Diablo III Server Issues are Barely Relevant to its Review

Mike Bachmann of SideQuesting.com writes "Diablo 3 got off to a pretty rocky start on Tuesday. Like most sane people, I spent all day with my new love and it was awful. I experienced intermittent issues and the servers went down for emergency maintenance three separate times. Is anyone really surprised? Should it affect review scores for the game?"

[Nitrowolf2]

TBH though I don't think it should be something that's gonna make the score a fail, but it should affect it. I mean come on they made it mandatory to be online just for the single player game, meaning you can't play it offline. If servers are off or not working properly don't you think consumers should know that?

I mean it kind of questions that whole online-only play concept, which IMO is a terrible idea. I guess it's that part that should be clearly stated in reviews and this outage or whatever it is is a result.

[Raf1k1]

I agree, I ddon't like the always on idea for SP. Just yesterday I was near the end of a quest when my reouter decided to restart itself. This meant I had to relog once I had a connection again only to find I had to start that quest all over again.

At least in WoW it keeps track of your quest progress instead of just what quest you were on.

Having said that I think the games really good. I didn't expect anything revolutionary after StarCraft 2 was just more of the same but with better graphics.

I also don't mind the removal of the skill tree which they had good reason for change. Even the developers of Torchlight have acknowledged that the skill tree in their game meant people just dumped points into one skill until they unlocked a better skill after which they'd simplly respec and dump skills into that. Torhclight 2 will have fewer skills but more useful ones rather than lots of skills with only a few useful ones.

[Christopher]

I'm not going to drop any score on the game right now. I can tell you that I am very frustrated with the lag when boss mobs are spawned in (which have caused me to die multiple times so far). I know this is based on distance factors as it applies to servers, but I do feel that my single-player experience shouldn't be affected by their choice to store enemy AI data on their servers.

I also just can't get behind a lot of the choices made in the game that changed it from Diablo 1 and 2 to 3. Some of the changes are good and much needed, the graphics and score are great, but the gameplay just hasn't been much, I hate having to waste my time going through normal mode to open the next level and so on, I dislike that they've turned stats into primary and vitality only required and we'll do it for you, I dislike that there is no option to invest points to improve certain skills over others (e.g. traps vs. bows vs. xbows vs. stealth).

The game isn't known for its storytelling, and it kind of shows. The characters seem kind of flat. The world is kind of what was expected. The achievement system is just a glorified way to tell players to play longer than necessary to achieve some ridiculous goals that don't matter other than what your banner looks like (who cares?).

Anyway, even with all the things I currently dislike with the game, I'm not going to drop a ridiculous score for it. I'll wait till I've finished it at least once through and then I might do a write up. If I don't, it's because I might think that I'll let my bias, if I feel there is one, get in the way of properly reviewing it.

[CLOUD1983]

Did u say that the graphics looks gr8? get serious man the game looks awful and the art direction it's nothing like the previous games, Diablo must have dark gritty & realistic graphics exactly like this http://webcdn.pathofexile.c...
not this cartoonish WoWish bulky over-bright/colored garbage that they want to call Diablo I wonder how some so-called old-Diablo fans spent 60$ to play this watered-down casual diablo-light-for-dubs this game is a disgrace compare to the first 2 games from Blizzard North.

[reznik_zerosum]

u spam a lot how to diablo 3 suck,and u obviously never played first 2 games,only diablo game that was even close to "dark" was D1,and if u think diablo games were ever complex then something is wrong with u,to play diablo games u need to have one hand and not to be completely blind thats all.
if u left only 1 dollar each month after diablo 2 release u could have more than enough for d3,getajob.

[Christopher]

The graphics are great, IMHO, from an art direction perspective. I'm not expecting real-world looking graphics, but their direction definitely has an artistic take that I enjoy.

[Raf1k1]

They just don't want their game being pirated like crazy but won't admit it. Either that or game devs get the best internet connection in the world.

I can understand the hate about the graphics. It's very different in tone to the previous game but TBH any world is going to have some colour and variety in it. Since the story takes you around different parts of Sanctuary it makes sense in my mind to have that variety.

Also one thing I think gets overlooked is the physics and destructability of the enivronment which I think are really cool but the gameplay hasn't changed much at all. Having physics play a part in combat as well would be great e.g. large demons crushing smaller demons when knocked back.

[Dark_Overlord]

Of course it should affect the review, although not to the extreme of giving it 0/10.

Other games don't get a free pass when they have online issues (Except certain titles, COD being one of them >:( ) so why should an exception be made for this.

Either all titles get marked down for online problems, or none do, you can't be selective about it then call yourself a fair reviewer

[Somebody]

So, Battlefield 3 had a horrible Beta and everyone said that will severely ward off fans before launch day. Even the relatively smaller server issues (compared to Diablo 3)it had in its first couple days were cited in reviews and affect the score a bit.

Here's article from the very same website talking about BF3's server issues:

http://www.sidequesting.com...

Come Diablo 3 and the server issues are "barely relevant"? They decided to leave the huge throbbing sore thumb out of their review?

That's not fair.

[kevnb]

the servers were fixed within a few hours...

[StayStatic]

Exactly , I logged on for the first time last night no problems what so ever , clean and awesome.

Blizzard titles often have teething problems in the first few days.

[Christopher]

Nah, I'm still experiencing lag in the game today. It's frustrating when it happens, especially during boss fights which is when the server sends boss AI data to your computer. Lag during this can result in death pretty fast depending on the number of bosses being spawned.

This may not be happening to everyone depending on your location in proximity to one of their distribution centers, but I believe everyone deserves to play the game with the same level of stability and connection to their servers.

***Blizzard titles often have teething problems in the first few days.***

Which shouldn't be the case for single-player games or game elements. This isn't about a bug in the game, it's about their servers, which are required to play the game.

[kevnb]

the game has issues with some quad cores, should be fixed soon I imagine. Until then set affinity to one or two cores. Its not a server issue.

[Dovahkiin]

@kevnb

I didn't know about the quad core thing, I was wondering why the game stuttered at points.

[Christopher]

***the game has issues with some quad cores, should be fixed soon I imagine. Until then set affinity to one or two cores. Its not a server issue.***

No, it's a server issue. The lag only happens on spawning boss mobs. AI for boss mobs are stored on Blizzard servers. So, the lag occurs when it's sending their AI, not at any other time.

[kostchtchie_]

yet a lot of other games get there scores punished because of this? haha game journalism...pathetic, don't want get black listed now do you so called journalists

[Halochampian]

It should deter people who may want to buy the game in the future when the problem was only for the first day.

[InTheLab]

Like I said. If you're in the middle of your single player game and get DC'd, then have trouble logging in, how does that not affect the score of a game.

Stop making up rules to protect big name devs.

And does anyone else find it odd that reviews for D3 still haven't posted....Must be waiting till the game functions properly to give it 9s and 10s..

[Somebody]

Yes,it is kinda odd that they held back the reviews this long. Max Payne 3 haven't been out that long and there were already tons of reviews about it before and around its launch day. And yet, Diablo 3 reviews seem to be deliberately held back. If this article is of any value, I wouldn't be surprised if the other reviews will try to avoid or downplay the server issues also.

Talk about selective journalism. And cheating.

[Halochampian]

Reviewers got to play Max Payne 3 before release. Reviewers started playing Diablo 3 the same time everyone else did.

The server problem is for 1 day. Yes.. it sucked and is unacceptable but it doesnt take away from the experience of anyone who plays now. And the people who should be looking at reviews are people thinking of picking up the game. They should not be deterred from picking up this great game just because of the 1st day hiccups.