Mysteries of the Mighty Barbarians.

[Agito]

Diablo 3 fans has some new info up from the press event and there's some new videos there.
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/2624...s-event-visit/

[GRT]

And how does this RMT stuff stop you from playing it for fun? (outside of the above things I listed which will clearly fuck up the gold market in the game from functioning optimally).

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer a system where Blizzard didn't do this, and there were no RMT sites at all, but I'd prefer this to d2jsp shit anyday.

Well, maybe it's just me, but as a grown adult and not a kid who has an abundance of free time on my hand, I have to pick and choose the games I spend my time on. A large part of why I've played every Blizzard game so far is that I respected the heck out of that company. This move is making me lose much of it, and I'm not sure I can enjoy playing D3 knowing that the company behind it is endorsing the kind of practice in online gaming that I've absolutely despised since I've first known it.

[elison]

They shoulda just remade D2 with today's graphical standards.

No skill trees? Passive and active traits? Limited passive and active traits I can use at any given time? Openly welcoming RMT and taking a cut of real life cash for every transaction? This shit is going to be terrible.

All these years of excitement shit on in a blink of an eye, amazing job Blizzard.

[Guitarman]

the in-game currency auctions will be nonexistant. Might as well not have an auction house for those of us who don't enjoy spending real money on games. Fucking blizzard.

[geno]

Well, maybe it's just me, but as a grown adult and not a kid who has an abundance of free time on my hand, I have to pick and choose the games I spend my time on. A large part of why I've played every Blizzard game so far is that I respected the heck out of that company. This move is making me lose much of it, and I'm not sure I can enjoy playing D3 knowing that the company behind it is endorsing the kind of practice in online gaming that I've absolutely despised since I've first known it.

Fair enough, if its a matter of who you're purchase money is going to, I completely understand. I am a bit disappointed myself, I considered Blizzard to have a damn near perfect track record for quite a long time. I never played WoW, so I tended to ignore anything they did there. SC2 had more problems at launch (and b.net's failures) than I'd care to admit, but at its core its still a great game. Personally, I'm hoping for at least that much with Diablo 3, all this other shit aside, I hope the gameplay is good enough to stand on its own. We'll see though.

[geno]

the in-game currency auctions will be nonexistant. Might as well not have an auction house for those of us who don't enjoy spending real money on games. Fucking blizzard.

This could be fixed so easily too, which kinda pisses me off. Like I said earlier, just make it so only gold is RMT'd and it would stop the gold AH players from getting fucked.

Or, if they are SO FUCKING HELLBENT on selling items directly to players, do the same thing except when you go to buy from the gold AH you get an option to pay with real money using a current or selectable market rate for gold. Problem fucking solved, let people RMT but don't fuck up the trading system for people who don't want to.

[geno]

the in-game currency auctions will be nonexistant. Might as well not have an auction house for those of us who don't enjoy spending real money on games. Fucking blizzard.

This could be fixed so easily too, which kinda pisses me off. Like I said earlier, just make it so only gold is RMT'd and it would stop the gold AH players from getting fucked.

Or, if they are SO FUCKING HELLBENT on selling items directly to players, do the same thing except when you go to buy from the gold AH you get an option to pay with real money using a current or selectable market rate for gold. Problem fucking solved, let people RMT but don't fuck up the trading system for people who don't want to.

[Hyan]

It's okay guys...it's Blizzard.

[Lordender]

It's okay guys...it's Blizzard.

yeah, its just Blizzard, the most successful game company in the history of games where every single game they produce turns to gold and is a smash hit around the world which ends up breaking sales records. They have also ran the MMO market for the last 6 years and will probably continue to do it for the forseeable future.

RMT kinda sucks but its still not going to stop D3 from raping sales records. To be honest, you were fooling yourselves if you didn't see this coming a mile away.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

Their Activision is really showing these days.

Wow, this is the direction my hobby of 20+ years is heading? Fucking depressing.

[Uzor]

Get the fuck out with this shit. By the time JSP became mainstream when D2 was slowing down, it was literally impossible to trade for anything BUT forum gold. Now that RMT is officially supported from the get-go, the economy may as well be DOA. You can be the most anti-RMT person in the world when it comes to buying, but when that shiny new loot drops and you have a choice of putting it up for gold or putting it up for cash right in the game interface... what do you think the popular option is going to be?

