zheavy wroteGame will never be offline, it's based on a server running most of the game, and buying an unofficial one [cracked] is pointless, that's the biggest difference between diablo2 and diablo3, and as well as the implanted AH, i don't know how you can expect seeing an offline mode if there's such a system implanted.
About the reviews and ratings, it doesn't matter what some website review the game as, i can say for sure that all of these people didn't even read the FAQ of the game pre-launch and just followed the huge lot and the good advertisement of the game and bought it and are expecting some godly miracle to happen on 1st day, the FAQ stated very well that there will be problems at first, especially with the logins on the launch, the most re-occurring error was "error37" i think which was very well explained to stabilize the login rate and people made countless threads and complaints to blizzard asking what it was when the answer was there over a month before the release, yet alone the thousands of people trying to download the game and patch it to 1.01 which also have a huge effect, those reviews are unbased and most at fault, i haven't gotten the game yet, still waiting since morning >< and i'm almost sure i'll have problems at first, i hope not, i know the server will need constant maintenance these first few days, it's expected from any huge launch for something server based, many games have had these bad starts, it's actually impossible not to have this bad start with such a huge launch, but the game will still be good and you will see reviews going in the good direction soon, not that it matters much. Another point reviews are saying, is that the game is "short" since some people capped it, many forget that this isn't WoW, and it's an rpg, not an mmo, i seen the live streams and judging from them, they are having hard time getting past bosses no harder modes, it's mostly diablo2 veterans that have actually reached that point and it was somewhat expected to happen but that doesn't make the game an easier, i'd like to see the people adding these sorts of reviews to do half as those veterans did in such a short time and even on the long term.
To sum it up, game has just been launched on a very massive scale and it's playable via internet connection only. When such a huge launch is made, people have the urge to rush in their criticism mostly to get some sort of attention.
Actually I feel compelled to tell you that it is quite possible for the game to be cracked via an emulated server. Albeit the game will run on one "template" of the game. In other words you will be playing fixed maps of each level, no randomization whatsoever. But the good news is that randomization can occur if multiple versions are mapped and introduced via patched updates of the server. All this will take quite some time, but it seems the good fellows over at Skidrow seem to have stumbled upon an interesting solution for their crack.
It remains to be seen what will come of it as they haven't released it yet but word is it will be soon. I've bought the game but I'm looking forward to the crack, because obviously our internet connections can't handle the caveats of modern online entertainment.