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Original Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/05/123_111971.html
Other Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/350210/korean-authorities-raid-blizzard-offices/
+ Show Spoiler [Original Source] +The government has launched an investigation into Blizzard Entertainment over allegations that the American computer gamemaker has refused to refund Koreans who purchased its latest real-time role-playing game Diablo 3.
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said the firm is suspected of having violated the country’s law on electronic commerce and commercial contracts. The FTC said Tuesday that it raided the firm’s Seoul office Monday and secured related documents and other evidence with which it will determine whether Blizzard broke the law.
The investigation comes only two weeks after the release of the game, which has sold more than 6.3 million copies worldwide.
Larger-than-expected traffic to the online game’s severs made it extremely difficult for its users to access the game, particularly on weekday nights and weekends, according to Blizzard Korea.
Some buyers of the game vented frustration over server shutdowns and asked for refunds, but the company refused to do so, citing sales contract terms, which the FTC says is disadvantageous to consumers.
Blizzard said it doubled the capacity of servers Friday and pledged to improve services further in order to prevent a recurrence of the problem.
Despite the move, major portals have already been receiving messages denouncing Blizzard’s poor service. Hundreds of users have filed formal complaints with the FTC, calling for an investigation by the regulator.
“We have received many complaints from Diablo 3 users,” said Kim Hyung-bae, a spokesman for the FTC. He admitted that an investigation into Blizzard is underway, but refused to elaborate.
Other FTC officials said the probe is aimed at confirming whether the firm has sold the game based on what they describe as an “unfair” contract so that people cannot receive refunds even if they discover problems with the game. They said they are studying whether the company should be held liable for “ill-preparation” for unexpected traffic.
It’s too early to see any results of the probe but some investigators expect the regulator to issue an order mandating Blizzard to provide a full refund to all unhappy customers.
Diablo 3, out nearly 12 years after its incredibly successful predecessor Diablo 2, was one of the most anticipated releases in some time both here and abroad.
According to game ranking firm Gametrics, Diablo 3 accounted for 16.16 percent of user time at PC rooms within a day of its release. The rate has increased to nearly 40 percent, it said.
Users choose one of five classes ㅡ Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, Demon Hunter or Witch Doctor ㅡ to fight the titular demon Diablo in single player quests and can level-up online in a Battle.net multiplayer platform provided by Blizzard.
The Diablo series is dubbed a “game of evil,” for its storyline and the fact that it is expected to account for many sleepless nights by avid gamers here.
Blizzard is well known for its constant patches and bug-fixes (12-year-old Diablo 2 is still very well maintained and played often), but thwarting constant hackers and illegal programs being slipped into the game is another task for the firm.
+ Show Spoiler [Other source] +Blizzard's Korean offices were raided by authorities this week over allegations of unfair treatment of its Diablo 3 players.
The developer is under investigation after allegedly refusing to give refunds to Korean gamers who demanded their money back as recompense for the game's extensive post-launch server issues.
A sea of complaints made their way to the country's Fair Trade Commission, who commenced the raid on the Blizzard office as it investigates whether Blizzard's no-return policy was in violation of Korean law.
According to The Korea Times (thanks Shack), the FTC aims to establish if the games were sold on an "unfair" contract that averts consumer's right to a refund, and is also seeking to determine if the firm should be held liable for "ill-preparation" ahead of the game's launch.
Diablo 3's post-launch woes have forced Blizzard to respond quickly with updates, apologies and lengthy statements to appease the rage of fans that found themselves unable to play a game they'd waited years to get.
This just popped up in the european battlenet forum and seem legit(surprisingly, it actually sounds like evil slander to me).
Since I didn´t see this mentioned anywhere in the D3 subforum, I thought I´d open the thread for this.
In short, according to the articles Blizzard Korea refused to refund the game because Blizzards terms of use explicitly say so, possibly conflicting with korean trade law. Documents have been secured by korean authorities and investigation is underway.
Thoughts?
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6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid?
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Good for Korea I guess.
Korea raided the Blizz offices more due to their refund policies and server issues, but I think when the RMAH opens, there are going to be other legal battles on Blizzard's horizon.
The RMAH puts this game in slightly new territory. While it may be convoluted, there is a form of cash-reward being offered in this game. It is essentially a lottery or sweepstakes. I think the rules and mechanics need to be made crystal clear and transparent, to ensure fairness. Wouldn't be surprised if other countries' various gaming and gambling committees eventually find themselves prying into Blizzard's business.
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On June 01 2012 08:47 Nonexistent wrote:
6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid?
what?
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On June 01 2012 08:47 Nonexistent wrote:
6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid?
hundreds of OFFICIAL FORMAL COMPLAINTS. Do you have the slightest idea of how few people actually go that far?
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What about them changing ToS and then forcing you to accept or lose your money?
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On June 01 2012 10:11 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 08:47 Nonexistent wrote:
6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid? hundreds of OFFICIAL FORMAL COMPLAINTS. Do you have the slightest idea of how few people actually go that far?
Obviously 000000000000.1%
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Wow seeing some form of consequence for the horrible service sure makes me happy, specially if it's punishing a greedy ass gaming company.
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People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7?
Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that.
As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining.
On June 01 2012 10:18 xavra41 wrote:
What about them changing ToS and then forcing you to accept or lose your money?
The only way you're losing money is if you were paying a monthly service which you're not for d3. You have unlimited time to play d3 post buying it, so a few hours a day or so of not being able to play the game is not losing money it's losing time.
The only way you lost money is if you bought the game put little to no time into it and asked for a refund and was unable to get it.
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Blizzard is like most game companies - they tend to think that simply writing something in an EULA makes it valid. The Korean government is currently explaining to them that it doesn't work like that.
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On June 01 2012 10:24 semantics wrote:
People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7?
Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that.
As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining.
I've heard that in Asian servers the problem is way worse than in the other two servers. I wouldn't be sure that they're getting even 1/2 of the day online.
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On June 01 2012 10:24 semantics wrote:
People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7?
Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that.
As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining.
And please go ahead and name any other game that costs a similiar amount and that has as many problems
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On June 01 2012 10:26 Alpino wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:24 semantics wrote:
People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7?
Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that.
As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining. I've heard that in Asian servers the problem is way worse than in the other two servers. I wouldn't be sure that they're getting even 1/2 of the day online.
I hear you can be hacked by playing public games in d3.
It's completely untrue blizzard blue's have even made statements saying those rumors are unfounded and no proof has ever been presented to them just wild theories that would not even work.
Funny how you can hear something and it can end up not being true at all.
There is a fine difference from bad service such as laggy and somewhat unresponsive servers and no service, not having the ah up is not a big deal, being overloaded due to more then expected turn out in the first month for an online only game is fine. It's cheaper for companies in the long run to aim for a conservative amount of servers during launch and adjust post launch, companies have been doing this for years, pretty much making most multiplayer games unplayable the first week and progressively better in a month which is the same trend d3 followed atleast in the US(anecdotically)
The majority of game hacks are from people giving away their info though phishing attempts or dling not so wise things. People think hackers take your info as soon as they get a email as password when it easily could have been gathered months in advance and as long as you don't change your password which most people don't they have you. Oh but wait there more something called trolls on the Internet who claim they have been hacked and have auth's but never provide any proof such as a simple ss of their stash and gold amounts.
On June 01 2012 10:27 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:24 semantics wrote:
People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7?
Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that.
As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining. And please go ahead and name any other game that costs a similar amount and that has as many problems
It's hard to say PC only AAA games are rare(something 8mil+ in cost). Alot PC only games that have any production quality to them; now of days are server based games based around making money though microtransactions. In large part due to the South east asian markets(mostly china and the surrounding area) and the rampant piracy in that market which is why they moved to server side games. The only recent game that comes to mind would be star wars the old republic, and i didn't play that game so i don't know how their launch month went but it's not hard to just search, "game name + servers down" to find a ton of hits for that.