Even Jay Wilson said in the interview that they fully expect the RMT AH to be the more popular route, and it's pretty obvious whats going to happen if this sticks. Slim pickins for gold, duplicates of everything for cash. "I can't believe I even have to explain this... It's embarrassing really."

I don't see what you're so pissed about. If you get some good items, you can sell them, yes. But the money is stored on your account until you choose to withdraw them, which you don't have to do. Later on, you can buy another item with the money you you made selling items - thus, you've spent all of 0 real life money on the game; just like you would have if there were no supported real life auction house in the game.

What are you so pissed about? The fact that some people might choose to make money instead of playing the game? That it might tempt you to make money instead of playing the game?

[Meko]

While I'm in 100% disagreement with the in-game buying/selling with real money, it was coming. Before, people went off site to do these types of things so what Blizzard keeps doing is nullifying the need for offsite ventures a la add-ons in WoW etc. I will not be giving any of you fuckers my real life money for an in-game item and I most likely won't be selling any either. I think what this info does for me personally is makes it more apparent that I only play with people I know and that I just avoid this system all together as I don't care to be apart of it. In principle, it's super lame but I don't think it will take away from the game itself.

EDIT: I also look at it in a positive light as a means of possibly helping prevent scammers from.....scamming. Before, you would go to sites for items and pay via paypal or whatever but now you can do it via the in-game system which allows Blizzard to manage it and monitor it (along with getting a little sumpin sumpin off the top). Don't act so naive to think this kind of thing hasn't been going on for years with other games. See: http://d2legit.com/?gclid=CPyk8-aLrqoCFRIH2godRTh6Wg

[avelle]

I don't mind the majority of the changes, but the RMT Auction House definitely concerns me. I spent 99% of my time playing Diablo 2 with friends rather than some stranger on Bnet, so the idea that some guy may be buying all his top end gear really doesn't bother me personally. That said I was actually interested in the Auction House idea as a convenient way to trade with players outside my circle. However, I don't see how the in-game currency AH is going to be useful at all. I know they are slamming RMT sellers with fees, but I'm pretty sure there's still more incentive to throw an item up on the RMT AH than there is the other one. I know this unofficially existed in D2 and I also know they wouldn't have implemented something like this unless there was a demand for it, but I just don't see players utilizing the in-game currency AH at all. I wouldn't even be surprised if the RMT players bought things off the in-game currency AH and then tossed that shit right back up on the RMT AH. The choice between the two seems artificial and Blizzard probably should have just included the RMT AH and foregone the other one, but they were likely too chicken shit to make that decision.

All that said, Blizzard has this track record of putting out monster hit after monster hit. I'm still hyped about the game, but a little apprehensive about this feature. Something like this isn't going to stop me from playing it and I suspect it won't stop most other players either.

[CasualPlayer]

As much as I dislike rmt this move from Blizz is genius......

The level of addiction people are going to have in this game if they can play it and legitimately cash out real dollars is going to be through the roof. Legitimizing rmt is a bold and unprecedented move and Blizz is just the company to make something like this become the norm. From a sales point of view its a brilliant move.

The downside to this is going to be the obscene amount of grieifing that will result. When you see that rare shiny drop and realize its going for 50 or 100 bucks on the rmt AH people are literally going to be trying to kill each other.

[avelle]

Diablofans has a pretty huge news post about their time at the press event, including this interview with Jay Wilson.

http://www.diablofans.com/topic/2624...s-event-visit/

So this is primarily to talk about the Auction House, the Battle.net features that you heard about earlier today…

Q: How do you feel about the obvious separation between the gold and the real-world AH? They’re both the exact same in terms of features and functionality and everything? In terms of use from the player base, clearly as a player, I would prefer to sell, for real money, any item, but as a buyer, I’d prefer to buy with gold. Do you feel it’s going to swing heavily to one side or the other? I feel it’s going to favor heavily the real-world one overall because, obviously again, I would prefer real money for selling an in-game item.

A: I think people are going to lean more towards the real money AH and I think there is an answer for the person who says “I don’t want to trade in real money, I’d rather trade in gold…I mean, the gold AH is one of them and I think the gold AH will be viable to find a good amount of items, but one of the reasons we’re doing the free listings every week is to allow people to sell items to generate an e-balance so they never have to put real money into the system if they don’t want to. That allows someone to circumnavigate that option if they don’t want to buy with real money. And yeah, the e-balance is technically real money, but I earned it from items I sold and not from putting in a credit card.


