To all the people attacking OP, what Blizzard has stated in the past is definitely subject to change IF enough money hinges on the issue.
For example, suppose there are enough people like OP to cost D4 a significant portion of sales, then Blizzard would likely include an offline mode for play.
The real reason they likely force online (and I think you’re naive if you don’t believe this) is because it lets them keep DRM tabs on everyone and better combat piracy.
However, if they lose X sales to piracy and Y sales to people who won’t purchase without an offline mode and Y is greater than X then Blizzard should just add the da*n offline mode.
Posts like these are VERY important for making it clear to Blizzard that “always online DRM” comes at some real cost to sales and that should be considered.
I would personally much prefer an offline mode be present myself. The community making it clear what they want matters. If you disagree with OP fine, but sheesh so many people here act like he’s spoiled their dinner for bringing up an issue that matters to him (and that matters to a lot of people for that matter).
Also, check out some of the DRM tests that have been done on YouTube recently. Though the impact to average FPS is usually relatively small, the primary issue it introduces in most games is hitching/stuttering (unless you have a very powerful CPU/aren’t CPU limited it seems). Overlord Gaming for example has done recent tests demonstrating this for example.
Now, Blizzard may use their own DRM that’s in house (rather than Denuvo for example) I really don’t know so perhaps their DRM has less of an impact of performance, I’m uncertain, but this is the primary reason why DRM has a bad stigma. Seriously, check out the tests of Assasins Creed Odyssey with DRM ripped out VS left stock, it’s disgusting.
Another example would be Arkham Knight which the Steam version had DRM while the Epic version did not. I own both versions and the Epic version (DRM-less version) ran noticeably better for me with less stuttering (compared back to back to the Steam version using Rivatuner/MSI afterburner to measure performance).