Blizzard Entertainment, the studio responsible for games like World of Warcraft, lost a lot of goodwill with their fans in 2012 when they launched the long-awaited Diablo 3 with always-online DRM built into it. Although they have never backed down from this decision before, it seems like the company has learned from that mistake and is making offline cooperative play available for the consoles.
The launch of Diablo 3 on Windows and Macintosh last year was embarrassing; many players simply could not play the game due to servers that couldn’t handle the traffic, even if they had no intention of playing online in the first place. When I heard about this, I decided to skip on the game as well and I haven’t bought a Blizzard product since. However, if the recent announcement of a console port wasn’t enough of a surprise already, Sony’s John Hight has now also revealed more information about how they will handle it.
In the interview he held with Gametrailers, he stated that: “You can have four people on the same screen. No split-screen, we just zoom the camera out. Or, you know, if you’re offline…” It remains unclear if the singleplayer will also be playable offline, but it’s safe to assume that it will.
This is really cool news, but Blizzard hasn’t quite redeemed themselves in my eyes yet. A special edition of the game that comes with a keyboard and mouse that work on a console could maybe change my mind.
[Source]
