I’ll put it on my shelf right next to may StarCraft Remastered box. Oh wait. You know what you get when you buy a physical copy of a game? Promotional materials. The physical game is almost never in the box. If there is a disk in there it’s likely all that’s on it is a link to a downloader that will download the game for you and maybe if you’re lucky some digital extras you could have downloaded anyway.
I remember leafing through huge boxes of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks at game stores to buy games. It’s all gone now. Printing and distribution costs are too expensive. Not to mention the hassle of dealing with customers who can’t get their unpatched physical game copies working enough to download the actual game all over again.
You can no longer install Diablo II from the original set of compact discs without jumping through hoops to overcome video incompatibilities with modern monitors and graphics cards.
I’ve been collecting Blizzard PC releases since 1993’s The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay).
For the Diablo series, I own:
Diablo
Diablo Shareware
Diablo II
Diablo II Exclusive Gift Set
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Diablo Battle Chest (original big box version)
Diablo Battle Chest (later smaller box version)
Diablo III
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
Diablo III Battle Chest
These really look great on a shelf, and are such a beautiful reminder of one of the most important series in gaming history. To think that Diablo II: Resurrected and/or Diablo IV might not get physical boxes is disappointing. Blizzard always used to release some of the most beautiful boxes in the industry, with gorgeous and detailed product catalogs, notepads, well written manuals, flow charts, etc.
That said, Blizzard (so far) has skipped:
Starcraft Remastered
Warcraft III: Reforged
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
It doesn’t give me hope for the future. I truly hope they will continue to release the amazing box sets they are known for.
It’s very dumb but that is the usual blizzard shtick these days. Hopefully they realize there is a big demand for it and do a physical release because I was defiantly planing on buying physical for ps5.
its a quick cash grab, since they are literally reselling the same game, just with a new graphical engine slapped on. theres no way its not a quick cash grab.
Unfortunately not everyone has the bandwidth to be able to download very game they want. Believe it or not some ISP’s only allow a certain amount of download per month and then you have to pay extra if you go over. So not everyone can just purchase all their games digitally and download 1TB of data when ever they want. Common sense when you stop and think about it. Average game now a days in about 90GB…
It’s all gone now, however these companies don’t stop to think about the people that don’t have the bandwidth to be able to download all these games digitally. Some ISP’s still restrick how much download you get per month, and when/if you go over you pay extra. Unfortunately not all ISP’s are keeping up with the gaming industries new standards.
I do wish they’d reconsider for at least a CE. I like CEs. I’d get a CE. Granted they’d need a compensation system in place for those that had the digital version for launch, but I’d still get it.
I’m in the same boat my friend, I am (and ALWAYS will be) a massive Blizzard fan/collector and it sucks they skipped a few as you mentioned. There WAS a physical edition of StarCraft Remastered, but it was only in Korea and it’s ludicrously expensive…just search eBay for it and you’ll see the vultures lurking.
There’s nothing sensible at restricting data usage. It’s not like ones and zeros are a some sort of finite resource. Any ISP limiting the monthly data usage (especially on any landline connection whether it’s DSL, fibre or whatever) is just ripping you off.
Is it? Not a single ISP I have access to, some 20 different ones, are charging for use, in fact I have not heard about it since the days of 56k, so about the time Diablo 2 had its original release.
That still wouldn’t work, because if they don’t sell all the copies they needlessly wasted money.
I don’t see many remasters get physical copies. It sometimes happens, but it’s definitely not the norm. I don’t care either way.
However, if they really wanted to, they could make them to order and make it impossible to cancel once purchased. Doesn’t seem like Blizz wants to do that.
You might want to go read up on your ISPs’ terms. Nearly all of them have actual data caps. Depending on the household’s other activities such as streaming, etc., available data for downloads may be rather limited. 1 TB goes by really fast for 4k streaming in the average household.
Oh? I don’t remember it getting one. Got a link? The originals had a physical edition, but I’ve never seen one for the remaster.
Nope. My personal record for one month is north of 15 Tb. They did lock my account once though, had been running torrents 24/7 and they thought I was using my line commercially because of all the incoming connections. One call and that was a non issue.
And they would be required to actively disclose any caps before singing, anything else would be utterly illegal.
Yeah just consume product and get excited for next product right lol
Millions of people buy physical because they prefer ownership and that’s how it’s done in 2021.Either drm free on pc or physical on console is the best way to go but it depends on the standards you have
