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Diablo 3 Coming To Consoles
RobinEggs writes "After long speculation and a few affirmative hints, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 3 will have a console version. Responding to a fan who asked him to 'confirm or deny' a console version of D3, Blizzard community manager Bashiok said, 'Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.' Here's hoping Blizzard remains one of the few companies to fully develop both the console and PC version of their titles, rather than simply porting the Xbox version to PC. I think we've all had enough of bizarre scrolling, menus that can't be used with a mouse, and 'Controls' menus that don't even bother replacing the 360 controller image with an actual keyboard layout."
Given that the Diablo 3 beta has been around for a while on PC, I would expect that the console version will be ported from the PC rather than the other way round.
With the tablet touch screen controller, Diablo 3 would be amazing, plus it could have graphics somewhat on par with the PC version. They gave the N64 Starcraft so anything is possible. Come on Nintendo drop a wad of cash off at Blizzard HQ.
Born to Play
I loved the first two Diablo games and spent endless hours playing them. However, there's a lot of questions that they never answer or keep changing their answer to. Will it be pay-to-play like their WoW model or will B.Net be free like previous games in the series? Will there be a single-player mode? Will you be able to play on private servers or will you be stuck with B.net?
If at least two of those three are not favorable then I probably won't be getting it.
Will the console version need a Internet connection to play single player though? Or can offline play finally be achieved? If it can be played offline, I would be tempted to buy it for a console.
Now, now, they already did all that back when they learned the game would have actual COLORS in it. Besides "dirt brown" and "blood red".
You have to wonder if the console versions will require a constant connection to blizzard's battle.net system along with a REALID registration? God forbid though if they allow voice chat in the console version. Who wants to hear little kids screaming all the time?
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
HOw will they do that?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Once the subscriber base for WoW starts falling off, they'll manage to pull the employees away from the giant cocaine fountain in the lobby and the omnihedonic stimulus cocoon in the break room.
At that point, it should be the usual 3-5 years.
The fan outrage continues: first rainbow colors, now console retardation. Hack and Slash already is dumbed down, porting it to consoles is really not a big deal.
Yes. Diablo III is using the new B.Net 2.0 which requires a constant login to play, even for single player. It's the same with Starcraft II, and I'm not going to fall for that trick twice...
Blizzard is pretty PC-centric, so if anything it will be the console versions that will be shitty ports of the PC version, not the other way around.
That said, there's no reason why both versions can't be good. Torchlight was a Diablo clone made by an indie developer that was praised for the amount of work put into making the console port just as playable as the PC version. There's no reason why a big company like Blizzard couldn't do the same... other than greed and laziness, I guess.
Rob
Don't forget the in game auction house, the lack of a real singleplayer game and that like SC2 there will be no LAN play option. I remember them rationalizing taking away the offline play as not requiring people to start over if they began a character offline.
Personally, I'm glad that they didn't have anything better to do like making sure that the game is actually better than its predecessor so that they could tell players how to play. Personally, I'm glad I didn't waste my money on SC2, I'm guessing that I'll feel the same way about Diablo 3.
Blizzard, what happened to you? You used to make such good games, but ever since WoW you can't seem to create a game that's worth paying for. Last good game you made was WC3 and that was nearly a decade ago.
How long until Acitvision/Blizzard get enough money that their bank account collapses into a black hole, under it's own mass? Seriously, I'm sure Diablo 3, will be fun to play but the whole real money market place and lack of LAN/always on connection requirement really bothers me as a consumer. I think I'm going to pass on Diablo 3 myself, and just buy Torchlight 2 when it comes out.
So what do you call your sort of flame, then? Preemptive douchebaggery?
I would except that Blizzard has pretty much admitted to fucking things up, i haven't been interested in Diablo 3 in quite a while because of all the "features" they've put in to prevent people from playing in unapproved ways. Any hope of me buying it evaporated the moment that I found out that there would be no singleplayer game and that there would be no LAN play either.
As the OP I'd like to acknowledge, before any lifelong Blizzard fanboy bawls me out, that sometimes the game masters, forum moderators, and community managers at Blizzard can be full of shit. If it was just that statement I quoted in support of a console release, I might be at least skeptical myself.
This story, however, has much more to it than just that final acknowledgment; from the directness of the reply, including naming the project lead, to the stuff in the extra links soulskill was kind enough to add for me, there are many credible indicators of a console Diablo 3.
Thanks Blizzard, this news saves me wasting $60 on yet another crippled game.
My
Actually, I got an offer in my email for a free copy of D3 if I buy a yearly pass for WoW. I cancelled my account a couple years ago. I wonder how many others got the same thing?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
everyone got the same thing. It's a deal blizzard ran once they realized that D3 was going to really cut into their wow subscription numbers. In some ways blizzard are their own worst competition.
Let's not forget that Diablo had a Playstation version. The sky is not falling.
Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.
Good-bye
... of "Pokemon Pandas: Farmin' the Grind".
Check your premises.
Who will want to play Diablo on the command line?
It might be missed, but you can always just get online in the same room.
Oblivion Awaits
There are still the usual health potions (in current Beta form) in addition to the "bulbs" or "globes". However, stocked potions do have an actual cooldown rather than instant in prior Diablo titles. In D1 & D2 it was pretty much possible to just spam potions to live. D2 made this a little harder with the way potions actually gradually filled the globe, but the purple potions were always instant.
Fear is the mind killer.
But Torchlight was made by the people that made Diablo 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is created by a completely different team.
I found both Torchlight and the D3 beta totally awful.
Maybe I'm just outgrowing hack-n-slash, along with every other mainstream category. God knows I hate 95% of shooters these days.
I swear to god, I hate indie game hipsters just as much as indie music hipsters and Linux prophets, but I haven't played a good AAA game since New Vegas, whereas indies are putting out dozens of kickass titles per year.
God help me I'm becoming an elitist. Get me some non-ironic domestic beer and a copy of MW3, stat!
>
Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.
You can all sit in the same room, on the same network, and play Starcraft 2.
You can just play with each other, you can play lan games.
The only real complaint I'm seeing here is "It's not easy to download copies for all our friends and play together without buying the game"
If you like it enough to have a lan party for it, you like it enough to buy it.
If your arguement was 'I should be able to have spawn copies in the past like the original starcraft did to play LAN with a few friends' I'd completely agree with you.
I think they should allow people to play games with spawn copies or something similiar so a few friends can get together to play.
Other than that, you can 100% recreate the experience, as long as you have internet access.
This makes me extremely nervous for this game. I was already feeling a little meh about them taking out certain other aspects like potions and trading them in for health orbs. I would rather not loose some in game depth or functionality because PC can do it but consoles can't so lets take it out of the game altogether. This is one game that they are changing so much stuff on I won't preorder it but rather wait and see how it turns out and wait for it to go on sale after I read reviews and what not. Don't hate what they are doing yet but I feel unsure... and scared... someone hold me...
I disagree. The announcement that the PC version will bite so they can release a console version is bigger news then when we can play the cash cow.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I don't play WoW, but when I saw the latest expansion pack in the store and realized it was Kung Fu Panda, I knew the end was near.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Now this shit? WTF is Blizzard doing?!?!?!?!
Yes, and you get basically no benefit from doing it. Part of the point of LAN parties is that you get to game with little to no latency and put people on a level playing field. Which you can still somewhat do with the current system, but you add extra lag so that Blizzard can be sure that you're not pirating the game.
