What the fucking fuck

[Dr.Disaster]

This makes me feel better about not buying D3. I plan on never letting Blizzard see another cent of mine.

Too late, you just gave them two

[Tyrmith]

It's because they're waiting till the money actually goes through from the credit card company. They're getting besieged by people using stolen credit cards to "buy" d3. Not (everything) is a money grab.

[scooter]

It's because they're waiting till the money actually goes through from the credit card company. They're getting besieged by people using stolen credit cards to "buy" d3. Not (everything) is a money grab.

That doesn't make this an acceptable way to treat paying customers. Honestly, I'm surprised this is legally okay.

[Injera]

That doesn't make this an acceptable way to treat paying customers. Honestly, I'm surprised this is legally okay.

They wouldn't take such drastic action if they had a choice in the matter. It's likely one of the credit card companies forcing their hand, and it's either this or stop accepting one of Mastercard or Visa.

[scooter]

They wouldn't take such drastic action if they had a choice in the matter. It's likely one of the credit card companies forcing their hand, and it's either this or stop accepting one of Mastercard or Visa.

Even if this is true (I'm skeptical), then it's your duty to inform the customer purchasing your product that the game will take a few days. Regardless, I have a hard time believing Blizzard had "no choice in the matter" when this kind of thing never happens with other games.

[SevenSpirits]

Locking paying customers out of playing the game for 3 days after purchase: stupidest thing I've seen a consumer business do.

Not mentioning it anywhere in the ordering/installation process or even when the game literally stops working: Insane and probably illegal.

[Elkad]

Think of it as time to get all your HC characters to 13?

[NobleHelium]

http://kotaku.com/5920414/blizard-explai...three-days

[SleepingMoogle]

Even if this is true (I'm skeptical), then it's your duty to inform the customer purchasing your product that the game will take a few days. Regardless, I have a hard time believing Blizzard had "no choice in the matter" when this kind of thing never happens with other games.

All relevant information and support articles have since been updated to be very obvious about it, but I'm fairly sure they did before. It's just that 99% of the people buying stuff nowadays don't read the terms of service anymore, and most don't do any kind of advance research on the product they're buying either.

[SevenSpirits]

All relevant information and support articles have since been updated to be very obvious about it, but I'm fairly sure they did before.

They didn't.

Day of release of the patch: people complained about it, and blizzard provided the reply I linked to, saying that new digital copies would be stuck in starter edition mode for up to 3 days.

Day after: they posted a stickied thread in the diablo 3 technical issues forum - the thing Lewwyn linked to.

Today: they announced that capping at level 13 / skeleton king was actually a mistake.

So apparently they were in a hurry and didn't think about the fact that starter editions were limited in that way in addition to being unable to use the auction house and public chat. Or they thought of it, but they were in a really big hurry and didn't care about legitimate customers as much as about fraudulent purchases, and therefore just slapped their existing code path (starter edition limitations) onto the problem since it was close to what was needed.

When I bought it, the terms of purchase, service, what have you did not say that digital purchasers would be unable to play most of the game for 3 days. This does make sense as they obviously rushed this out and were surely not planning to leave it like that. Nevertheless for a couple days, their official position was "suck it up". It literally took multiple days before they admitted it was a bad idea (and said it was "unintended" (wow, that's a lot of effort they put into not saying sorry)).