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I imagine they're just going to change their policy and give people refunds. In most places they've been giving people 30 days to contact them, have their D3 license removed and get a refund. I don't expect it to impact Blizzard in Korea at all considering D3 has pretty much dominated the PC Bang rankings since release. As an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of pressure behind the scenes because D3 has consumed so much of the PC Bang playerbase that some Korean Game companies have seen a drop in price for their stocks.
I mean, check out this chart from thisisgame, lol.
+ Show Spoiler +Blue – Diablo3 / Red – League of Legends / Green – Aion ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gKX6z.jpg)
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@semantics wtf are you talking about. If you don't accept the ToS you can't play at all. If it was a monthly service it would be better.
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On June 01 2012 10:49 xavra41 wrote:
@semantics wtf are you talking about. If you don't accept the ToS you can't play at all. If it was a monthly service it would be better.
So wait you're saying you can play online only games without accepting a ToS? please show me a game that is online only that doesn't have a ToS. Hell show me a game with online that doesn't have a ToS.
Because wtf are you talking about every game with online has a ToS, and with all ToS you need to agree to it before you can use it. Unless it's some backwater game or the company doesn't have to maintain it's own servers.
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On June 01 2012 10:49 xavra41 wrote:
@semantics wtf are you talking about. If you don't accept the ToS you can't play at all. If it was a monthly service it would be better.
Pretty sure if this was a monthly game it wouldn't sell near as well as it did. I sure as fuck wouldn't have bought it.
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On June 01 2012 10:56 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:49 xavra41 wrote:
@semantics wtf are you talking about. If you don't accept the ToS you can't play at all. If it was a monthly service it would be better. So wait you're saying you can play online only games without accepting a ToS? please show me a game that is online only that doesn't have a ToS. Hell show me a game with online that doesn't have a ToS. Because wtf are you talking about every game with online has a ToS, and with all ToS you need to agree to it before you can use it. Unless it's some backwater game or the company doesn't have to maintain it's own servers.
kid you really need to learn how to read. I said they can CHANGE change CHANGE the ToS and you must accept it or else you acnnot play at all.
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TOS and EULA are not legal bind contracts
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On June 01 2012 11:39 xavra41 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:56 semantics wrote:On June 01 2012 10:49 xavra41 wrote:
@semantics wtf are you talking about. If you don't accept the ToS you can't play at all. If it was a monthly service it would be better. So wait you're saying you can play online only games without accepting a ToS? please show me a game that is online only that doesn't have a ToS. Hell show me a game with online that doesn't have a ToS. Because wtf are you talking about every game with online has a ToS, and with all ToS you need to agree to it before you can use it. Unless it's some backwater game or the company doesn't have to maintain it's own servers. kid you really need to learn how to read. I said they can CHANGE change CHANGE the ToS and you must accept it or else you acnnot play at all.
Yes and that is with every game or service when they change tos, so again what is your point. Asking me to learn to read is quite silly when you just see that i didn't follow your literal so you just dismiss everything.
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Not really a big deal if you ask me. I can play now so I don't care.
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I think this was a good move and also a healthy move for the industry in general.
Yes, you sure do agree to a ToS, when creating an account. Also one would expect not a perfect launch and connection problems like any MMO.
HOWEVER, these issues of major server and connection problems have been an issue for a long time now and still remain. This means, that you basically bought a product that is simply not working. Therefore, I find it very nice to see action taken by the Korean government in order to protect its consumers.
Why do I think this is good for the industry? Recently many cases has shown us that game companies are trying to "test" the limits of the market in order to increase profit (You can hardly blame them, since this is a company that needs perform in order to satisfy shareholders. It's not a charity people), although sometimes companies go too far and that's were it's comforting to see government institutions take actions in order to protect its nations consumers.
I'll encourage people that are really unsatisfied with their game (wants to get a refund), to to investigate the options of government institutions or policies that are made to protect consumers. Instead of using the time on whining on the forums (the official forums are pretty much 95% whine at the moment). It is much more effective to have bigger organizations going after Blizzard, than the sole individual whining on a forum.
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On June 01 2012 12:01 Maekchu wrote:
I think this was a good move and also a healthy move for the industry in general.
Yes, you sure do agree to a ToS, when creating an account. Also one would expect not a perfect launch and connection problems like any MMO.
HOWEVER, these issues of major server and connection problems have been an issue for a long time now and still remain. This means, that you basically bought a product that is simply not working. Therefore, I find it very nice to see action taken by the Korean government in order to protect its consumers.
Why do I think this is good for the industry? Recently many cases has shown us that game companies are trying to "test" the limits of the market in order to increase profit (You can hardly blame them, since this is a company that needs perform in order to satisfy shareholders. It's not a charity people), although sometimes companies go too far and that's were it's comforting to see government institutions take actions in order to protect its nations consumers.
I'll encourage people that are really unsatisfied with their game (wants to get a refund), to to investigate the options of government institutions or policies that are made to protect consumers. Instead of using the time on whining on the forums (the official forums are pretty much 95% whine at the moment). It is much more effective to have bigger organizations going after Blizzard, than the sole individual whining on a forum.
It's the entertainment industry, wow so you can't play 24/7 every day, everyday there is a little down time so fucking what it's not a big deal.
Ohh you can't use the commodities part of the AH, something not even core to the game and the game can be played without every interacting with the AH itself
The only legit complaint would be you barely played the game or not even played the game and wished to refund the game and was unable to do so, esp concerning if you never played the game. I am not talking about a over entitled person who put in 60+ hours into the game pretty much already seen most of the content then decided he wants his money back, that is full of shit.
You shouldn't waste the government's time and money to appease a small portion of it's population, becuase they are unsatisfied with their entertainment. There are legitimate cases for things like FTC's in respective counties to investigate such as actual fraud such as no service was given and things dealing with large amounts of money.
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On June 01 2012 08:48 Leporello wrote:
The RMAH puts this game in slightly new territory. While it may be convoluted, there is a form of cash-reward being offered in this game. Wouldn't be surprised if other countries' various gaming and gambling committees eventually find themselves prying into Blizzard's business.
There isn't even gonna be a RMAH for Korea/Asia. Only NA and EU will get an RMAH (eventuallly^^).
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On June 01 2012 12:55 FeiLing wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 08:48 Leporello wrote:
The RMAH puts this game in slightly new territory. While it may be convoluted, there is a form of cash-reward being offered in this game. Wouldn't be surprised if other countries' various gaming and gambling committees eventually find themselves prying into Blizzard's business. There isn't even gonna be a RMAH for Korea/Asia. Only NA and EU will get an RMAH (eventuallly^^).
And it will probably only roll out once they get the servers very stable as they want to avoid actual service complaints when dealing with new money coming in. I'm surprised for asia they just didn't have a flat option to buy in game gold with cash and just take away getting real money in return for selling on a RMAH as that would be easy to do.
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On June 01 2012 12:51 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 12:01 Maekchu wrote:
I think this was a good move and also a healthy move for the industry in general.
Yes, you sure do agree to a ToS, when creating an account. Also one would expect not a perfect launch and connection problems like any MMO.
HOWEVER, these issues of major server and connection problems have been an issue for a long time now and still remain. This means, that you basically bought a product that is simply not working. Therefore, I find it very nice to see action taken by the Korean government in order to protect its consumers.
Why do I think this is good for the industry? Recently many cases has shown us that game companies are trying to "test" the limits of the market in order to increase profit (You can hardly blame them, since this is a company that needs perform in order to satisfy shareholders. It's not a charity people), although sometimes companies go too far and that's were it's comforting to see government institutions take actions in order to protect its nations consumers.