As for buying it, what was so brilliant about spawning was that you could actually spend time playing competitively with friends before having to commit to the purchase. The spawned copies were really just demos and you would be left with that when your friends went home.
I'll probably try the demo at some point and I'll probably play the free to play option if Blizzard provides one, but I doubt it will stay installed for more than a few hours. At least SC2 didn't, and I took the unusual step of deleting the files. I don't normally do that with large install files as I often times reinstall later, but SC2 went straight in the trash upon uninstall.
up - jump
down - duck
left - move left
right - move right
A - shoot current object (e.g., throw a turtle at a demon)
B - strike (punch a demon, or break a brick in front of you. if hit at same time jumping, breaks a brick above you)
unlock super secret key combos for special super moves!
Check your premises.
If you think that SC2 was a bad game or a disappointing one because it didn't have LAN, you should google GSL or MLG ;-)
- live from Costa Rica !
It's actually worse -- it is a combination of Kung Fu Panda and Pokemon
Look no further than the sad evolution of TES. Back when TES4 came out the Bethesda said they had to dial back the graphics so it would run properly on an XBOX. So no distinct shadows, no huge preloaded areas (E.g.: open cities) even though the PC hardware could handle it without choking, they really didn't give a rat's ass about how much PC hardware could handle. Then enters TES5 and it's like the consolization of this game has grown by orders of magnitude. Now you can't change the default WASD keys for some aspects (e.g.: map), no more modding!
From: Bethesda To: Huge rich TES4 modding community: "Fuck you".
They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users. That's like removing the bullets from a gun to make it safer! God damn idiots! That's he whole reason people play RPGs!
It's always a epic laugh to watch a "expert" with a console controller to try and control a player character in a FPS style game, like watching Helen Keller race the Indy 500. Or try and play a RTS game. To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS. Some serious lowest common denominator shit.
Another good example of the destruction of an empire is Total Annihilation. Released back in the '90s for the first time, it was the first RTS with polygonal units (as opposed to sprites) where you could both create hundreds of units and select and control massive armies. One of the most significant perks of the game was the ability to create new construction prior to being able to afford it, like if you had half the bricks you needed to create your house so you got started before you had the rest of the bricks. If you run out before you're done, that's your problem. For the last 10 years that was fine, then Supreme Commander 2 came out (the 4th iteration of TA) and they removed this keystone element from the game to help simplify the game for console users.
(mini-rant: They made the game more like starcraft, which cannot hold a candle to the TA franchise IMHO, I mean you can't even select more than a dozen or so units at the same time, what the fuck good is that? Can you imagine the U.S. armed forces telling the JSTARS commander "sorry sir, you cannot command more than 12 soldiers at the same time, select fewer units".)
No longer can you have engineers assist other engineers to speed the construction process, no longer can you build before you have all the resources. All in the name of the console. The game's ability to be modded was removed, the game's ability to have user generated maps was removed. The game basically sucks, and anyone who loved TA either kept playing Supreme Commander 1 or switched to TA Spring (which you should check out if you like RTS games! Open source and pretty amazing.).
Perhaps the greatest demonstration in a single player game of how much superior PC gamers are to console gamers is the shooting range in GTA Vice City. If you're a mouse keyboard user you ace the contest every single time with flying colors. Then you begin to wonder, "why was that so damn easy" then you realize that they made the same test for console users and they wanted to allow them to pass the test so they had to lower the bar so low that it made PC user's breeze though the test. And don't even get me started on "Shadowrun" the only (as far as I know) FPS that allowed XBOX gamers to play with PC gamers. So sad that story, the poor console gamers never had a chance. I could be half asleep with two broken fingers, being actively stabbed by a knife, and partially on fire and I could still beat the crap out of a whole room full of console gamers. And I don't think th
As for the Kung Fu Panda comment. The 'Pandaren' race was in place before Kung Fu Panda was released.
But who really needs their facts straight when bashing a game they'll never play.
I guess it depends where you live.
I don't have latency issues playing diablo 2 or starcraft, or world of warcraft. Actually, any game.
So fair point if your internet connection generally has poor latency or the servers you can stuck on by location aren't very reliable.
This mattered much more though back in the days of dial up internet. Most people's broadband connection will have no issues in many parts of North America.
So on the reverse it is fair to say that PCs are for grown-ups who couldn't find the stairs up out of their parents basement.
We have a cocaine fountain in the lobby? Why does no one tell me of these things?
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
the lack of a real singleplayer game
There is a single-player game in exactly the same format as Diablo 2. That is, the single player and multiplayer are the same game, but with multiplayer the difficulty is increased with each additional player. I guess it's a matter of perspective, the fact that there isn't a separate game for single-player and multiplayer, as in SC2. But with an RTS, the multiplayer component always focuses on player v player battles whereas the single player focuses on story missions - eg, the entirety of the Command and Conquer series, Dune 2000, the Red Alert series, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander 1 & 2, Warcraft 1, 2 & 3, etc - in all of these games, there's no multiplayer "story", it's just battles.
Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty. Occasionally they add some multiplayer specific components, such as arenas, but what you're describing - "lack of a real single player game" is at best misleading. If anything, there's a lack of a separate multiplayer game, but as pointed out, this is the norm for the genre. Torchlight 2 multiplayer is going to be Torchlight 2 singleplayer + more difficulty. It's rare (I can't think of a single example, really) where an RPG developer has produced an entirely separate storyline for SP and MP.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
> but you can always just get online in the same room.
Tell that to Ubisoft and RB6:LV2 (Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 2) You are ASSUMING the login servers NEVER go down.
Why the fuck do I need to go online when I already have friends+family in the same room ??
> Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty.
Uh, Diablo 2
a) Uber Trist for Hellfire Torch
http://extreme-gamerz.org/diablo2/viewdiablo2/hellfirecharmquest
b) Diablo Clone for Annihilus Charm
http://extreme-gamerz.org/diablo2/viewdiablo2/annihiluscloneguide
c) Ladder only Runewords
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runewords-110.shtml
But the company (THQ) learned from the blowback from SR2. They took extra care with Saints Row the Third, and it's a terrific PC game. All the menus, combat, and movement are optimized for the PC and function intuitively and smooth as glass.
Games built for consoles don't have to suck on PCs. THQ has proven this. Blizzard is known for the polish they apply to their games, so I trust they'll take extra care in making the PC version great. It's the management decisions for D3 that I fear. (No LAN, no offline play, etc.)
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Starcraft 2 was fantastic. I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than the original SC. Take off those rose colored glasses.
None of the ISPs around here give good latency to the connections. I'm glad that I'm not personally into online games that require good latency.
It's so bad at this point you can pretty much just drool on the keyboard and you'll still be just fine "raiding".
Weren't most people in the mmo community saying this about wow before it even launched?
This game took the whole genre and brought it to this lowest common denominator drive thru window mentality.
And millions have rewarded them for doing exactly this.
So why is it NOW wow players would be complaining, every expansion is just a logical follow up to how the game was built 'dumbed down' in the first place?
Right you are, except these aren't examples of games released with completely separate singleplayer and multiplayer storylines. These are simple mods for Diablo 2 multiplayer.
As for Ladder only Runewords, I did explicitly state that sometimes developers add additional multiplayer content to the multiplayer version of the game, but overall - it's the same game.
