Und wieder hat sich der offizielle Blizzard Poster Bashiok gemeldet. Diesmal geht es um den Einstieg ins Battle.NET in Diablo 3. Im Threat Are you going to play single player first? nimmt Bashiok Stellung zum Thema “Einstieg ins Battle.Net”.

So schreibt er:

One thing that seems to be a fairly consistent experience for a lot of people when they first picked up Diablo II was their introduction to Battle.net. And it wasn’t generally a positive one.

Most people, including myself, went home and installed the game and started playing. Over maybe a few weeks or months they’ve finished the game maybe a few times, they had a ton of fun, but they keep playing and trying to find more items.

One day while loading up the game they notice the “Battle.net” button and decide to click it… and, their characters aren’t there. They have to start over. Any of us would have gladly played on Battle.net (in passworded games if necessary) just to have that online/trading option for their character available to them. It felt like a lot of wasted time to find the actual game, which was on Battle.net.

While “starting over” is something almost every Diablo II player is going to do any way, the lack of on-screen instruction or indication as to what the different systems meant left a bad taste.

To help avoid that type of situation we’re going to try to find ways to encourage Battle.net character creation first and foremost.

Wer kennt das denn auch nicht. Man war froh endlich Diablo II in den Händen zu haben und hat dann auch gleich mit dem Single Player Modus angefangen. Erst viel später, vielleicht nach dem ersten durchspielen, ist einem dann der Battle.net Button aufgefallen. Spätestens nach einem Klick darauf befand man sich in einer neuen Welt und musste verbittert feststellen, das all die Zeit im Single Player Modus umsonst war. Der Charakter samt seiner erspielten Items war nicht da und man musste komplett vom Anfang beginnen.

Blizzard will nun in Diablo III gleich von Beginn an dafür sorgen, das der Spieler sofort mit einem mit Battle.net Charakter beginnt.