Developers Should Not Choose Online Only Direction For Games

The simple answer that we all agree to is that the online only Diablo III is perhaps the worst idea Blizzard has come up with. Last week when the huge hit from Blizzard went live, hundreds and thousands of players suffered from issues from connecting to the official servers, proving once again that online only direction is a dangerous direction for developers to take. The servers were overcrowded as soon as they were launched, and within minutes millions of players tried to log in to start slaying demons, but unfortunately, the servers could not handle a limited load and went dead immediately.

For years the Diablo franchise has been promoting multiplayer gaming. This game is best experienced with friends and that is why since past week, the only thing I have been doing is jumping in and out from my friend’s games. However, many of the players still wanted to experience the campaign mode at least once as a solo player. But with the online only system, even these players suffered a lot of disconnection and server issues.

Blizzard recently released its other popular franchise game Starcraft II, in which the developers had the players stay online all the time when playing the campaign, however the game also allowed players to play the campaign mode in offline mode, allowing them to continue the story without any server issues.

Diablo III being online only means that no one can play it from outside where there is no internet. This game requires a lot of your time when you sit down to farm the right kind of equipment for yourself, and sometimes you are not home.

The multiplayer functionality of the game is pretty decent, as it allows the players to instantly jump into any game their friend has started and without any wait they can join in. However, serious issues with the servers still plague the game, with several players reporting that they are kicked out of the server in the middle of a quest or even when fighting against a game boss. Such problems have proved that going online only is a bad direction for developers to take.