Q: I guess the biggest thing would be if everyone prefers to sell with real money on the AH then there won’t be nearly as many items in the gold AH, but I guess you kind of answered that.


A: Yeah, and if the vast majority of people prefer the real money AH – or if the vast majority of people prefer the gold AH – that’s what the vast majority of people prefer.


Q: Will there be some kind of mechanisms to balance out the need for gold so maybe there would be a way to counteract that? Like to actually need gold, let’s say I have $100 in my e-account, but I actually need some gold for whatever, maybe I would feel more inclined to sell it for gold if there was actually a need for gold. Like with D2 I never really felt it was important…once I had a million I didn’t really feel like I needed more.

A: So the Artisan system we put in the game is really designed to be a constant gold recycling element, so crafting items has a lot of similarities to gambling; it’s just gambling with a little better understanding of what’s coming out the other side and every time you craft an item, there’s a material cost and the material cost pulls items out of the world, items equal money, also there’s a gold cost, so you have a big gold sink there. Enhancing items, combining gems, pulling gems out of things, socketing things, all of these have gold costs that increase as you get further into the game. So those are our primary elements of gold sinking.


Q: What’s the party size gonna be for multiplayer?

A: 4. That was easy!


Q: Will gold be a sellable item? Because I think that the balances could become the currency exchange rate between gold to the dollar…


A: Gold is a tradable item, and I make the distinction because Blizzard doesn’t sell gold. We will not create any items or commodities. Players are able to sell gold.


Q: Will that be regulated then? X gold sells for…

A: Nope, it’s a player-driven market, so one of the things that we’re really focused on is making sure that we have as few inputs and incentives into the market as possible. We want it to be really a player-driven market and a player-driven service. So it’s one of the reasons we talk about having flat fees instead of a percentage. If we have a percentage, there would be an incentive for us to drive up the value of items to get bigger percentages. It’s one of the things we considered: let’s do a flat fee because we don’t need more of a perception that there’s an incentive there for us. We want it to be a very player-driven trading economy and that’s what the core of Diablo is, is a trading game.


Q: As far as keeping the economy not stagnant and still exciting, one thing I notice about D2 is once I had my items, they never degraded, I was pretty much good to go; I never really needed to upgrade. I see that in a player-driven economy as kind of a big problem, because eventually prices will taper off and at some point, it’s not worth even putting my item on the AH because everyone has one. That leads to a lot of pressure, I think, on you guys having to create a lot of items and expansion sort of content so there’s new stuff. What is the plan for that?

A: So the plan at release really comes back to the crafting system again. A lot of the crafting system is focused on pulling items out of the economy, so certainly the most highly-valued items people aren’t going to salvage, but everything slightly below that they are, which is going to drive a lot of items out of the economy. The enhancing system is actually one of the…basically our enhancing system kind of works like enchanting from WoW, but it has a random value to what you’re getting. So you input the enchantment, and let’s say it’s somewhere between 80-100 attack that it’s gonna give you. So if you roll 83, you could roll that again and you have a chance of getting a better number. You won’t get a lower one, and it might say “aww, you didn’t get any better.” But you can try over and over again and you need to essentially recycle items to do that. Eventually you’ll get to perfect, but you’ll really have to pull out a lot of items. And at that level, you’re really talking about rares and legendaries that you’re actually going to have to be melting to be able to do this. So we do have some systems in. Even so, there is going to hit a saturation point and what will we do about that? We have a bunch of ideas on how to deal with that, most of them do revolve around extending the item database at some point. Whatever we do, we’ll try to make sure that the player base has a lot of forecasting, like they will know long before we do anything what we’re going to do so that they can prepare. We don’t want people to go on the AH and spend basically $100 and then us change the item database the next day. We want them to know, in 3 months we’re changing the database “OK, well that gives me time to plan and think about what I want to do.” So we may not…it’s still up in the air. But it’s one of those things where we really want to see what happens to the economy and to a certain degree, we don’t know because we’ve never done something like this before.


Q: So you’re throwing out the idea of character resets like in D2?

