Blizzard Boss Mike Morhaime Talks About Diablo III's Future

Written by: Carina Vossos (@Rinaxas) | July 19, 2012 3:15 pm

Blizzard Boss Mike Morhaime Talks About Diablo III's Future

59 Comments

President and co-founder of Blizzard, Mike Morhaime, reached out to the Diablo III community to address some of the bigger concerns players have had.

In his open letter to the D3 community he gives us some more solid confirmation on what to expect in patch 1.0.4 and beyond:

We will be seeing significant changes to legendaries in 1.0.4 “…new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably won’t be expecting.”
More class balancing, including buffs for underutilized skills: “this update will contain changes designed to further deliver on the team’s goal of promoting “build diversity,” with buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities.”
1.1 will see the addition of the PvP arena, as well as social and auction house changes. Let’s hope one of those auction house changes is more search options.
“Endgame” alternatives for PvE players are in the works; sort of vague but at least they have the ball rolling.

Morhaime also touched on the topic of always online DRM, saying that, “Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design. The effectiveness of the online elements — including the friends list and cross-game communication; co-op matchmaking; persistent characters that you can use by yourself, with others, and in PvP; and some of our customer support, service, and security components — is tied directly to the online nature of the game.”

People have been frustrated at the inability to play offline, but this clarifies D3’s status as an MORPG, instead of just an RPG with an always online DRM.

The other sensitive topic Morhaime touched on was the Gold and Real Money auction houses.

“We are also committed to ensuring you have a great experience with Diablo III without feeling like the auction house is mandatory, which was never our intention.”

Ah, that does sound like a lovely dream, doesn’t it? Here’s hoping that something changes to make their “intentions” come true.

The whole letter and forum thread can be found here. I’d be interested in what you guys think about the changes coming for D3. Is there something you want to see in a future patch?

Grid 2

$190k For Grid 2 Special Edition

Winning the Guinness World Record for most expensive video game ever!!Read more »

3 comments
Microsoft PC

Microsoft Leave PC Gamers In The Lurch!

No Xbox One games coming to PC "in a traditional sense" Read more »

15 comments
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Hearthstone And The Secrets Of Stranglethorn Vale

Let's explore Stranglethorn Vale... Hearthstone style.Read more »

1 comment

http://twitter.com/Nathiest Nathiest

Too late. Already uninstalled the pos game.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  You bought it, so it is too late for you. They got your money.
http://www.facebook.com/daniel.beverly Daniel Beverly

I wanted to try it, But the demo they said would come 30 days after release never materialized.
- Rinaxas
  
  They did have a full open Beta weekend back in April which could have counted as a demo, but getting on to the servers was almost impossible because they were slammed.
  There is the Starter Edition. http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-starter-edition-guest-pass which is what they’ve termed the demo for d3.
- Kelly Jolliffe
  
  Um, I’m pretty sure the “demo” account was out within weeks of Diablo III’s launch, never mind a month. Plus, anyone who bought a hard copy of the game got three or four guest passes in the box, which is essentially the demo.
http://twitter.com/kirzanSix Michael Coulombe

I don’t remember having to wait on content updates to enjoy my mainly single-player games.
http://twitter.com/pacgamer Chris Kourmoulakis

Sorry, but there is no possible way to rationalize DRM. Diablo 3′s always online “feature” one reason among many why I got a refund.
- Rinaxas
  
  I think they’re trying to move focus away from the fact it is a DRM. In his post, Morhaime doesn’t once call it a DRM. He just describes D3 as being an Multi-player Online Role Playing Game.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    No, he slipped it in there, im assuming “security components” refer to the anti-thief and anti-cheating components.
  - http://twitter.com/pacgamer Chris Kourmoulakis
    
    “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
    
    Don’t get me wrong though, it’s definitely easy to sense the sincerity of what he’s saying. It’s the same vision they’ve been trying to push since the launch of Battle.net 2.0 and the release of StarCraft 2. It’s even why they’ve been so stubborn about including LAN support in SC2. A push for an always on, always changing, cross-game platform, however, comes at the cost of customer satisfaction and support.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jacob-Wishon/42403350 Jacob Wishon