I'll encourage people that are really unsatisfied with their game (wants to get a refund), to to investigate the options of government institutions or policies that are made to protect consumers. Instead of using the time on whining on the forums (the official forums are pretty much 95% whine at the moment). It is much more effective to have bigger organizations going after Blizzard, than the sole individual whining on a forum. It's the entertainment industry, wow so you can't play 24/7 every day, everyday there is a little down time so fucking what it's not a big deal. Ohh you can't use the commodities part of the AH, something not even core to the game and the game can be played without every interacting with the AH itself The only legit complaint would be you barely played the game or not even played the game and wished to refund the game and was unable to do so, esp concerning if you never played the game. I am not talking about a over entitled person who put in 60+ hours into the game pretty much already seen most of the content then decided he wants his money back, that is full of shit. You shouldn't waste the government's time and money to appease a small portion of it's population, becuase they are unsatisfied with their entertainment. There are legitimate cases for things like FTC's in respective counties to investigate such as actual fraud such as no service was given and things dealing with large amounts of money.
So someone is entitled when they want a refund because they already played through the entire game and the server problems aren't letting them play anymore? Fuck Blizzard. If they can't keep their damn servers up and let me play my $60 copy of the game, then yes, I would request a refund. There's nothing entitled about wanting to get refunded because a company as big as Blizzard can't keep their damn servers up no matter how much of the game you played already.
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This is pretty rediculous.
If they can't play after 2 weeks or something yeah give them a refund but if there are down times I'm pretty sure there is no law forcing an online game to be up 24/7 and not allow it to be down for maintenance or technical problems. If I buy a 24/7 gym membership should I sue them when its closed for rennovation ?
No online game ever runs 24/7 the minute its launch, did these people lived in a cave during the past 10 years and missed a tons of crappy launches ?
This won't get very far to be honest. Blizzard will show they had to put down the servers to repair them SO THEY CAN ACTUALLY PLAY after that. I mean seriously wtf ? Do they think Blizzard purposely put their server down just to piss us off ? /facepalm.
And even if there is a legal claim dont you guys think its a bit over the top for a few hours of denied access ? 2012 entitled consumer society at its finest.
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Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
On June 01 2012 13:12 rezoacken wrote:
This won't get very far to be honest. Blizzard will show they had to put down the servers to repair them SO THEY CAN ACTUALLY PLAY after that. I mean seriously wtf ? Do they think Blizzard purposely put their server down just to piss us off ? /facepalm.
And even if there is a legal claim dont you guys think its a bit over the top for a few hours of denied access ? 2012 entitled consumer society at its finest.
It's quite damn obvious what happened with the servers. Blizzard cut corners to rush out their product and now when a consumer is having a problem playing the game, they quickly go and blame the consumer. A log-in queue, which they have implemented in WoW, of all games, wasn't put into Diablo. Why the hell not? It's quite fucking obvious that Blizzard would need something like that in their game, but they cut corners.
And servers? They obviously don't have enough servers if they are constantly getting overloaded and constantly need maintenance. Again, it's them trying to cut corners so they can make more money.
As far as entitled? Are you fucking kidding me? You think someone is entitled for wanting to play a fucking game that they paid $60 for? How about you go buy a car and the dealership tells you "Well, it can only be used from 12 AM to 5 PM every day. It shuts down from 5 PM to 12 AM for shits and giggles." Would you be entitled for wanting it to work all the time? No you wouldn't. Maintenance is expected, so you won't be able to drive your car everywhere. Maintenance is also expected on Diablo's servers so you can't play it all the time, but having a problem every other fucking day is ridiculous. It's not that great of an analogy, but I think it gets the point across.
Edit - But then again, I'm a pretty cynical guy. I really don't trust whatever company's PR managers spit out because they really don't have your interest at heart at all. It would be better for them to just constantly blame everyone else instead of taking responsibility for a screw up on their part.
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On June 01 2012 13:16 Joementum wrote:
Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
It's like they are purposely trying to use less servers than they really need in hopes that tons of people stop playing in just 3 weeks and the servers they have are enough.
Please apply to their offices you seem like you know the situation from their perspective and would be a good candidate.
D3 has record sales and Blizzard server may have had to manage one of the biggest load of connection and server-client communications in online gaming history. I'm not surprised it crashed. Considering I could actually play most of the time I wanted to it doesn't look that bad from my perspective even though I had my fair share of errors the first days.
Edit: Lol dude your anger is over the top. Take a walk. What you want me to say, you're making a terrible analogy. You're comparing a technical difficulty in something that is reknown for its technical difficulties (Internet, computers) to the car industry. If you want another analogy, do you get a refund when there are too many tourists on your vacations ? Yeah this one proves my point but its probably terrible too.
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On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 13:16 Joementum wrote:
Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
It's like they are purposely trying to use less servers than they really need in hopes that tons of people stop playing in just 3 weeks and the servers they have are enough. Please apply to their offices you seem like you know the situation from their perspective and would be a good candidate. D3 has record sales and Blizzard server may have had to manage one of the biggest load of connection and server-client communications in online gaming history. I'm not surprised it crashed. Considering I could actually play most of the time I wanted to it doesn't look that bad from my perspective even though I had my fair share of errors the first days.
And do you seriously think Blizzard wouldn't know that it would break records left and right? I'm pretty sure Blizzard have smart people working for them that worked all this shit out beforehand. They knew what would happen just like Activision knows what will happen with each CoD game they release. It wasn't a big surprise to them.
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On June 01 2012 13:28 Joementum wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:On June 01 2012 13:16 Joementum wrote:
Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
It's like they are purposely trying to use less servers than they really need in hopes that tons of people stop playing in just 3 weeks and the servers they have are enough. Please apply to their offices you seem like you know the situation from their perspective and would be a good candidate. D3 has record sales and Blizzard server may have had to manage one of the biggest load of connection and server-client communications in online gaming history. I'm not surprised it crashed. Considering I could actually play most of the time I wanted to it doesn't look that bad from my perspective even though I had my fair share of errors the first days. And do you seriously think Blizzard wouldn't know that it would break records left and right? I'm pretty sure Blizzard have smart people working for them that worked all this shit out beforehand. They knew what would happen just like Activision knows what will happen with each CoD game they release. It wasn't a big surprise to them.
Merely adding more logon servers would cause security issues; logging in is still throttled on a security basis, and this is more or less unavoidable. Would you rather you were playing with a bunch of hackers? Yes, blizzard specifically said, "there will be problems with logging in when it releases, just keep trying." Such is life.
However, seeing as everyone was forewarned about this, it just comes of as whining when I read this "Error 37" shit all day. Guess what? When the servers came on in NA, I logged in right away, because I was copy-past spamming my password. If you wanted to play that badly on release you would have been sitting there for 10 minutes logging in once every 3 seconds like I was (it took about 3 seconds for you to be rejected from the server). If you didn't want the possiblity of having to wait, then don't buy the game - this was an advertised issue. If you cared enough to read the official "launch day" webpage, it said it multiple times on it. There will be issues logging in.
Long story short. You were warned that a product didn't meet your expectations (ie server issues), then you bought it anyway and complained that it fell short of your expectations.
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On June 01 2012 13:37 Shai wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 13:28 Joementum wrote:On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:On June 01 2012 13:16 Joementum wrote:
Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
It's like they are purposely trying to use less servers than they really need in hopes that tons of people stop playing in just 3 weeks and the servers they have are enough. Please apply to their offices you seem like you know the situation from their perspective and would be a good candidate. D3 has record sales and Blizzard server may have had to manage one of the biggest load of connection and server-client communications in online gaming history. I'm not surprised it crashed. Considering I could actually play most of the time I wanted to it doesn't look that bad from my perspective even though I had my fair share of errors the first days. And do you seriously think Blizzard wouldn't know that it would break records left and right? I'm pretty sure Blizzard have smart people working for them that worked all this shit out beforehand. They knew what would happen just like Activision knows what will happen with each CoD game they release. It wasn't a big surprise to them. Merely adding more logon servers would cause security issues; logging in is still throttled on a security basis, and this is more or less unavoidable. Would you rather you were playing with a bunch of hackers? Yes, blizzard specifically said, "there will be problems with logging in when it releases, just keep trying." Such is life. However, seeing as everyone was forewarned about this, it just comes of as whining when I read this "Error 37" shit all day. Guess what? When the servers came on in NA, I logged in right away, because I was copy-past spamming my password. If you wanted to play that badly on release you would have been sitting there for 10 minutes logging in once every 3 seconds like I was (it took about 3 seconds for you to be rejected from the server). If you didn't want the possiblity of having to wait, then don't buy the game - this was an advertised issue. If you cared enough to read the official "launch day" webpage, it said it multiple times on it. There will be issues logging in. Long story short. You were warned that a product didn't meet your expectations (ie server issues), then you bought it anyway and complained that it fell short of your expectations.