A: Umm…I would say that we are not that fond of the ladder reset. I kind of feel like the ladder resetting thing is like…”wow, I can’t believe people fell for that!” I kind of feel like that feels really simplistic. We can do better than that. If we really want to reset things, let’s reset them for real. And I’m not saying that’s what we’re going to do; we honestly don’t know at this point. But I think we can do a better job than ladder races, which…the other side of it is, how many people really get to participate in that? You’ve got your crazy guildies who essentially do run shifts to get a character up and once the first 100 or so hit the top, who gives a crap? I don’t want to be 150, who cares? Much less 150,000. So we think we can do better than that.


Q: Are there any restrictions as to what items can be bought or sold on the AH?

A: Right now, there are some, but they’re pretty light and most of the things that we don’t allow are things that don’t really have any business being there in the first place like quest items, elixirs (which are junk drops meant to fill out the database, not provide like super-compelling items), and there’s a bunch of little power-up kind of things like that. I don’t think we’ve actively gone through and restricted them yet, my guess is we probably will and not because we don’t want people to trade them, but because we just don’t think people probably will. So generally, no, we’re going to let people trade as much as possible.


Q: Do you feel that since people are going to be able to buy items, and therefore essentially power, do you think that will polarize the community based on the top elite, especially in PvP, versus the casual player and what repercussions might there be if that is the case?

A: I think if you look at a lot of games where power gets sold, you run into a lot of different types of games. Take a game like WoW: if we started selling items there, it would pretty much destroy the game. The core of the game is guild/raid progression; that is your top tier and that’s where everyone is focusing on. If you now give me the ability to circumvent that using money, you’ve kind of destroyed the need for having guilds in the first place. Microtransaction games tend to be very successful, but have very short lives because people tend to buy out everything. Essentially, it’s like “what if the government started printing money?” It’d be really awesome for a short time, and then we’d all be screwed. That’s kind of what a microtransaction game is; the key difference between them and this system is that it’s player-driven so we’re not generating items, players are. We’re not doing anything different than what D2 already did. Players could trade items in D2 and buy them using real money. All we’re doing is facilitating it so that it’s a good experience for everyone. We don’t expect that it’s going to feel very different from D2 at all, and to kind of separately address the PvP issue, will people buy power to be more successful in PvP? Yes they will, that’s why our PvP system is very casual and not an e-sport. It’s meant to be a “I wanna go in and see what this build can do against people who are of equivalent power.” The nice thing is with a really good match-making system, you’re going to have a good game regardless because you’re going to get matched with someone who’s roughly equivalent to you and gear’s a part of that.


Q: In the past, you’ve mentioned that you might entertain the idea of some sort of competition or tournament, if you will. Maybe not on a regular basis, you said you kind of liked the idea. Have you guys put any thought into adding a replay or observation mode? Is that way too off-keel since it’s not an e-sport? Way too much investment, basically, to be worth it?

A: I don’t remember specifically talking about competitions; we were probably in a different head space when I said that because really at this point we’re not focused on that at all. So features like replay, etc. are…it’s one of those things where it’s a cool feature and there’s no reason not to add it, but it’s not like in SC where it’s really necessary. As a result, it’s not high on the list of things we’d do. It is actually on a list, but it’s pretty low down on the list because there are a lot of things that would be cooler to do and without it being an e-sport…replay’s kind of an e-sport feature.


Q: Did the attitude kind of change then since Blizzcon? Because when I played at Blizzcon, it seemed like it was definitely some PvP arena-style focus…

A: Well, we definitely want a PvP mode, we want people to be able to play against and kill one another and that’s a big part of the game, it’s just how e-sport-oriented we want it to be. When people ask me “how balanced is this going to be? Is it going to be balanced for…is it going to be SC-level balanced and perfect?” No, it’s going to be horrifically imbalanced, and that’s part of the fun, to find crazy builds that are all over the place. So we have changed the arena mode a bit to feel more casual than the mode that was at Blizzcon, which was very last man standing, high-pressure, because if you died, you were done for that round. Now, granted, the rounds were fast, but still…we’ve actually switched to more of a team deathmatch. Still same arena environment, still kind of feels the same, but when you die, you stay out for a few seconds and then you come back. It bases more on time limit and kill count, which we actually found was a lot more approachable and a lot more fun.


Q: If a lot of players want to turn it into a big, competitive e-sport kind of thing…you wouldn’t stop them, would you?

