “puffery.” It’s not illegal and does not constitute false advertising.

210

Theres your proof. Done yet?

I bet hes not. lol, Bye

211

We have one sentence uttering in an interview that it was still planned. Well guess what, things change, and they reserve the right to make changes. They were not dishonest about it. They told everyone WELL IN ADVANCE that it was going away. No dishonesty. No tricks.

Features in games get canned all the time, Name any game and I can find something about it that was originally planned but got scrapped. Does that mean the people who made it are horrible people not to be trusted? No, it doesn’t.

It was MENTIONED in one interview. It was not “advertised.” No one at Blizzard went around promoting this as something to make people buy the game. I can accept that some people may have read this and they’re like “oh good, TCPIP is still going to be a thing.” But it was NOT promoted. Then they decided they wouldn’t be offering it, mostly because a coprorate bigwig was scared to death about piracy. You have to understand, this probably wasn’t even a developer decision. But you’re hating on the developers anyway over a completely unrelated problem that they ARE WORKING IN GOOD FAITH to resolve.

212

In this case I don’t agree that it was malicious intent.

The VV folks did not make or run the original. They had full intent to make it as close to original as possible. They were excited, and dare I say a bit naive.

It was after the Alpha got hacked and distributed that the change to TCP/IP happened. I am very sure it is related to piracy. I might be wrong, but that is my feeling about it.

Again, they let us know before Beta that it would no longer be in game, so everyone could get refunds almost 2 months before release.

2 Likes
213

The official statement cited “security concerns” regarding its removal. “Security concerns” = piracy.

Anyway. It is obvious there was no malicious intent. So if you (Joanna, not MissCheetah) want to blame someone for the loss of TCPIP, blame whoever leaked the alpha test.

214

I wont argue anything you are saying, its all legit. But, i was right in my claim that it was indeed stated, and i will make note of the person who has now changed their tune to a different argument.

Anyways , appreciate that link and your opinion. Cheers.

QUICK EDIT : @Miss Cheetah. I suppose the reason i feel it was intended and malicious, is because, i feel any billionaire that is only concerned about more and more of ‘their own’ accumlated wealth and money, to the point they will actively seek and destroy other great things, is truly malicious to many, without even knowing it. Or maybe they do, and just don’t care.

Is it their right? Yes. Does it make it right? Subjective.

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I accept the statement he provided. But I also accept the probable reasons they made the decision to change it. And I agree with him that there was no intention here of screwing everyone over.

If they really wanted to do that, they would have just not made a statement about it, or make it after the fact. But they didn’t. They said it was going away well in advance and gave everyone who cared about that feature plenty of time to cancel their preorders.

Which brings us back to the actual topic of this thread. I truly believe that VV is acting in good faith here. They definitely made some mistakes, but, unlike the warcraft 3 team, they are actually intent on addressing those mistakes.

No developer that didn’t intend to fix problems with their game would have wrote like a 10 page essay on what the problems with their game are and how they’re going to fix them.

216

It is easy to point at Bobby K and say he should not get paid. The CEOs are paid WAY above what the staff get. Insanely more.

There is an another aspect though. The people who make the art, program the games, design games, market, publish, etc. Even the folks in the cafe and cleaning staff. They deserve to be paid a share of the games that they make and support. Piracy strips those folks of the revenue that should be coming in. It also reduces revenue for development of new games - those take years to make and millions and millions in staff pay, etc.

The issue of abusive CEO pay is huge. Using that to green light piracy that only hurts the workers though, is not logical to me. One wrong does not make another wrong ok.

Bobby big bucks gets paid no matter what - stealing games from the folks in the trenches is not cool.

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217

Really the whole reason for my posting and reaction to you was your assumption of malicious intent. I recognize that Blizzard has had past actions that would make you question their faithfulness in a circumstance like this. But I always assume good faith in people unless they give me a really good reason not to. And even then, I give them a chance to prove themselves before I make a decision.

You really just have to put yourself in their position. Do you really think some bored guy at Vicarious Visions just thought to themselves, “I wonder what I could do today to make people mad. I know, let’s remove TCPIP!” ? Who would do that, other than someone who doesn’t want a job? There is a reason for everything.

218

Well… i wish we didnt have to make this about piracy, but i can definitely see how it is going to be a part of it.

But really, you must be aware that almost all the modders, the community, i mean, we all had legit copies. You kinda had to to get on bnet. Hell, i still have several accounts with 3 or 4 old school keys bound to them. Must have bought this game 16+ times over on disc.

Anyways , i hear ya. I think its really all we can say here. Cheers.

PS: I absolutely agree the artists and devs need to get paid. Bobby kotick shouldnt.

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219

Well this is also where you have to remember that they did the right thing here by not making Ressurected a patch to the original game (even though the way they went about making it, it certainly could have been). Original Diablo II and all of its mods etc. are still playable. You can still play on bnet. They did not make the mistake of destroying that like they did with WC3.

1 Like