What I really hate is ppl crying about the online thing but…..really how many ppl here that play d3 are not on cable or dsl interenet….they just want to be able to cheat the game like in d2 and edit toons and shit….
- http://twitter.com/grizzlyGummy Gummy
  
  Except that’s not it. I’ve died due to DCs and lag on multiple occasions. Hell, I’ve seen those dudes on Twitch with 1000+ viewers lose level 60 hardcores to DCs. Hardcore mode is pretty much non-existent in Australia since they have to deal with constant lag.
- EndrzGame
  
  Sure, the customers are on-line a lot, but what about when Blizzards servers are down or messed up. My end is fine, there’s is not. When all I’d want to do is play single player.
  I don’t own the game. I refused to buy it for this very reason.
- Jeremy Whallon
  
  Actually, the ability to play offline was HUGE for me in Diablo 2. Farming Mephisto, Diablo, Baal and the cow level got boring — but I still wanted to play Diablo 2. Enter the modding community. People that spent hundreds of hours creating new content for the game that gave it a fresh feel — new quests, monsters, items, etc.
  
  So, no, you’re completely wrong in your ignorant belief.
- http://twitter.com/benjamintlc Benjamin Crowther
  
  I didnt buy D3 due to the lack of offline mode, didnt cry though, would only have cried the first time they had server maintenance during my prime playtime (and at the same time as wow). Not all gamers are in America with your super-fast-awesome-always-on-never-crashes-in-the-middle-of-a-pull internet as well
  
  I dont see any reason why they couldnt have given an offline mode, seems a bit ridiculous to me.
- ArsenicSundae
  
  There’s no such thing as cheating when you’re playing by yourself offline. Who the hell are you going to cheat, other than yourself? People are entitled to the experience they want, so long as it doesn’t adversely affect anyone else. When you play solo, you should be able to do whatever the hell you want since it’s no one’s business how you get your enjoyment out of them game. That also means it’s none of your business too, even though you seem to think it should be.
  
  Always online was only incorporated to force exposure to the RMAH. That’s it. The security and DRM business, the nonsense about QOL it provides, is just smoke and mirrors. But I’m not surprised how many people take Blizzard at their word. Why would they lie, right? It’s not like they have money on the line. Oh wait…
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/YSVAPKVBUPTX6YS3W2DLPOBNN4 AlokP
    
    That’s a pretty short-sighted view when you can then just go online (in your model) and introduce your altered toon to the world at large. Either they would have to design a whole separate system which separated “offline mode” toons from online-eligible ones (and double the DB storage needed), or somehow make a filter to not allow 3rd party modifications. All of which is more complicated than simply not allowing offline play. I feel like people who constantly bitch about DRM have no idea what they’re talking about from a macro, game design/security level.
    
    In a game where they were going to introduce a RMAH, they simply couldn’t risk offline modification. End of story. Whether the RMAH was something that should be put in, that’s a different story. But RMAH (and the DRM) were things they discussed long before launch, and fairly openly as well. So I don’t see how anyone can feel burned by that.
    - ArsenicSundae
      
      On the topic of short-sighted, it’s not rocket science to designate a character offline only. In fact, it’s not even something new. Yet those that do want to play the game by themselves and not have to put up with garbage like server downtime, lag, etc., don’t have that option. The option they do have however, is to use the RMAH. That’s most definitely available to them.
      
      Believe whatever pablum that Blizzard spoons into your mouth if you like, the fact is that everyone would have been happier with an offline mode, INCLUDING those who only play it multiplayer since they wouldn’t be listening to the complaints from those being forced online. And it wouldn’t have required any kind of programming magic to set it up. You’re fooling yourself if you think that implementing an offline mode is any kind of difficult. Not that they wouldn’t screw it up anyways. Everything else Blizzard has done with the game has been laughably ill-conceived.
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      1 – Neverwinter Nights had offline and online character distinction – 10 years ago. And that game ran on player PCs, not company servers.
      
