Digital copies of Diablo III limited to Starter Edition for up to 72 hours

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104

Blizzard has announced that, as of Tuesday's 1.0.3 update, newly-purchased digital copies of Diablo III will be restricted to the Starter Edition for up to three days. The company says digital purchases require a review period before being fully unlocked to help combat fraud and other illicit activities.

Blizzard didn't elaborate, but PC Gamer speculates that the change is an attempt to prevent banned players from quickly reaccessing the game, which could help filter gold sellers and other such spammers. Others suggest fraudsters are purchasing the game and cancelling before the funds transfer.

The Starter Edition is limited to Act I (up to the Skeleton King) with a cap set at level 13. Matchmaking is only supported with other Starter Edition players, there's no access to the gold and real money auction houses, and Global Play is unavailable (you'll get Error 12 when trying to connect to other regions).

Although Blizzard has good intentions, limiting players to a few hours of content eliminates the primary appeal of buying a digital game: instant gratification. On the bright side, the company says its approval often takes less than three days, but until it implements a more elegant solution, you're probably better off getting the game from a local retailer if you want to play for a lengthy period right away.

In somewhat related news, Blizzard announced that it will offer refunds to unhappy South Korean Diablo III players. The decision comes nearly a month after Korea's Fair Trade Commission began investigating complaints about the game's server issues. At the time, Blizzard refused compensation, but that violated Korea's consumer protection law, which guarantees refunds for defective products.

Blizzard has since addressed the connectivity issues by deploying more servers in the region. Players who remain unsatisfied will be able to apply for a refund between June 25 and July, as long as they're below level 40. Players below level 20 will be able to get a refund within 14 days of purchasing the game from now on. Additionally, Blizzard will offer a 30-day free trial of StarCraft: Wings of Liberty.

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Blizzard's ideology is making good paying customers suffer for the wrongs done by others.
They make the game internet based because of pirates.
They delay your purchase because of non-payers/cheaters or whatever reason they choose.

Not buying this game.
 
If there was any doubt remaining that they blew it completely...

Solo/LAN games should never, never EVER require the internet to play. <b>Do not reward companies that make this mistake!</b>
 
I got to level 13 in a few hours, so it would be infuriating to deal with that. Diablo 3 isn't like WoW, you might not play it for years. And since it's pretty linear there's nothing else to do.

I would however like to know how to obtain some guest passes for friends who want to try it.
 
Blizzard is now dead to me, I'll never buy another game from this criminal copy ever again. I'm tired of feeling like I'm playing their games, not my own, and at their leisure. I don't want to be forced to update every couple of days, let me play offline when I want, where I want. The practice of assuming everyone is stealing from you isn't how you attract customers, and its only getting worse.
 
Sadly, Australia get neither refunds nor servers to call our own.
I have to put up with a beautiful connection speed of roughly 200ms until the US wake up and then I get 900-2000
 
Sadly, Australia get neither refunds nor servers to call our own.
I have to put up with a beautiful connection speed of roughly 200ms until the US wake up and then I get 900-2000

If I lived in Oz, I'd be more worried about the carbon taxes starting next week. The carbon cycle is natural, plants breath it, but you gotta pay for it. Gas-X pills may be a good investment.
 
Everyday I log in I have about 5 friends requests from names such as: "jkhsjk, uhsjuashdj, etc..". Blizzard is doing this for their existing player base IMO. It sucks for the new players, but the less spam the better imo.
 
Sadly, Australia get neither refunds nor servers to call our own.
I have to put up with a beautiful connection speed of roughly 200ms until the US wake up and then I get 900-2000

If I lived in Oz, I'd be more worried about the carbon taxes starting next week. The carbon cycle is natural, plants breath it, but you gotta pay for it. Gas-X pills may be a good investment.

Unfortunately the AU Gov is just like Blizzard, refuse to hear opposing opinions, refuse to acknowledge that there is an issue in the first place, and will go ahead and do their own thing anway
 
Blizzard's ideology is making good paying customers suffer for the wrongs done by others.
They make the game internet based because of pirates.
They delay your purchase because of non-payers/cheaters or whatever reason they choose.

Not buying this game.
Pirates have nothing to do with always online mode, d3 was cracked on like day 3, always online just prevents people from sharing there games with friends giving them a free single player.

This move is a pain in the butt for legit players, but will really help reduce or eliminate the spam bots. I am guessing people were buying d3 accounts getting banned the same day or hour spamming gold sell sites, getting a refund that day somehow maybe because the sale takes time to process on there credit card and they cancel the transaction?

p.s. if anything always online makes more pirates since its the only way to play offline
 
Blizzard's ideology is making good paying customers suffer for the wrongs done by others.
They make the game internet based because of pirates.
They delay your purchase because of non-payers/cheaters or whatever reason they choose.

Not buying this game.
Pirates have nothing to do with always online mode, d3 was cracked on like day 3, always online just prevents people from sharing there games with friends giving them a free single player.

This move is a pain in the butt for legit players, but will really help reduce or eliminate the spam bots. I am guessing people were buying d3 accounts getting banned the same day or hour spamming gold sell sites, getting a refund that day somehow maybe because the sale takes time to process on there credit card and they cancel the transaction?

p.s. if anything always online makes more pirates since its the only way to play offline

You got the always online requirement wrong. It's not for people not to share a single player game, is for hackers to not be able to hack game items to sell them either on normal or real money ah, or just to not be able to create items.