Error 37s on the first day are one thing. Error 37s two weeks after the game launched are bullshit.
Like I said before, a log-in queue would have solved this shit. WoW has one. League of Legends has one. I would much rather wait 15 minutes in a queue to log-in than copy/paste my damn password for 3 hours just to log-in.
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On June 01 2012 10:27 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:24 semantics wrote:
People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7?
Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that.
As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining. And please go ahead and name any other game that costs a similiar amount and that has as many problems
No other game even comes close in terms of how much capacity they need, which is the main source of all these problems.
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It's kinda sad because Blizzard didn't expect to have THAT many people buying the game, but since they had to have internet connection to play a SINGLE PLAYER GAME my sympathies end there. I just still blame Activision for this whole thing and everything that comes from it.
Edit: If this is still happening over in Korea, I'd be super pissed and would want my money back as well. I'd wait until they had their shit together.
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On June 01 2012 13:37 Shai wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 13:28 Joementum wrote:On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:On June 01 2012 13:16 Joementum wrote:
Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
It's like they are purposely trying to use less servers than they really need in hopes that tons of people stop playing in just 3 weeks and the servers they have are enough. Please apply to their offices you seem like you know the situation from their perspective and would be a good candidate. D3 has record sales and Blizzard server may have had to manage one of the biggest load of connection and server-client communications in online gaming history. I'm not surprised it crashed. Considering I could actually play most of the time I wanted to it doesn't look that bad from my perspective even though I had my fair share of errors the first days. And do you seriously think Blizzard wouldn't know that it would break records left and right? I'm pretty sure Blizzard have smart people working for them that worked all this shit out beforehand. They knew what would happen just like Activision knows what will happen with each CoD game they release. It wasn't a big surprise to them. Merely adding more logon servers would cause security issues; logging in is still throttled on a security basis, and this is more or less unavoidable. Would you rather you were playing with a bunch of hackers? Yes, blizzard specifically said, "there will be problems with logging in when it releases, just keep trying." Such is life. However, seeing as everyone was forewarned about this, it just comes of as whining when I read this "Error 37" shit all day. Guess what? When the servers came on in NA, I logged in right away, because I was copy-past spamming my password. If you wanted to play that badly on release you would have been sitting there for 10 minutes logging in once every 3 seconds like I was (it took about 3 seconds for you to be rejected from the server). If you didn't want the possiblity of having to wait, then don't buy the game - this was an advertised issue. If you cared enough to read the official "launch day" webpage, it said it multiple times on it. There will be issues logging in. Long story short. You were warned that a product didn't meet your expectations (ie server issues), then you bought it anyway and complained that it fell short of your expectations.
Long story short, it's two weeks after launch and they still haven't got their shit right...
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On June 01 2012 14:46 peekn wrote:
It's kinda sad because Blizzard didn't expect to have THAT many people buying the game, but since they had to have internet connection to play a SINGLE PLAYER GAME my sympathies end there. I just still blame Activision for this whole thing and everything that comes from it.
Edit: If this is still happening over in Korea, I'd be super pissed and would want my money back as well. I'd wait until they had their shit together.
Iunno, you have to have internet to play any steam game, most of which are singleplayer. I believe something like this happened when half-life 2 was launched. I had to install 3rd party programs in order to play skyrim offline as well since steam's offline mode...isn't really offline (you have to have internet access in order to access it).
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On June 01 2012 14:46 peekn wrote:
It's kinda sad because Blizzard didn't expect to have THAT many people buying the game, but since they had to have internet connection to play a SINGLE PLAYER GAME my sympathies end there. I just still blame Activision for this whole thing and everything that comes from it.
Edit: If this is still happening over in Korea, I'd be super pissed and would want my money back as well. I'd wait until they had their shit together.
IT'S NOT A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. So no shit you're pissed off you think it's a single player game and it's not. It's sold as Internet connection needed, this was well known before launch so if you want to be pissed about anything be pissed you're so weak that you will buy the game knowing that.
On June 01 2012 14:54 nam nam wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 13:37 Shai wrote:On June 01 2012 13:28 Joementum wrote:On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:On June 01 2012 13:16 Joementum wrote:
Being down occasionally for updates and such is one thing, but the amount of problems D3 has had upon launch are kind of getting into the ridiculous realm. People are still having problems logging in... That's just damn sad. You would think Blizzard would put a log-in queue in their game like League of Legends has or even WoW, but they would much rather people get Errors non-stop. So many of their stupid problems could have been avoided with a little foresight, but that would cost money.
It's like they are purposely trying to use less servers than they really need in hopes that tons of people stop playing in just 3 weeks and the servers they have are enough. Please apply to their offices you seem like you know the situation from their perspective and would be a good candidate. D3 has record sales and Blizzard server may have had to manage one of the biggest load of connection and server-client communications in online gaming history. I'm not surprised it crashed. Considering I could actually play most of the time I wanted to it doesn't look that bad from my perspective even though I had my fair share of errors the first days. And do you seriously think Blizzard wouldn't know that it would break records left and right? I'm pretty sure Blizzard have smart people working for them that worked all this shit out beforehand. They knew what would happen just like Activision knows what will happen with each CoD game they release. It wasn't a big surprise to them. Merely adding more logon servers would cause security issues; logging in is still throttled on a security basis, and this is more or less unavoidable. Would you rather you were playing with a bunch of hackers? Yes, blizzard specifically said, "there will be problems with logging in when it releases, just keep trying." Such is life. However, seeing as everyone was forewarned about this, it just comes of as whining when I read this "Error 37" shit all day. Guess what? When the servers came on in NA, I logged in right away, because I was copy-past spamming my password. If you wanted to play that badly on release you would have been sitting there for 10 minutes logging in once every 3 seconds like I was (it took about 3 seconds for you to be rejected from the server). If you didn't want the possiblity of having to wait, then don't buy the game - this was an advertised issue. If you cared enough to read the official "launch day" webpage, it said it multiple times on it. There will be issues logging in. Long story short. You were warned that a product didn't meet your expectations (ie server issues), then you bought it anyway and complained that it fell short of your expectations. Long story short, it's two weeks after launch and they still haven't got their shit right...
Long story short show me a game that has an auction house that runs for possibly millions of people at the same time due to regions being shared. Optimizing their log in servers and AH to handle such large region play takes time, pretty sure the AH is a first considering transactions a second it must go though.
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On June 01 2012 10:31 semantics wrote:
I hear you can be hacked by playing public games in d3.
It's completely untrue blizzard blue's have even made statements saying those rumors are unfounded and no proof has ever been presented to them just wild theories that would not even work.
Funny how you can hear something and it can end up not being true at all.
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The majority of game hacks are from people giving away their info though phishing attempts or dling not so wise things. People think hackers take your info as soon as they get a email as password when it easily could have been gathered months in advance and as long as you don't change your password which most people don't they have you. Oh but wait there more something called trolls on the Internet who claim they have been hacked and have auth's but never provide any proof such as a simple ss of their stash and gold amounts.
i hear company employees would never release assuring statements that would calm jittery customers even when said statements weren't entirely true. they would never bury truth that may potentially hurt their customer base and total revenue.
i've had 2 very different RL friends be hacked. one is a fucking retard and uses the same username and password for all his accounts (he told me so) including his online banking account, paypal, amazon. the other is currently an Information Systems major at a top university and is someone i would consider very internet saavy. he's interned for Northrup Grumman in their IT department and basically helped advise a multi-billion dollar government contracting agency on keeping their network safe from cyberterrorists. he was part of a project that ended up getting some medal from the CIA for cybersecurity.
of course both are at fault for using unsafe internet practices and allowing their [stash + inventory of last character played] to get emptied out. of course the retard should just be glad that his real money shit didn't get cleared out because we all know that D3 items are far more valuable.
does the fact that the rate of hacking in D3 greatly exceed the rate of hacking in ANY OTHER SERVICE not make you raise an eyebrow? i don't know anybody IRL who has had their bank account emptied out by an online predator. now within the span of two weeks 2 of the 12 or so RL friends who play D3 have been hacked.
what makes you so confident that blizzard isn't at fault?
