Blizzard VP ‘Surprised’ Over Reaction to Diablo III Always-Online Requirement

Blizzard Vice President of Online Technologies Robert Bridenbecker told MTV Multiplayer he’s been “surprised” over the fan outrage at the announcement that Diablo III would feature a constant Internet connection requirement:

“I’m actually kind of surprised in terms of there even being a question in today’s age around online play and the requirement around that,” said Bridenbecker. “We’ve been doing online gameplay for 15 years now.and with ‘World of WarCraft’ and our roots in Battle.net and now with ‘Diablo 3,’ it really is just the nature of how things are going, the nature of the industry. When you look at everything you get by having that persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that.”

Bridenbecker also commented on whether piracy factored in the decision to implement this requirement:

“Internally I don’t think [DRM] ever actually came up when we talked about how we want connections to operate. Things that came up were always around the feature-set, the sanctity of the actual game systems like your characters. You’re guaranteeing that there are no hacks, no dupes. All of these things were points of discussion, but the whole copy protection, piracy thing, that’s not really entering into why we want to do it. I’m a huge purveyor of online sites and from my standpoint, I don’t look at DRM solutions and go, ‘Wow, those are awesome.’ I look at those and say, ‘Wow, those kind of suck.’ But if there’s a compelling reason for you to have that online connectivity that enhances the gameplay, that doesn’t suck. That’s awesome.”

And reassured solo players that Diablo III can still be a solo experience (a concern I was personally unaware of):

“There seem to be folks that believe that because you have to be connected, it’s like you’re on Facebook or out there with the rest of the world. That’s really not the case. Yes, you’re going to have a connection, yes, your character will be stored on a server, but it doesn’t mean you have to socialize with people. It doesn’t mean you have to do anything but play the game by yourself. You’ll still be able to have a private game. You’ll still be able to go off and play the game solo and adventure solo. You can opt to bring other people to your world if you want, but that’s up to you.”

I’m a little ‘surprised’ myself that a team as experienced as Blizzard couldn’t anticipate this kind of reaction.