Most PC games these days require authentication in order to play them online. This especially applies to games from Blizzard Entertainment that use Battle.net 2.0 like StarCraft II and World of WarCraft, though these game are still playable offline. However, Blizzard’s upcoming Diablo III will require you to be online to play it at all and this will apply for all of the game’s modes.
According to Diablo III executive producer Rob Pardo, the decision was made to prevent hacking and cheating, a recurring problem that plagued the online RPG series. Pardo said, “In both Diablo and especially in Diablo II, I think the intuition for a lot of people when they’re playing the game is ‘I want to make my character offline away from that scary battle net environment. And then once I have this powerful character, I’ll jump online.’ But the problem with that concept is we can’t really detect if they’re cheating.
They might have the capability to hack their character, things like that, so at that point we can’t really allow that character to be in the battle net environment. Then they’re going to have to restart their character, which is exactly what happened in Diablo II, which was really unfortunate.”
Pardo also acknowledges that he is aware that people would want to play Diablo III offline but assures them that the increased security outweighs their desire. He adds, ”I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that.”
What do you think about not be able to play Diablo III offline? Star a rant with a comment below to get the ball rolling.