Interesting: Penny Arcade posted a comic ridiculing the fan reaction to the Diablo III “always on” DRM announcement, and a blog post supporting the fan reaction, on the same day. Apparently Gabe and Tycho disagreed on this point.

I think the blog post is quite astute. As for the comic, well I am frankly sick of both of those arguments: “Saw this article 23 seconds after it was posted because he has been continuously online since 1999.” So what? That’s not the point. I’m always online, but that doesn’t mean I want to be connected to the Blizzard servers when I play a single player game. I’m always online when I edit documents too, but that doesn’t mean I want to be working on Google Docs instead. I paid for the game, so I should be able to play it on my computer — the fact that my computer happens to be connected to a global network is not an argument for the game to require a connection to that network.

“Still going to buy it.” This is supposed to make the dude look like a hypocrite (“he complains, yet he’ll still buy the game”). Well… I’ll probably still buy it as well. This is great news for Blizzard (they can pull off shit like this and still get money), but it isn’t a valid argument against the fan. He’s in an awful position: he hates what Blizzard is doing and he knows that the next game will probably be even worse, but he’s a long-time Diablo fan and he doesn’t want to give up the game because of the DRM.