Wyatt Cheng’s statement about disconnects:
I wish the game could be more disconnect friendly. I don’t have a lot to say, I’m not a super expert on disconnects; but as long as we’re talking about hardcore, some people are asking about that. We’ve talked about it. If it was a perfect world, you wouldn’t lose your character with disconnects. The truth is that, what we don’t want is to be in a situation where if you think you’re going to die, the right answer is to pull your network cable out of the wall. Which means that we would need to differentiate between a staged disconnect versus a server issue on our end. The issue with server issues on our end — the server’s not supposed to crash. Our server engineers are really amazing people. But obviously crashes do happen. If the server is crashing, it can’t save your character, because it’s crashing! It’s a funny suggestion sometimes when I see it, but that’s the reality. And yeah, you know what? It’s rough and it scares me when I play hardcore, too.
The above shows that he is correct about not being a super expert on disconnects because he is confusing the issue of server crashes with the issue of network related issues which leads to the current situation where a character ends up mostly defenseless in game as it waits for the server to acknowledge there is an issue with its connection with the client. Server crashes are what they are when it comes to saving the state of a character when the hardware and/or software is going down. What we’re more concerned about is network related latency/disconnects. A client crash would also fall under that umbrella because if it does lock up, network wise, there would be no communication (once the usual tcp retries timeout and the connection is torn down) between client and server (thus the above system would kick in placing your character into a paused state).
Now could Blizzard actually go further where you could actually reconnect to that game instance? Currently, one can disconnect just from the game server or from Battle.net completely. In the former, you get kicked back to the character selection screen once whatever happens on the game server is completed. In the latter, you have to log back in again. In either case, you either see your character dead or alive.
What if instead in the former, you are presented with a dialog that allows you to reconnect back up to your paused game (this would apply so long as the idle disconnect period of 30 minutes has not passed). And in the latter case, when you log back in again (before 30 minutes), presented with this same resume game dialog?
Like everything else, it would require additional development work.
Here is what Travis Day said about hardcore:
I don’t do a lot of hardcore, because I’m a giant sissy and I’ve always said I’d get really angry if I got disconnected from the internet. But I definitely was leveling a hardcore Witch Doctor at one point. Because I was like, well if I’m gotta play hardcore I’ll hide like a little girl, and throw spiders at things I can’t see, with lots of pets.
Source: http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1555-candid-chats-with-wyatt-cheng-and-travis-day#travis-hardcore
While it’s a bit tongue-and-cheek, these kind of responses from their recent interviews don’t inspire much confidence (for me at least) in terms of them really fixing the game in a timely manner. Based on one of the recent interview with Diablofans for example, itemization won’t be as dramatic a change (like it will still be based on the same flawed foundation which currently exists) and that probably won’t see the light of day until 2014. If there is one thing I can say, what they (the D3 team) have proven since 2008 is the ability to over promise, and under deliver.
Given their current pace (and the above sort of responses), I personally am not holding my breath on anything positive happening in this area (let alone, the game itself).
Thus this is basically going to be my one of last posts about the disconnect issue since I am finding myself beating a dead horse (or in Diablo terms, a dead demon). Hopefully, someone else who still has a passion for this game and continues playing it will fight for some better solutions than what currently exists (thus holding Blizzard to their safe and fun gaming environment for everyone mantra).