A 3rd-party multiplayer TC is hardly contravenes anything in my post as it's irrelevant. I can write a GTA3 mod that spawns clowns everywhere only when playing multiplayer with the multiplayer network mod.. but as this isn't how the game was shipped it means jack to any discussion.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
I plan on playing this on my PC. The same PC that's always on and connected to the internet. There will be no change between me playing this and me playing Skyrim.
Rose colored glasses don't explain why SC2 was so ho hum and generally meh. Considering how much time Blizzard took in creating the game, the least they could have done was spend some time to make the single player campaign worth playing. Well that and implement proper LAN play and head to head modes.
Nearly the day it was announced they let everyone know necromancer was not on the menu. The next day I forgot this game was even going to happen. Seems like.... that was a long damn time ago.
>
Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.
You can all sit in the same room, on the same network, and play Starcraft 2.
You can just play with each other, you can play lan games.
The only real complaint I'm seeing here is "It's not easy to download copies for all our friends and play together without buying the game"
[...]
Other than that, you can 100% recreate the experience, as long as you have internet access.
And that's where the trouble starts.
Some of my favourite LAN parties in the last decade or so were done in places without direct internet access.
- My parent's garage: Adjacent to the house, but no cabling there, 15-20m to the DSL modem and my parents would've killed me if I had to prop open a door for a LAN cable letting flies and mosquitoes into the house all night.
- My cousin's garage: 10-20m away from the house and on the opposite side to the location of their DSL modem inside the house.
- A mate's backyard party hut (complete with wet bar and pool table): 50+m from the house and any internet access.
- A mate's deceased grandmother's vacant house: No phone or internet at all.
A WiFi bridge can be dodgy (access points behind multiple walls) and cell phone reception is spotty at best at either of those places which rules out phone tethering and I don't know how well it would work either way, setting up NAT behind a tethered phone that is already behind the service provider's NAT or god forbid, the game wanting to download a patch over a volume limited phone contract with probably mediocre speed.
Lastly, even if you have a place where you have no problems accessing your ordinary internet connection, ISP outages can happen, especially if you live in a rural area where phone cables aren't run underground (takes only one tree falling over during a storm or one drunk driver hitting a phone pole) or one construction worker to accidentally the whole cable if it is underground.
If you don't think this is an issue, you've probably never been on the receiving end of an internet outage during your recreational time, as an internet outage is exactly when I tend to fire up a good singleplayer game.
I'll take my classic LAN mode and offline single player every day and games that are not MMO but force you to be logged in/online even for single player or LAN play can fuck right off again and will not see a dime from me.
In the store?
Excuse me, but which store is already selling copies of an expansion that isn't even in Beta yet?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
ps. Apologies, none of these are mods, I mis-read one of the links. These are all examples of some additional content added to the same game for multiplayer.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
You guys seem to give up on potentially cool games really easily.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
The single player campaign for SC2 was crap - clearly an afterthought. Since that's the only part of the game I care about, I was extremely disappointed, and I'll wait to buy D3 untrill I hear good reviews from those I trust. That's a real change for Blizzard.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Make it so! There's no reason why not. Unless... They want to cripple players in the name of PVP fairness. /meh
Finding the stairs is easy - it's climbing the stairs that defeats most of us!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yea, like they did for Diablo (the first one)?
Nope. (they also still charge near full retail for it)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
How abut the expansion, where the Pandaren brewmaster was one of the playable heroes?
I know i should have kept on playing it but ..... wait a minute.
It will be released when you BELIEVE in it enough.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
A video game may be entertainment, but the money exchanged for it does pay for food and shelter. Blizzard does want our money, right? So why do they make their games worse on purpose?
Also, by your reasoning we can't judge a non-essential product. This seems silly.
The map is not the territory.
You're assuming the probability of infrastructure failure on their end is higher than the probability of something going wrong with local LAN server software and infrastructure.
And remember, they're the ones writing the LAN server software. They are the ones who have the biggest LAN party of all, which is the development team in the office. I'm working on a project where we have LAN support, and have for 10 years. It's still easier and more reliable for us to use the steam matchmaking service (since our game supports steam), while we're all in the office, than to use LAN networking code that was so lovingly crafted before I joined the team. Too many timing and sync issues, port opening/closing, performance issues, version mismatches etc. etc. etc.
I'm sure Blizzard *could* try and make a LAN server option. I'm sure they have an internal LAN server. But building and deploying a public LAN server (and documenting it, and supporting it etc. etc. etc. all the crap that comes with consumer facing technology) is frankly not worth it when they have the battle.net infrastructure, which is far easier to make reliable, because they know what it's running on, and can actively work to fix it.
Odds are, for the VAST majority of their playerbase, or potential playerbase, Battle.net is far preferable to a LAN server. You may think yourself some uber-nerd capable of small miracles in seconds to make it all work, I, getting a PhD in computer science make that mistake a lot. You have to realize they bear the support costs if the LAN server doesn't work, OR if battle.net doesn't work. Guess which is cheaper and more reliable for most computer users? The market, from 1997 when SC1.0 was printed onto disks, is far less tech savy, far less capable, and far more likely to call you up and yell if they can't figure it out. Battle.net is far more reliable than a LAN will be, and it's far easier to just use their service.
Clearly it's time for the CEO to put a stop to employees wasting all day bathing in bathtubs full of $100 bills, at least until Diablo III is finished.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I never said they would release it for free. I don't understand your point.
Oblivion Awaits
I'm going to preface my reply by saying that I am a huge fan of Diablo 2. I didn't like Diablo 1 all that much (a classic to be sure, but a little too slow and clunky for me). I've put thousands of hours into Diablo 2 (a small portion of which is represented on my Xfire profile. I know the game inside and out. That said, while I was excited about Diablo 3, a lot of the stuff that has been happening has caused my interest to gradually wane.
Don't forget the in game auction house
Something I can understand. There are going to be items sold for D3 whether or not this exists. Any solution that *would* stop people from selling items will end up costing money as it would have to be either a very developed technology, involve a lot of people, or both. It's against the ToS of every nearly online game out there to sell items, accounts, etc. and yet you can readily buy them for all of those games.
This way, Blizz makes some money and everyone's generally happy. Hell, there are people who are talking about the potential of making a livable income off of said auction house. How possible or not this will be can only be discovered once it's actually out and has been subjected to the usual balancing, but it may be a likelyhood to put in 40 hours a week and make minimum wage or something close enough...
Moreover, occasionally people are hard up for cash and need to get rid of assets. In the digital age, a Level 80 WoW character with maxed out crafting and the best of the best epic gear is an asset in every sense of the word - yet we cannot legally sell them due to the ToS. If a similar case came up on D3, at least someone would be able to clear out a whole bunch of the items they've been saving for one reason or another and put some money in their pocket.
the lack of a real singleplayer game
Diablo 2 was fun single player, but I honestly always had more fun running it in groups. The lack of offline single player is, as far as I am concerned, the lack of a single player game though. I agree with you here.
and that like SC2 there will be no LAN play option.
This bugs me to no end, and for more reasons than you may think.
Starcraft 2 came out. I tried it on a weekend while hanging out with a friend at a LAN party weekend at his house. I loved it.
But I didn't buy it.
