Diablo 3 Expansion Reaper of Souls Launches

Today Blizzard released the first expansion to Diablo 3, titled Reaper of Souls. The expansion continues the story with Act 5, which includes trips to Westmarch and Pandemonium. The level cap goes up to 70, there's a new class: the Crusader, and a new crafting NPC: the Mystic. The Mystic lets players reroll specific stats on their gear and change how the gear looks. The loot system has seen a drastic revamp, and Blizzard recently shut down the game's controversial auction house so they could have players find better and more interesting gear by fighting monsters. There's a new type of gameplay called Adventure Mode, which unlocks all waypoints and lets players go wherever they want, unrestricted by the campaign progression. This includes completely randomized dungeons, which can pull art and monsters from almost anywhere in the game. They've combined Adventure Mode with the Bounty system, which opens up randomized objectives scattered throughout the world. Blizzard has confirmed that the first major content patch after the expansion will bring ladders and leaderboards.

Comments

Re:niggers are shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that didn't take long.

no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

still online only and 3 more expansions at 40 to 60 bucks a pop coming to up level to 100

sorry not interested

Re:no thanks

[Some_Llama]

Sweet online only play and 3 more expansions at only 40 (or less if you wait) a pop coming to up level to 100!!!

Totally interested!

Re:no thanks

[Krojack]

When was the expansion from Blizzard more then $40?

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Reaper of Wallets.

Re:no thanks

[CronoCloud]

still online only

The console versions don't have that requirement.

Re:no thanks

[crashcy]

While online only is not much of a problem for me (thanks Google Fiber), your comment comes across as a celebration of a lack of choice.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Raper*

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Just download a private server and host yourself, that's what I do. I play the online some but I kick it on private servers most of the time because they're modded and offer better gameplay.

Re:no thanks

[blackicye]

The console versions don't have that requirement.

The console version is a different game now essentially, with different mechanics and different content.

Re:no thanks

[Calydor]

Since Warlords of Draenor, which is $49,99. For the standard edition, no less.

Source: https://us.battle.net/shop/en/...

Yes, I realize it's an expansion for WoW and not D3, but you only asked about expansion price from Blizzard and didn't specify it had to be for a specific game.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

For us it's 40 Euro, but I just wait for blizzard games until they are discounted in the US shop and get it for $20 with a fake address.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

While online only is not much of a problem for me

OK, your side is no problem, what about their side?

And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Anonymous Coward]

... so I'll continue enjoying Path of Exile.

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Remus Shepherd]

Through Normal difficulty, Path of Exile is an amazing game. The character build paths are numerous and distinctive, the item/gem mechanics are interesting, and the skill tree is a genuine work of art. It beats D3 soundly.

But after the end of Normal, PoE starts to seem a little lackluster. I finished Normal at level 35, and I won't see any random maps until the end of Merciless at about level 65. So that's 30 levels -- and two full playthroughs -- to go with no new content. Add to that the fact that character builds that worked at level 35 will probably fail at high level, and specific unique items may be required for high-level builds. I just don't feel compelled to stay with the game. The high-level PoE game looks very intimidating and not very fun.

That's not to say D3 is any better; it's still grinding the same content with very little fresh loot. And D3 (plus the expansion) is expensive while PoE is free. I just wish there was more to do at high levels in both games. Adventure mode sounds like a step in the right direction.

For casual players who don't intend to play through either game the expected three times, I heartily recommend Path of Exile. The new D3 content doesn't make up for the flaws in D3 -- the characters, skills, and combat mechanics are still poorly designed and lack the appeal of D2. PoE has that appeal, plus some innovative charm of its own.

For the heavily invested type of player who loves the grind...I don't know which to recommend. I'm not that type of player.

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Desync problems are no fun.

And how come no complains about the "online only" requirement for PoE? Somehow that complaint is reserved for D3. Especially when an offline mode for PoE would solve the desync problems.

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Luckyo]

Because PoE is free, and requiring online connection is their business model to keep it free.

Diablo is pay to buy, and until recently also pay to win on top of that. All while requiring online connection specifically to facilitate pay to win.

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point makes almost no sense, being a player of both.

You argue people should chose PoE for content, instead of grinding. (Let's ignore the fact PoE, D3, TL, TQ, etc are all ARPGs - a.k.a. grinding hack 'n slash games)

Being a regular player of both PoE and D3, I can easily state D3 has far more enjoyable content, lore, story, etc than PoE - thus your argument should be for D3, not PoE from a casual "I just want a fun story, in depth lore, and shiny cut-scenes". Ignoring the lore from D1/D2 which ties into D3, plus the books - you've also got hundreds of dialog scenes, lore sound snippets, and in-game references to the history of the world and the books.

PoE you get "you're exiled in Wraeclast cause you're a bad person (no real back story to your character), there's lots of bad people here, and there's this Warden and this Captain - got get strong and kill em!" and maybe 80-ish tid bits of lore as dialog pieces or items you can read around the game.

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[JudgeFurious]

I could have written this post nearly word for word it's so close to what I think about Path of Exile. Awesome game that becomes tiresome as you get further into it. Normal was a blast, Cruel was less fun but I made it through still enjoying myself. Merciless was like I hit a wall and didn't want to go on. I made it to level 74 and just lost interest in it because..... "Fuck grinding"?

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Remus Shepherd]

I'm not complaining about online only. It just doesn't matter to me.

Re:And it costs almost as much as a new game...

[Remus Shepherd]

'Content' includes many things -- storyline, enemies, zones, and *character build options*. Being able to replay the game using an entirely different strategy is a form of additional content. That's what I love most in these type of games.

PoE has that in spades, at least through the first one or two difficulty levels. (At high levels, only a few strategies are viable, which is why the game starts to get more tiresome.) It also has enough storyline lore and enemy diversity to be consistently interesting. (I disagree with your comment about PoE exiles having no backstory, by the way. Ask the Scion about her husband sometime.)

D3 has more enemies and more storyline, but there are almost no character builds to speak of. You choose a class. Every character of that class has the exact same skills, and they all do the same thing, and if there are slightly different builds it's free and easy to switch between them. That means there are reduced strategic options, which means less replayability.

Nope.

[TFlan91]

Avid Ex-Diablo fan.

Never again, you killed the franchise Blizzard.

Re:Nope.

[beheaderaswp]

How about on expanding your comments as to why?

I'd be interested in why you made that choice.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine all of these no forgiveness types in relationships and it helps explain the divorce rate.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, it was the online requirement for the game, even for single player.

Unlike Diablo II, which I still occasionally play, Diablo III will one day stop working when Blizzard decides to shut down their servers and the game can no longer validate itself to launch. It's a game rental, put simply.

If I buy something, I want to own it, and Blizzard isn't giving me that option.

Re:Nope.

[lgw]

As much as Blizzard lost my fandom with D3, (well, starting with SC2, but D3 was the last straw), I have to applaud them for Adventure Mode and the Bounty system!

I've been saying for a long time now that the post-WoW MMO would need these in a shared world. And sure, the "shared" part is the hard part, but it's good to see a revival of "randomly generate a level, then randomly generate quest-specific content, then modify the level as needed for the content". Back in the era of low-res games, when worlds were big, that idea wasn't rare, but it seems to have vanished.

And, yes, you can do that in an MMO and not have it suck. Sure, random content is often dull, repetitive, and uninvolving, though I'd argue that's just fine for quickly-passed low-level content. But take that same engine, which can generate a random level with some random quest-specific stuff, and make it a tool for world builders. Randomly generate an expansion zone and most of the hours of labor of building that expansion zone is done. Let the world builder focus on the unique elements, the humor and amazing sights and, well, the fun stuff. Take an auto-generated quest and add the creative writing element that makes it interesting, maybe custom design the boss, or maybe write something inspired by how the random boss turned out if that was particularly wild, and done.

You could make a vast and expanding world with new content being cranked out just as fast as the world/quest builders can generate new ideas, by letting a good random content generator provide the starting point and backdrop and all the "flyover country" in a new area.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about him, but one of the major problems I've heard is that loot is too generic, even with their new changes. In Diablo 2, you had all sorts of weird stuff. For instance, you had items that gave you abilities that your class couldn't learn. Enigma gave teleport to all classes, for instance, and one of the common examples that's been thrown around lately is that there was a barbarian helm that let barbarians use the Druid "werewolf" skill. There were lots of unique and interesting things attached to items on D2 and apparently they've dumbed it down a lot with D3 to the point where it's more of a chore than a matter of experimentation.