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wait ? this is a private law thing but there is police involved? why? O_o
edit : ok its actually not a private law thing i guess
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I think that this game, with the RMAH, may not go so far >.>
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On June 01 2012 15:15 redtooth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:31 semantics wrote:
I hear you can be hacked by playing public games in d3.
It's completely untrue blizzard blue's have even made statements saying those rumors are unfounded and no proof has ever been presented to them just wild theories that would not even work.
Funny how you can hear something and it can end up not being true at all.
...
The majority of game hacks are from people giving away their info though phishing attempts or dling not so wise things. People think hackers take your info as soon as they get a email as password when it easily could have been gathered months in advance and as long as you don't change your password which most people don't they have you. Oh but wait there more something called trolls on the Internet who claim they have been hacked and have auth's but never provide any proof such as a simple ss of their stash and gold amounts. i hear company employees would never release assuring statements that would calm jittery customers even when said statements weren't entirely true. they would never bury truth that may potentially hurt their customer base and total revenue. i've had 2 very different RL friends be hacked. one is a fucking retard and uses the same username and password for all his accounts (he told me so) including his online banking account, paypal, amazon. the other is currently an Information Systems major at a top university and is someone i would consider very internet saavy. he's interned for Northrup Grumman in their IT department and basically helped advise a multi-billion dollar government contracting agency on keeping their network safe from cyberterrorists. he was part of a project that ended up getting some medal from the CIA for cybersecurity. of course both are at fault for using unsafe internet practices and allowing their [stash + inventory of last character played] to get emptied out. of course the retard should just be glad that his real money shit didn't get cleared out because we all know that D3 items are far more valuable. does the fact that the rate of hacking in D3 greatly exceed the rate of hacking in ANY OTHER SERVICE not make you raise an eyebrow? i don't know anybody IRL who has had their bank account emptied out by an online predator. now within the span of two weeks 2 of the 12 or so RL friends who play D3 have been hacked. what makes you so confident that blizzard isn't at fault?
Is it a fact? You'll need the actual blizz numbers dealing with customer support claims you forget this is the Internet, and people troll, oh yeah i'm a doctor you can trust what i say. So 2 out of 12 friends got hacked, how many of those 12 friends also play other games that are prime hacking targets, MMO's and other games with in game currencies and popular games too. You simply can be noticing a normal rate of people who get hacked in this kind of game but you never noticed before due to lack of all 12 of those friends and you playing the same game that is a prime hacking target.
Also your smart friend i bet doesn't use a unique password for battle.net, i know i don't, my bet is he uses the same password for all game log-ins becuase it's time consuming and hard to remember a ton of passwords or use a keychain and games are a low priority in terms of harm that can be inflicted on you if compromised.
So what's more likely blizz blue's lie-ing about the situation and nobody showing a proof of concept hack anywhere on the internet publicly. But at the same time So many hackers know how to do this that it's effecting 2 out of 13 people by your numbers at the same time none of those hackers are fool hearty enough to brag about how they did it. Oh wait that's just silly, show me a legit proof of the hack and then show that to blizzard, else all you have in unsubstantiated rumors because people's egos are so big that; no, there is no way i could be hacked my epeen is so large i'm above that all must be blizzards fault.
Phishing, key-logging or an password recovery exploit(which did exist in d2 at one point) are still far more likely then what has been going around, the idea of session id hijacking which is not even what d3 uses. I'm actually shooting that it's a password recovery exploit that one of the major gold traders is using or someone working for gold traders, which is why it's not publicly known.
Steal everyone's gold leave them with no items, resell the gold back to them for real money, ez.
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On June 01 2012 15:25 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 15:15 redtooth wrote:On June 01 2012 10:31 semantics wrote:
I hear you can be hacked by playing public games in d3.
It's completely untrue blizzard blue's have even made statements saying those rumors are unfounded and no proof has ever been presented to them just wild theories that would not even work.
Funny how you can hear something and it can end up not being true at all.
...
The majority of game hacks are from people giving away their info though phishing attempts or dling not so wise things. People think hackers take your info as soon as they get a email as password when it easily could have been gathered months in advance and as long as you don't change your password which most people don't they have you. Oh but wait there more something called trolls on the Internet who claim they have been hacked and have auth's but never provide any proof such as a simple ss of their stash and gold amounts. i hear company employees would never release assuring statements that would calm jittery customers even when said statements weren't entirely true. they would never bury truth that may potentially hurt their customer base and total revenue. i've had 2 very different RL friends be hacked. one is a fucking retard and uses the same username and password for all his accounts (he told me so) including his online banking account, paypal, amazon. the other is currently an Information Systems major at a top university and is someone i would consider very internet saavy. he's interned for Northrup Grumman in their IT department and basically helped advise a multi-billion dollar government contracting agency on keeping their network safe from cyberterrorists. he was part of a project that ended up getting some medal from the CIA for cybersecurity. of course both are at fault for using unsafe internet practices and allowing their [stash + inventory of last character played] to get emptied out. of course the retard should just be glad that his real money shit didn't get cleared out because we all know that D3 items are far more valuable. does the fact that the rate of hacking in D3 greatly exceed the rate of hacking in ANY OTHER SERVICE not make you raise an eyebrow? i don't know anybody IRL who has had their bank account emptied out by an online predator. now within the span of two weeks 2 of the 12 or so RL friends who play D3 have been hacked. what makes you so confident that blizzard isn't at fault? Is it a fact? You'll need the actual blizz numbers dealing with customer support claims you forget this is the Internet, and people troll, oh yeah i'm a doctor you can trust what i say. So 2 out of 12 friends got hacked, how many of those 12 friends also play other games that are prime hacking targets, MMO's and other games with in game currencies. You simply can be noticing a normal rate of people who get hacked in this kind of game but you never noticed before due to lack of all 12 of those friends and you playing the same game that is a prime hacking target. Also your smart friend i bet doesn't use a unique password for battle.net, my bet is he uses the same password for all game log-ins becuase it's time consuming and hard to remember a ton of passwords or use a keychain and games are a low priority in terms of harm that can be inflicted on you if infiltrated. So what's more likely blizz blue's lie-ing about the situation and nobody showing a proof of concept hack anywhere on the internet publicly. But at the same time So many hackers know how to do this that it's effecting 2 out of 13 people by your numbers at the same time none of those hackers are fool hearty enough to brag about how they did it. Oh wait that's just silly, show me a legit proof of the hack and then show that to blizzard, else all you have in unsubstantiated rumors because people's egos are so big that; no, there is no way i could be hacked my epeen is so large i'm above that all must be blizzards fault.
No it's not a fact. And you may be right, maybe Blizzard is experiencing 'normal' levels of hacking and that I just happened to know two friends who just ran bad. Maybe thousands of people went out of their way to report identical stories not only on Blizzard forums but on TL. Some of these people, with developed online personalities not known to be internet trolls, had giant shifts of character that led them to falsify stories to make sure that the tales of Blizzard's security ineptness were greatly exaggerated.
I never suggested that 2 out of 13 is a significant number. Nor did I even suggest that this ratio was representative of the D3 population. What I did state was that I've very rarely seen accounts get hacked (primarily due to malware that was soon detected). We're talking maybe 6 or 7 instances among thousands of possible cases. Even you would be shocked if a sixth of your RL gaming buddies said they got hacked.
The reason why I was so explicit in describing my one techie friend is that I highly doubt someone like him fell victim to a keylogger. As far as I know the only computer games he plays are LoL, Dota 2, and (for now) D3 so it's hard to believe that his password got 'leaked' from another service. I haven't talked to him in detail about the hacking (it was sort of implied between us that he wasn't at fault) but let me consult him tomorrow and I'll get back to you on what he thinks.