A: No. But when people say “BARB IS TOTALLY OP!!!” we’re going to be like “yeah…he probably is.” (Talk about SC2 balance…) We’re not going to be looking at a lot of percentages or really even tracking it. If players want to turn it into an e-sport, more power to them, but we want to set their expectations about what level we’re going to support that. We never want PvP to drive PvE game balance, and that is the reason why in WoW (to a lesser degree than SC2) they both let the PvP game drive the PvE game and whenever we have a conflict…(moderator dude interrupts)


Q: For the third-party, you g uys have said you don’t have anything solidified, is it looking to be something akin to the PayPal system? Without saying any names, is it sort of gonna be a system where people sign up, third-party money goes there, and then it’s transferred to their bank account?

A: I can’t really say because we’re in negotiations.


Q: Before he asked about the maximum party size, you said it’s going to be 4…If we can have a total of 3v3 in arena and PvP, why would max party size not be 6?

A: Because the party size isn’t based on technical limits; our team would be quite happy if the numbers were higher because we could get more players per game and that’s actually good for our client server architecture. It’s based on what we feel is a fun experience. More than 4 is very chaotic. People will say “well in D2 you had 8 and it was fine” except, I can’t really remember the last time I was in an 8-player game in D2 where everybody was on screen. It’s not really very viable and their effects weren’t nearly as loud as ours (both monsters and players). We’ve tried 5-6 player games and we want to push the numbers up, but every time we do, it feels really chaotic.


Q: In the actual battle.net interface, can you have up to 6 people in your party?

A: No.


Q: Because in a PvP game, the maximum is 6 players, correct?

A: We’re actually playing around with the max being 4 per team, which is 8 players total, but that’s still 4 per party. By the way, that’s not confirmed, we’re just playing around with it. Ideally, we’d love for parties in PvP to be 4 players.


Q: Well that makes a lot more sense because previously if it was a max of 3v3, then if I’m playing with 5 of my friends, 2 people kind of get shafted.

A: It came down to…can we have a game where you can tell everything that’s going on with 8 players in the game? That’s what we’ve been playing around with. We’ve also been playing around with a lot of sliders on how the effects work and how we show one team vs. the other and 4v4 is looking very promising and if we can get it to work, that’s what we’ll do.


Q: Are there different brackets or will it just be one static way of playing, like if (something…)

A: Right now we’re just looking for one mode. Part of that is PvP isn’t our primary focus, so we want to keep it simple. Also, we don’t really want to segment the population…we know we are going to have some balance issues, and it’s a lot easier to control if we’re not balancing for different kinds of modes, so right now we’re just focused on the one.


Q: Are there going to be chat channels at launch?

A: If there’s not, I’m sure someone will set me on fire, so are we going to have chat channels at launch? Yes we are.


Q: For the AH system, is it going to be accessed solely through the battle.net title screen? Can we access it through the game, or will we have to leave the game with our friends to sell something on the AH?

A: Right now, it’s accessed completely through battle.net and not found in game. If there’s a demand for in-game, that’s a feature we can add down the road.


Q: Also, if you’re in a party, you stay in the party regardless of whether you’re in the game or come out of the game, right?

A: That’s in flux right now, so…. Right now if you do it in game, it jumps you out of your party and I’m not sure why, but that could just be a bug (it’s a bug). We do everything we can to keep parties together, even if people go to different locations.


Q: So while you’re playing, you’re just focused on the gameplay and trading is kind of a separate thing that you do after you’re done slaying?

A: No, the idea is we want to ship the game. Why would we not have it in-game? No reason other than it was like…which way is going to be a little faster? It’s very likely that if people really ask for it, that’s a feature that we’d add down the road.


Q: Will there be an avatar system or will it basically just be your character?

A: That’s really what the banner does. The sigil that shows up on the center of the banner, that pattern, you’ll see it if you look at the SS’s and also in game, that turns into like a little icon for you. The banner plays into that.


Q: So is it recognizable in a party? In SC2 I don’t even have to see my friends’ names, I just know that guy’s…

A: Yeah, actually my feeling is that it’s more recognizable because you can customize the primary sigil and the accents and the pattern and colors, so there’s a lot more points of customization so there’s a lot more variation.


Q: Will there be a level requirement on the AH so new players can’t just immediately start buying high-level items?

A: There might be. The primary reason we’ve considered it is just because there’s not a lot of reason for a level 1 character to interact and it’s kind of better to introduce systems as people level up. If there is though, it’ll probably be fairly low, like level 10 or something like that. We haven’t made a determination on that yet.