Another complaint I heard a lot was that classes seem fairly generic. In Diablo 2, there were a few builds that were used really commonly due to utility in farming, but really, you could build a passable to good character around at least 60% of the abilities, even more once synergies were introduced. It was always interesting to see a sorceress running around hitting crap with a sword and just butchering it, for instance, but it was viable with a high enough enchant and a very specific build. There were all sorts of weird combinations and it seems like a lot of those don't exist in D3 from what I hear.

Full disclosure, though, I'm going purely off hearsay here. I have never played D3, though I probably spent a good 8 years of my life on D2 and LoD.

Re:Nope.

[sexconker]

How about on expanding your comments as to why?

I'd be interested in why you made that choice.

Where to start?

The loot system is shit - everything from the drops themselves to their rarity to the auction house was designed to extract time and money from players. Yes, the auction house was removed last week but the drops still suck. The auction house (and the design choices made in order to push players to use it) ruined the game for nearly 2 full years.

The gameplay, story, combat etc. is uninspired. It's generally not any worse than DII but it's not any better. There's nothing substantively new here to keep people experimenting with different character classes and builds. Everything is easily power gamed and the game is nothing but grind if you want to play past a single play through to beat the higher difficulty levels. Run through the campaign once, then grind away using a build you found on the forums until you can do it again at the next difficulty. Yawn.

The art is horrid. Being too bright/colorful isn't my main issue (though I agree it's worse than the original, darker look we saw earlier). The worst thing about the art is the god damned World of Warcraft art team shitting up everything. I'll never get over WoW's art team shitting up SC2 (compare a WoW felhound to an SC2 zergling for starters), and I'll never get over that same shitty style infesting DIII.

The meta is a joke. 2 years in and we've still got an unstable game with regards to balance, loot, etc. Blizzard's idea of balance is results-based. If X % of players are using a certain class they balance it to adjust X up or down accordingly. They don't actually bother to balance mechanics, abilities, or class attributes, they're just balancing against popularity. It's SC2 balance all over again. Nerf Terran, buff Zerg, buff Protoss specifically against Terran, all based on 1v1 rock paper scissor matches. The loot similarly is unstable. There's no point in griding for the flavor-of-the-month item if it's going to be B-tier next month.

Diablo III doesn't have the staying power that its predecessor had. The expansion won't change that. The game is shit from the ground up.

Re:Nope.

[MrLeap]

If you bought vanilla d3 it's worth the download to see how the game has changed through the patches. I'd agree though that they botched D3 so badly initially that blizzard games are no longer just impulse buys to me. That said, I recently downloaded the game again for the first time since a month~ after launch, and it has definitely changed for the better. It feels good to play now. Removing the auction house was _such_ a good thing for so many different reasons. (Least not of which was the fact that it was an awful webapp bolted into the client. Lowest quality shovel development I've ever seen out of blizzard. Did they contract it out?). I don't know if it's true, but I heard that they fired the majority of original game development management. That was cathartic to hear, since it's easy to dehumanize people you've never met. I think the biggest thing that missed the mark with D3 was the fact that the developers misunderstood the appeal of D2. The rare loot hunting was a huge component, but it was only fun because it existed as a layer upon a really great character development system. Abilities were varied and neat, especially after 1.11. You'd make your first character, it'd be garbage. You'd join a game with a fOrb sorc and it would impress you enough to try to make that yourself. You'd play that for a while and see a meteor sorceress blowing up bosses.. So you'd want to try that. A decade later you're still playing, gearing out your hardcore warcry barbarian. D3 completely shortcircuited this cycle. You can switch your build instantaneously, nearly any time. Sure this is convenient, but it completely removes the recognition you'd get for doing something unique, because there's no commitment behind your choices. Seeing a level 99 sorceress that was using enchant and charged bolt was impressive. Now if you see some other player doing something unique, click click click I'm the same as them now! An hour later the novelty has worn off. Replay value was based on building new and different characters. You farmed loot to prop up the crazy garbage characters you wanted to make. Not to mention that the gearing setup at launch in D3 was abysmal. There was nothing interesting about it. "This gear has more strength than what I'm wearing, better equip it" was the choice you'd be making 99% of the time. In D2 if you were the aforementioned maniacle charged bolt sorceress, commited to the craft. You'd spend a lot time trying to find a white, 2 slot staff with +4 to charged bolt on it so you could put a rune word in that shit and have like +4 billion to charged bolt. The skills in D3 are pretty flat, the build landscape pretty boring and unspecialized. The gear effects things detatched from your build. (They fixed this somewhat though , the gear is a little more interesting now, even though the system begs you to ignore the interesting parts). Really uncanny how much blizz missed the mark. I wonder how many of the design team even played D2?

Re:Nope.

[CronoCloud]

it was the online requirement for the game, even for single player.

The console versions of the game don't have that issue. Offline single-player, no RMAH and "Smart Loot".

However, the upcoming PS4 version is the only console version confirmed to have RoS, so far. (There are rumors about an Xbox One version of the Ultimate Evil edition though)

Re:Nope.

[ausekilis]

My friends and I were rabid Diablo II fans. I played through DII and it's expansions with many characters and genuinely enjoyed playing with friends. I refused to buy DIII, though I have played the X360 version as well as PC version. My friend did buy DIII and gave me the rundown on why he doesn't care the least about it anymore. Here's a collection of reasons:

1. Always online. Battle.net, while useful for chatting, is Blizzards answer to Steam for their 4 games. You can no longer play with friends in a LAN party, or via home to home without stopping by a Blizzard server that isn't guaranteed to be there in 10 years.
2. Incessant grind-fest. While the Diablo games are known for mowing enemies down for hours on end, in order to get to the maximum level pre-expansion you need to beat the game 3 times in a row. It gets tiresome the first time you do everything again. Try levelling more than one character and maintain your sanity... go on... try. D2 had pacing such that you would hit the level cap somewhere in your 3rd play through, though you could certainly grind at a lower level to give yourself better stats in the 2nd or 3rd run. This, in addition to (3)
3. The maps are not truly random. Many dungeons have a set organization, as you may expect from a scripted story. However, compared to DII, there aren't many "random dungeons" littered along the countryside, and those that are there are much more boring than their DII counterparts.
4. Loot and the botched Auction House. One of the big problems in DII was endless grinding for new great stuff, Blizzard tried to fix this by creating a real-money Auction House (and net themselves a little profit, much like microtransactions) and create a way for players to spend money instead of hours trying to find that new weapon. Only problem was it wasn't well received and, from what I recall, heavily abused.
5. Different Dev Team = Different Game. A lot of the original folks behind D1 and D2 went on to form Runic Games and develop Torchlight. The DIII dev team was trying to emulate and expand on that successful formula of D2. From the few hours I played and the reports of friends, it sounds like DIII was hurting in the story and gameplay departments compared to it's predecessors. It just didn't feel "fun" in the way the others did.

That said, I spent my money on Torchlight 2, which I still find enjoyable and more creative than DIII.

Re:Nope.

[MrLeap]

Oh, excellent, I was in HTML mode and it stripped out all my line breaks. :|

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bro...don't you think if Blizzard is going to shut down their D3 servers they would patch it to let you play offline first? Way to be paranoid. Besides, Blizzard is one of the biggest game companies on the planet, them shutting down would be like Valve shutting down Stream. If that ever happened the economic and technological landscape would have to have changed so much that it would be irrelevant.

Now on the other hand...the online requirement is wack as fuck if you are playing hardcore mode and you lose your connection and your character dies. Fuck that. Why can't they just make it like bitcoin, if you lose connection to the server the local machine makes a hashed record of all the shit you did then uploads when it reconnects. Yeah, I guess someone could cheat but come on, the instant death on internet interruption aspect makes hardcore mode a game of chance.

Re:Nope.

[Krojack]

The loot system is shit - everything from the drops themselves to their rarity to the auction house was designed to extract time and money from players. Yes, the auction house was removed last week but the drops still suck. The auction house (and the design choices made in order to push players to use it) ruined the game for nearly 2 full years.

If you didn't notice, the loot system was revamped and the AH no longer exists.

The art is horrid. Being too bright/colorful isn't my main issue. The worst thing about the art is the god damned World of Warcraft art team shitting up everything.

Being an old retired WoW player of many years (and loving the early years), I don't really see any link in graphics design between D3 and WoW. WoW had a more cartoon look while D3 doesn't if you ask me. So I love the D3 graphics. I feel they were very well done.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't notice, the loot system was revamped and the AH no longer exists.

