Pliskin Gaming

Let's talk about Diablo.

As someone who got Diablo day 1 and has experienced all of the elements people have been discussing and complaining about, let me give you my take.

Blizzard have not been coy about the direction they are taking Diablo, or any of their franchises. They've expressed over the years their interest in connecting all of their games in this persistent online state so you can communicate or play with your friends or others extremely easily. The best way to do that is to force you to be online all the time to play the game.

There is a lot of talk about how this "singleplayer game" should have an offline mode and how the persistent online state exists only as DRM, but I disagree. First of all, we don't decide what type of game Diablo is, Blizzard does. They decided that Diablo is a multiplayer game that you can choose to play by yourself. That alone should hush the cries of people lamenting over their ruined singleplayer experience, there was never a singleplayer experience to ruin. If Blizzard had been vague about their goal with a required constant connection I could at least understand the worry, but no, they have been transparent that their goal is to encourage multiplayer and reduce potential exploitation.

I can, on the other hand, understand people's disappointment that Diablo isn't a singleplayer game. In fact, if you talked to me Tuesday or Wednesday I would be in that camp. After some more time with the game I can safely say that I am a believer in Blizzard's vision.

The first thing I do when I hop in Diablo is check my auctions. I've already made a good amount of gold buying up cheap gear and selling it higher, selling rares that I find in the world and even offloading vendor trash at extremely low prices for someone looking for cheap solutions to gear draughts. After that I open my friends list, see who my friends are playing and see if they're on a quest and at a level I can join in on. When I don't see anyone near where I'm at I jump in myself. After a while one of my friends may chat to me and ask for an invite, all while I'm playing. If I'm in the mood for more to join I invite them to the party, and poof, they appear in my game. Minions are stronger, the loot is better, and the quest system assigns the active quest to whatever the "host" of the current party was currently on.

This kind of seamless interaction turned out to be much more compelling that I had given it credit. Diablo is near-objectively more fun with other people, albeit the right people. If you have a friend who hates exploration and wants to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, that might not mesh well with your goal of revealing the whole map. Overall though, I have had much more fun questing with friends than playing by myself.

Obviously everyone has their own take. Many people will WANT to play by themselves the whole game no matter what, and that's ok. You can turn off party invites, chat, everything. You can encapsulate yourself in your own little Diablo world. This, however, is not how Diablo is meant to be played by any means and to be disappointed that it isn't different is natural for this type of Diablo player, but to constantly rage and complain about how Diablo isn't properly set up for singleplayer is akin to complaining about all those other people in Stormwind of World of Warcraft.

Diablo is not a singleplayer game.

-Pliskin