Diablo issues/Respect for Travis Baldtree grows

[Zidders]

Watching on Twitter as people rake Blizzard over the coals due to all the issues with the Diablo III launch. Some folks are being real dicks about it. I mean, I get being frustrated, but there are people being really nasty, rude and insulting.

Travis, at a time where Runic could sit back and gloat, is instead..trying to get people to stop being so hateful. Granted, this is his personal twitter...still, my respect for the dude just quadrupled and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this. (It was public lol)

https://twitter.com/#!/TwinStickGames
"Watching people lash out at Blizz, one of the most amazing and highly regarded developers in the world, is nauseating and scary as a dev."
"*shrug* I think it's fine to complain.I think people too often go overboard into true nastiness,and that's what I think is gross"
"Who designs a game & says 'Wait! Guys! Too many people might play this! Whoa, settle down there!'D2 had a MONTH of server issues."
"Net arch for randomly generated area MMOs w/realtime missile-based-non-instant-hit-combat is SUPER hard.Not a thing widely solved"

Alexander Ewings ‏
@TwinStickGames How dare we complain about faults. Stop acting like a game is entitled to good press when it doesn't work.
"@AlexanderEwings Who said don't complain? There's a difference between complaining and ROASTING. Dude, I'm making a COMPETING GAME!"

"No argument.Frustration/Complaints are justified.But if my steak comes out cold I don't call the chef filthy names.I ask for a refund."
"riticism is what you'd say to somebody's face. There's some vile stuff being said that no-one would say in person."


Kevin Gadd ‏ @antumbral
@TwinStickGames What are you talking about? How do you get your money back? Few retailers accept returns for PC games, DRM or no.
"Blizz just footed the bill for lost-pre orders when a retail store shut down.I bet if you gave 'em a call you'd get satisfaction."


"I am not exactly sure how I became the D3 Twitter defense squad when we're hoping to not get crushed by it when Torchlight 2 launches. "
" I guess all I'm sayin' is, people shouldn't be mean. Disappointment,criticism, all natural. Nastiness not so good."

So yeah...all the folks who think Runic want to see Bliz fail? Not so much.

[hawkn]

Blizzard has been getting away with screwing people over for years. They could have avoided almost every issue, but they didn't. They deserve all the hate they're getting.

[Zidders]

There's a difference between being disappointed in a companies actions, and losing all sense of common decency. He's not telling people NOT to criticize or be upset with Blizzard, he's just asking that people not take it to the point where they're being hateful.

So, what, it's ok to hate now? What's the difference between the guy who called me a fag on the forums yesterday and someone calling Blizzard a bunch of fags for having a bad launch? Hate is hate dude. You can't tell people they shouldn't hate on others for being a different gender, or preference, or color and then turn around and say it's ok to hate on a bunch of game developers because they made a few mistakes.

What if the situation were reversed? How often have I seen you spring to Runics defense in the face of hateful, ignorant people? So it's ok now, because you lost an achievement and weren't able to play a videogame for a little while?

It's just a game, dude. A game. Stupid videogames. It's not worth it. Everyone should be happy. Is the game perfect? No, but it's probably a lot better than most of the action/rpg's out there. We're getting so many great action/rpg's now. This is a cause for celebration. So what if the launch sucks. Like there's never been a game in the history of videogames that got a bad launch and ended up being considered one of the best games ever. Like Travis said, Diablo II was unplayable for many up to a month or so after it came out. That was back when some of the folks who are at Runic now were the ones responsible for it and look where we are now, huge Runic fans who loved the Bliz North Diablo games and consider them classics.

Diablo III might not turn out to be a classic, who knows all I do know is i'm tired of people hating each other over videogames. Its just as silly and stupid as hating people for being gay, or transgendered, or a different color, or whatever.

[jamesL]

All I see is Travis telling people to ask for their money back

JamesL tweets
TL2 dev urges disgruntled D3 players to call Blizz, ask for money back

Spoiler: show

just kidding

[Zidders]

Thanks JamesL -_-

[Brixtan]

I must have just lucked out yesterday, but I've had zero problems logging and playing D3 since about 4:30am EST yesterday.

[kaosweilder]

Blizzard has been getting away with screwing people over for years. They could have avoided almost every issue, but they didn't. They deserve all the hate they're getting.