Wow (or should that be WoW?), his very next sentence was "Yes, the auction house was removed last week but the drops still suck" and yet you missed it in your hurry to get a reply.

Re:Nope.

[Mashiki]

I'm guessing you actually haven't played the game since 2.0 rolled out. And while what you said was semi-true before the AH was removed it's not now. Otherwise you'd know that loot is rolled based on the character you're playing. While you'll see an "off" stat like "arcane orb" on your "pew-pew disintegrate" build, you're not going to see +133str on your offhand anymore. So that pretty much guts the whole "flavor of the month" thing. There really isn't a pure build out that kicks ass anyway for any class atm.

Your complaint on the story? Meh. It's the same writer as Warcraft, Diablo, and everything else. There's plenty however for you to experiment with different builds for your playstyle. For quite a while I was a orb launcher, now I'm a destrobeam wizard. On several of the bosses, on torment there was no way I could beat them without using hydra's either.

Odd that you say the game doesn't have staying power. If you base that on the number of people playing it seems to be just fine. Then again, the only thing that kept people going back to D2, was that they could hack their way to happiness.

Re:Nope.

[Remus Shepherd]

D3 character builds were set by the game design and are very limited compared to D2 character builds.

In D2 I had a crossbow-using Necromancer. That's flat-out impossible in D3. A Witch Doctor (the D3 Necro class) can't even pick up a bow, if I recall correctly.

They severely limited player choices, while giving them free respecs. This destroyed replayability. A character of any class in D3 plays the exact same as any other character of that class. (Or could after a quick respec.) This is a fundamental problem with D3 that the expansion doesn't fix.

It does sound as if the expansion fixes the loot/drop rate fiasco, at least. That's a separate issue, and one that is more important to some players.

Re:Nope.

[Opportunist]

I have no problem forgiving a loved one a blunder. But if, and only if, he ceases to do it and promises that he won't do it again.

I mean, be honest, would you forgive your loved one if they cheated on you, you discovered them, and they told you right to your face that they neither want to end that relationship and plan to expand on that behaviour?

Why the fuck should I forgive that?

Re:Nope.

[Opportunist]

Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But why should I subject myself to the whims and wants of a company? Why shouldn't they shut down the D3 server to make people buy D4 and move over there? As history has shown, it's far from impossible for a company to do something like that.

Re:Nope.

[Krojack]

I find the drops to be good if not to often. I see "SOME" people on the Blizzard D3 forums bitching that they aren't getting enough legendary drops and it's shitty. I got 8 in one a hour time span one night. Other times I've got zero in an entire day. It's fucking RNG. People need to stop bitching. You want your fucking free handouts, go bitch to your favorite government representative. In this case, keep playing.

Re:Nope.

[afidel]

Otherwise you'd know that loot is rolled based on the character you're playing. While you'll see an "off" stat like "arcane orb" on your "pew-pew disintegrate" build

Heck, in RoS you have the Enchanter where you can pay mats and gold to reroll a specific attribute, so if you find an OMG good source but it has the wrong secondary skill for your build you just reroll it a few times until you get the skill you ARE using.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

How often does Blizzard have major game releases? Its not like they are making a new Diablo every year and shutting down the previous one. If a game is still good enough to play 5+ years after a server shuts down then I assume its a pretty good game and worth the money even if you only get to play it for a limited time. After the server is shut down the worst thing that happens is you won't get to play the game, kind of like your choosing to do right now which you seem to be okay with.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

The could be the dumbest comment in the history of the Internet. In the PART THAT YOU QUOTED he covers your "witty" reply.

Go back to WoW and stop posting on the Internet you retard.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly Blizzard likes to shut down their servers ... I mean how can they shut down allowing people to telnet to the old battle.net chat!! I mean Diablo is 18 years old, its clear they have no respect for their customers!

          Chat (1996-2005) (they used to allow standard Telnet clients to connect to their servers for chat purposes)
        Diablo (1996-present) (limited to public chat channels)
        StarCraft (1998-present) (and expansion)
        WarCraft II (1999-present) (support added by the "Battle.net Edition" expansion)
        Diablo II (2000-present) (and expansion)
        WarCraft III (2002-present) (and expansion)

          StarCraft II (2010-present) (and expansion)
        World of Warcraft (2010-present) (and four expansions, support added in 2010 with the "migration" of WoW accounts)
        Diablo III (2012-present) (and expansion)
        Battle.net Desktop App (present)
        Hearthstone (present)

Re:Nope.

[Whorhay]

I think we might have played different Diablo 2's. The Diablo 2 I played had a level cap but you definitely weren't hitting it until long after you beat all the difficulty levels. The cap was 99, but somwhere in the early 90's you stopped getting experience for anything but Hell Baal kills. It took thousands of Hell Baal kills to get to 99.

The Auction House to me was a failure in that it was too easily accesible. There was tons of trading in Diablo 2 but you had to really go out of your way to do it in a meaningful way and get big benefits out of it.

I've enjoyed the torchlight games but haven't gotten nearly the same mileage out of them that I got out of the Diablo games. I think the big design decision in the Torchlight series that I couldn't stand was that spender abilities didn't benefit from leech affects and whatnot. I don't want to rely on boring generic attacks to heal and refill mana.

Re:Nope.

[Whorhay]

Witch Doctors can definitely use some ranged weapons. I don't remember which exactly but they can use ranged weapons. Most of the ranged weapons though seem to be Demon Hunter only.

Viable class builds was definitely an issue prior to the most recent patches. But honestly you have the same problem in most games like this. There is almost always some spec that is superior to all or most others and players gravitate towards them. With the 2.0 patch they changed a lot of skills and itemization, such that now there is much more variety. That said as the community gets a better handle on what is available and what works you are again seeing a few builds dominate the playing field. Although most of the time if you look into discussions about those builds you will see that the core of a build may center around 1 spender, a few defensive/utility abilities and 1 or two passives. That leaves a good bit of room for customization depending on gear choices and play style.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference being, (s)he didn't purchase the game, so is actually out significantly less than buying the game now, playing for 5 years, and then having the servers shutdown.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

D3 costs 50 bucks...if you play it for 5 years...that's 10 bucks a fucking year. God damn, how fucking cheap are you?

Re:Nope.

[peragrin]

for me the online part sucks hard. comcast makes the game stutter like a bitch. I can't play as I click count to 2 and die as the monsters have hit me 40 times.

Re:Nope.

[Zalbik]

Interesting, as almost all of your complaints were actually fixed by Loot 2.0 / RoS.

I originally found D3 to be an above-average, but not amazing game.

After 2.0...items that were fixed:
grind-fest - power-levelling is completely viable now. Grab a couple of level 60 friends and you can level to 60 in a few hours
random maps - added in RoS
Loot / Botched AH - AH gone. Loot 2.0 fixes most loot issues
Different Game - D3 "feels" a lot more like a Diablo game than it did previously. If anything, it is an improvement on D2.

Re:Nope.

[jxander]

Amusing that a post full of blatant lies can get +5 Interesting, if it just uses a bit of proper grammar and a tab indented list.

1. You list "always online" as a problem, then immediately compare it to the other main platform that requires (nearly) Always Online: Steam. Battle.net chatting has pros and cons v Steam. You don't actually have to pause the game or bring up an overlay to use it, but it's harder to keep multiple conversations separate
2. Grindfest? Compared to D2? Clearly you've never played either game. Leveling in Diablo 2 took an absolutely absurd amount of time. Less than 1% of players (by Blizzards metrics, so grain of salt) ever made it to the cap of 99 in D2. You can reach the level cap in D3 within a week, easily. Of course, then there are innumerable Paragon Levels after that (tiny little buffs, but they stack up over time) Blizzard's official intent was to create an equivalent level of difficulty to reach maximum Paragon level in D3 as to reach level 99 in D2 Either way, you certainly didn't reach the cap "somewhere in your 3rd play-through"
3. The maps are random enough. Sure Zone 1 always connects to Zone 2, but beyond that, how they connect is random, which hallways leads to the stairs is random, which sidequests spawn is random. Speaking of Sidequests, D3 has many MANY more non-plot related events. Some are simple, some are more involved. Some are scripted events, some are just random dungeons full of monsters... but any way you slice it, there is WAY more side-tracking in D3. The expansion even introduced entire optional quests lines (relatively short ones, but still) for all 3 of your hirelings, the Blacksmith, Jeweler, etc.
4. Loot has been completely revamped, and the AH is gone. Sure, the AH was a spectacular failure, and maybe it was just a blatant moneygrab, but at least it was something new. Blizz tried a new thing, it didn't work, they removed the thing. I can't say that it was ever abused, at least not any more than any market can be abused. Sure, people probably tried to corner markets or bot for loot, but I dno't know if that counts as abuse of the sales system
5. Dev teams always change. Some people stick around, some people leave. Doesn't mean the game will be better or worse. One definite improvement was the story line. I suppose that you're claim of "it sounds like..." should be a clue that you're just making shit up, but the characters in D3 are much more realized, backstories much more fleshed out. Part of that is simply time and tech. We can support beautifully rendered cut scenes these days, which helps. But the story doesn't just exist in those cut scenes. Characters will tag along with you and occasionally chatter a bit. Not a lot, just enough to get to know them... so that we feel a little investment later when we're called upon to rescue them.