The lack of LAN play is a deal breaker for me. If it turns out that I really, really want Diablo 3, I may buy a legitimate version and run the superior pirate version in a sandbox so I can have LAN play. In the digital age, there are people who are just as skilled as the people working for companies like Blizzard working to give the fanbase what they want. If the players want LAN play, they'll have it - just like they have it with Starcraft 2, just like they have it with games like Minecraft that don't really have an official LAN play system (via Hamachi), and just like they absolutely will with Diablo 3. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
I remember them rationalizing taking away the offline play as not requiring people to start over if they began a character offline.
Of course. This is marketing 101. "We're not taking something away, it's actually a bonus feature!"
Personally, I'm glad that they didn't have anything better to do like making sure that the game is actually better than its predecessor so that they could tell players how to play. Personally, I'm glad I didn't waste my money on SC2, I'm guessing that I'll feel the same way about Diablo 3.
I fear that I may feel the same way about Diablo 3. I have basically zero interest in buying Starcraft 2 until the full three games are out in a battle chest, and even then I might just not buy it. There's nothing so awesome in Starcraft 2 that I would be willing to put up with the garbage that comes along with
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It's for everyone but you.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The single player campaign was great. I spent more time on it than multiplayer, playing through three times (hard, insane, and speed run) and it was a blast.
In fairness to WoW (which I haven't played since 2007), they had the "Kung Fu Pandas" in WC3, back in 2002, long before the movie even started development. It's not like the idea of taking an iconic Chinese animal and having them fight in an iconic Chinese style is particularly innovative.
In the next expansion, you'll be able to play as a jumping shark.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That's just putting lipstick on the shark they're jumping.
Confirmed for shit.
FACT: consoles retardify any gaming experiance.
While I may not agree with your wording, I do agree with your sentiment to a degree.
I loved Beyond Good & Evil. It was, in my opinion, probably the last good game that Ubisoft put out. A cult classic in every sense of the word.
I noticed that there was a PC version and it was on sale on Steam for $5. I bought it right away... but I also regretted the purchase to a degree. The ability to change the controls was very, very limited. You outright couldn't unbind certain actions or movement axises. I ended up having to get a pretty awesome program called XPadder so I could just rebind the keyboard and mouse controls to a gamepad.
So yes, I agree that consoles do often have an undue influence on PC games, especially when a console game is ported to the PC.
As I said in this post just a little ways down the thread, I am a big fan of Diablo 2 and I'm not really too keen on a lot of stuff they're doing with Diablo 3. But when it comes to some of the "console-ization" they're doing with D3, a lot of it makes sense.
One thing that I've seen decried since it came out was the removal of allocating individual skill points to skills. Rather than being able to raise any skill from Level 1 to Level 20, you can now only have that skill at one level. This makes sense, though.
I'll use the example of a Bone Necromancer build in Diablo 2. 20 to Teeth, 20 to Bone Spear, 20 to Bone Wall, 20 to Bone Prison, 20 to Bone Spirit, 1 in Decrepify, 1 in Corpse Explosion, 1 in Bone Armor. The rest of the 110 or so total skill points were used for prerequisites. This is pretty standard fare for a build - you have 5 skills that are maxed out. You usually only use one or two of them - Bone Spirit in this case was the bread and butter in nearly every instance. Sure, you might use teeth or Bone Spear situationally, but you're going to be using Bone Spirit more often than not. Decrepify, Corpse Explosion, and Bone Armor were important enough to me to actually have the skills, but not important enough to get beyond Level 1.
Most builds were basically like this - 5 or so skills maxed out to Level 20 and only one or two are really used most of the time. Removing skill points from skills makes sense to me because of this.
Then, we have the bit with removal of health potions in favor of "healing orbs". This system is used in a few games. Every Diablo player worth his salt wouldn't go up against a boss like Hell Diablo without a belt full of Full Rejuv potions and a few extras in his inventory. Dying (and losing experience!) was a costly price to pay, and any amount of gold, gems, and runes spent to prevent this was almost always worth the price when the alternative is grinding out more Baal runs to recover levels or failing to win against a boss that took days or weeks to save up the items for.
I don't know how I feel about this - it makes sense in a way and it simplifies the game without dumbing it down. I'm against simplicity at the expense of versatility and customization. I am not against complexity for the sake of complexity or because "that's how the last game was".
Lastly, there's the art style. Most people didn't like it right out of the gates. They said it looked too much like WoW and that it lost the feel of a Diablo game. Counter-arguments pointed out things like Acts 2 and 3 were pretty bright (as if anyone hadn't been rushed past those points straight into Act 4...). It is true in the sense of coloring that the entirety of Diablo 2 was not 100% gothic grimdarkness. But it is also true that Diablo 3 feels fundamentally different than its predecessor in an artistic and thematic sense. I look forward to player-created mods and texture packs (that we'll inevitably have to hack into the game somehow and get Blizzard all pissy) that will actually maintain the mood of the game better.
That is, of course, if I buy the game - which isn't looking too good right now to be honest.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So it will go the way of Duke Nukem Forever? People believe and believe in it and it never comes and then when they stop believing in it they release a big steaming pile of shit?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
We have a cocaine fountain in the lobby? Why does no one tell me of these things?
Awww......man who told him?
I played it on and off for years; it was fun when it was somewhat challenging, but the story was always pretty weak. The world was well constructed, but particularly after BC came out everything really felt like it was just blatantly ripping off other sources for what passed as "story."
I'm a huge fan of Warcraft and Starcraft. WoW was, indeed, pretty weak. But then, I'm one of those people who can enjoy something and still recognize the flaws.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I don't think its so much of an argument as to whether or not Pandaren were made up on the spot or not but more of an argument about whether that's the best Blizzard has to offer the franchise at this point. The last expansion was rehashing an old raid boss. Before that it was tieing off the ends of an old story arc. Now it seems they're forced to provide content that seems silly by the outside spectators and not those completely engrossed in the lore. I quit WoW shortly after the Lich King became an actual raid boss and I look at what content they've added and feel its become rather silly.
Blizzard would be better off at this point to cut ties to WoW and help people transition to a new MMO with fresh start instead of attempting patches to WoW to make it flow better and *seem* original.
Obviously just my opinion. I haven't marketed any multi-million/billion dollar franchises so my view is obviously skewed.
There are enough potentially cool games that we can afford to be picky. I'm not missing out on anything by not buying Diablo 3. Any time I would have spent with Diablo 3 will be spent with another potentially cool game, and I'll have just as much fun.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Long long time ago Blizzard offered opportunity to play a single copy of Starcraft in multiplayer up to 8 times using spawn installations. But now everyone is required to pay for every bit of functionality of the game (think DLC and mappacks, campaigns in case of Blizzard), which is still not guaranteed to work.
Great. Now we'll have to move it to sub-basement 3 next to the solid gold server farm...
hahahahhaha
In Rochester, New York I get all sorts of latency issues with game play. You see my only choice for broadband is Cable, and the cable is so over saturated by all the neighbors on the same circuit that I can barely get digital TV let alone decent low latency connections.
The cable company doesn't care. I have the techs out twice a year to get them to make the same adjustments, they adjust me, then a month later adjust my neighbor, then adjust someone else, until they get down the block and 6 months later they start all over again.
assuming an always on connection always fails in the USA. you can't assume it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
A] You didn't understand what he was saying : he meant there isn't any OFFLINE Solo mod like in D2. See in D2 you had 4 ways to play the game : offline solo, LAN, Open BNET, and Closed BNET.