Q: How does character naming work? Will names be unique? Will there be an identifier like was tagged on in SC2? I wasn’t really a fan of that because I was just Sixen##### and any douche could be Sixen##### just with different digits and you couldn’t really tell if we were different people.

A: We’re using the same system, so when you log in you’ll be displayed more at your battle.net level, so if you’re RealID, you’ll be displayed there and then your character names are not. They’re only unique on your account, so you can not have three guys named Sixen on your account, but you could always have your name relative to others.


Q: I understand the cash AH being anonymous in terms of buyers and sellers, will the gold one be also? Why did you choose to do that as opposed to character names for ID?

A: Yeah, ummm….primarily as a privacy kind of element. We wanted to make sure people felt secure interacting with the AH and there wasn’t a strong reason to show names. If you look at something like WoW, a lot of people post things that they made through crafting and there’s good reason for wanting to be able to contact that person to get them to craft something else for you, and generally they’re going to welcome that contact. Something like eBay, where there’s not actually an assurance of receiving the object, they need a sort of reputation system, but we guarantee the transactions, and all the itemization is random, so there’s not a lot of reason to know the name of the seller. All the reasons we came up with were most frequently some sort of griefing, so we decided not to put it in there.

[Sonomaa]

people were going to do this by themselves with ebay or something, and they were going to pay fees to ebay and fees to paypal to get their money, except a portion of them were going to get scammed by dicks who know they can get away with it scott free. now its all being done and tightly controlled by blizzard, the only thing that will happen now is the market will be overrun by china and its workforce of underpaid MF mules doing constant runs of bosses to sell us cheap shit

[Meko]

I think the general idea is the fear that RMT will take over (every other game I've played they are firmly rooted anyway) but I don't think that is the case for this. I think what Blizzard is doing is 'normalizing' it. I don't necessary agree with it or want it in D3 but I also know that players will seek it elsewhere so adding it to the game doesn't change the scope at all.

[Lucavi]

Edit: I just hope that the really really good gear takes a ton of work to earn (Like FFXI Mythic Weapon tier work). Otherwise, everything is going to be over-farmed and the best gear will be dirt cheap. If the best stuff IS easy to get, and if Blizzard's RMT Auction fee is high enough, then nobody will be willing to sell on it and it will die immediately anyway.

Its not going to take months/years to randomly find a good drop to sell, like XI. Its going to be random, where the more bosses you kill, the more chances for shit you get. I'm just amazed that Blizzard was aiming to take one of the most tedious (yet popular) parts of D2 (boss runs with a MF sorc) and shape the entire game around it.

D3 is no longer about killing dudes and questing through a randomly generated world or killing prime evils or anything. Its now about getting paid, and I think the community as a whole is going to suffer from this focus only on the cash/gear side of the game.

Edit: Of course, D2 turned into "all about getting paid" as soon as people realized that they could sell shit for real money. The constant bots streaming in and plying their wares proves that. I guess Sono is right. I'm sure there will be enough of each person's friends that don't give a shit about the game being some e-sport or social commentary on the state of economics to just play the game to kill shit.

[Eanae]

NCSoft is dancing around like little school girls right now.

So, Guild Wars 2 anyone?

[Insanecyclone]

http://kotaku.com/5826453/diablo-iii...ed-not-allowed


Diablo III Mods Are Forbidden, Banned, Not Allowed

One of the cornerstones of PC gaming is the modding scene. The best games embrace this. The good ones at least let you play with certain aspects of a game. The stupid ones try and ban them outright.

Yet that's exactly what upcoming blockbuster Diablo III has done, an FAQ handed to Kotaku at a recent press event stating:

Q: Will Diablo III include support for bots and/or mods?

A: No, for a variety of gameplay and security reasons, we will not be supporting bots or mods in Diablo III, and they'll be expressly prohibited by our terms of use for the game.

Just to clarify, mods won't just be discouraged from this game, they're expressly prohibited.

Blizzard certainly has its reasons for this, most of them stemming from its use of Battle.net to force all users to connect to the internet to play (not to mention the workings of the in-game marketplace) But that won't change the fact that this move will piss a lot of people off, especially those looking for a singleplayer-only experience.

The first two Diablo games are still being modded to this day, and the fact people can tweak their experience (and extend it!) is a big reason they're still being played to this day. Losing that feature in Diablo III will certainly hurt its longevity.

Mike got hands-on time with the game last week; you can read his impressions here.