Far be it for me to tell you how best to spend your time and money, but you might want to actually give it a shot before pontificating

Re:Nope.

[sexconker]

If you had read my post, you'd know that I mentioned:

1) The AH being killed off 1 week ago. The effects of the AH on the overall design of the game are still in effect.

2) The loot system being tweaked repeatedly. Not only have none of the tweaks failed to solve the core problem with loot (it's boring and takes forever to get) the constant changes make any time invested a complete waste.

Re:Nope.

[Rakarra]

but really, you could build a passable to good character around at least 60% of the abilities, even more once synergies were introduced

Ah, but the reality is most of those weird builds were only usable if you had certain rare, very-difficult-to-obtain-unless-you-open-your-wallet items. The enigma runeword you mention, for instance, required the Jah rune, a rune rare enough that your average player has almost no chance to see it drop even once, ever.

Many of those D2 builds also only worked in the first two-thirds of the game but became fairly unrealistic when you got to Hell mode. Sorry werewolf druid, bet you wished you'd know you'd have to spec for the heavy elemental damage talents since half the things in Hell mode are 100% immune to your totally-physical-based attacks!

I loved D2 but damn that game did have some glaring flaws that I eventually sickened of (especially the piss-poor network/battlenet code that they fixed in WoW when it came out). The auction house in D3 was a direct response to the item trading black market in D2 being a HORRIBLE experience (and any public, non-friends in D2 was a horrible experience, but that's a different post).

I loved my D2 hammerdin though. And my conviction or zealot paladin. And the aforementioned werewolf with his base-upgraded Bonesnap maul. And my hydra sorceress..

Re:Nope.

[Rakarra]

Always online. Battle.net, while useful for chatting, is Blizzards answer to Steam for their 4 games. You can no longer play with friends in a LAN party, or via home to home without stopping by a Blizzard server that isn't guaranteed to be there in 10 years.

Blizzard's been pretty reliable keeping old game servers up, and I feel pretty confident I'll be able to play Diablo 3 in 10 years. That fear certainly wouldn't discourage me, though it's not my favorite thing in the world.

Incessant grind-fest. While the Diablo games are known for mowing enemies down for hours on end, in order to get to the maximum level pre-expansion you need to beat the game 3 times in a row. It gets tiresome the first time you do everything again. Try levelling more than one character and maintain your sanity... go on... try. D2 had pacing such that you would hit the level cap somewhere in your 3rd play through, though you could certainly grind at a lower level to give yourself better stats in the 2nd or 3rd run.

What??? I stopped playing Diablo 2 partially because I was sick starting in the same boring Act 1 Normal monestary over and over again. You want to get to the end of Diablo 2? You have to play the exact game three times in a row, all five acts in Normal, Nightmare, Hell. The only times I ended up making it to the end of hell mode in D2 I was about level 70 -- that's a lot of grinding afterwards. Are you sure you weren't talking about Diablo 2 instead of Diablo 3 there? I don't see -any- more grinding in Diablo 3.

The maps are not truly random. Many dungeons have a set organization, as you may expect from a scripted story. However, compared to DII, there aren't many "random dungeons" littered along the countryside, and those that are there are much more boring than their DII counterparts.

The D3 expansion introduces several new modes of play apart from story mode, and they have randomized dungeons. I'm not sure the DII counterparts were "interesting" though.

Loot and the botched Auction House. One of the big problems in DII was endless grinding for new great stuff, Blizzard tried to fix this by creating a real-money Auction House (and net themselves a little profit, much like microtransactions) and create a way for players to spend money instead of hours trying to find that new weapon. Only problem was it wasn't well received and, from what I recall, heavily abused.

The RMAH was intended to correct a problem with the D2 loot system and the horrible grey-market and black-markets that popped up around that. I entirely agree that auction house > trading games as a way of gaining items, if those are your only options. Unfortunately it had the unintended side effect that it became a much better investment of time for players to play for gold (it became TOO easy to find what you wanted), then use that gold to buy all your items. That killed the item hunt part of the game, along with you having little chance of finding a good item in the game. That last thing may or may not be getting fixed with the D3 Exp, only time will tell, and the auction house is now a thing of the past.

Different Dev Team = Different Game. A lot of the original folks behind D1 and D2 went on to form Runic Games and develop Torchlight. The DIII dev team was trying to emulate and expand on that successful formula of D2. From the few hours I played and the reports of friends, it sounds like DIII was hurting in the story and gameplay departments compared to it's predecessors. It just didn't feel "fun" in the way the others did.

I'm not sure there were story problems with D2; it had a good story. A better story than D2, at least! Not that I had a problem with D2's story either. The big knock I could make is that there might be -too much- story in D3, and the story mode is too integrated with gameplay. I don't need elaborate cut scenes to advance the story and interrupt gameplay. At least it didn't go really off the rails like Starcraft II did. Fortunately there's no D3 story in adventure mode.

Re:Nope.

[Rakarra]

I'm not sure there were story problems with D2; it had a good story. A better story than D2, at least

Ack, I only caught this afterwards. I meant to say:
"I'm not sure there were story problems with D3; it had a good story. A better story than D2, at least."

Re:Nope.

[theArtificial]

Maybe you're an Opportunist? /hides

Re:Nope.

[Luckyo]

If you're a fan of D2, consider trying path of exile. It's always online but it's free to play because of it, and they only sell cosmetics and nothing else to finance the game.

So costs you nothing to try it.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the Diablo 1 servers are still up.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use a bow or crossbow on Wizard and Witch Doctor. And it does the same thing it did in Diablo 2: it's a stat stick. In D2 you only used your weapon if you were out of mana, and if you were out of mana (after level 35 or so) your build or gear were probably wrong.

Re:Nope.

[ildon]

While the Diablo games are known for mowing enemies down for hours on end, in order to get to the maximum level pre-expansion you need to beat the game 3 times in a row. It gets tiresome the first time you do everything again. Try levelling more than one character and maintain your sanity... go on... try. D2 had pacing such that you would hit the level cap somewhere in your 3rd play through, though you could certainly grind at a lower level to give yourself better stats in the 2nd or 3rd run.

For one, you had to play Diablo 2 three times to get to the highest difficulty level, too, and you were playing through the same content a million times anyway, just like Diablo 3. In this aspect, D2 and the release version of D3 were identical. For two, you could still keep playing old difficulties and getting xp in the release version of D3, precisely like D2. Additionally, in D2, you reached the level cap after literally months of grinding, whereas in D3 you can reach the level cap in a weekend or faster.

There are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons to dislike the original released version of Diablo 3 (always online, auction house, impermanence of choice, etc.) that you don't have to make up ones that are fake.

Furthermore, this argument is now completely moot, because as of the 2.0 patch, the game no longer uses the traditional D2 difficulty system. You can select whatever difficulty you want at the start, and rather than having static monster levels per difficulty, the monster levels always scale to match the level of the party leader (you, if you're playing by yourself), and then damage/health/xp/gold is scaled based on the difficulty. A single normal playthrough of acts 1-4 will get you to level 45 or so, and 60 before you finish act 1 again. And if you play on a harder difficulty (much harder difficulty) you can reach level 60 within your first playthrough.

Re:Nope.

[Mashiki]

Don't forget under loot 2.0 you're guaranteed a legendary now every 2ish-hrs of gameplay. I'd hunt down the blue post on it if I wasn't so lazy, but they want to make sure that people have the mats to craft gear, and have a chance for good upgrades for higher levels of difficulty. If you're trying to play higher than torment 3 with your basic rares, and non-crafted legendaries or set items you're going to be in for a world of hurt.