The actual Online experience was Closed Bnet, where you had to start dedicated characters for online playing, and the characters were not hosted on your computer so you couldn't temper with them, althought cheating was indeed quite endemic, but I never saw it as a problem.
Now in D3 you will have 1 & half way to play : Online multi and some sort of mutant solo/online shit mode who's only purpose is that I don't cheat in solo and that people can see my achievements !
Well I ask you WHAT THE FUCK do I care if 12 years old see my achievements or if other people use cheats on their solo mode ? I didn't pay $60 to wank on my facebook about what level I am and what mode I finished, I pay to have fun, play a great game, and be able to do so whenever I please, even if I don't have internet connection. SO Yes there is a big difference between solo in D2 and in D3 : Solo in D2 >>> Solo in D3.
B] if you think it's harder to defeat the Uber Tristram Boss on closed Bnet than it is to actually finish the game in Hell mode in solo than you never played D2
C] If you've never played D2 I don't think you must speak here, also I stopped regarding you as a valid human being 1 line ago.
Ranma 1/2, has the titles hero father be a martial artist who turns into a panda when wet. So the idea is hardly new even back in the days of WC3 (Unless you believe Blizzards people aren't nerds)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Bleh - you actualy liked that? Man, I gave up after a handful of missions and re-learned SC1 - the enigne may be worse, but the mission designs were far better.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well put. I see your point.
I've experienced outages but none while playing games that required internet connectivity as a LAN party.
I suppose I'm also not looking at this from the correct point of view. I work in IT, I have wire cutters, crimpers, connectors and cat5 cable on a spool. When we have lan parties far from an internet source I'll spend five minutes and make a cable up to 55m long to resolve the issue.
Not every has that equipment handy to do that or know how. Although I don't still consider lan features super critical, I appreciate your point of view and do think they should include it on games that are best played with friends.
Blizzard got a 100 million reasons for going online with Diablo. It is the 100 million dollars coming in each and every month for WoW for year after year. 10 million subscribers x $10 bucks.
Oh the actuall amount might be slightly different depending on actual subscription costs around the world and the income from other services related to WoW but still, that is more money then most game companies make on a full single player release. Star Wars The Old Republic is rumored to be the most expensive MMO ever, with a budget of 100 million. 5 years of developer. For Blizzard, in those same 5 years they took in 5 BILLION.
And piracy? Not an issue for Blizzard at all. Every WoW player payed them for it. Can you say the same with Diablo 1-2? Star Craft?
They got two models, one which made them a lot of money in the past but they also found another model that them a shit load of money and keeps on making it long after anyone would be able to expect any money from a single player game that old.
100 million dollars each month. That is a powerful incentive to get rid of offline single playe games. Don't like it? Then don't buy it. I am sure other companies are just dying to make single player games designed for the PC. Oh wait.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm 48 and was publishing games before you were born (a presumption to be sure, but no worse than yours), but OK, I understand you're extremely angry about.. something. Blizzard I think. But no need to redirect your anger inapproriately.
As far as my reply to OP goes, he may have been intending to say that there's no offline solo play in Diablo 3 (btw, this isn't necessarily true - although certainly if present it would require periodic reconnection as the offline mode in Starcraft 2 does), but that ISN'T WHAT HE SAID.
He said there's no real single player game. By contest, I point out that as far as gameplay goes, there is an identical single player experience to Diablo 2, as compared to multiplayer. There is a single player game - it's the one you play on your own, not with other people. There's no permanent offline mode that there was in Diablo 2 (agreed, which was better), but if that's what OP wanted to elaborate on, he couldn't have chosen a poorer wording.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Finding the stairs is easy - it's climbing the stairs that defeats most of us!
They make climbable stairs now?
And of course, no one lives in any part of the world other than North America. Australia, where I live, usually gets left out in the cold in cases like this. Our internet connections aren't the best, plus servers are rarely if ever put in locally. This means that latency is a huge problem for all of us here.
That's a fine stance to take, although I hope I never work for someone who feels that way about his employees. But why the hell do you care about this article, then? You've dismissed a game whismically, confident that another game will suit your fancy... there's no information relevant to Diablo 3 to be gleaned there that makes any discussion interesting.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
My point is they never did release anything at all for the multiplayer servers. It's battle.net or nothing (yes, there's reverse-engineered solutions out there, but they are technically not legal).. though in this case there is at least a LAN component.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
So fair point if your internet connection generally has poor latency or the servers you can stuck on by location aren't very reliable.
Replace 'poor latency' with 'typical latency', and you have a more accurate statement.
Consoles are for children and people who like to wave their wand around.
"Despite the facts, I will insist..."
There are couple of games one can play to cut the wait shorter, some are listed here:
http://www.gamestiq.net/2012/01/best-alternatives-to-diablo-iii.html
It is a violation of federal law to play this game in a manner inconsistent with Blizzard's decisions.
:(){
Parent isn't trolling. It's simple truth (granted, with a bit of exaggeration to make the point), as anyone who has been involved in end-game in each expansion should know. Here's the next stage in the devolution: In the next expansion they're doing away with talent trees all together (apparently it wasn't simple enough to force people to spec in only one tree). Now instead of talents and talent points you get tiers with 3 abilities per tier, one every 15 levels. You must choose one (and only one!) ability per tier. But don't take my word for it, go see for yourself. Here's the Death Knight "talent calculator": http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/mists-of-pandaria/feature/talent-calculator#d. I almost couldn't believe it at first, but there it is.
If there was anything they could have done to ensure with absolute certainty that I will never return to the game, this is it.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Actually I'd say the bigger news would be how nasty are they gonna make the DRM. If they give it some nasty always on DRM that makes you jump through hoops i have a feeling it'll be pirated more than Spore.
Why can't these companies just see the traincars filled with cash that Valve is making and jump on board? Gabe had it right when he said to the effect "Pirates are the competition offering a better product" and he has shown you follow the three simple rules, make it cheap, easy, and convenient and you can turn those pirates into money. Has Valve released the numbers on how much they made during the Xmas sale? because I bet the amount was staggeringly huge. steam has gotten so easy and cheap that frankly if it isn't on steam i don't bother, not even to pirate it, what's the point? I bet i blew through a couple of hundred there just myself because both my boys decided they'd rather have Steam games for Xmas as well as my personal buying. Frankly it was easier to pick up what we wanted on steam than to pirate the things!
But if its one thing we've seen over the years its that the CEO of ActiBlizzard is a massive douchenozzle that happy to screw over his customers if he can "maximize profit potential" while letting him beat an IP into the ground so while i'm happy that there will be a Diablo III as i had a blast with Diablo II if they fill it to the rim with DRM and make you jump through hoops instead of just using steam frankly they can shove it. Its not like there aren't a wealth of Diablo clones out there, some of them quite good, so for me its gonna come down to how big a prick they are gonna be as to whether Diablo III is in my game collection or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yes the panderians where talked about(as a joke) before Kung-FU panda, but series consideration didn't happen until after the movie was a success.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's because the best of their devs who made all those good games left, shortly before WoW released. The alpha (or possibly early beta) build of WoW was the last work some of these guys did for Blizzard.