      2 – RMAH is the excuse for online always? No damned good. The RMAH is a negative, not a feature. It exists only for Blizzard’s greed.
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    You are right about smoke and mirrors, but the real reason for ‘always online’ is to prep the market for paying sub fees for solo games. Coming soon.
    - Revanhavoc
      
      If that horrible future comes to pass it will be a dark, dark day.
- Jay
  
  Error 37 wants to have a word with you…
- MMO_Doubter
  
  And when Blizzard’s servers are DOWN? Is that the ISP’s fault too?
- jayremy
  
  Server lag, server maintenance (weekly shutdowns) and servers being non-functional much of it’s new release days is not fun.
Galdros

Blizzard used up all of my faith tokens, now I’ll be spending them in either LoL or Guild Wars 2, because lets face it, they won’t be releasing these essential patches within a month.
- http://twitter.com/yarb23 Yadiel Báez
  
  Yeah you have a point there. Cool that he came out with this message but.. when are we going to see this patches?
http://www.facebook.com/fredrik.gardsio Fredrik Fronken Gardsiö

I’m done with Diablo 3, played it up until Inferno, got bored of the endless and meaningless grind for gold and simply stopped playing, the addition of the Auction House was an extremely large mistake i think, it turned Diablo 3 into a Pay-to-win game, seeing as the Gold side of the AH is inflated beyond belief, the only thing that actually works is the RMAH, but as i said, that’s Pay-to-win, so it’s no good either.

Will probably be playing again once an expansion is released, if only to complete it once.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Then you are part of the problem. They don’t care if you play, as long as you buy the game.
mgnexus

By the time any of this happens, GW2 will be out, and D3 will be a distant memory to me =x
Caio Negri

Maybe if they keep calling it an MMO, people will eventually accept the DRM nonsense.
I am so proud of myself for not buying D3 on impulse =]
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JD5RIAPTFFZFIF3DCNYVVG7NIQ Kyle Bohannon
  
  i wish i had listened to myself and not bought it either. ive been a long time blizzard fan and have bought all of their products upon release, with the exception of sc2. i wasnt going to buy d3 but a few friends were going to play it so i thought maybe id get my 60 bucks out of it. unfortunately i played it for about 25 hours and realized that it was fairly boring. the story was quite terrible and it almost felt like it was on rails.
  
  the rmah seems like it was implemented right around the time the masses were hitting the harder content and overall seems like money scheme. itll be quite humorous to see how much its used when the pvp patch is implemented, pay to win anyone?
  
  i dunno, they had 12 years to make a sequel and i just feel extremely let down and underwhelmed at the experience. i mean what were they doing for those 12 years? anyways to each their own, if people are having fun thats fantastic, but my faith in blizzard has been in a steep decline for a couple years now. cheer!
http://twitter.com/crocodilius ryan phillips

Mike Morhaime is a great dude and you know shit is serious
when he has to personally address something.

All we wanted was a reskin of D2 and they messed it up.
- jayremy
  
  I am not so sure, being a co-founder seems to ring “co-sellout” in my ears. Ever since Activision took the reigns and Blizzard got too spoiled with Warcraft’s success, especially WoW, their production quality attention to detail and passion seems to have gone away. It’s all corporate now. Hearing from a lot of the employees there, explains a lot about the company internally; their creativity has stagnated.
http://www.facebook.com/bazz.james.7 Bazz James

I refused to play what is essentially a single player game that’s online for some bull that bliz spewed out about it being an mmo. Everyone knows that the real reason is so that they can make money from the AH. Bliz loves money; Shock!!!!. On a related topic just got torchlight for 4 quid on the steam summer sale.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Scott-Blair/614675377 Daniel Scott Blair
  
  Or maybe they didn’t want to run a lagy B.net service with ads all over the place…
- jayremy
  
  They could easily just give some extra storage space and have items and gold classified as (online) or offline items. Honestly not much else really matters, it is a grind game anyways, once they distinguish the items and currency they can allow for offline play. People just wanting to play offline don’t need achievements or gold to trade anyhow, it’s just personal.
- http://twitter.com/DaveBigger Dave
  
  Diablo 2 sucked if you didnt play it with people as well, it might as well be always online.
http://twitter.com/ShawnaRM Shawna R. M.