But back to the topic at hand. If you want to talk about probabilities, what is more likely? The fact that a bunch of hackers would go after digital items in this game, Diablo 3, or the fact that if these hackers were truly capable of exploiting individual stupidity rather than the failings of the service they would probably utilize their talents elsewhere? You know what is a "prime hacking target"? Banks. Paypal. Amazon. Fuck, if Papa Johns Pizza got hacked I would be screwed because my credit card number is on there somewhere. And for some reason they chose to use all their talents and all their keyloggers and all their time to (incompletely) screw over some gamers.
Not to mention your argument defeats itself. The fact that D3 is a "prime hacking target" does not excuse its security shortcomings. They should just make stuff more secure, the fault was their own after all. Your (original) argument is instead that people should be smarter and learn to protect themselves.
You're right that individuals may not be perfect in their computer setup but guess what, Blizzard isn't perfect either. Maybe, just maybe, you're wrong. Maybe people aren't all egomaniacs who resort to blaming the company in order to preserve their self-image/identity. Maybe this ailing company really did fuck up with their initial attempt and are doing everything they can to maintain a strong front in order to retain business.
Chew on it.
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On June 01 2012 10:31 semantics wrote:
The majority of game hacks are from people giving away their info though phishing attempts or dling not so wise things.
On June 01 2012 15:25 semantics wrote:
I'm actually shooting that it's a password recovery exploit that one of the major gold traders is using or someone working for gold traders, which is why it's not publicly known.
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On June 01 2012 14:46 peekn wrote:
It's kinda sad because Blizzard didn't expect to have THAT many people buying the game, but since they had to have internet connection to play a SINGLE PLAYER GAME my sympathies end there. I just still blame Activision for this whole thing and everything that comes from it.
Edit: If this is still happening over in Korea, I'd be super pissed and would want my money back as well. I'd wait until they had their shit together.
You blame Activision, but you don't seem to understand how the merger worked.
Vivendi SA owned Blizzard. Vivendi then struck a deal with Activision. The deal was Blizzard and Activision would merge and Vivendi SA would have a 54% stake in the newly formed company. Part of the deal was that Blizzard and Activision both remain autonomous. Blizzard cannot control Activision and vice versa. You can't really blame Activision for anything that happened here. Just Blizzard
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The fact that Blizzard had such a woeful launch world-wide and weren't accepting refunds just sounds so wrong to me, I'm not surprised in the least.
This only adds to the skepticism that I hold toward the company these days. Blizzard lost most of it's creativity and respect when they axed all of Blizzard North (the ones who were primary contributors toward Blizzard's biggest IP's). How do you undershoot server numbers by such a margin for one of the most hyped PC games in recent memory?
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On June 01 2012 16:57 cozzE wrote:
The fact that Blizzard had such a woeful launch world-wide and weren't accepting refunds just sounds so wrong to me, I'm not surprised in the least.
This only adds to the skepticism that I hold toward the company these days. Blizzard lost most of it's creativity and respect when they axed all of Blizzard North (the ones who were primary contributors toward Blizzard's biggest IP's). How do you undershoot server numbers by such a margin for one of the most hyped PC games in recent memory?
Once again. Why would you have more servers than you need just for launch day? That's beyond stupid in economic terms. You aim for what you think is going to be the average and let it pan itself out. Every single MMO has had this issue. Anyone not expecting it is just being dumb.
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Blizzard accepting refund for someone who has played their game for many more hours than most would play any other game of its price would be a little weird. They are, however accepting refund for people who have not played an excess amount, from what I've seen.
This seem more than fair.
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Bit surprised by this, given that I've seen several posts saying "I emailed Blizzard CS and they gave me a refund with no problems" accompanied by screenshots and such.
Why is it different in Korea? Or for that matter, is this definitely confirmed?
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On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:Edit: Lol dude your anger is over the top. Take a walk. What you want me to say, you're making a terrible analogy. You're comparing a technical difficulty in something that is reknown for its technical difficulties (Internet, computers) to the car industry. If you want another analogy, do you get a refund when there are too many tourists on your vacations ? Yeah this one proves my point but its probably terrible too.
I agree. Going on a vacation and then getting rejected when trying to board the plane on the airport because the airline has oversold tickets is completely standard, I see no reason to get upset as this is business praxis.
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On June 01 2012 17:40 Kassploj wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 13:24 rezoacken wrote:Edit: Lol dude your anger is over the top. Take a walk. What you want me to say, you're making a terrible analogy. You're comparing a technical difficulty in something that is reknown for its technical difficulties (Internet, computers) to the car industry. If you want another analogy, do you get a refund when there are too many tourists on your vacations ? Yeah this one proves my point but its probably terrible too. I agree. Going on a vacation and then getting rejected when trying to board the plane on the airport because the airline has oversold tickets is completely standard, I see no reason to get upset as this is business praxis.
The best part is you wait 2 weeks later and tickets are still sold out.
On June 01 2012 17:01 Infernal_dream wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 16:57 cozzE wrote:
The fact that Blizzard had such a woeful launch world-wide and weren't accepting refunds just sounds so wrong to me, I'm not surprised in the least.
This only adds to the skepticism that I hold toward the company these days. Blizzard lost most of it's creativity and respect when they axed all of Blizzard North (the ones who were primary contributors toward Blizzard's biggest IP's). How do you undershoot server numbers by such a margin for one of the most hyped PC games in recent memory? Once again. Why would you have more servers than you need just for launch day? That's beyond stupid in economic terms. You aim for what you think is going to be the average and let it pan itself out. Every single MMO has had this issue. Anyone not expecting it is just being dumb.
Old Republic had an extremely smooth launch with very few problems despite the massive population on day 1. If EA can do it, so can Blizzard. Pretty inexcusable.
On June 01 2012 16:43 Joementum wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 14:46 peekn wrote:
It's kinda sad because Blizzard didn't expect to have THAT many people buying the game, but since they had to have internet connection to play a SINGLE PLAYER GAME my sympathies end there. I just still blame Activision for this whole thing and everything that comes from it.
Edit: If this is still happening over in Korea, I'd be super pissed and would want my money back as well. I'd wait until they had their shit together. You blame Activision, but you don't seem to understand how the merger worked. Vivendi SA owned Blizzard. Vivendi then struck a deal with Activision. The deal was Blizzard and Activision would merge and Vivendi SA would have a 54% stake in the newly formed company. Part of the deal was that Blizzard and Activision both remain autonomous. Blizzard cannot control Activision and vice versa. You can't really blame Activision for anything that happened here. Just Blizzard
You would be naive to believe that Activision has no influence in how Blizzard runs things.
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Quote from battlnet forums:
"If Blizzard expect you to be always online to play their game. Then Blizzard need to always be online whenever you want to play it."
They totaly deserve this , having downtimes so often/long cant be acceptable , i hope they get a realy huge fine for doing this , so they finaly realise that they should actualy spend more money on servers , rather then having a bare minimum, just to safe some money (guess they did it that way).
IMO Blizzard are huge morons , just imagine all the "future" money lost due to this losing their "good image" , if I were Blizzard i would try to sue the guys responsible for this within the company/or their server providers , and obviously fire them :O
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I asked for a refund to Blizzard Korea after I found out that I'm not gonna be able to play in English with the Korean client and thus had to buy the game again with my EU b.net account. They denied my refund request. Maybe I'm gonna get the refund after all? ,)
(I purchased the Korean digital version and never logged in with it once)
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On June 01 2012 17:15 Uncultured wrote:
Blizzard accepting refund for someone who has played their game for many more hours than most would play any other game of its price would be a little weird. They are, however accepting refund for people who have not played an excess amount, from what I've seen.
This seem more than fair.
This, people who seriously ask for a refund after playing a game for over 50 hours are pure dicks. If you don't like the game, refund it immediately. Don't dick around with it until you're bored and then expect to get money back.