Some of them formed ArenaNet and developed Guild Wars, which (unsurprisingly) proved to be a huge success. I'm not sure where the rest went.
Blizzard is still making good games, but they're a huge step down from the great games they once produced.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
aka the cash cow level.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I guess I'm spoiled. Highest latency is usually under 100 ms...
Why would anyone want to live anywhere else in the world besides North America? :D
In many ways, the pandas were Samwise's pet easter egg. However, he was one of the lead graphics artists responsible with creating a LOT of the Warcraft concept art, and was very influential. Nearly every Warcraft nerd (which is not the same as all the players), when WoW first came out, knew of the Pandaren, and I recall people speculating and hoping that the first expansion (which brought us Draenei and Blood Elves) would give us Pandaren. Many people wanted to play a Brewmaster, even though they had only a faint idea of what that meant.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Pandaren has a good deal of info on them, but the interesting section is the "History" one.
The pandaren started as a creation of lead artist Samwise Didier and an April Fool's joke, but they got a massive response from Warcraft fans.[4] When the expansion to Warcraft III was announced, the Pandaren Brewmaster was added as a neutral hero, available and playable on nearly every melee map. One Brewmaster, Chen Stormstout was included as an optional playable hero in the expansion's orc campaign. Due to this popularity, pandaren were rumored to be the new playable Alliance race to be introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion
The Burning Crusade expansion was released in 2007, a year before Kung Fu Panda, and a significant section of the population had a pretty good idea of who the Pandaren were, even then -- despite them starting as a "joke". Moreover, the World of Warcraft tabletop RPG has had the Pandaren race since 2003. Even at that time, elements of eastern philosophy and martial arts were intimately tied to the Pandaren cultural concept.
I think it's safe to say that the Pandaren were well developed before Kung Fu Panda, even if they were not a playable race in the MMO yet. I'm sure that the success of the movie made it an easier decision to make them the next playable race, but they were certainly not designed in some copycat attempt.
Pandarens have been canon since Warcraft 3 (Well, Frozen Throne anyway), so this isn't really all that interesting.
Yea i agree to this, my backlog is so large, that it ultimately doesn't matter, cool games can keep on coming, but i've got plenty of cool games already, and i don't mind playing a few ps2 games (although some of them look really good at 1080p on the pc emulator), or the isometric rpg's, in spite of the current gen graphics.
So you infer anger from Unknown Soldier's post, then infer from my post that I inferred anger into your post. Actually, Unknown Soldier's post doesn't seem especially angry to me. But what do I know, I don't have your apparently Deanna Troi-like empath skills.
Like a post below says, try following your own advice.
You can stop the name calling, also, it makes you look foolish.
The map is not the territory.
Because I don't like reading anything into anything...
He didn't say the "Diablo *3* console project".
This could be a case where there is Diablo 3, for the PC, Diablo: Return to Sanctuary for Xbox360, Diablo 2:Cow Wars for PS3, and Nintendogs: Duriel Edition for the 3DS, and Horadric Cube Simulator for the Wii.
Although incredibly secretive Blizzard has a track record of incredibly high standards for their game releases. I'm very confident the console version will be excellent and not merely a cobbled together port.
And, as a corollary, what are the odds of Battle.net going away any time soon? They've had matchmaking support for Starcraft for twelve years. Comparing Blizzard to Ubisoft is a technically correct comparison that overlooks the history of Blizzard's support for Battle.net.
I have heard a lot of people say they quit right after Lich King became a raid, and go on to dismiss Cataclysm.
The truth is Cataclysm was a very impressive expansion. The question content was excellent. A huge step up from every expansion before it. And that is just the new zones... don't forget they completely revamped the old world.
The dungeons were also much more interesting (bosses with real mechanics)... but the problem is they were too hard. Not too hard for a group of friends to do, but too hard for a group of randomly assembled players.
Cataclysm was a response to accusations WotLK was "too casual", but you know what... casual is what most people want. I used to play EQ for 5 hours a day, or more, when I was 21... Now I am 30 I can't be stuffed. I just want a game I can jump on to with friends and have some fun. That is what WotLK offered, and that is what they seem to be returning to in the Pandarean expansion (people are making too big a deal about Pandas... the original WoW had Native American Cow Men for christsake).
Cataclysm missed the boat because their audience is older now, with families and responsibilities... so the chances of get 5 (let alone 10, or 25) friends together is slim, so dungeons need to be doable with 1 or 2 friends and a bunch of randoms.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Blizzard sent us through a response to this story:
Bashiokâ(TM)s response on Twitter was intended as a confirmation that weâ(TM)re actively exploring the possibility of developing a console version of Diablo III, as weâ(TM)ve mentioned in the past. This is not a confirmation that Diablo III is coming to any console platform. Our focus right now is on finishing the PC/Mac version of Diablo III and making sure itâ(TM)s a worthwhile successor to the Diablo series.
Blizzard, what happened to you? You used to make such good games, but ever since WoW you can't seem to create a game that's worth paying for. Last good game you made was WC3 and that was nearly a decade ago.
Vivendi merged them with Craptivison, and put Kotick in charge. Now they exist solely to make ever larger income streams.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You're assuming that Blizzard will eventually release server software or something similar once the game has run its lucrative course. This is Activision we're talking about, not Blizzard. Please let's be serious here.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I guess we won't be seeing you in Sanctuary then, because D3 requires an always on net connection. This has been debated here and other forums previously. This move is primarily (according to Bliz) to stop the hacking and loot dupping that was rife in D2. Your character data will be stored server side, as will all loot information.
WRT to the summary comment about the PC game being a console port - you do realise it's been in Public Beta for PC and Mac for months?
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Soon(TM)
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Bliz have gone on record saying there will be real local Oceanic services for D3, probably based in Au or Singapore at a guess.
As someone who's been playing WoW since release, I rarely find the auth servers down for planned maintenance. Most weekly 'maintenance' these days are just a restart of the world servers unless there is a significant patch to be deployed or hardware changes to be made. In those cases the maintenance time generally cuts well into the US play time too.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Well, the Diablo servers are still up and running. They must be getting something out of it. This is wishful thinking, but we've come to expect from Blizzard some sort of respect. I still trust them.
Oblivion Awaits
I don't believe it is scientifically possible (speed of light and all that) for my latency to drop below 190 (it's generally about 230) from eastern Australia to the Bliz West Coast data centres. Hearing US players telling me that anything over 50ms is unplayable makes me want to beat my head against a wall.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Bliz have stated there will be actual Oceania servers for D3 - as in located locally, as oppose to the WoW Oceanic servers which are located stateside with a different clock setting.
I'm guessing they will be located in Sydney and hosted by Telstra, but that's based soley on their previous attempts to negotiage for local WoW servers.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
You're forgetting that a local failure takes out internet play as well, so any problem on Blizzard's end goes on top of whatever LAN downtime. It's not an either or scenario.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
D3 is starting out as a PC game and being ported to console, not the other way around. The Diablo franchise has always been based around mouse play with minimal keyboard interaction.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I never completed D2 single player. It felt more like it meaant something when I did it on closed BNet. And boy did I obsess with D2.
...and in case D3 will not be my cup of tea there still is Torchlight 2. It's not as if there are a ton of other games out there so you are not forced to play D3 if it isn't your thing. I dunno if I wil obsess with D3 as I did with D2. Sometimes OCD kicks in with games and sometimes it don't.