Tyrael has some mighty nipple pasties in that picture.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Scott-Blair/614675377 Daniel Scott Blair

I took a break after 200 hours in to play some other games and just recently started playing again, I don’t know what everyone is so pissed about other than the always online and the very strange itemization at times. If you read the box it says always online which to me would mean a high probability of lag at least initially and I don’t automatically and continually keep shouting that it’s a single player game. On that note Torchlight looks like it’s going to be a excellent single and multi-player game, can’t wait!
- Jay
  
  Torchlight II beta was lots of fun… It took Diablo’s spot for me.
http://profile.yahoo.com/WZ324KCWGCMJENR2ZFFTCK3QP4 Blaze

i got bored with d3 and got sick of click click click click click… game takes no skills just time and money.
- Morturion
  
  I never understood the appeal of Diablo. I value my wrists to highly, and have way more fun grinding coffeebeans (which smells heavenly while you grind away…)
http://twitter.com/yarb23 Yadiel Báez

So the big boss had to step out and say some words. That can totally bring us confidence in Blizzard, that they are indeed aware of the state of the game. Props to him, well played.
Deathstar2x

Kulle story, Morhaime.

*Goes play Path of Exile*
Spammerbam

I’ve been playing the game on and off, without cheats whatsoever, so I’ll say this:

Goodluck to Diablo 3 with all its future patches.
Because, well.. it’ll need ALL the luck it can get.

So cheers to you, Blizzard! You really screwed it up.
D3 is something that could’ve been, or should’ve been, a big hit.

Like many others, once GW2 launches, D3 will be ancient history to me.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Blizzard has shown they are no longer a good game company. ANet fans are in for a rude awakening in the future.
  - Spammerbam
    
    To be honest, anything could happen. I’m not gonna sit here and say GW2 is going to be the best game ever; who knows what the future holds. I’m open to other games that provide fun experiences. GW1 was very well supported and so I’m having the same expectations for GW2, that’s all.
    
    But for now, the main focus here is D3 and how it’s going to die off for me very soon if there are no major changes.
Dorkk

Seriously everyone keeps complaining it’s “pay to win”, but it’s really not much different than how Diablo2 was.. The auction house gave a more organized way of trading, and the RMAH just made a more secure way of selling items for real money pretty much, because it’s a given fact that, just like in Diablo2, a lot of people will be selling and buying items for real money. The game really isn’t bad, right now it might be a little boring and a little more of a grind at times, but the game isn’t finished.. they have PvP coming and more changes that can and will be made in the future.. Is every game perfect when it first releases? No.. hardly any game is.. It takes a little time to tweak it. You guys give the game no time to work some of the stuff out, you give it a few days or weeks of playing before you label it as terrible. Just calm down. If you want to quit it, go ahead, but the game is good, it just isn’t finished yet. If you don’t want to wait, whatever.. just move to a different game that you’ll play for a little then probably complain in the same way everyone currently complains about Diablo.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  If you think the fact that Blizzard gets a cut from the cash AH sales (and probably puts things on there themselves) doesn’t affect the design, then you are very naive.
  
  THAT is the big difference. Third party sellers can’t manipulate the game – Blizzard can.
- Spammerbam
  
  You’re right to some degree, the game isn’t that bad. Playing from level 1, all the way to Inferno was fun, and the skills system was quite nice.. then the game gets to a point where it becomes “boring and [have a whole lot] more of a grind.”
  
  I believe D3 could’ve been a lot better.
  