I have to agree with this. I still remember the quote "Who doesn't have a good internet connection these days ?" by one of the Blizz devs. Well, turns out a lot of people do and its just your servers that are impotent to handle it A part of User Experience is how accessible the game is when you want it to. Not at all in this case. If they knew this was gonna happen why not prepare for it, and if they didn't know, what was all the open beta weekend for ? I am saying this from beyond the always online DRM thing. When people accept your DRM and they are ready to play it that way (by your rules) and still you fail to provide them the service, well you're going to get ripped a new one. A game in box or on hard disk is useless if it can't run because of server issues. If I were a company evaluating Blizz over the UX, I'd fail them immediately (which is actually my job right now). It will smooth out in the coming days but Blizzard have stomped on their own foot by saying rubbish before (the quote about internet connection above) and then failure to provide services as required by the players.

[breadfan]

I have ceased trying to understand all this crowd-hating on a new diablo. where are all of this people came from? a moon base? it was very predictable that such issues would shown up. gamers aren't nice people anymore . only whiners, retards and douches. now deal with it.
even RPS authors slipped down into hate positions.

[KnuckleHead]

I was reading the D3 forums yesterday between game sessions and wow...what a sad display. Bunch of man-children crying and throwing little baby tantrums. My two young children don't even act like that and the sad thing is I'd wager a great deal of these folks aren't even kids.

I wouldn't worry too much about Blizzard and I'm sure they are very used to this kind of thing. Few things to remember, gaming forums only account for like 3-4% of a game's total player base. Those that do post on gaming forums tend to be the more "devoted" types. Of that small subsection, there's subsets therein. You got your normal well adjusted folks who are just really into the game and into discussing it, and then you got your man-child and totally obsessed weirdos who throw hissy fits and stomp their feet at every perceived indiscretion. The latter are probably a small minority, they are just loud and make a lot of noise.

The same stuff happens every game release, the same group of little babies cry their eyes out and throw a baby tantrum and act like they will boycott everything, yet they will continue to buy every single Blizzard game regardless and the next release will be sure to throw their baby tantrums again.

Blizzard probably made as much money as a small country yesterday in sales so I wouldn't worry too much about them. There's no pleasing people like that so the best thing Blizzard can do is stabilize the game ASAP, and I'm sure that's what they are doing as we speak. The servers will stabilize too, so if you are one of those man-children who threw a hissy fit yesterday try to take a deep breath and calm down. If you want I can help you, I have a few exercises I do with my kids to calm them down when they get upset that we can try

---

Anyways got about 8 hours (I think) and now am a decent way into Act 3. Skill system is so-so but the game itself is wonderful. Tons of great additions to the game (random events, ect). Also, everyone who was worried it looked too care bear for a Diablo game is totally wrong. It NAILS the Diablo tone, especially once you start getting into the later part of Act I...it get's pretty gruesome!

[Zidders]

Thanks, Knucklehead. Great post. Breadfan..hating on haters = hate, hun. :/ I'm trying to encourage people to not hate.

[breadfan]

Thanks, Knucklehead. Great post. Breadfan..hating on haters = hate, hun. :/ I'm trying to encourage people to not hate.

not hating, really. incomprehension, i would say. and it gets even hilarious at some point.

[Nekky]

People act like it's the end of the world when a game doesn't have a perfect launch. Then a few days later after they have been able to get some play time in, they forget about all the nasty things they said and it's the best game ever. It's sad to see what the gaming community is turning into. It's almost like people want games to fail, especially if it's something that a person doesn't like. Why spend so much time and effort telling everyone else how bad the game they are waiting for is going to fail... Blizzard has never been known for their flawless game launches so I don't get why this is a suprise. It's 1 day, really I think people can survive and give them time to work out a few bugs. So what, you lost a few hours of play time, you have years to make them up...

[kaosweilder]

Just to make it clear, I'm not hating either. I played the beta and liked it. But from a totally objective point of view, I have followed Blizz's boasting and now its hilarious to see them to have put their foot in the mouth. And I'm enjoying it kinda. It sure is fun IMO a product should deliver for what it has been paid and the users have every right to raise their concerns, complain and bitch (whatever they choose out of the three). Not doing that means you're a fanboi or just don't care about the franchise at all. Consumers are not always polite though and I'll agree on that

[KnuckleHead]

There's a difference between complaining and flailing your arms around like a baby. If I went into a restaurant and my steak was under cooked I'd politely ask them to take it back and cook me another one...I wouldn't jump up on the table and call the chef a piece of crap and start screaming at the wait staff.

