Just noticed what the game is missing...

[ViralSpiral]

The ability to have mods. Due to Blizzard's Big Brother security setup, we won't be able to mod this game like the last two. Mods were at least half the fun of D1 (Whee V&K's mod) and definitely kept me interested in huuuuge 1.09-1.10 gap of D2, amongst other times. I must have played at least 30 mods.

We as a community have generally been able to fix what we consider Blizzard's biggest blunders in previous games. Things like PlugY kept the game from becoming an utter hassle and losing its appeal. As long as Blizzard slobs the DRM knob though, we're never going to have this capability with D3. I think that's just a huge mistake on their parts - look what modding did for Doom, Unreal, Neverwinter Nights, et cetera.

I'd have thought that they were aware of the longevity effect mods had on their prior products and have made D3 more mod-friendly, not mod-impossible. Hrm.

[kandrathe]

It's new. Like... 5 weeks now. Give them some time. WOW has client side mods, and it's the same type of architecture -- Server Side + Client Side UI. I'd like to see the DH get some survivability first.

Are you going to be able to modify the MOB AI, item drops, etc? No. Security is a very, very good thing.

[MonTy]

This was the saddest thing I had realized when they announced online only. As a huge fan of Median XL I could only imagine what Brother Laz would craft with the ability to modify Diablo 3.

[Mavfin]

Are you going to be able to modify the MOB AI, item drops, etc? No. Security is a very, very good thing.

Yeah, that's intentional. If the server-side code is not available on every hard drive to play with, you're less likely to end up with the dupe/hack disaster that D2 online was.

Everything's a tradeoff.

[MMAgCh]

I'm not really sure mods were that big of a deal in terms of enhancing the longevity of the previous games – not enough so for Blizzard to actively take notice, at least. But I might be wrong.

Are you going to be able to modify the MOB AI, item drops, etc? No. Security is a very, very good thing.

Obviously they'd need to implement the D3 equivalent of D2's SP mode, which just as obviously isn't going to happen.

Which is a shame, certainly. I didn't even care for just about any of the gameplay-modifying D2 mods, but being able to adjust monster stats and roll up items on the fly made it much easier to figure out the game's underlying mechanics. We'll probably never be able to achieve the same degree of insight we had into the way D1 or even D2 worked because of this.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah. Blah. I guess it's just another case where all the honest people have to be screwed because there's a few bad apples out there. Between some stuff like Zy-El, Median, Gemstone, a LotR mod...I had a lot of very fun experiences with D2 I could never have had with stock D2 that really impressed me with all the stuff that could be done with the game. It's a shame we probably won't be witness to nearly as much creativity now because there's a large core of Blizzard fans who are - at least online (via GIFT) - absolute scumbags.

[Mavfin]

It's a shame we probably won't be witness to nearly as much creativity now because there's a large core of Blizzard fans who are - at least online (via GIFT) - absolute scumbags.

I wouldn't say that it's anything unique to Blizzard games. It's just the way of the Internet now, unfortunately. There's a lot of people out there (not just kids) who will spend hours exploiting any loophole, hacking anything they can, to get a perceived advantage, and avoid actually playing the game in its intended way, because they're putting something over on 'the man', I guess. There were posts on another Diablo fan site bemoaning the fact that Blizzard had nerfed several easily bottable farming areas, chests, etc, including the gold from Ashes in the Royal Crypts in Inferno. One complained that he had nothing to do, and when someone pointed out there was a whole game to play otherwise, his response was "No one buys D3 to actually play the game! You get it to exploit it, get loot, and sell it!" Um, not much to say after that.

If you say something to them about cheating or exploiting, well, then, it's the vendor's fault for having a bug or having something able to be exploited, not theirs for taking advantage of it. We saw a good (bad?) example of this when the high-end guilds in WoW abused LFR loot and got banned for a week or so over it. A couple of those guilds more or less said it was Blizzard's fault that the loophole existed, not theirs for taking advantage of it. The victim mentality is mainstream now, obviously. Not a happy thing, IMO.

[FoxBat]

I'm not really sure mods were that big of a deal in terms of enhancing the longevity of the previous games – not enough so for Blizzard to actively take notice, at least. But I might be wrong.

