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Probably :)

You'll have to forgive me if it was another rant from Mr.Miller, as I need a break from the prophet of Doom.

In these terms, it got me thinking about Sim City and how popular that game is (I didn't realize). THAT led me to think about the infrastructural requirements and how different they must be from Halo. That got me thinking about Destiny.

I think that would be really neat to see it and for Bungie, it could lead to a "how to" of sorts for other developers and theirAlways Onlinegames.

Basically, you know how Bungie sort of invented the testing standard that 343 adopted for Halo? Well, what if they do the same thing for Always online gaming?

These are things I am interested, others maybe less so. I don't think these topics/subtopics have been brought up.

Naturally, I'm probably wrong.

Like Diablo 3, running critical code server side is without question an anti-piracy move.

I'd question that it has anything to do with piracy in the case of the always-on requirement with Diablo III, which I suspect Bungie will have something in common with: a strong desire to guarantee the integrity of the game state data.

Going back a few years, Diablo II had a major problem with item duplication due to locally-run exploits. There were also black markets for item trading, through eBay and other places. Knowing that people would want to trade items for real money whether or not they gave it their blessing, Blizzard decided to incorporate a real money auction house in-game, but that necessitated having pretty strong confidence in the integrity of the game systems. It's no good having a RMAH if it's trivially easy to duplicate a bunch of high-demand items and then sell them — it'd ruin the game for everyone.

The lack of an always-online requirement for the PS4 version of Diablo III has nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with the PS4 being a closed system that's far less likely (impossible?) to reverse engineer the loot system for, and so the auction house is safer. That's assuming they're even going to launch a RMAH for Diablo III on PS4 — maybe they're not, and that's another reason they're happy with it running entirely locally?

Either way, piracy is a red herring. Sometimes users get caught in the crossfire, but unlike the more overtly obnoxious efforts of DRM, this kind of always-online system is usually a design decision made to enforce some other requirement.

The server load for Sim City is undoubtedly higher than it will be for Destiny. XBL and PSN are very lite, in that the matchmaking servers only pair players up, then the host player's connection is responsible for maintaining the game. In contrast, the Sim City servers actually run simulation code, and so one of the things EA is doing is removing game features to alleviate problems (such as limiting the simulation speed to llama, and not letting you choose cheetah).

Like Diablo 3, running critical code server side is without question an anti-piracy move. And like Diablo 3, whose console versions will NOT require an internet connection, the game will probably run fine locally.

A couple of my buddies are big Diablo players and they bitched like nobody's business the first few weeks after that game came out about connection issues and server availability.

I don't necessarily know that PSN and XBL are...lighter. I would imagine they've seen significant growth in the time they've been out (especially with all the stuff Sony plans to do with PSN and PS4).

The reason Blizzard isn't requiring a connection for the console versions is simply because folks don't pirate console games in large numbers since it is much harder, and even if they did they couldn't get online with it. So Bungie would be foolish to be running large chunks of the game code on servers, since the 'problem' it's meant to solve doesn't really exist, because 1. people don't pirate console games in significant numbers, and 2. even if they did they couldn't play online anyway.

I think its cute that you think that, I really do.

Buddy, I used to pirate xbl games. It's easier than you think, and the community is pretty large. I only ever lost one xbox to being console banned, and the reason I did is because I got cocky and played a ripped game without applying a firmware update.

I didn't get caught on that box and gamertag for 4 years. I easily played a couple thousand worth of games.

When I got console banned on that account, I stopped because I wised up after I had my fun. My main gamertag has never been...disgraced, I should say. I essentially used the other one for all the games I wanted to play but didn't want to buy new. Thankfully, I've seen the light and have changed.

The two other guys that modded with me still do it, and haven't payed for a game in years. I'm sure the hacks and mods have changed but I haven't kept up with them. I still see em online allll the time, and they play the same games we do.

Piracy is more present than you think, I think. But, for Destiny I don't think that will be an issue at present, because who knows what counter measures the PS4 and next xbox may have.

Basically, Bungie would have to be dumb to do what was done with Sim City.

Destiny seems to be shaping up to be something really big. Since its on multiple platforms, I wonder how much of this will be housed and provided by Bungie or that might be hosted by someone else. I'll clarify that I'm referring to the servers and network relationship in this case.

Basically, I'm curious if there will be similar....outages(?) and demand for this title?

There's a few others but I have to get back to work. I'll check back here in a bit.

Do not be blinded by your nut-hugging fanboydom for Bungie.

Find a better way to express yourself, please.

Remember that you're posting on a Bungie fansite. Don't act surprised and go on the offensive every time you see an optimistic post from a Bungie fanboy (or fangirl).

It's going to be a total disaster. There is absolutely no way to be sure how things will turn out, good or bad, we just have to wait and see.

I don't understand... should we wait and see, or do we already know it's going to be a disaster?

Do not be blinded by your nut-hugging fanboydom for Bungie.. A company as huge as EA couldn't even manage to pull this off, why would Bungie be able to?

EA has a history of terrible online launches, no one was really surprised this time, just this time it got a lot of press because of the "always-online" functionality. Bungie on the other hand has had no problems with their online game launches, while Microsoft had problems with Halo 4 day one. The reason why I have such "nut-hugging fanboydom" is because so far they have not done anything that made me doubt them a whole lot. Am I a little skeptical they can pull it off without a hitch? Sure. Am I hopeful they can and will? Absolutely.

Why don't we wait see eh?

Do not be blinded by your nut-hugging fanboydom for Bungie.. A company as huge as EA couldn't even manage to pull this off, why would Bungie be able to?

Do not be blinded by your kiddy notion that "bigger is better."