It was nice to trade with other players. Especially since the higher echelon players liked trading perfect gems for stuff that never quite dropped for me. Also there were a lot of sites and communities dedicated to D2. You were missing out if you didn't play closed BNet. It wasn't always a nice experience but you could easily tag along on boss/cow runs. Even tho it became repetitive in the end having company was actually a nice thing.
The thing that I didn't like was how rampant cheating was even in closed BNet. That I can easily do without. I never played the power classes but preferred playing fringe builds(like going lightly armoured elemental dual claw assassin or Zerker Barbarian or a healing Paladin) so at times I was not quite able to solo stuff especially after they did incease hell difficulty which indeed could be hell. So I won't miss offline play. If they can eliminate cheating then more power to them.
What worries me a little bit is how much having a console port will dumb down the controls and what you can do within the game. A couple of builds actually took some skill to play. As in: not spamming the same skill over and over again. And I took great pride not to play that way. That's something I would miss.
20 minutes into the future
One good thing about console ports to PC is that game controller support is actually more common nowadays. I really don't like moving with keyboard and looking around with the mouse. OTOH I REALLY do hate targeting with a game controller. And cycling through targets.
Downside is:
-no key rebinding
-lousy UI(I'm looking at you, Skyrim)
-no proper windowed mode
-DirectX9(we've moved on ages ago even tho Steam statistics still claim that DirectX9 rigs are still in the majority)
-bad performance due to compatibility layers so you don't have to rewrite the engine from scratch
-less focus on pure more complex PC type games(I can't ever see something like SC2 or Heroes of Might and Magic being released on console)
A port from PC to console might work for D3. If they get the controls right. I didn't play the beta but controller enabled gameplay with Bastion was great and D3 won't be that far away from that, I suppose.
Kicking back and twitch playing with a controller in my hands and slaughtering hordes of monsters in D3 is something I'd quite enjoy. It's not as if that kind of games is rocket surgery. In case it doesn't work, well, there are plenty of other things to play. Due to the Steam holiday sales my gaming backlog is HUGE.
20 minutes into the future
...with frickin lasers
D2 was quite a mess at release. The game got better and better as the years went by. So not immediately hopping onto the bandwagon and giving it time to ripen might be a good choice.
I wonder how representative the beta actually was. From Blizzard's statements I'd say it was akin to Stony Field on normal level in D2. There was precious little challenge there since the difficulty level then was not more than a tutorial level. As a fresh graduate from nightmare level not quite being able to wear all the gear you had acquired for that character, Stony Field on hell difficulty could be quite daunting.
We shall see.
20 minutes into the future
There will be Oceanic servers for D3, as there are for SC2. Based in Singapore, admittedly so still a way from Australia, but should give at least acceptable pings (keeping in mind Diablo isn't a twitchy game like an FPS that requires absolutely minimal latency). I get 103 ms from Canberra to the battle.net servers in Singapore currently.
Oh and BTW, our internet connections don't suck as much as you think compared to the US. You might be surprised. I'm a US/Australian dual citizen and have places in both countries. And the connection I get in Australia kicks the hell out of what I can get in the US. Both in normal, suburban areas in decently-sized cities. You can get the 'short end of the stick' when it comes to geography/long lines/RIMs/availability of other options like cable in both countries - it's a lucky dip, and I don't think either country is, on average much better than the other. Oh and you often have no choice of ISPs in the US (it's the local telco monopoly, or the local cable monopoly), whereas there's at least 20 other ISPs I could switch to in Australia, so at least we have that...
I wouldn't be surprised to see it ported to Tegra3 devices(I don't know if Apple hardware can compete...possibly).
You can supposedly hook up game controllers to Tegra tablets. Or at least that's what I read in nVidia's own Tegra Zone or however they call it. If D3 works well over 3G and it is actually worth it and it synchs nicely with bnet then I might actually think about it. That's a lot of ifs but it does sound cool. Tegra3 should be more than able to run it and if you skip a bit of eye candy so should Tegra2.
Funny how tablets suddenly compete with game consoles. You can hook up quite a lot of premium tablets to a PC screen or modern TV. If Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo don't get their act together soonish then they might find themselves cornered by mobile devices. This console generation was kept around far too long.
20 minutes into the future
The iPod 3 and iPhone 5 will be right in there. The pace of progress is brisk these days, yes. There's going to be a $249 Tegra 3 tablet this summer. Software houses should be falling all over each other to get games on.
Yes, there are wireless game controllers for Tegra tablets and phones.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Aren't there even drivers for run-of-the-mill Bluetooth XBox controllers? Those things and the demo videos in the Tegra Zone are amazing! I don't know if they are as of yet on par with XBox360/PS3 but they sure aren't far away from these.
20 minutes into the future
Yeah and my left leg plays jingle bells if you jiggle it! I don't see anybody else having that problem so they need an always on Internet connection, do you? Valve solved that problem years ago with the banhammer. you pull shit in MP? enjoy your banhammering.
i predict that Razr1911 or one of the other groups will have it hacked before release and the massive amount of piracy will be truly staggering to behold. nothing pisses off the hackers more than always phoning home DRM so they just painted a big ass bullseye right on their forehead. Me if it ain't on steam I don't want it, I'm sure as hell not having yet another service sucking bandwidth and calling home with God knows what information, no thanks. it isn't like there aren't thousands of Diablo clones out there to choose from and I bet we have a good 2 dozen released at the same time as DIII. Too bad ActiBlizzard as I'd like to give you my money but I don't pay to get kicked in the crotch, thanks ever so.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The problem with talent trees is that, counter perhaps to intuition, more talents mean less real choice. The more talents there are, the closer to impossible it becomes to balance them, especially when inter-talent synergies come into play. That leads directly to cookie cutter builds, where most of the choice is illusory, and you're only really distributing 2-3 points between situational/flavor talents. With a sharp reduction in talents, Blizzard has a chance to make each tier an actual meaningful choice. Worst case, they won't be able to balance it out, and we'll be back to cookie cutter builds. But at least then there'll be fewer points to copy off Elitist Jerks.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
We needed someone to man the phones.
*Sniff*
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
But enough of us will buy it that it won't matter to them.
In case anyone at Blizzard or any other game company reads Slashdot, I'll add my voice here.
I bought Diablo.
I bought Diablo II.
I have towering stacks of other purchased games.
I've had to throw out most of the boxes, just the naked CD cases stack a few feet tall.
I am pissed off at the crapfest DRM that has been getting shoveled onto games. I am pissed off at games being deliberately crippled.
No. I'm done with deliberately crippled crap.
Under no circumstances am I going to be buying Diablo III so long as it has no offline single player and other DRM crap. I don't care if every review touts Diablo III as Must-Have-Game-Of-The-Century. I just don't fucking care. I'm sick of DRM-crippled crap. I won't pay fucking ninety nine cents for it from a bargain bin.
Sooner or later someone, whether Blizzard or someone else, will produce a version with a properly function offline mode, with the DRM crap stripped off, and probably with a properly functioning LAN mode to boot. Assuming Diablo III is at least half as good as Diablo II was, then I'll buy that version. I'll buy it from Blizzard, or I'll buy it from whoever else does the work needed to repair the game. And if it's someone other than Blizzard who repairs the game, and if they insist on a price of zero, oh well. Somehow I'll manage to survive the sacrifice of having to pay that price.