Re:Nope.

[dywolf]

no, WDs can use any ranged weapon other than the class locked ones for the DH.
weapon type simply rarely matters. its just a stat stick. class weapons simply get a few bonuses that may or may not be worthwhile.

i dont see hwo free respecs kills replayabilty. id think not having to replay an entire 60 (now 70) levels just to get a new build would dramatically increase game life and reduce player burnout.

i played Diablo3 at release. it sucked. bad. hated it. left it, dropped, didnt touch it again.
tried Path of Exile...fun, if somewhat clunkier.
Torhlight 2...really fun. The real Diablo3 in many ways.

but the recent changes to D3 have all been dramatically good. they killed off the AH entirely. the loot is no longer mostly useless garbage. drop rates and quality are DRAMATICALLY improved. the crafting is improved as well, such that youll rarely sell anything, and instead salvage it more often.

if you didnt like the class builds before, theres not much i can see to that, other than if you, like me, havent played since initial release, at least giev a look cause a lof ot the skills have been changed and retuned. i remember initially, playing a WD, pretty much all the skills were like all the others. you basically just picked which button was an AE, a DD, a CC, or regen, and which graphic skin it used. they fixed that to a degree, and the skills now have a bit more flavor (at least for the Wd, though WD still seems to be rather unfairly forced to use Zombie Bears as a build, as its simply so much better than most everything else).

ive been playing agian for the expandion the last few days (managed to get it reduced cost with the bonuses to WOW) because i wanted to see how much exactly has changed. its dramatically improved. if you can find a friend with it, at least take a look. i've been pleasantly surprised and will probably play for at least a couple weeks, thuogh i still am less of a grind oriented player and may not go beyond that time frame.

Re:Nope.

[Krojack]

After playing the new xpac last night, legendaries were dropping more than cheap whores. Most weren't upgrades but they also start losing their legendary feel if they drop this often. I remember being excited when a yellow item would drop. Now they are nothing but crafting mat trash.

Re:Nope.

[dclydew]

Dunno what you're playing, but in two nights of play with the expansion my level 62 Monk has picked up a huge number of crazy items and they all stacked beautifully. My wife's Barbarian had the same experience. Maybe its because we get the team bonus for playing together, I dunno.

Re: Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the money. It's not worth investing time/emotion in a game which could be arbitrarily shut down. Not to mention that you can't play it if for whatever reason YOU DONT HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION. Hard to imagine, I know, but it's possible in life to be away from the internet.

Re: Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not worth investing time/emotion into LIFE when you could arbitrarily DIE OF A SUDDEN LIGHTNING STRIKE.

Risk-averse illogic, you have it.

Re:Nope.

[Remus Shepherd]

My crossbow was not a stat stick in D2. I marched an army of skeletons between me and the monsters, then took the monsters out with crossbow bolts. Got to level 73 that way. It was a viable weapon choice and a viable strategy. In D3 it no longer is.

Re:Nope.

[nhat11]

We don't need another copy of D2 MrLeap.

I enjoy the freedom of choices instead of being stuck to one build. Many people like to "min and max" but that gets too extreme and not fun sometimes and having a skill tree is part of the problem.

Re:Nope.

[hobarrera]

* Online only.
* Pay-to-win.
* The "challenging" part that the previous titles had is gone.
* Nothing new at all (mechanics-wise). Blizzard was one of those companies that ALWAYS innovated.

Re:Nope.

[hobarrera]

I can still play Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, from 1994, or StarCraft, from 1998. And Blizzard never had the power to change that, nor will they ever.
Can I be sure I'll be able to play Diablo III in 20 years? No. It all depends on me trusting a company that has burnt franchises* to the ground for the same or more income.

* Yes, Blizzards franchises have huge amounts of fans, by "burnt to the ground", I mean they died in spirit, and were replaces with games that carry no more that the title of Blizzard's former franchises. Sure, WoW sells a lot, but it's pretty damn obvious that it's not even remotely close to keeping the spirit (gameplay, machanics, storyline, etc) of Warcraft 1/2/3.

The launch was smooth

[Korveck]

I was playing Act IV, not knowing the exact time of RoS launch, and was surprised by the announcement that RoS had launched. I left the game after killing the Key Warden and created a new game for Act V. There was no need to log out. The server was stable. I don't think I ever experienced an expansion launch as smooth as this one.

Re:The launch was smooth

[royler]

same here. ive played since launch on and off and i've had more fun in the past weekend than all the rest of the time the game has been out.

Re:The launch was smooth

[Anonymous Coward]

A few thoughts: Yes, the launch was smooth, but I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers of people joining for launch yesterday night / today were significantly lower than Blizzard anticipated. There has been a pretty steady decline of interest in the game over the past year, and a lot of the fixes they were bringing into the mix were too little, too late. If a couple of my friends hadn't dragged me to the expansion kicking and screaming last night, I know I wouldn't have tried it.

That said, it looks like they have fixed the worst of the issues, and playing D3 for the first time in... a year with a couple friends was surprisingly fun. 7/10 would play again.

Also, hate to be the person to bring up the obligatory mention of Path of Exile, but was really hoping D3 might take a couple cues from it in terms of specialization, complexity, and inherent challenge. (PoE is still my go-to for dungeon crawlers, but D3 was an interesting interlude.)

Re:The launch was smooth

[afidel]

Ditto, I was talking in clan chat about how unstable everyone thought the servers would become at midnight, one of my clannies chimed up and said he had been on the EU servers at release and they had been stable, and sure enough the NA servers never missed a beat. This was simply the smoothest and lowest bug release from Blizzard ever and probably in the top .1% for all games ever.

Re:The launch was smooth

[afidel]

I found PoE boring after 16 hours played (according to Steam), I've played D3 more than that in the last week alone. I'm already to the point where I know I'll be under $.25/hour which is some cheap entertainment.

Re:The launch was smooth

[chakan2]

I have something like 70 hours in DIII and probably approaching 100 hours in PoE (60% of that pre v1.0). They both have their pros and cons. I just finished PoE normal with the Vaal content, and it's enjoyable. Ambush is a neat twist, and Cruel is interesting with new bosses and more uniques...It doesn’t seem as grinding as the 2nd playthough of Diablo on the harder difficulty. But, to be fair, I’m only halfway through Act 1.

What I hate about PoE is if you screw up a build...there's nothing worse than finding out a 50th level character is no longer playable as you're getting smeared by common mobs. It is not a noob friendly game. I strongly recommend going through some build guides before picking it up.

Just to make sure I piss off all the fanboys everywhere though, I'll probably skip the DIII expansion until it hits XBone. I'm interested to see how it plays with a controller, and it seems like it could be a good pick up and play party / beer drinking game at lower levels. I remember great times with Gauntlet Legends on N64 and hoping this carries on that vibe with local multiplayer.

Re:The launch was smooth

[afidel]

An auto-upgrade option could make it a good party game, have the game do some quick analysis and if a drop is better overall for the character have it equip on pickup. Obviously you'd want to be able to disable it if you're at all a serious player, but for a quick fun game it would be a neat twist.

Re:The launch was smooth

[bananaquackmoo]

You're kidding right? Did you even play during the first week?

Re:The launch was smooth

[bananaquackmoo]

nevermind, I just realized you were only talking about the expansion

Re:The launch was smooth

[Luckyo]

That's probably because there weren't that many new players coming to play it, unlike launch of D3, where everyone was expecting an awesome game and it sold millions in a very short time frame.

Re:The launch was smooth

[Luckyo]

As has been pointed out, that's likely because the new players that are needed to clog the servers never came.

There are two ways of doing a smooth launch. You can prepare enough servers and test them severely before hand, or you can mess your game so badly that people don't come back to play expansions.

Re:The launch was smooth

[dywolf]

they did cheat a little bit. the expansaion was basically released around a month ago, and simply had a software block on when the "act v" button would become enabled. dramataically reduced the server load and the numbers of those who didnt download/install it until yesterday.

Too Little Too Late

[228e2]

I sorta enjoyed DIII. But I've long stopped playing this along with anyone I used to play with months ago.

Maybe if they came out with this sooner with a higher cap, but Diablo just might be done for me.

I'll give Warcraft another chance.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

What message are you trying to send by paying them for the crappy version and not buying the fixed version?

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

That I am pissed that I paid to beta test a game, and no, I'm not going to throw even more money at you for the finished game you greedy pricks?