People are acting like the game will be broken forever...it's ridiculous.

The always-online requirement was known WAY ahead of time. Any service that has this volume of players on release is subject to some release day jitters...it's normal stuff.

[Zidders]

Oh trust me. Blizzard definitely messed up. I understand that multiplayer infrastructure is a big deal and not that easy to handle...but the fact is, Bliz spent tens of millions making DIablo III. You would think they would of had enough servers to handle it. They should have had a lot longer open beta, for one thing. Runic only had their beta going a short time before discovering they were going to need a lot more people. I'm also not arguing with the fact that they took a somewhat dismissive attitude towards things like LAN and offline single player. I disagree that you can't have a secure transaction system AND the RMAH. They could have easily done a separate client, even, but they obviously wanted to steer people towards the auction house.

Like I said, I've got some criticisms. I just don't get nasty about it.

Like Travis said. It's not that criticism isn't justified, it's just that people really need to keep some perspective.

[KnuckleHead]

Runic would have the same issues if they had as many people trying to play their game online day one. This happens to damn near every single MMO release to some degree. You can plan all you want, but when you have the volume of people on day 1 all trying to play there are just things that can go wrong no matter how well you planned. I'd imagine Blizzard has some of the best engineers in the business too, and they run one of the largest and most successful online games in history.

Anyways I don't think Blizzard screwed up as bad as people are making it out to be. The game probably already sold enough to be profitable 10 times over. In a few days all of this will blow over and people will be happily playing the game. Well, happily is maybe a bit optimistic lol...I guess it's safer to say the whiners will just switch from crying about not being able to log in to how X skill is overpowered and how Blizzard is an idiot for not seeing it.

[Webbstre]

I think most of the outcry relating to the downtime is simply because gamers have gotten a lot more self-entitled these days, and many of them aren't old enough to remember things like the server problems of Diablo 2's time. Considering that Runic had a hectic first few days with their beta (after the "Second wave") I can't imagine they would feel anything but sympathy.

[kaosweilder]

There's a difference between complaining and flailing your arms around like a baby. If I went into a restaurant and my steak was under cooked I'd politely ask them to take it back and cook me another one...I wouldn't jump up on the table and call the chef a piece of crap and start screaming at the wait staff.

People are acting like the game will be broken forever...it's ridiculous.

The always-online requirement was known WAY ahead of time. Any service that has this volume of players on release is subject to some release day jitters...it's normal stuff.

I understand that. Thats why I said people can choose to either raise their concerns, complain or bitch about it (whatever they choose out of the above 3). However, I don't agree at all with that last statement of yours. Its not normal. Its the company's responsibility to asses the situation and make amends for it or take precautions in advance. You cant blame people for trying to login the game and causing server crash because that what they have to do to play in the first place and Blizz made it so.

[KnuckleHead]

It is normal, the fact that damn near every single major online game has these same kinds of problems in the first few days is testament to that fact. Services are subject to interruption...and brand new services bombed by millions of people in the same day tend to have these issues...it's just a fact of life.

I think most of the outcry relating to the downtime is simply because gamers have gotten a lot more self-entitled these days, and many of them aren't old enough to remember things like the server problems of Diablo 2's time. Considering that Runic had a hectic first few days with their beta (after the "Second wave") I can't imagine they would feel anything but sympathy.

I agree with that sentiment (kinda goes back to that thread I created a long while back). Anyways no company is immune to these kinds of issues...even the best laid plans can crack under the overwhelming stress of what must have been millions upon millions of people simultaneously trying to play all at the same time starting from 12am PDT. If Runic just launched with that kind of volume they would probably have some issues as well.

Anyways the servers are already much more stable then they were yesterday, and soon all will be well

[Morbus]

I think most of the outcry relating to the downtime is simply because gamers have gotten a lot more self-entitled these days, and many of them aren't old enough to remember things like the server problems of Diablo 2's time. Considering that Runic had a hectic first few days with their beta (after the "Second wave") I can't imagine they would feel anything but sympathy.

Webbstre, I, too, think that this is the heart of the matter. Are they not called the "Gimme Generation"?