Whoever is playing mods probably isn't doing so on Blizzard's servers, so I doubt they care about these people. And they probably more than made up the money from that small segment of players in D3 by stopping any effective piracy of the game for the next few years at least.

[Roland]

WOW has client side mods, and it's the same type of architecture -- Server Side + Client Side UI.

They've stated emphatically they have no plans (ever) of allowing UI changes. They want the UI to look the way they want it, and that's it - end of story. This isn't WoW. There's less need for such modifications, thus there will be no such modifications.

Now, will someone eventually change their mind 2 years down the road? Who knows. For now, though, that's the company line: no mods, period.

[Nystul]

Whoever is playing mods probably isn't doing so on Blizzard's servers, so I doubt they care about these people. And they probably more than made up the money from that small segment of players in D3 by stopping any effective piracy of the game for the next few years at least.

It's hard to argue with Blizzard's business sense. Millions of people have already shelled out 60 bucks for the game. They were probably at the "Anything more is icing on the cake" point before the game even launched. Personally I am very reluctant to pay that money for a game where I will have lag deaths in single player, no way to back up my characters (or keep more than 10?), forced to follow whatever path the company takes the game, etc. That's why I stayed away from Guild Wars. But there are more would be pirates and cheaters than people like me, so that's that.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, the ability of cheaters to rationalise their actions always scares the Hell out of me. Going around saying you'll do anything you can get away with unpunished and the fact that you can do it is everyone's fault but yours...has some, let's say, uncomfortable ramifications if taken outside the context of gaming. Can you imagine hiring someone whose mentality is to get money and way they can get away with? Do I need to even parallel how this mindset could approach interpersonal relations?

I've never really understood the "win/get ahead at any cost" mindset. To me, it's not a victory if it wasn't done within the rules. I didn't cheat on tests, wouldn't backstab someone for a promotion, don't consider a game beaten if someone had to use Godmode to do it, and so on. I make several remarks about how few runes I ever got to play with in D2 - I got to use all of them at some point or other in modded D2, but that still "doesn't count" to me.

I think I have a silly obsession with honour, really.

[Mavfin]

I think I have a silly obsession with honour, really.

We have our differences, but, I don't think that part is silly.

Sure, you have to modify that depending on your situation, but, sometimes it's better to leave the situation than compromise yourself too much, too.

[ViralSpiral]

We didn't have differences during D2 that I knew of. At least we never argued over any. The only issue I know of you having now is that I speculate and make theories about a game I don't currently own. So far as I can tell, most of the stuff I've cooked up has been pretty close to on-spot, too. Of course I've also been watching a friend play a DH via live streaming too, so I'm learning a lot that way too. She's a pretty skilled gamer, too. I might even bring her around here, she might have some useful stuff to add once she's in Inferno.

[swirly]

Yeah, the ability of cheaters to rationalise their actions always scares the Hell out of me. Going around saying you'll do anything you can get away with unpunished and the fact that you can do it is everyone's fault but yours...has some, let's say, uncomfortable ramifications if taken outside the context of gaming.

These type of discussions always remind me of the the Ring of Gyges. It is amusing for me to see things Plato thought about apply to modern things like video games. I'm not saying there is any right/wrong in his writings. Just that it is interesting. One can consider the anonymity he spoke of with the ring and what we often have on the internet as pretty similar. Which is why Blizzard considered what they did with RealID. It's just all interesting thought paths to ponder I think.

[BellaStrega]

WOW has client side mods, and it's the same type of architecture -- Server Side + Client Side UI.

They've stated emphatically they have no plans (ever) of allowing UI changes. They want the UI to look the way they want it, and that's it - end of story. This isn't WoW. There's less need for such modifications, thus there will be no such modifications.

Now, will someone eventually change their mind 2 years down the road? Who knows. For now, though, that's the company line: no mods, period.

Also, they didn't design the UI in a manner that makes it easy to customize, unlike WoW. Requests for particular modifications were nixed for this reason during that Reddit Q&A.

[RiotInferno]

One thought: There is research already going into D3 Server Emulation. I won't link anything here, because it is a huge grey area in terms of pretty much everything.

If one wanted to mod the game, they could just mod their own emu server.
This does put a lot more work on modders, and they would need more resources than the previously needed though ( server / host, etc. )