Re:Too Little Too Late

[FirstNoel]

Actually with the 2.0 patch that came out a few weeks back the overall DII feel has become much better. Drops are more reasonable, not being dependent on having 3 Billion gold to buy items off the AH is a plus.

I won't say it made it a whole new game, but it freshened it up enough for me to want to play through again with a new toon.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Samantha Wright]

I believe the obvious message is "the bridges are burnt," not "we want more crappy games." Publishers may be incredibly, unbelievably stupid, but they are stateful enough to know when they've killed brand trust. It is one of the few things they are indoctrinated in, since they are little more than marketers run amok.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

So if a developer listens to valid criticism and fixes the game then screw them?

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

I started playing again after the Loot 2.0 patch a few weeks ago, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, enough so that I finally reached level 60 with one of my characters (Thelonious, my Monk - obviously), and have grabbed a few Paragon levels as well. Now that RoS is out, I want to try the Crusader, to see how differently he plays.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Samantha Wright]

It's not about whether the game is fixed or not, it's about the business's management decisions. Lots of people won't buy EA games, for example, regardless of the quality of the title itself, because of the business's conduct in the past. The simple act of shipping a fixed game doesn't equate to the necessary cultural shift from the developer that would merit returning to the game. It's not as if they've gotten rid of Bobby Kotick as the head of Activision Blizzard, or said they'd commit to a long-term fan-driven model across their titles. It's essentially a boycott.

On top of that, we're talking about rewarding them with more money for what is, at its heart, an old product with some refreshes. Expansion packs and other forms of non-free DLC are only really effective at drawing in consumers when the base product has something the player wants to continue. Many people (myself included) got sick of the repetitive, imbalanced structure of the game a year and a half ago, when it first came out, and we have no desire to relive those memories or anything tightly associated with them. D3 had a breathtakingly uncompelling story; the adventure RPG equivalent of a cookie-cutter save-the-cat blockbuster, only without any character development whatsoever. (Unless you can think of a game with a lamer ending cutscene?) Even without the auction house, crazy elite monsters, terrible loot rates, failure to learn from competitors and clones like the Torchlight and Dungeon Siege series, the total lack of character personalization, and the extensive balance issues, I think the exploitative, sequelitis-infested anti-plot would be enough to keep people away from any continuation of the franchise.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anubis IV]

So if a developer listens to valid criticism, fixes the game, and charges you the price of a full game for the fix, then screw them?

FTFY. And yes, especially when it's not up to the level of quality we expect from companies that are known for saying "we'll release it when it's done".

I'm an old-time Warcraft, Starcraft, and general Blizzard fan, but Blizzard started burning various bridges with their fans a few years ago, maybe a year or two after the Activision merger, and for awhile the pace of their doing so seemed to be accelerating, what with the real money auction house (or pretty much anything related to D3, for that matter), the real name ID system, dropping LAN support in their games, and various other smaller things. As a company that used to be known for putting quality and their customers first, those things ran completely contrary to what attracted me to Blizzard in the first place.

It seems like they're finally getting some sense back, but they'll need to re-earn my trust before I start throwing money their way again. I haven't purchased anything from Blizzard since World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, and I currently don't have any plans to do so in the foreseeable future. And because most of my friends are feeling just as burned by the company, the peer pressure we used to apply on each other to pick up the latest Blizzard game has simply evaporated. We've moved on to other games from other companies.

Blizzard's not dead to us, but it certainly isn't anything special any longer.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the obvious message is "the bridges are burnt," not "we want more crappy games."

Yes and no. Bridges have been burnt, but it's the disgruntled player (like the OP) who is burning it.

Like it or not, millions of other people bought and are playing D3. Those who are enjoying D3, and those who forgive D3 and return because of the latest patch/expansion, will clash and likely drown out those still angry at Bliz

A safer message to bet on is "you can't please everyone"

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Remus Shepherd]

The developer *claims* to have listened to criticism, and *claims* to have fixed the game.

By not purchasing the 'fix', the players are sending the message that 'We Don't Trust The Developer Anymore'.

How do they regain our trust? If things actually are fixed and the developers are actually listening, word of mouth will eventually filter down to those of us that hold a grudge. It will take time.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Opportunist]

When you release a game, make sure it's ready for shipping. If you don't, I'm not gonna fork over more just for the patch that should've been in there from the start.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Whorhay]

I don't really see how the height of the level cap actually matters. What I think would matter is more than just a single extra Act worth of storyline. They did some other content including a new character but it does seem pretty shallow for a $40 expansion.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[afidel]

Loot 2.0 and the new more granular monster scaling did fix most of the brokenness with D3, there no longer an item wall at Act 2 Inferno where you can't progress without grinding for gold to buy items you have almost zero chance of finding yourself, now you find actual upgrades on a fairly regular basis that allow you to continue on to higher difficulties and you don't run into this steep cliff where you go from slaughtering monsters to being slaughtered through no fault of your gameplay but rather bad itemization. Now I'm not saying you can just jump in and hit Torment 7 in a day, but I took my HC wizard from 43 (Act 3 Nightmare in D3 1.x) to Torment 1 in two weeks and when I found my killing power a little lacking in Torment 1 it was because I was having my health yo-yo more than I would like rather than suddenly being one shotted like happened multiple times under 1.x.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[yoshi_mon]

While I've played a fair amount of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft my main interaction with Blizzard was with WoW and so I'm not really here to talk about D3. I only played D2 a bit and have not even watched a LetsPlay of D3 just to give an idea of my interest in the series at this point.

What I would like to say is that it is less than a year since Activision/Blizzard has detached themselves from Vivendi Universal. And as such there may be hope for them going back to some of the older better ways.

IIRC Vivendi Universal was losing money pretty badly during the years that introduced a lot of the really blatant cash grab moves that happened. And while getting any sort of proof from corporations is laughable in this day and age it sure as hell looked like Vivendi was pressuring Blizzard to make those moves.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[jxander]

I can't blame you for being wary, but they're definitely working in the correct direction. Can't really say if they're "there" yet ... that's a bit subjective, but it's a drastic improvement over D3's original release

Determining whether or not it's worth the full price (main game + expansion) is an exercise for the end user ... but for my money, it's $40 well spent (p.s. that's 66% of the price of a full game these days. Just sayin)

Re:Too Little Too Late

[Anubis IV]

Yeah, I'm tentatively hopeful that things will continue to get better. Everything I'm hearing for RoS has been encouraging, so I don't want to suggest that they're not making moves in the right direction, but as we're fond of saying around here, "an anecdote does not a trend make". RoS is a start. I'm curious to see what's next and after that.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[jxander]

Well technically Patch 2.0 was a start. RoS is next ...

Patch 2.0 introduced all of the changes to loot and leveling and the difficulty system about a month ago. Those changes are available without the expansion. If you only have the original game, you can log on and play through the original levels with the new system.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[akpak]

Just a point here: The improvements to loot drops, and removal of the AH do not require you to purchase the expansion. There are a number of other improvements that went in the game with the 2.0 RoS pre-patch, which everyone gets free.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[228e2]

But see, I'm so removed from DIII that I didnt even know that there was a patch issued. And thats probably for the best, because im too busy to put the time into Diablo. Now if they didnt fumble the game play between 2 and 3, I might have been more compelled to check out the update, but meh

Fuck the haters...

[MugenEJ8]

The "ding" when a legendary/set item drops is crack cocaine to my little brain.

Re:Fuck the haters...

[CronoCloud]

and the pillar of light. Oooh shiny!

I'm rather fond of the sound of the character reaching Level 3 of Nephalem Glory too.

Some of the character/NPC phrases stick in your head too:

Templar: Dark Magic bars our way, but the will of a Templar is STRONGER!

DH: VENGEANCE!

Re:Fuck the haters...

[Anonymous Coward]

Darkness awaits you!

Re:Fuck the haters...

[Kaenneth]

Hard to beat "Stay a While and Listen." as an ear worm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Fuck the haters...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my friends confuses the monk heal light with legendary light. I get his hopes up every time I cast it... and then crush them mercilessly mwahahahahhaha!

Re:Fuck the haters...

