2) “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.”
That's actually quite reasonable. Why spend three months to provide interface for mods, and three months to create tools for modders? That's quite a bit of effort used for 30 modders in the world, and these months could be spend for bug testing, fine tuning, and properly polishing the resulting game so it will not need patch. For example Assassin creed 2 required just a small patch to remove negligible annoyance and few next to unnoticeable problems. (Of course Ubisoft were fucking bastards with theirs copy protection. They learned and remedied it in Assassin creed: Brotherhood, where they rather gave bonuses, additional quests to legal users, and added few minigames for Facebook users.)
Why screwing yourself just for some modders who are violating copyright anyway? If they want to dissasemble the program and do it in theirs own home illegally, nobody would stop them, as long as they wont be abusing with respect to developers or do any trouble.
I would rather have a reliable game at the release where game rules will not change in patch noticeably, than a crappy stuff that permits modding.
3) “We think it’s really going to add a lot of depth to the game. If I have more money than time I can purchase items, or if I’m leet in the game I can get benefits out of it. The players really want it. This is something that we know people are going to do either way. We can provide them a really safe, awesome, fun experience, or they’ll find ways of doing it elsewhere.”
This stuff is actually somehow problematic. Look at it from a perspective of a competent ruler of the country. Basically they want to provide something similar to banking services without adhering to additional restrictions that differs banks from normal companies. For example they are obliged to act in best interest of theirs client. Translated when they have choice between bonning the client to get back money, or spending effort to protect client and get back money, they are obliged to spend the effort. Inability to fulfill the obligation ends in fines, forced governance for a while, or a licence revocation. (Some countries which were brainwashed by western countries into licking arses of so called market forces might be without that law, or unwilling to enforce it, but smart country protects theirs fiscal "market"/enforces quality of companies that provides auctions/fiscal services.) Considering Blizzard is providing this "service" worldwide they can get into problems with law of certain countries.
(Technically this service is comparable with bank like transferring money and taking fees for that. Taking 1/4 of transferred moneys will not make it something else. Some countries does have laws for stuff like poker, but poker is game where players are supposed to play for money, or chips.)
The best idea would be making terms of service that outlaws paying for stuff like that and enforce it. Taking part on selling and buying virtual items just legalizes it and encourages amoral behavior.
1) “One of the things that we felt was really important was that if you did play offline, if we allowed for that experience, you’d start a character, you’d get him all the way to level 20 or level 30 or level 40 or what have you, and then at that point you might decide to want to venture onto Battle.net. But you’d have to start a character from scratch, because there’d be no way for us to guarantee no cheats were involved, if we let you play on the client and then take that character online.” Also, piracy.
I actually thought they are talking about online play only. Basically they sounded like they are taking about multiplayer. Then I looked at original site.
Very funny retards.
At least we know a name of a person who should be hit by a class action lawsuit, Rob Pardo. They want to authente player character for a single player game? Isn't that a violation of copyright? Next time they would say a manufacturer of Photoshop would like to authenticate all user's drawings. It would be funny when they would stop doing theirs business and all online servers would be shut down.
Looks like, they changed from we are making game and we give a shit about what players say to we are trying to rob them dry and don't give a shit what players say.
The trouble is, the whole ideas looks like they have origin in heads of upper management.
