Don’t Buy Diablo III Digitally [updated]

Not if you want to actually play it, anyway!

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devildiablo3

A quick public service announcement: If you haven’t bought Diablo III yet, because you’re waiting for that console release, or for the simple reason that it didn’t work— don’t buy it digitally. Why? A new patch that went live yesterday restricts players to the “Starter Edition” of the game—essentially a demofor 72 hours after purchase.

I repeat: If you buy the game digitally, you can’t actually play it for three days. Or at least, you can only play up to the end of Act 1, and you can only interact with other Starter Edition players. They didn’t list a reason for including this great new feature, although I can only assume it’s because they weren’t satisfied with the bad press they’ve already been receiving.

Can you imagine if other retailers adopted this practice? If you bought a sandwich at Subway, and then weren’t legally allowed to eat it for three days? I’m normally not on board with the ActiBlizzard hate, but this is a bit much. What would Oleg (MEGAMASTER) say?

Update:

Per Kotaku, Blizzard has clarified their restrictions on new purchasers of the digital version of Diablo III. Apparently the comedic “you’re restricted to the demo version, lol” feature is actually a glitch—although new accounts do still have several intentional limitations as Blizzard “verifies” them as legitimate buyers, and not dirty, dirty gold farmers:

· No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
· No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
· Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
· Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
· Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
· Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers

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About the Contributor


From 2002 to 2013

11 Comments

  1. I hate how Blizzard has handled this game every step of the way. I’ve never really played Diablo before and wanted to jump in with Diablo III, but if I have to pay full price only to jump through endless hoops like this I’m going to bow out until they figure it out and the price drops a whole lot.

  2. Oh, wait, my friend just showed me that he made $20 selling an in game helmet in the real money auction house. I’m back to being tempted to buy it, proving once again that I am easily bought.

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