[Chris Mattern]

Diablo II? Bah. The original, accept no imitations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I'm a Modern Gamer

[The Cat]

Here's how I see the world:

1. Everything sucks
2. I will not pay for anything, no matter what the quality to cost ratio is. Any game with a price tag is the man trying to keep me down. In fact, if daily raging taser-sex with a different college's cheerleaders followed by a 29-foot roast beef buffet were priced at $0.02 and I had a half-off coupon, I'd still bitch like the entitled little fuck I am.
3. Everything sucks

Re:I'm a Modern Gamer

[sexconker]

Here's how I see the world:

1. Everything sucks
2. I will not pay for anything, no matter what the quality to cost ratio is. Any game with a price tag is the man trying to keep me down. In fact, if daily raging taser-sex with a different college's cheerleaders followed by a 29-foot roast beef buffet were priced at $0.02 and I had a half-off coupon, I'd still bitch like the entitled little fuck I am.
3. Everything sucks

Seems to me that sex with an entire cheerleading squad and a 29-foot roast beef buffet are the same thing.
Not sure how the taser is involved.

Re:I'm a Modern Gamer

[CronoCloud]

come on, this sarcastic commenter isn't a troll, they've got that entitled attitude down pat. We sure see a lot of that attitude in the D3 forums.

Re:I'm a Modern Gamer

[idontgno]

You gotta cook the beef somehow.

Ok, well, maybe not "gotta"...

something I never thought I'd say

[Anonymous Coward]

I played a *lot* of Diablo 3 after it came out and, after bleeding my way through half of the game on inferno difficulty, I realized that whatever magic Diablo 2 had that made me want to keep playing for years just wasn't present in Diablo 3. The game wasn't fun so I stopped.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago and I decided to log in again just to see if things were still as bad as I remembered and... to my utter amazement, Blizzard had actually fixed the game. It's fun again- they expanded difficulty settings to allow you to find the sweet spot where things are tough but manageable, good loot actually drops, crafting isn't hideously tedious... it's exactly what I was hoping Diablo 3 was going to be when it was announced. Also, the new act is pretty cool as well.

D3 was fun, expansion probably will be too

[Petersko]

I bought Diablo 3 and I got about what I expected from it - 60-ish fun hours. I expect I'll get about the same from the expansion pack. At under a buck and hour it's cheap entertainment. That's how video games worked for most of my life.

What got me was seeing people putting in hundreds of hours, and then complaining on the forums about how some aspect of the game annoys them. "Blizzard better fix this or I'm done with Diablo!" I don't want to come off like an aging hater. You know, "Kids today with their..." But it sure feels like the stereotyped sense of entitlement we ascribe to millenials.

Re:D3 was fun, expansion probably will be too

[CronoCloud]

What got me was seeing people putting in hundreds of hours, and then complaining on the forums about how some aspect of the game annoys them. "Blizzard better fix this or I'm done with Diablo!"

Yeah People with multiple Paragon 100 characters saying that sort of thing made me laugh, though I only started playing it with the PS3 version.

Re:D3 was fun, expansion probably will be too

[Anonymous Coward]

It's boring. It's a boring 60 hours.
The PS3 version, I tried it normal mode, it was OK, average experience. Button mashing and not much else. Then, I tried hardcore, pretty damned annoying because nobody joined.
Reached level 60 with one character, it was disgustingly easy in inferno.

Same screen multiplayer was nice, but other than that, it's a dud.

From someone who gave up on the game...

[Last_Available_Usern]

I reinstalled the game a few weeks ago after not playing for ages due to a constant feeling of never finding decent items and being tied to the AH for upgrades. The game (even just post patch, not even counting the xpac) is so much more playable. If you're on the fence, I can give you a few bullet points that have kept me interested:

1) With the AH gone, way more legendaries and meaningful items drop.
2) The drops (both rare and legendary) are often more meaningful as they cater the stats to your class for the most part.
3) All items (including legendaries) roll max-level with appropriate stats for the person who made the game.
4) +Skill and +DmgType has become very prevelent stats on many pieces now, making it less about sheet DPS and cookie cutter builds and more about building a spec that compliments your playstyle and the gear you've found.
5) Paragon levels are shared across all characters so no more grinding paragon for all your toons.
6) Paragon points are used to supplement stats like Int/Dex/Str, Vitality, Life on Hit, Crit Dmg, etc, allowing you to customize your build further and fill in the blanks your gear lacks.

All in all, I really like the changes and what little I've seen that they added to the Xpax (namely the Mystic for customizing drops in both appearance and stats) I like as well.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Some_Llama]

sounds good.. thanks for the info, i got my son the expac early for the LOL clone perk blizz gave with it but now (since most of the items that bugged me too are addressed) I might have to grab a copy too...

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played 40+ hours since the launch of the Loot 2.0 system and have yet to see a legendary or epic drop.
As I understand it and read, the legendary and epic items are account bound so I would hope they cater to the individual that received the drop.
I do enjoy the individual tweaking of stats on my character so I give it a plus. The paragon aspect is a plus to assist in getting an alt toon up and running rather quickly saving some boredom.
The adventure mode with bounty system sounds good. The bloodshards are a nice aspect as well.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[netsavior]

Epic?
there are Legendary [orange/brown] and Set [green]items
I assume that is what you are talking about.

Playing for 40 hours without a drop is supposed to be impossible.
There is a timer called "safety net" that is ticking away any time you are in combat killing monsters. If you get a legendary or set item, the timer goes to 0. If the timer gets to 2 hours, your chance to get a legendary item steadily ticks up until it is at 100%, then you get a drop, then it goes back to 0.

the most you can play (actually play, not just sit there) is just over 2 hours before getting a legendary. If not, you should record a video of you playing for 5 hours straight with no drops and put it on the youtubes, because you are bugged.

Blizz claims most people will not have to rely on the safety net, only the truly unlucky... but my experience is, you can set your watch by the 2 hour gap between legendaries.

Re: From someone who gave up on the game...

[Radish03]

I picked the game back up last weekend and had a pretty identical experience. Quality drops and interesting legendaries that affect skills and game mechanics in fun, useful but not really game breaking ways. I also found far more crafting recipes dropping than I remember. I'm definitely excited to get into the expansion as soon as I can.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Whorhay]

1 - I don't think I'm seeing any more items actually drop, in fact I'm seen a good bit of evidence to the contrary. On the upside the quality of drops is better because of the "smart loot" feature and the general revamp of items and their properties.

2 - That is the "smart loot" system which for rares has something like a 20% chance to affect an item. Legendaries seem to nearly always be smart loot drops, which in combination with the revamp of legendaries in general makes for better items.

My only complaint is the Bind on Account for all Set and Legendary drops. I don't particularily mind the loss of the AH. But not being able to trade the items that are actually very time consuming to find is very frustrating.

I can't play with clan mates and friends without looking like a jerk, because I crush the monsters in the difficulties they play on. They can't play on higher difficulty levels where I play because then they can't manage to survive by themselves for long. Neither of those is much fun. This could be solved by giving them some of the extra equipment I have stashed to bring them up closer to my level of gear, except that stuff is all BoA so no go anymore on that. I could in theory gimp myself by equiping crappier gear, but again that isn't fun for me either.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Zalbik]

I've played 40+ hours since the launch of the Loot 2.0 system and have yet to see a legendary or epic drop.

That seems very strange. I get at least one legendary almost anytime I play (around 2-3 hour play sessions).

From what I understand, there is actually a legendary "timer" that increases the chance of finding a legendary as you play. Based on this, it should be nearly impossible to play 10+ hours without finding a legendary.

Diablo guarantees you a legendary the first time you kill him (after loot 2.0)....you've gone 40+ hours and haven't reached Diablo yet?

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Macgrrl]

Diablo guarantees you a legendary the first time you kill him (after loot 2.0)....you've gone 40+ hours and haven't reached Diablo yet?

That got patched in later, it was originally the Skeleton King that had a guaranteed Legendary drop. I know my husband didn't get a legendary on Diablo the first 2 times he killed her (spoilers sweetie ;P ) since loot 2.0.

He has had a bucket of legendaries drop overall though. And at least 1 set item. I got a plans for a L21 Set the other night, not sure if they would be worth making for an alt. Given how quickly you level now, they would be replaced before I could earn the materials back. Might make them just to have them in the transmog panel.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome! Now as soon as they patch out the online server requirement, I'll pick it up immediately.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[dywolf]

^^^this.

Re:From someone who gave up on the game...

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Interesting, I have been following the d3 news but I did not know that, where did you get this info? Also you have any reliable place I can look into the mechanics of the stats for patch 2.0, most sites are out of date now.

I got to lvl 64 with just 2 hrs of play

[Modern]

I got to level 64 with just over two hours of play. I wonder if this game will have the longevity power to keep people interested. I play with friends, but refuse to forever grind the same content over and over and over ..... ad infinitum. I was pretty bored with D3 after grinding to 60. I got my paragon from 17 to 45 with just one reset and a run through of the acts after the 2.0x patch.