  You’ve said it yourself, “the game isn’t finished” — this is where Blizzard screwed up. With the amount of contents that it has, it certainly wasn’t worth the $60 out of my pocket; the game currently feels like it’s worth no more than $30 at max. it’s going to take a lot more updates and contents to get the big crowd playing again.
  
  So, like I said: Goodluck to the future patches and updates.
- http://twitter.com/MMO_NUB MMO_NUB
  
  Lolz, this game has been in the works for at least 6 years. F blizzard imo.
- http://twitter.com/Hengman14 Chettra Heng
  
  1. It IS pay to win, hence people complaining about it. D2 pay to win was not legitimate.
  2. RMAH is the conniving work of a greedy scumbag – why people are just realizing this and not back when it was announced? Probably blinded by their hope the game was good.
  3. Since when did it become okay for games to be officially released unfinished? Isn’t that was alpha/beta tests are for? Shit, better let me know I’m dropping $60 for an unfinished game. I could buy like 10 cheeseburgers with that.
  4. A little boring and a little more of a grind at times? How about really boring (I think I can count the number of maps they have) and pure grind at level 60.
  5. They can’t even figure out their shitty magic find system on their own. And they are going to develop PvP on that platform? That’s like waiting for Mcdonalds to sell marbled steak.
  
  Can’t blame people complaining about an extremely low quality $60 game from probably the biggest company in the industry.
Tig Bitties

Im not touching that crap ever again
http://twitter.com/MattProtagonist Matt

It will be a long time til I touch any Blizzard game again. Next time anything interesting comes from them (the Titan project, most likely), I’ll actually wait for reviews and frustration proof before I buy it.
http://twitter.com/Deadalon Deadalon

It has been proven. You can polish a turd. It just takes time but it is still a turd. So good luck to BLizzard cause the only thing that is wrong with D3 is entirle their fault. Cause many of the core design concepts were just horribly bad. And since ppl are paying real money ingame… Blizzard can’t actually fix the real issues without pissing those guys off.

In other words. D3 will never improve for the normal everyday player. It will still be the perfect plattform to keep third party werbsites floating for years to come. Cause BLizzard has now created a market for those guys. Realy – really sad.
- http://davebooth.co.cc/blog/ D4V80T
  
  haaahahaha I just said the same thing, scroll down afterwards and see a similar opinion, glad I aint the only one.
http://twitter.com/QuietNine Quiet

The biggest problems with D3 are that their features are all drawbacks, which are ontop of the drawbacks that just sort of “happened.”
Witch Doctor and Monk are not half as cool as Necro and Assassin.
RMAH sucks (end game becomes: “how can i make money for blizzard tonight?”)
Low level req on OP items sucks (pushes players to use AH).
Forced online sucks (what about people who live rural, or overseas, or travel for work, imagine if this game could have had a skyrim-type modding community).
Act 1 and Act 2 are 90% of the game, sucks.
Farming money just to pay repair costs sucks.
Launching without PvP UNACCEPTABLE.
4 player maximum cap for a “multiplayer” game sucks.
Isometric camera in 2012 sucks.
the graphics suck.
the dark, mature vibe is almost completely gone.

The only improvement this game has seen over diablo2 is that everyone gets their own loot, and the chat is easier to read. glad it took them this long. glad it costs $60.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IL7J7A3V2ZNIXCQ7LSOJGTH5RY Rizen

the game itself is not very fun to play. follow the mouse cursor…. press a couple buttons every now and then…. rinse repeat 3 times? boring.
http://davebooth.co.cc/blog/ D4V80T

mmorpg…. -_- yeah, right, no, and no, this is a single player RPG with multiplayer option and online DRM, you can polish a turd for days…. its still a turd when your done.

Blizzard Boss Mike Morhaime Talks About Diablo III's Future

$190k For Grid 2 Special Edition

Microsoft Leave PC Gamers In The Lurch!

Hearthstone And The Secrets Of Stranglethorn Vale

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sign in to your account