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On June 01 2012 18:12 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 17:15 Uncultured wrote:
Blizzard accepting refund for someone who has played their game for many more hours than most would play any other game of its price would be a little weird. They are, however accepting refund for people who have not played an excess amount, from what I've seen.
This seem more than fair.
This, people who seriously ask for a refund after playing a game for over 50 hours are pure dicks. If you don't like the game, refund it immediately. Don't dick around with it until you're bored and then expect to get money back.
It's not about being bored. It's about not being able to play half of the time. Since the patch 2 days ago, I haven't been able to play at all, despite trying to log in the whole day. Same the days after launch where you often had to spam the login screen for over 2 hours before you got in.
This is not an MMO, where adding server capacity at the start will later be a problem because of underpopulation. Blizzard should have planned ahead, maybe leased external server capacity for the launch days.
I am a CS student having working experience with large database systems, so I know that it's not as simple as just "adding additional servers". Given the experience blizzard has with such launches (every WoW expansion, SC2, heck even WoW content patches) and them being the huge company they are, it is still no excuse though. Every game they launch has the same problems (remember SC2?) in the first weeks, you would have expected them to have sorted these things out by now.
Other games have problems too, but most of the time they have nowhere near the experience and money that Blizzard has.
I think it's a good sign that governments step in, I feel the games industry has gone a bit too far in the last years screwing over their customers with ToS, EULA and anti-piracy measures. Although I don't expect anything bad coming out of this story for blizzard, it will show other companies, that they can in fact not do anything they want just because their customers are mostly non-adults who won't sue them.
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On June 01 2012 15:53 redtooth wrote:
But back to the topic at hand. If you want to talk about probabilities, what is more likely? The fact that a bunch of hackers would go after digital items in this game, Diablo 3, or the fact that if these hackers were truly capable of exploiting individual stupidity rather than the failings of the service they would probably utilize their talents elsewhere? You know what is a "prime hacking target"? Banks. Paypal. Amazon. Fuck, if Papa Johns Pizza got hacked I would be screwed because my credit card number is on there somewhere. And for some reason they chose to use all their talents and all their keyloggers and all their time to (incompletely) screw over some gamers.
Chew on it.
If you hacked such targets, you'll be a prime target for the authorities. If you hacked something thats "only a game", the authorities will spend less effort (if any) at chasing you down. If I had a choice between making millions with the risked of getting locked behind bars for a loooonng time, or making a few hundred bucks with the risk of losing my account, I'd choose the latter any day.
People who play 50 hours and then demand a refund are just too much. Do you buy clothes, wear them for 89 days and then demand a refund on the 90th day? No? I thought so too. If people played only for 2-4 hours, interrupted by a ton of server issues, then that's a good reason for a refund, not "I don't like the story".
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Why do people keep taking blizzards side of the "Login problems are expected, yatta yatta yatta". That is not my fucking problem as a consumer. In any other industry (car-analogy have already been made), it is not the consumers problem if the suppliers product is shit, it's the suppliers problem.
If it doesn't seem reasonable to buy extra serverspace for the 1st month, then don't sell 6,3 million copies at once. It is just simple business, if it wasn't because I love to play this game when it is actually online, I too would get a refund.
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On June 01 2012 10:20 houseurmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:11 Shikyo wrote:On June 01 2012 08:47 Nonexistent wrote:
6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid? hundreds of OFFICIAL FORMAL COMPLAINTS. Do you have the slightest idea of how few people actually go that far? Obviously 000000000000.1%
/facepalm
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On June 01 2012 10:20 houseurmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:11 Shikyo wrote:On June 01 2012 08:47 Nonexistent wrote:
6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid? hundreds of OFFICIAL FORMAL COMPLAINTS. Do you have the slightest idea of how few people actually go that far? Obviously 000000000000.1%
lol. You sure it wasn't 000000000.10000000000%? this number seems scarier
On June 01 2012 11:44 NotSorry wrote:
TOS and EULA are not legal bind contracts
Yes this is true. I see a lot of people (on the bnet forums where I'm lurking for game fix updates) defending actions with the TOS/EULA as an end-all be-all counter argument.
On the extreme, you could put in your TOS "all players hereby must serve as slaves to our company for 3 months prior to being permitted to play", but yeaaaah that wouldn't exactly hold any weight in court. They'd just say: "fuck your TOS it's invalid" (verbatim obviously)
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On June 01 2012 18:09 Onioncookie wrote:
Quote from battlnet forums:
"If Blizzard expect you to be always online to play their game. Then Blizzard need to always be online whenever you want to play it."
They totaly deserve this , having downtimes so often/long cant be acceptable , i hope they get a realy huge fine for doing this , so they finaly realise that they should actualy spend more money on servers , rather then having a bare minimum, just to safe some money (guess they did it that way).
IMO Blizzard are huge morons , just imagine all the "future" money lost due to this losing their "good image" , if I were Blizzard i would try to sue the guys responsible for this within the company/or their server providers , and obviously fire them :O
Truer words have never been spoken (written) :D
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Blizzard totally ruined their reputation on D3. Totally. My fanboyism went down the drain. I won't even buy HoTS on pre-order. Fuck it. I'll buy it another time, or not perhaps, see who cares.
They blew it with me. I don't even log on to D3 anymore because of the login fails..
Really a huge hit in their reputation.
We will release when it's DONE. we demand our customers have a 100% satisfactory experience. Else we won't release.
Yeah Right Blizzard... I'm done with you. I'll have to find a new game complany to become fanboy of.
Blizzard was 10/10 in my book, now I rate them 3/10 for all this shit. It all started with bnet 0.2 with SC2 launch.
SC2 didn't stick to me like BW did. I don'tk now Blizzard isn't the same.
*edit*
I forgot to mention how excited I was for D3 and I even took a week off for it.
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On June 01 2012 17:01 Infernal_dream wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 16:57 cozzE wrote:
The fact that Blizzard had such a woeful launch world-wide and weren't accepting refunds just sounds so wrong to me, I'm not surprised in the least.
This only adds to the skepticism that I hold toward the company these days. Blizzard lost most of it's creativity and respect when they axed all of Blizzard North (the ones who were primary contributors toward Blizzard's biggest IP's). How do you undershoot server numbers by such a margin for one of the most hyped PC games in recent memory? Once again. Why would you have more servers than you need just for launch day? That's beyond stupid in economic terms. You aim for what you think is going to be the average and let it pan itself out. Every single MMO has had this issue. Anyone not expecting it is just being dumb.
no, businesses pissing off consumers, tarnishing their image because their servers are shit are dumb. And it's not every single MMO.
Besides it doesn't take 2 weeks to rent additional servers if you noticed you fucked up, does it?
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Every time I read an article about Blizzard & Korea.. SC2/Kespa, RMAH, licensing, intellectual property, and now this...
I think that whoever is there legal representation, and their PR company in Korea, both must be awful.
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On June 01 2012 23:58 Nizaris wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 17:01 Infernal_dream wrote:On June 01 2012 16:57 cozzE wrote:
The fact that Blizzard had such a woeful launch world-wide and weren't accepting refunds just sounds so wrong to me, I'm not surprised in the least.
This only adds to the skepticism that I hold toward the company these days. Blizzard lost most of it's creativity and respect when they axed all of Blizzard North (the ones who were primary contributors toward Blizzard's biggest IP's). How do you undershoot server numbers by such a margin for one of the most hyped PC games in recent memory? Once again. Why would you have more servers than you need just for launch day? That's beyond stupid in economic terms. You aim for what you think is going to be the average and let it pan itself out. Every single MMO has had this issue. Anyone not expecting it is just being dumb. no, businesses pissing off consumers, tarnishing their image because their servers are shit are dumb. And it's not every single MMO. Besides it doesn't take 2 weeks to rent additional servers if you noticed you fucked up, does it?
