Diablo 2 giving Daikatana a run for its money?

[Zucchini]

You have a geforce ddr? that what i have. It might seem a little choppy in direct 3d, but thats the way it is in direct 3d in general. I've seen the game on several different cards, it always looks like that, it has nothing to do with the card or direct 3d.

The game isn't much of a stress on the cpu, it hogs ram though.

 

[damocles]

Blizzard should have anticpated and resolved a lot of the problems prior to shipping. The short beta test revealed many of the TNT problems, but they chose to ship before they were resolved.

With a million copies presold and a market that would obviously exceed that rapidly they should have forecast the server demand a heck of a lot better. It is not acceptable to release any product in the state diablo 2 is currently in. I'm sure if Windows 2000 had bugs in it that caused this many people, this many problems people would be less forgiving.


I would imagine that Diablo 2 was given the push by executives who saw their potential return diminishing as Diablo was continually delayed and beginning to look dated.

PS i solved most of my 'ugliness problems' by dusting off my old V2s. It still isnt visually stunning, but it is definitely better and faster.

 

[Zucchini]

The only problem with that arguement is battlenet is only a bonus. We dont pay for the service, it is completely free, you can't expect perfect service from them if they just offer it for free. There are some advertisements, but it won't pay for 2 million users all trying to log on at once. Maybe they should change to a pay to play like everquest model. I'd rather pay then use a free laggy server. Think in terms of money

 

[prontospyder]

And D2 allows you to host your own server, just create the game and give your friends the IP Address....it's that simple to enjoy lagless games.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< they should change to a pay to play like everquest model. I'd rather pay then use a free laggy server. Think in terms of money >>

If done, the pay to play servers would run into the exact same problem with lag. It's inevitable. The only difference would be your loss of money.

 

[Zucchini]

Jellybaby, you know your argument makes no sense whatsoever. With a pay to play model, they would have extra resources to make sure they had an adequet amount of servers. They would also have a responsibility to keep the servers running smoothly as it would be a paid service.

 

[JellyBaby]

Zucchini, in theory yes but three big hurdles foil the fun:

1. The internet being what it is, you really can't defeat lag. You can throw all the money in the world at the problem and it'll still be there. (well technically *all* the world's money would fix it but...)

2. Diablo 2 is too popular. This guarantees lag during peak times and all but guarantees (damn i hate trying to type that word) it at other times.

3. Corporate greed. There's a never-ending battle between the company funding the servers and the game players. The suits don't want to spend $$$ on server improvements while the gamers scream &quot;lag sucks!&quot;.

All the popular online games have mucho lago. This is an issue in everyone I've tried and I'm on a DSL connection.

 

[damocles]

I dont personally believe that Bnet is free. It just has no ongoing costs. Without Bnet i wouldnt have bought Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo 2 or War2Bnet(duh!).
I enjoy the prospect of playing with people i dont know, and also (with diablo 2) not having to worry about hacked characters. I fear that Open servers will be subjected to this.
Bnet is slowly getting better, although i noticed 26 copies of Diablo2 for sale in my local Second Hand Paper. Hopefully it will be better to play on soon as they transfer more operations to the client side. I still make my point though, that i believe Diablo2 was basically Shipped a a Beta

 

[prontospyder]

<< 2. Diablo 2 is too popular. This guarantees lag during peak times and all but guarantees (damn i hate trying to type that word) it at other times. >>



I usually get the most trouble (server splits, etc...)during late nights when people outside North America get on B.net...When I play during the day or early evening, games are really smooth. Other than that, it's still a lagless experience (unless I play with people on AOL or are using slow P200 and under computers) even with my PIII and 28.8K modem.

 

[Zucchini]

There is no Garranteed lag. You only have garranteed lag of whatever connect you are using. Maybe 300 ping for a modem is average, things like that. The reason games are so laggy is because the server model has changed. I think i've already said this. They do far more processing now, confirming all actions in games, so when there are too many people, it slows down. The old style battlenet was not much more then a chat server for getting games started.

 

[Sunner]

Damocles, the fact that alot of people are having problems can be attributed to the fact that this game sold enormous amounts of copies right away.
A game selling ~200.000 copies in the retail channel, and over 2 million preoredered copies will naturally have alot more users with problems than a game selling half that.
For me its worked fine, aside from the poor D3D performance.
Of course I havet played bnet, so I wont comment on that, but again, there is simply no way to prepare yourself for a rush like that, even if you know about it.
Knowing about it doesnt mean you can do something about it you know.

 

[prontospyder]

Remember when Blizzard released the first wave of emails for the Diablo II stress test (about 30,000), big ZDNet.com was slowed down to a crawl due to the 30K trying to download the stress test. So I'm pretty suprised that B.net is still functioning given the magnitude of users on it.

 

[HellRaven]

Yup, I agree with ProtonSpyder. I was in the Stress Test and let me tell ya, when i tried to download it to begin with I gave up and waited 2 days longer =) Actually, whats going on right now is VERY similar to what happened when the second wave of stress testers hit. During the Stest the servers went up and down, over a period of about 4-5 days the servers were up a total of like 12 hours hehe. I definately sympathise with those of you having these problems now since I remember how frustrating it was. My copy of DII won't be here for a few more days, hopefully by then they got it figured out.