Re:I got to lvl 64 with just 2 hrs of play

[royler]

adventure mode looks pretty fun. i think its tailored to a better end game experience than the game had at launch or anytime before the last update before the expansion

Re:I got to lvl 64 with just 2 hrs of play

[Anonymous Coward]

"i got to 64 with just over two hours of play"

yeah, maybe if you started the expansion at 60 with a character you already had.
but if you're claiming 0-64 in two hours, then I call BS, unless you had a team of powerful friends powerleveling you through T4+ difficulty.

Path of Exile

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

Bigger Party Size is what I want!

[ninjagin]

It would be nice if they would support larger party sizes -- 6 people, maybe?
On our LAN gaming nights, we frequently have to divide up into 2 groups that can't play alongside each other.

Re:Bigger Party Size is what I want!

[Korveck]

I find the game hard to play with 4 players, especially in public games where everyone does his own things. I can't see the freeze and shocking orbs from Elites because there are too many Meteors and Blizzard and Zombie Bears clustering the screen. Low frame rate during intensive fights is already a problem for many. Having 6 in a game will just be chaos.

Re:Bigger Party Size is what I want!

[CronoCloud]

If people are throwing Blizzards and Meteors all the time, they're "DOIN IT WRONG" and probably playing at too high a difficulty.

Have you tried turning down the graphics?

Re:Bigger Party Size is what I want!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Why wouldn't someone be throwing Meteors all the time? It's an extremely effective and highly spammable spell.

Re:Bigger Party Size is what I want!

[CronoCloud]

Traditionally in an ARPG, you don't cast your powerful spells all the time, you rely on your standard attacks You use spells like Meteor on Bosses/mini-bosses/elite mooks/overwhelming numbers only.

It'd be like a wizard not upgrading his weapon in D1 and relying on a Level 1 chain Lightning and having to go back to town every minute for mana potions.

PoE $0 D3 $60 + $40

[UnknownSoldier]

I've found Path of Exile to be the spiritual successor to Diablo 2.

Diablo 3 is more polished, has way better art style (aka "Blizzard" style), and is meant for casual playing.
* http://gdcvault.com/play/10153...

However the game play is way better in Path of Exile (barring the desync, and single-threaded game) TONS of build diversity, named and colored stash tabs, way better end-game system (maps). Plus you can't beat the price. :-)

D3 on the consoles is getting better -- definitely will be checking out RoS to see in Blizzard _finally_ understands Itemization.

* http://i.imgur.com/EHEKduL.jpg

This patch makes it a better game

[Anonymous Coward]

Always enjoyed Diablo. Did not play Diablo 1. Spend about a two weeks (~160 hrs) playing D3; The first week just after release, the second last fall. I liked the second time better, the gameplay was smooth, in my opinion smoother than any of the clones.

The grind factor, however, sucked. Especially because of the auction house. This, however, seems to be fixed now. I am looking forward to another week of D3 in my next vacation.

Re:PoE $0 D3 $60 + $40

[X0563511]

So A is better than B, if you ignore the crippled engine problems? Good sell!

A new Diablo expansion?

[argStyopa]

I the people playing are both going to be delighted!

Re:PoE $0 D3 $60 + $40

[Anonymous Coward]

neither of these hold anything even close to Grim Dawn

Re:PoE $0 D3 $60 + $40

[subanark]

Not a big fan of Exiles, learn and reroll talent system that has interesting options, and flat out bad ones that require a prohibitive amount of resources to fix to the point where you are encouraged to reroll.

Never did try Diablo 3 starter

[Anonymous Coward]

ack.. i've always wanted to play the free demo but I never did get a chance to download the client. guess i should download the client soon.

graphics look cool.

Meanwhile, Path of Exiles kicks D3's butt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Path of Exiles. On Steam. Integrates with your steam account for login & purchases. Free to play! Sales are purely cosmetic, with the exception of an (unnecessary) larger stash. It's what Diablo 3 SHOULD have been!

Stash can go up to over 64,000 tabs. Most people never need more than the (free) default. Really over the top skill-tree. All classes can get any skill in the tree, can use any weapon or armor (if you have the stats from the skill tree), can use any spells. Your class just determines where you start on the skill-tree, and what your quest rewards are. Complexity is as high as you want to make it. There is no gold. Everything is traded for "currency items".

Caveats: If you don't know graph theory, that skill-tree will make you learn. My only gripe so far: To few keybindings for spell-gems. (All spells are socketed gems. Some help connected gems.)

Re:Meanwhile, Path of Exiles kicks D3's butt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except PoE sucks and is boring.

The combat is boring. The bosses are boring. The environments are boring.

Other than that, yeah, it's great....

Doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

$40 is too much. I will buy it when it comes down to $15.

And if it never comes down to $15, I guess I will have to play Path of Exile, or Torchlight, or Van Helsing, or Sacred, or any of the myriad other Diablo clones available for dirt cheap (or free) on Steam.

No Expansion for x360 users?

[James-NSC]

I just searched google, amazon and gamespot and no where can I find an expansion for the x360. Not even a commitment to release it. I found multiple references to D3 being worked on for the x1 and p4, but nothing for the 360. I haven't found confirmation yet - though with all the news on this right now, finding meaningful search results is getting arduous - but it doesn't look like x360 users are getting this expansion and if they do, it will be via the x1 - can anyone confirm?

What a great way to screw your customers, sell them a game for one system, then only make expansions available for the next gen console - which, BTFW, *requires* them to purchase the game a second time in order to play it on the new system. Making their purchase on the 360 a total waste of money in the long run.

Re:PoE $0 D3 $60 + $40

[Zalbik]

Yeah...played Exile up to the point where I realized I'd screwed up my talent tree. Then realized it would be prohibitively expensive for me to fix it. Moved on.

Yes, Diablo 3 is more casual. I like that. Strangely, I want games to be fun, not work. The minute I need to spend offline time researching how to best min/max my video game character is the minute I stop playing. Some people enjoy doing that...but I'm just not one of them.

My fave was

[Anonymous Coward]

When the assassin enters that really dark area, I think it was act 3 underground she says:

"So dark".
.
.
"Perfect"

Maps is a must try

[liwee]

I have 2 characters that are able to do maps right now and I heartily recommend everyone to give maps a try at least once. It may be true that many high level builds require unique items but the summoner build should be able to take on maps with just decent rares. fyi, all my gear are self found, no trading.

I don't buy video games any more

[msobkow]

I don't buy video games any more because I'm not interested in "always online" crap. The time I most want to play a game is when I'm visiting for a few days somewhere, which means no internet connectivity -- just my laptop and headphones.

If I want to play a game online, I'll play a game online. Otherwise shove your DRM in your anal sphincter and rotate it rapidly.

Re:I don't buy video games any more

[reikae]

Luckily there are enough offline games to last a lifetime.

New Character Class

[issicus]

For $40 I expect a new character class. a new npc doesn't do much for me. at $20 an act, that would make the original D3 $80 .

Re:New Character Class

[Macgrrl]

It's called the Crusader. I was going to link directly to the Bliz gameplay guide but was still getting the press release in my hasty search string.

Always online requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Starcraft2 required a Battle.net login, but did not have server-side code which was required for single-player to function correctly. D3 always online requirement is a deal-breaker for me. Why? Try playing the game over a satellite internet connection. 650ms-850ms constant ping. Swing a sword, wait over a full second to see the result of your mouse click actually hit what you were aiming for or if instead you get obliterated in that period of time.

I'll vote with my wallet and pass. Thanks.

I suggest anyone to try out the game again

[nhat11]

They increase drop rates of everything by a lot so gold drops like candy and legendaries you get after a few hours of gameplaying. They took out the AH and rebalance the characters and skills. They also rebalance the difficulties where even on normal you get a legendary. The game definitely doesn't play the same since release and plays great.

Re:I suggest anyone to try out the game again

[nhat11]

Also forgot to add there's a dynamic stat system so when loot drops, the stats will pertain to your class like playing as wizard, you get items that mostly drop int and related stats

Re:PoE $0 D3 $60 + $40

[UnknownSoldier]

Both D3 and P3 are good games. They have both have pros & cons.

If you unable to appreciate someone being open and honest about both games strengths and weaknesses then I humbly suggest you go back to fantasy land where negative facts are ignored.

Re: niggers are shit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a good reason. He care more that he's an insecure asshole.