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Diablo 3 Expansion Announced: Reaper of Souls
Today at Gamescom in Germany, Blizzard announced the first expansion to Diablo III, titled Reaper of Souls. The story will follow a fallen archangel called Mathael who has returned as the Angel of Death. The level cap will increase to 70, and the expansion will bring a new playable class to the game called the Crusader, whom they described as a "natural walking tank." Reaper of Souls will also bring vast improvements to the loot system; in addition to having a better chance to find good, useful gear for the character you're playing, the items themselves are getting an overhaul to make for more interesting gameplay. Instead of being simply loaded down with combat stats, legendary items will include unique ways to modify how your character functions. They're also implementing something the community has been asking for since shortly after the game came out: randomized dungeons. Further, the Paragon leveling system, put in place after launch as a way to provide character progression after reaching the level cap, will be made account-wide, rather than on a per-character basis. A new profession NPC has been added as well: the Mystic, which lets players reroll one of the stats on a powerful item. As you might expect, Blizzard did not mention a release date. The Reaper of Souls opening cinematic is available on YouTube, as is a brief gameplay video.
Gamer don't normally allow themselves to be disappointed twice.
... may want to rename that class for the Middle East...
Randomized dungeons are a good sign. The devs need to go play some roguelikes and less WOW for a few weeks before working on it. That may detoxify them enough to fix it.
I seem to remember playing this class in D2 but it was called a Paladin at the time.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Gamers are stupid. Blizzard has been on a downturn for a while but people will still line up in droves for this. If you need any further proof, look at Call of Duty. Exact same engine, almost indentical gameplay, loaded to the brim with shitty DLC that's made irrelevant by next year's installment and it STILL sells 10 - 15 million units.
Look how long it's taken for people to abandon EA. It's been years since they were considered the worst company ever and they are just now starting to feel that wrath. If Blizzard and their brands fall, it will happen at a slow and steady pace.
Hope this slashvertisement paid the bills!
Any word on offline single player? No offline single player, no sale.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You're already reaped my soul with Diablo 3. I had to Exile myself to repair the damage you've done to my soul.
I won't be buying this expansion because D3 was such a huge disappointment, I don't see any expansion ever making it fun. I think my highest level character was 37 -- I stopped when I got to Hell difficulty, because there seemed no point in playing the exact same content over a third time. Meanwhile it didn't seem possible to progress without spending real-world money. Blizzard lost me with this game.
But on a related note, I have a question. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is bringing out the new Everquest Next which looks amazing. But I swore off of Sony in 2000 after being a guide in the original Everquest. The guide program was so corrupt, and the John Smedley administration was so disrespectful of the players, that I swore never to buy another Sony game. Has Sony improved? After more than ten years I'd be willing to give them another chance if I hear that they're not the pure evil they used to be. (I know EA is still pure evil, but I haven't heard anything lately about SOE.)
Blizzard has probably lost me for ten years. We'll see if they still try to trick players into spending money, and whether they re-discover what makes game fun.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
...oh, please. All of you saying that you're done with Blizzard, and "fool me once...", and that you won't buy RoS are not fooling anyone. You will ALL buy it. Maybe not at first, but you will. And you know it.
Anyone who gets to level 60 (or I guess its now level 70) can now work at getting Paragon levels, and use the points for Vit on ALL characters? This means that HC has far less risk for those who have a whole lot of extra Vit compared to the plebs who don't have a higher level char.
Of course, there's already big differences depending on what equipment you can afford or got lucky to find, but I wonder if this could make people lose interest in the HC scene (or conversely, some will buy the expansion just so that their alts start off with a lot of advantages)
...It's called Torchlight 2.
The real Diablo 3 in my books.
I'm a casual gamer. I don't mind shelling out some money for a weekend or two of fun. I bought Diablo 3 and at first it was, okay, but not on par with Diablo 2. I often ended up dying or at least being very annoyed when network lag interfered with playability, and of course there is no offline mode. That was annoying. But the real problem came when my account was de-activated randomly one day. Well crap, that's strange, but I had the serial and the login and password for my account, how much of a hassle could it be? Several e-mail exchanges and numerous broken help pages later, they finally decided they needed a copy of my driver's license! WTF?
I might consider another game from Blizzard in future if they ever manage to implement a level of DRM that doesn't inconvenience me, their customer, quite so much with poorer gameplay and stupid bureaucracy. I tossed Diablo 3 in the trash, sent an e-mail explaining why, and bought a better game (for less money) from their competitor.
Blizzard has done nothing to address what was wrong with Diablo 3 for this customer.
Actually, there is supposed to be a major itemization patch before the expansion is released. They did the same thing prior to releasing LoD.
As long as Blizzard is making money off the auction house I'm not playing D3. I gave them the benefit and bought it once, but there's no way I'm falling for freemium-in-disguise again. I'd much rather pay a monthly fee and have the game actually be balanced correctly. D3 was fun for a while, and had some good innovations, but it also had some glaring flaws and the auction house alone would've overwhelmed any good qualities it had. When there's a profit motive to making the game worse, you can count on a mediocre-at-best product.