Diablo III to Have Persistent Internet Connection, Real Money Auctions
by Stefanie Fogel, posted on 01 August 2011 / 2,300 Views
A flurry of new information has come out today on Diablo III, and some of it may not sit well with some gamers.
According to IGN, Blizzard's latest entry in the franchise will require a constant Internet connection in order to play. Player characters will be stored on Battle.net, whether they are used for co-op, solo, or PvP play, and the Internet connection will be required to access them there. It's all an effort, Blizzard Executive Producer Rob Pardo says, to cut down on hacking.
"In both Diablo and especially in Diablo II, I think the intuition for a lot of people when they're playing the game is 'I want to make my character offline away from that scary Battle.net environment," he explains to IGN. "And then once I have this powerful character, I'll jump online.' But the problem with that concept is we can't really detect if they're cheating. They might have the capability to hack their character, things like that, so at that point we can't really allow that character to be in the Battle.net environment. Then they're going to have to restart their character, which is exactly what happened in Diablo II, which was really unfortunate."
Also new to Diablo III is the ability to buy and sell in-game items using real cash. According to a FAQ on DiabloFans.com, nearly everything in the game, including gold, can be traded on the auction house system. The choice to use real-life cash for in-game gold is completely optional and can be made on a per-item basis. Blizzard says the aim of real-money auctions is to provide an easy and secure way to sell items without the use of questionable third-party sites, who are often associated with scams and theft.