It can it strongly depends where you are looking for servers and the capacity/power you need along with what kind of set up the servers are in can all matter, just half hazardly signing contracts and getting servers is how server files end up leaked by shady people, i wouldn't be surprised if blizz doesn't rent servers for atleast log in but instead owns. Anyways it seems that part of the problem seems to be not enough optimization of the code, based off reading blue posts, esp dealing with the AH.
On June 01 2012 18:12 snowbird wrote:
I asked for a refund to Blizzard Korea after I found out that I'm not gonna be able to play in English with the Korean client and thus had to buy the game again with my EU b.net account. They denied my refund request. Maybe I'm gonna get the refund after all? ,)
(I purchased the Korean digital version and never logged in with it once)
Shit like this is confusing so you have 2 copies of d3? one in eu and one in kor. Well if you never played your kor account one would hope you could be able to get your refund as that seems legit to ask for one, the thing is is about what constitues as a timely manner. I say about 1 month after the refund request is great. 2-3 is acceptable for the amount of money are are talking about here and the type of purchase this is, 3+/never is unacceptable.
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On June 01 2012 10:24 semantics wrote:People complaining about not being able to play a game 24/7? Pretty sure the Korean government is suppose to have a stance different from supporting that. As long as they had servers up every day for say 1/2th of the day i don't see any problem they are providing the service everyday just becuase it's an online game doesn't mean it has to be up 24/7 esp a new game that often early bugs etc need to be hammered out now if this continued on 3 months from now it would be a systemic problem and a real problem. As far as complaining about refunds, the idea that you can refund your game after you threw 40 60 hours+ into it is quite silly, by that measure you can return any game you disagree with post playing though the whole game. Refunding a game that a person is unable to play sub 10hours i can see outside of that it's just people whining. Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 10:18 xavra41 wrote:
What about them changing ToS and then forcing you to accept or lose your money? The only way you're losing money is if you were paying a monthly service which you're not for d3. You have unlimited time to play d3 post buying it, so a few hours a day or so of not being able to play the game is not losing money it's losing time. The only way you lost money is if you bought the game put little to no time into it and asked for a refund and was unable to get it.
24/7, you know that some people actually have to make a living and work from like 8-17, then when they get home and want to relax and play d3, a singleplayer game they paid for they can't because herpaderp servers broken again.
And no, it should be up 24/7 except for like weekly maintenance which should be 1 time a week, it doesn't matter if it's a new game or not people paid for it and should be able to fucking play it. It's like buying a car and only driving when your car feels like it, which is fine because you don't need to drive 24/7.
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On June 02 2012 01:06 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 23:58 Nizaris wrote:On June 01 2012 17:01 Infernal_dream wrote:On June 01 2012 16:57 cozzE wrote:
The fact that Blizzard had such a woeful launch world-wide and weren't accepting refunds just sounds so wrong to me, I'm not surprised in the least.
This only adds to the skepticism that I hold toward the company these days. Blizzard lost most of it's creativity and respect when they axed all of Blizzard North (the ones who were primary contributors toward Blizzard's biggest IP's). How do you undershoot server numbers by such a margin for one of the most hyped PC games in recent memory? Once again. Why would you have more servers than you need just for launch day? That's beyond stupid in economic terms. You aim for what you think is going to be the average and let it pan itself out. Every single MMO has had this issue. Anyone not expecting it is just being dumb. no, businesses pissing off consumers, tarnishing their image because their servers are shit are dumb. And it's not every single MMO. Besides it doesn't take 2 weeks to rent additional servers if you noticed you fucked up, does it? It can it strongly depends where you are looking for servers and the capacity/power you need along with what kind of set up the servers are in can all matter, just half hazardly signing contracts and getting servers is how server files end up leaked by shady people, i wouldn't be surprised if blizz doesn't rent servers for atleast log in but instead owns. Anyways it seems that part of the problem seems to be not enough optimization of the code, based off reading blue posts, esp dealing with the AH.
not enough optimization maybe for the AH, but the main problem is error 37 aka the login server being flooded. code they could have ripped off from wow or sc2 or any other game they have. i doubt the login code is the issue really.
They don't need to go outside of the current company that runs b.net to add servers so i doubt leaking server code is an issue (it couldn't be worse than what it is right now)
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On June 01 2012 08:47 Nonexistent wrote:
6.3 million copies sold. "Hundreds of complaints", that means like 00000000000.1% of the player base. This is probably slander, how could any gov be that stupid?
Because everyone who is legitimatley pissed off makes ligitimate complaints don't they?
I dont even know HOW to make a legitimate complaint that they would count.
But I am fed up of been kicked off the servers.
The no refund policy is also illegal in uk
On June 01 2012 22:57 Heh_ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2012 15:53 redtooth wrote:
But back to the topic at hand. If you want to talk about probabilities, what is more likely? The fact that a bunch of hackers would go after digital items in this game, Diablo 3, or the fact that if these hackers were truly capable of exploiting individual stupidity rather than the failings of the service they would probably utilize their talents elsewhere? You know what is a "prime hacking target"? Banks. Paypal. Amazon. Fuck, if Papa Johns Pizza got hacked I would be screwed because my credit card number is on there somewhere. And for some reason they chose to use all their talents and all their keyloggers and all their time to (incompletely) screw over some gamers.
Chew on it. If you hacked such targets, you'll be a prime target for the authorities. If you hacked something thats "only a game", the authorities will spend less effort (if any) at chasing you down. If I had a choice between making millions with the risked of getting locked behind bars for a loooonng time, or making a few hundred bucks with the risk of losing my account, I'd choose the latter any day. People who play 50 hours and then demand a refund are just too much. Do you buy clothes, wear them for 89 days and then demand a refund on the 90th day? No? I thought so too. If people played only for 2-4 hours, interrupted by a ton of server issues, then that's a good reason for a refund, not "I don't like the story".
Except it would be having the clothes for 2 days wouldnt it ... and yes people do return clothes after 2 days when they discover they don't all fit.
Or they fall apart ... and they return them legitimatley because they wouldn't be fit for purpose
do you want to use another broken analogy?
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If the mobile network is down my Samsung can't be used to phone people. Maybe i should ask my government to raid the offices of Samsung. 
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is awesome32274 Posts
On June 22 2012 06:28 ZerGrim wrote:If the mobile network is down my Samsung can't be used to phone people. Maybe i should ask my government to raid the offices of Samsung.
Samsung doesn't run mobile networks, carriers do (T Mobile, Telecom, Telefonica, etc).
If phone carriers are down beyond a % of the total time of the month, they get fined by goverments. The same is true for internet providers. Contracts usually provide a max downtime they are allowed to have (for maintenance / random interrupts).
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-21-blizzard-offers-south-korean-diablo-3-players-a-full-refund-following-error-37-server-woe
"Blizzard has taken the drastic step of offering South Korean Diablo 3 players a full refund following the server woe that plagued the game's launch.
The decision comes after gamer complaints forced the South Korean government to launch an investigation into Blizzard's Seoul office.
The always-online Diablo 3 was unplayable for many at launch, with Error 37 messages flashing on screen as Blizzard's servers were overwhelmed.
Blizzard had resisted providing compensation, but South Korean consumer protection law guarantees a refund if there is a problem with a product that is not caused by the customer.
In a post on the Korean Battle.net (translated by Wall Street Journal), Blizzard said Diablo 3 players who are under level 40 can apply for a refund from 25th June to 3rd July.
Blizzard will accept returns from players less than level 20 within 14 days of purchase from now on. It appears players above level 40 will not be offered a refund.
The company declined to comment when contacted by Eurogamer on the possibility of a similar offer being made in the UK."
"South Korean consumer protection law guarantees a refund if there is a problem with a product that is not caused by the customer." That is how I feel consumer protection should work. If the product is defective and not the consumer's fault, refund is very reasonable. I don't understand how people here can argue otherwise.
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On June 01 2012 10:26 Jumbled wrote:
Blizzard is like most game companies - they tend to think that simply writing something in an EULA makes it valid. The Korean government is currently explaining to them that it doesn't work like that.
EULAs are always subject to limitation local laws and regulations. This isn't news to anyone, including Blizzard's lawyers.
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EPT
