Onlive - Anyone actually using it?

[Soundmanred]

Now that Onlive has been out for a while, is there anyone actually using the service past the beta/free stuff stage?
I don't know of anyone that was impressed enough to pay for the service.
Anyone?

 

[Red Storm]

Their catalog sucks. I remember they had Crysis at one point and now they don't? Don't like the idea of a revolving showcase of games.

 

[CPA]

Can't use it, apparently my DSL connection is too slow.

 

[borisvodofsky]

Latency is impossible to overcome, it's fine for single player stuff where latency doesn't matter.

 

[gorcorps]

You're probably posting in the wrong place for this. Most people in AT gaming actually have a PC to game on, so the whole OnLive thing is a step backwards.

I know the console release of OnLive was reviewed relatively well, and other console gamers may have tried it. Maybe ask in there.

 

[thespyder]

Latency is impossible to overcome, it's fine for single player stuff where latency doesn't matter.

Not anymore. Even Single player games are now running always online such that we are now going to have to worry about latency even on single player (ala Diablo 3 and every single new EA game going forward). Sux.

 

[vshah]

Not anymore. Even Single player games are now running always online such that we are now going to have to worry about latency even on single player (ala Diablo 3 and every single new EA game going forward). Sux.

what? your clicks in diablo 3 SP are not being subjected to latency

 

[Barfo]

what? your clicks in diablo 3 SP are not being subjected to latency

Yes they are, every single click has to be validated by the server in order to be registered by the game.

 

[thespyder]

what? your clicks in diablo 3 SP are not being subjected to latency

Why so? You are playing on the company's server. Which means that every single action you take passes data from your computer to the server and then back. In what way is that not subject to latency?

it is not a 100% equal translation, but I play NWN2 on a persistent world and there is latency. Sometimes significantly so. And since my single player Diablo 3 experience is shackled to an always online connection, i see no (significant) difference. Do you?

 

[gorcorps]

Yes they are, every single click has to be validated by the server in order to be registered by the game.

Yup. I had so much lag in the beta it was disgusting. The fix at the time was to disable the P2P connection which was busy uploading stuff I guess, but that should never EVER affect my SP game if it's not being played online at all times.

Online DRM killed diablo for me, and I was really looking forward to it. I wouldn't mind the always on connection if I never knew it was there... but it's far from transparent.

 

[tecplayer]

Online DRM killed diablo for me, and I was really looking forward to it. I wouldn't mind the always on connection if I never knew it was there... but it's far from transparent.

Thumbs up! Same for me here. What a disappointment.

 

[zerogear]

I bought a few games for $1 or so. But I haven't even played them. Doubt I ever will.

 

[fixbsod]

Oh noes!! Have to stop torrenting just to play D3? Even moar cores won't solve that!!!

How soon are the days when people get *2* broadband connections so they can have one free even when they saturate the hell out of the other...like back when people had 2 phone lines...

 

[gorcorps]

Oh noes!! Have to stop torrenting just to play D3? Even moar cores won't solve that!!!

How soon are the days when people get *2* broadband connections so they can have one free even when they saturate the hell out of the other...like back when people had 2 phone lines...

You obviously weren't involved in the beta process.

It's not EXTERNAL p2p I'm talking about, blizzard's very own downloader is P2P. You download from peers, and when you're done the game continutes to run the client in the background uploading the content to more people. In theory this is good because you won't have as big of a slowdown from the rush of people downloading directly from limited servers. Once it's saturated through the community the downloads are fast. HOWEVER, the downside is that it's constantly using your connection without you knowing, and it affected the game's performance in single player which IMO isn't right.

In short, a lack of information turns your smartass post into a dumbass post.

 

[thespyder]

Online DRM killed diablo for me, and I was really looking forward to it.

and you know that what the hackers are going to do is to load the Hacks into the client side active memory so that the always online will not be able to detect or block it. Another DRM scheme down the tubes, and we consumers get to bite the bullet again.

 

[PrayForDeath]

It was awfully laggy on my 8mbps connection. The screen would freeze every couple seconds, then get completely blurred then go back to normal.

Admittedly I have an old Athlon x2 laptop, but I thought the point of this service was to run games regardless of hardware.

 

[Destiny]

Tried it once... no bueno... I have a fast internet connection and the latency is still there and it irks me...

 

[vshah]

wow. i assumed the online requirement for SP was just for authentication. that's ridiculous.

 

[PingSpike]

You obviously weren't involved in the beta process.

It's not EXTERNAL p2p I'm talking about, blizzard's very own downloader is P2P. You download from peers, and when you're done the game continutes to run the client in the background uploading the content to more people. In theory this is good because you won't have as big of a slowdown from the rush of people downloading directly from limited servers. Once it's saturated through the community the downloads are fast. HOWEVER, the downside is that it's constantly using your connection without you knowing, and it affected the game's performance in single player which IMO isn't right.

In short, a lack of information turns your smartass post into a dumbass post.

That sounds pretty bad. Can you turn off the upload? Not everyone wants to donate free upload bandwidth to blizzard, especially since that is the most limited part of most people's connections and we live in an era of bandwidth caps.

I thought diablo online was just for authentication as well. Sounds like its more like Ubisoft's recent crapfests.

 

[gorcorps]

That sounds pretty bad. Can you turn off the upload? Not everyone wants to donate free upload bandwidth to blizzard, especially since that is the most limited part of most people's connections and we live in an era of bandwidth caps.

I thought diablo online was just for authentication as well. Sounds like its more like Ubisoft's recent crapfests.

They might have made it easier than before, but it used to be a PITA to do so. When you start the launcher to download the game, you have the option to disable P2P and download from server only or use P2P. P2P was obviously much faster so I left that on. But when the game is finished downloading, that launcher with those options doesn't appear and instead the splash screen for the game launched right before the game loaded. There was no way to disable P2P in-game (at the time). The way around this was to delete a small, but necessary file, from the game directory to force the launcher to boot and redownload the small file. THEN you could go into the options and disable P2P, and the slower speeds of going server-only didn't matter because it was a smaller file.

So, I hope they've either fixed the P2P to not slow the game down so much, or at the very least give an in-game option to disable it. Based on how many people are claiming login issues and such, I say I made the right choice in skipping this one for now.

 

[thespyder]

That sounds pretty bad. Can you turn off the upload? Not everyone wants to donate free upload bandwidth to blizzard, especially since that is the most limited part of most people's connections and we live in an era of bandwidth caps.

I thought diablo online was just for authentication as well. Sounds like its more like Ubisoft's recent crapfests.

I haven't played the demo, so I can't speak to this. But Blizzard has stated outright that even the single player game will be 'Always online' as a requirement to play the game. I assumed that the game would be resident on your system, but that the actual game play would be on their server. which may not be the case. However, you will have to have an always on connection which will actually do something minute to minute in game and may cause issues relating to lag and latency.

 

[PrayForDeath]

I haven't played the demo, so I can't speak to this. But Blizzard has stated outright that even the single player game will be 'Always online' as a requirement to play the game. I assumed that the game would be resident on your system, but that the actual game play would be on their server. which may not be the case. However, you will have to have an always on connection which will actually do something minute to minute in game and may cause issues relating to lag and latency.

Yeah, based on my beta experience, every action goes through the server before it executes. In other words, there's freakin' ping in your singleplayer game. If someone hogs up your bandwidth while you're playing (loading 10 youtube videos or something) you'll get major delay in your game.