Hellgate's Open: Diablo Starter Edition Bug Squashed

Sometimes, videogames are confusing. Except with Diablo III, in which case they're always confusing. Most recently, Blizzard's opus - made up of one part hack, one part slash, and one part commerce - introduced a baffling up-to-72-hour set of restrictions for new players. Among those, however, two - a halt to all progress beyond Act One and a demon-tickling level cap of 13 - basically turned the full price product into a glorified demo. Fortunately, however, a new patch has looted those items and put them up for sale on the auction house of non-existence.

"Leveling and Act I content restrictions for unverified digital purchasers have been removed with patch 1.0.3a. Please note that this change will not take effect until your game client has been updated to the most recent patch," wrote Blizzard on its official forums.

It is, however, important to note that the following restrictions are still alive and kicking in the name of credit card verification.

• No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
• No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
• Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
• Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
• Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
• Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers

So that's inconvenient - which kind of flies in the face of the idea of games as a "service," but I've already ranted about that. Even so, I still hold out dim hope that one day Blizzard will see the light and carve out a standalone single-player mode. Today, however, is definitely not that day, so I suppose I'll just throw heaps of money at Torchlight II and Grim Dawn until somebody gets the message.