I find that extremely worrying, because if these things are generated at server level, then the server is not only a form of DRM, but a noose around the players neck making them reliant on the Blizzard servers always being available, I can pull out Diablo 2 and play it now, I wonder if the same will be true of Diablo 3 in a decades' time?
Same argument goes for Steam as a whole. Also, the original Diablo servers still work today, 15½ years after release.
A quick little review of Diablo 3:
Collector's Edition: Overall, Blizzard probably makes more profit off of a regular copy of the game than the Collector's Edition. It's not perfect, but it's still one of the best CEs I've seen in a long time.
★★★★★.
Polish: The launch was temporarily disastrous, but was largely fixed on the launch day (albeit 20 hours into the day). There are a couple rare (but severe) bugs, but beyond that the game is very well-presented and free of noticeable issues. Blizzard-quality release (both good and bad), as always.
★★★★.
Gameplay: Lack of character customization is not so much of a downgrade but rather a sidegrade. I can't fault the game nor praise it for its choice here. Diablo 2's character creation caused you to have a single build which would be difficult to change from (and a single set of correct stats for whichever build you picked), and Diablo 3 obviously avoids this issue. However, the lack of being able to choose the order in which you learn abilities can be aggravating at times. Beyond that, the combat is simplistic but gets more complicated when the difficulty levels go up, and has a real challenge to it in Nightmare and beyond. The act of killing is intensely satisfying for many reasons, and it's overall a very fun game to play, even though it's a
very classic, been-there formula.
★★★★.
Sound and Visuals: The game looks like a moving painting. When stuff happens, it's clear and doesn't get in the way of the gameplay, yet it looks very good. There is a lot of blood, gore, and explosions, as expected of a Diablo game. The fidelity of the art and technical prowess of the game are not top-of-the-line, but the art design is excellent overall. The sound effects are crisp, meaty, and highly varied, overall exuding quality. The music is also pretty good, easily one of the better tracks Blizzard has made.
★★★★★.
Content: If you explore everything, talk to everyone, and listen to all the lore, this game has a respectable length to it. If you set out to do everything, you probably won't finish in one day. In a group of friends who seek to see everything, the normal difficulty alone will be a 20-30 hour experience. The later difficulties are longer. Beyond that, every class has as many skills as their Diablo 2 counterparts, but the rune-enhanced versions of those skills bring the variety much higher than the previous game (different artwork for runed skills, too). There are fewer items than LoD, but more than vanilla Diablo 2, though each armor piece now has 16 tiers which go all the way up through the last difficulty level. There is enough item content via random drops, crafting, sets and legendaries, gems, etc. that the game will last a long time for any interested player. Almost every area of the game is randomized as well, containing random events, dungeons, and layouts. You will not see every possibility on one playthrough, by any means.
★★★★★.
Story: Fleshed out way more than previous Diablo games, but still fairly cheesy/badly-written. The voice acting is good, but the lines are not. Still, I have to chalk it up as something of an improvement. The cinematics are wonderful, though.
★★★.
Online: Bad launch aside, the Battle.net service could use some improvements. I won't list them here, but suffice it to say that it needs some work. This is especially troubling considering that this is an online-only game. It's usually not laggy, though, so that's good. The Real-Money Auction House is fairly disturbing, but I can't fairly judge it until I see it in action next week. It could end up being beneficial for the title, rather than a detractor. Who knows?
★★★.
DRM: Online-only. This is advertised reasonably well, but ought to have a larger warning on the box/website/etc. There are reasons for doing this, but more reasons against doing it.
★★.
For this type of game (Co-op Action RPG), the score weights are as follows: Collector's Edition - 0.2, Polish - 1, Gameplay - 2, Sound and Visuals - 1, Content - 1.5, Story - 1, Online - 1.5, DRM - 1.
Overall Rating: ★★★★