Gaming in 2012 : not what it used to be.

So I finally bought a new MacBook Pro, since my old MacBook - which was over 52 months old - started to show its age very quickly.

Now, having a decent computer in my hands, I decided to buy Diablo III, as I have been a big Diablo fan since the late 90's and spent probably upwards of 1000 hours on Diablo II alone. So I buy the game off Amazon (they had a 20$ off deal for Cyber Monday). I install it (it was a lot longer than I expected, but it's a huge game, so it's normal) and launch the game so I can start playing. Usually things go pretty smoothly from there. You buy a game, you play it. As you have done for the past 25 years. Simple.

Well not with this game. Since it's an online game, I had to create a battle.net account, which I gladly did and create a gamer tag for Blizzard. Simple enough. But even as I lauched the game, it didn't work because I had to activate the full game with the CD-key. I start to think : "Well why this wasn't done while I was installing the game with the DVD? Wouldn't that have been a million time easier?" But hey, no biggie. I enter the CD-key on the Battle.net website. Then it demands I enter my postal code. I do, but it doesn't work since I live in Canada and battle.net has decided without even asking me that I lived in the United States. Seriously?

All right, so let's just change the country on my account settings, right? How hard can that be? For anyone who has used the Internet in the past 10 years, changing account settings is the easiest thing you should ever have to do, unless there's a credit card involved or something. I go into my account settings and it says I can't change the country without asking Blizzard via customer support. Read that line again. And again. WHAT THE FUCK? Seriously? I delve deeper into my account settings and realize I can change the billing information of my account, country and all, in about 12.3 seconds. Which I do. But this doesn't change my account's country. I phone Battle.net support and the machine tells me I have a 20 minutes wait before I can speak to a human being. The other option is to create a ticket, a message to the customer service thing, so they can change my country. But they need governement-issued documents. Read that again. And again. Seriously? I do as told, and now I'm waiting.

So I bought a game like any good customer, paid Blizzard so I can play a f******g video game on my computer and I STILL have to jump through hoops to change my country? Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with them? I can enter and change billing information on the fly - like on any freaking website accross the Internet (I just did on Apple, credit card and all, and it took less than 30 seconds) - but I have to PROVE that I live in Canada with government-issued documents? How fucking pointless and absurd is that?

 It's a video game, for Christ's sake, not some classified FBI material. Why does it have to be so complicated? I bought your freaking game, just let me play it.

I bought a game that I can't play because the online service is absurdly idiotic and pointless. Blessed be the times where you bought a game, popped it in the system and had fun with it. Now you have to jump through 15 administrative loops and waste away hours of your life to simply start up the game. Nice.

Thanks a lot Blizzard, you've effectively pissed a gamer who has been a loyal customer for the past 16 years.