Sean Malstrom loves Diablo III, I think about Dragon Quest X being online

http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/email-drm/

This isn't me talking about drm or anything. I also haven't played a single Diablo game ever. This is just me thinking about a game requiring online all the time and making me wonder how it'll affect Dragon Quest X.

Sean sure loves Diablo III. Everybody it seems is excited about it. Even the Gamestop in Patrick Street Cork has a gigantic painted mural in their window dedicated to the game.

Sean's post here(you know, it's difficult for me to type his name without putting a fada over the "a". It goes against my upbringing) has me thinking of a single player game being online all the time. This makes a game a kind of a service instead of necessarily being just a product(he's talked about this before himself). This is usually done with multiplayer but if you're a single player it could be a very interesting thing. I don't really know any game world that's online and has a single player option.

I've actually spoken with a flight simulator enthusiast and he talked about how thrilling it is to connect online and just observe other users flying on their flight routes.

I wonder what that's like?? In Dragon Quest IX, the only time you went online was to unlock a subquest or to shop or something.

I've played Animal Crossing online but the areas I visited belonged to other users. That's OK but I'm thinking about a world that would be on the server of the company who developed the game. Say, if that world was online all the time and you didn't have to do multiplayer to enjoy it.

Is there any other game besides Diablo III that does this? Sorry if that sounds like a stupid question. In any case I heard that in Dragon Quest X you can create a team of characters like you could in Dragon Quest III that aren't controlled by other people but I don't really know for sure. If you could though it would be another example of what Diablo III is trying to do. This could be a pretty cool thing.

Actually one major difference in any case is that Diablo III doesn't have a subscription fee whereas Dragon Quest X does.