There are people that like to grind (Not me... but there are really :p) so their goal in this "linear" game that you say it is, is to get the best gear posible to beat more monsters and then get better gear, there is never a best one possible, I think. All of this without the frustration of a dude who got in the game and in 2 minutes he created a better item than yours without a single in-game effort.
 
Sadly, Australia get neither refunds nor servers to call our own.
I have to put up with a beautiful connection speed of roughly 200ms until the US wake up and then I get 900-2000
You can get a refund. Already got it myself.

If I lived in Oz, I'd be more worried about the carbon taxes starting next week. The carbon cycle is natural, plants breath it, but you gotta pay for it. Gas-X pills may be a good investment.
Your argument is the height of naivety. Take a box that has 1 cubic metre of volume. Put in an ecosystem that has 50/50 CO2 and O2. Then put in something that converts O2 to CO2 faster than the ecosystem converts CO2 to O2. What do you have? An UNSTABLE SYSTEM. One that will saturate from CO2. What if the ecosystem requires O2 to work? Well it will *die*.

You can't just pump every increasing levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and expect the planet to be able to take it all. At some point there will be too much CO2 being produced for the system to handle. Maybe we haven't reached it yet. Maybe we have gone too far. You can't keep exponentially increasing CO2 production and expect the world to work indefinitely.

I'm not saying I believe in global warming. But I am saying you can't expect to pollute indefinitely and not have consequences.
 
You got the always online requirement wrong. It's not for people not to share a single player game, is for hackers to not be able to hack game items to sell them either on normal or real money ah, or just to not be able to create items.

There are people that like to grind (Not me... but there are really :p) so their goal in this "linear" game that you say it is, is to get the best gear posible to beat more monsters and then get better gear, there is never a best one possible, I think. All of this without the frustration of a dude who got in the game and in 2 minutes he created a better item than yours without a single in-game effort.
This is kinda funny, you can have single player like in warcraft 3 and a zillion other games that is seprate from online play. Yes you can alter single player items if people search for single player hacks\trainers but that in no way effects online play. If anyone wants to test hacks with offline gameplay they can simply download the cracked version of a video game within a week of its release.

Lets check the list of reasons there could be for always online mode:
1. To prevent the game from being cracked.
Answer: No, popular games with online always mode are cracked within days of release, none popular games usually within a week.
2. (Kibaruk)To prevent items from being hacked in single player then brought to multiplayer.
Answer: No, this has never happened gaming companies keep single player characters separate from online only characters.
3. To prevent people from testing hacks offline.
Answer: No as stated its easy to get a cracked offline version of any game.
4. So people can't give the single player version to their friends for free.
Answer: Yes, mainly because I can't think of any other reason then companies trying to make money off people not tech savy enough to pirate the cracked single player version of a video game. Or people to moral to pirate but don't mind using a friends single player.
 
Sadly, Australia get neither refunds nor servers to call our own.
I have to put up with a beautiful connection speed of roughly 200ms until the US wake up and then I get 900-2000
You can get a refund. Already got it myself.

If I lived in Oz, I'd be more worried about the carbon taxes starting next week. The carbon cycle is natural, plants breath it, but you gotta pay for it. Gas-X pills may be a good investment.
Your argument is the height of naivety. Take a box that has 1 cubic metre of volume. Put in an ecosystem that has 50/50 CO2 and O2. Then put in something that converts O2 to CO2 faster than the ecosystem converts CO2 to O2. What do you have? An UNSTABLE SYSTEM. One that will saturate from CO2. What if the ecosystem requires O2 to work? Well it will *die*.

You can't just pump every increasing levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and expect the planet to be able to take it all. At some point there will be too much CO2 being produced for the system to handle. Maybe we haven't reached it yet. Maybe we have gone too far. You can't keep exponentially increasing CO2 production and expect the world to work indefinitely.

I'm not saying I believe in global warming. But I am saying you can't expect to pollute indefinitely and not have consequences.

The more CO2 in the air, the bigger plants become as they eat it. Pump CO2 in a greenhouse with plants and they're be double the size than those without it.

The Earth can take care of itself when it comes to CO2, but pollution which is chemicals in the air, can be solved with property rights, not government control. What windws up happening is corporations become exempt thanks to their government friends. If you need proof, just look at all the exemptions from Obamacare issued by the White House.

Anyway, if you can prove someone is polluting your air, water or ground, then you get compensated. That's strong property rights and freedom. The solution is to empower the people.
 
And the fanboys of diablo 3 will eat this news up and say that this is a good thing, because blizzard never saw this coming and they are only putting this in place to protect everyone.

Implementing a service I a game (like hats etc in TF2) only opens up the game/ service to exploitation have a look at google and type "I was scammed TF2" you will see this service only guarantees one thing and that is legit users will always be on the receiving end of it.

*This is the exact reason I did not buy diablo 3, and that is I saw this service of real world money being circumspect to abuse and legit users suffering & the always online to avoid piracy making legit consumers suffer again."

Well done ubisoft oh I mean blizzard keep punishing the legit consumer, know there is two companies I won't be purchasing from..
 
Wow guys... you can't get 'instant gratification' anyway, you do have to download the 8GB game for it play right. And of course you can share the game with other people... you just can't both play at the same time. It can be shared like any console game that comes on a disc. All you need is your friend's password.

Being online is no hassle at all... and anyone who's played knows this. Complaining makes you sound like you're angry you can't steal it.
 
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