Too bad there's usually no way to pay the people who do the valuable work fixing Defective games.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Why the fuck do I need to go online when I already have friends+family in the same room ?? Because this is the year 2012? I mean, I played HoMM1 back in the mid 90s myself, but...this isn't the mid-90s anymore, Toto.
My parents installed an escalator and put pie at the top... When I arrived at the summit to my chagrin pie was not waiting for me but a job and a college education... life sucks...
I guess we won't be seeing you in Sanctuary then, because D3 requires an always on net connection.
Right. I bought Diablo I and Diablo II. There is no chance in hell I'm buying this deliberately crippled crap until it's fixed.
This has been debated here and other forums previously.
You, and Blizzard, can expect this issue to continue to dominate any internet discussion even remotely related to Diablo III, up until the point that Blizzard fixes it.
This move is primarily (according to Bliz) to stop the hacking and loot dupping that was rife in D2.
You know what's worse than a company that lies?
A company that insults our intelligence with stupid blatant lies.
If someone is playing single player then who the fuck would care if they're hacking or loot duping?
If they want to store online-character data server side to avoid duping and whatnot, sure. Just keep the same old offline single-player mode with the locally saved character data. If they want to get fancy they could add an the ability to download your online character for offline use, simply make it one-way with no possibility to upload anything back to the online multiplayer universe.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Ehh? The end boss of this expansion is Deathwing, who hasn't made a significant appearance since Warcraft 2. Perhaps you're referring to Ragnaros? Honestly, how many current subscribers were around to fight the Vanilla Ragnaros when he was relevant?
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Wrong.
Pandarans were in the running to be the new Alliance race in Burning Crusade, but they were supplanted by the Draeni.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Being ridden by a dinosaur, ridden by a mowhawked undead playing electric guitar.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
I don't think they meant permanently, more of a 'it's down for 4 hours' thing. But either way, Battle.net is relatively robust.
> Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty.
> These are all examples of some additional content added to the same game for multiplayer.
Thus, your initial assertion/assumption is invalid.
In the future you might want to check your "facts" before talking with someone who has played D2 for 12 years.
That's not really arguing my point though. How difficult is it to get the LAN setup going? For one hour a week (or one hour every two weeks or whatever it is), compared to plugging into battle.net what's the tradeoff?
I realize everyone in Oceania gets screwed a bit by having to talk to servers in the US right now, but you're a small market, developing a LAN server costs money, are you really worth it, compared to the cost of just using battle.net? I bet on average for users in Australia and New Zealand, with a LAN, it would be faster to just wait for battle.net to come back up, than it would be to figure out how to get the LAN going.
it was poorly phrased. I was thinking more the failure of Battle.net as a service (software or hardware, either way, if you can't connect, it doesn't work), vs LAN software and whatever the server is running on (which may not be able to perform the job properly, especially if its running a client too) rather than the actual networking itself.
Woah.. don't get ahead of yourself. Did you read the next sentence ahead of what you quoted?
Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty. Occasionally they add some multiplayer specific components, such as arenas, but what you're describing - "lack of a real single player game" is at best misleading.
I'm very happy to admit (in fact, I kinda pointed out) that there are frequently additions to the base game for multiplayer, but as I allude to repeatedly, there's no separate multiplayer and singleplayer game.
If anything, there's a lack of a separate multiplayer game, but as pointed out, this is the norm for the genre. Torchlight 2 multiplayer is going to be Torchlight 2 singleplayer + more difficulty. It's rare (I can't think of a single example, really) where an RPG developer has produced an entirely separate storyline for SP and MP.
I get it, you're a Diablo 2 fanboy. I love Diablo 2 as well and have been playing it since launch. I just did a complete bnet playthrough with two friends just over a month ago (from scratch, because we're crazy like that). I wasn't dissing Diablo 2. I was merely pointing out that they didn't create a separate game each for single player and multiplayer. They're the same base game. OP was complaining that there simply wasn't a single player game in Diablo 3. There is - in the same fashion there is in Diablo 2. AND, like Diablo 2, there'll be additional multiplayer-only content in Diablo 3.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Why would anybody release a PC version when almost everybody will just end pirating it anyway, and then rationalizing that it's too expensive or they just wanted a try or that copyright is morally questionable? Honestly I don't even understand the rationale of putting out a quickie XBox port, even if it was absolutely free to do so. They're just going to cannibalize from the sales of XBox360 and PS3 versions of the same game.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
up until the point that Blizzard fixes it.
Working as intended - whether you like it or not. They don't consider it broken, so they won't be 'fixing' it.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
They don't consider it broken, so they won't be 'fixing' it.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I expect.
And what they can expect is:
(1) this issue to continue to dominate any internet discussion even remotely related to Diablo III.
(2) someone else will almost certainly fix it, and when they do I will buy a copy from them. They deserve to get paid for their valuable work fixing the game, but they'll probably charge zero. Oh well. Bummer.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
This post deserved an upmod, moreso than many others.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
There are enough potentially cool games that we can afford to be picky. I'm not missing out on anything by not buying Diablo 3. Any time I would have spent with Diablo 3 will be spent with another potentially cool game, and I'll have just as much fun.
That's a fine stance to take, although I hope I never work for someone who feels that way about his employees. ... You've dismissed a game whismically, confident that another game will suit your fancy...
Wait, what?? In what way is a gamer/producer relationship like an employer/employee relationship? Even if it were, why in hell would you put up with an 'employee' that basically dictated where and when they would work, and who may decide to go drop everything and go home for arbitrary reasons unrelated to their 'job'? (Yeah, I gotta go now, there's a transit strike going on. No, I don't take the bus, but I'm going home anyway. Bye!) In any workplace I know of, that would be grounds for dismissal.
This is a sales relationship, and what Blizzard/Activision (and yourself, apparently) don't seem to realize is that there are plenty of other, much tastier fish in the sea, ones that won't leave you with a bad taste in your mouth if your DSL goes down or you want to play them at the cabin with friends. Yes, I played Diablo (1 and 2) and Starcraft, and yes, I enjoyed them immensely. Past enjoyment of their products will not make me knuckle under for their bullying tactics in SC2 or Diablo 3. It is a betrayal of their core userbase, and it steps waay over the line, IMHO.
It's too bad, because in other ways they do make a great product. Buying SC2 or Diab3 would be like buying a brand new set of Calvin Klein underwear with a great big shitstain in them. Nice product, other than that one little flaw...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Look at me I work for Blizzard!!!!!
Please give me attention!!!!!!
GAMING NEWS [ TVOG ] gaming news posted about this thread that this is releasing very soon and the best game for all gaming experts
From your post, you didn't watch the last 3 GSL, the last 2 Blizzcups finals also. All of them had multiple "Waiting for server" and "Waiting for player" messages during their live broadcasts due to battle.net structure. Also, more recently this weekend, a whole tournament set to happen in Chicago had to be rescheduled, because despite filling the required for sc2 tournaments and arranging with blizzard employees, after half the players started logging in, the IP was blacklisted and all of the players that traveled from far away could not play and all of that was blizzard's fault. Here you can read about the tournament http://challonge.com/starcraftchicago http://www.starcraftchicago.com/EventsCalendar/tabid/81/ModuleID/428/ItemID/74/mctl/EventDetails/Default.aspx