Blizzard says Diablo 3 Internet Requirement Prevents Hacking
Despite recent talk that Diablo 3's required Internet connection was all about the player's character and Battle.net's feature set, game director Jay Wilson made it clear that the requirement is also to prevent the same amount of hacking as seen with Diablo 2. The revelation was made while explaining why it's a bad idea to have an offline mode for the upcoming action-RPG game.
"If we allow an Offline mode, it changes the structure of the data that we have to put on the user’s system," he told PC Gamer during Gamescom. "Essentially we would have to put our server architecture onto the client so that it can run its own personal server. Doing that essentially is one of the reasons why Diablo 2 was a much easier game to hack than obviously any other game you’d mention and so it’s what led to extensive cheating and item dupes and things like that."
"I would never guarantee that we’re never going to have those things in Diablo 3, but it’s one of the things that our community has been the most vocal about, wanting this fixed, and if we essentially are putting the server out there…we’re not really going to be able to better than Diablo 2," he added.
