Diablo 3

[Finnien]

In the little southern California nerd subculture I primarily dwell in, Diablo 3 is basically heralded as something akin to Gamer's Rapture, where divine videogameness touches mortal hands. People are taking vacations, setting up LANs, and stocking up on enough Mountain Dew to kill an NFL football team. In other words, it's gonna be big.

That being said, in theory, behind the shiny loot and the stabby stabby, it's a multiplayer game. I'm curious about a number of things. Who plans on playing, what do you plan on playing as, do you have any elaborate plans for the game's release, and do the Diablo fans within the community here wish to exchange battle.net tags to add some (hopefully) non-braindead contacts with similar interests to dungeon-romp with? I assume we all have our own pool of friends that plan on playing, but more contacts doesn't hurt, if the community here thinks it's a good idea.

[digs]

I've got mine on order! I only played Diablo briefly and never played Diablo II, but I'm quite excited. Got a bunch of friends who'll be playing too. I'm looking at playing a monk, but after watching the class videos on the website barbarian looks really cool too. I'm sure I'll end up playing everything.

[Finnien]

Monk is, from what I could determine, the most synergistic class - it plays best with others. It lacks the massive toolbox of AE skills someone like the Wizard possesses, but has buffs, heals, auras, debuffs - good stuff for group Inferno play. Every class has a little bit of group synergy, but Monk definitely is the card-carrying pro at it. I'm thinking a monk will be my second class, after a wizard - although Barbarian certainly has that whole hulk-smash thing going for it...

[Finnien]

Oh, by the way digs, BattleTag: Finnien#1846. Look me up when it goes live.

[wonkishere]

I'm going to get the game. I'm not really sure which class I'll focus on to begin with, but I tend to enjoy playing either healers or squishy damage dealing types (direct damage casters) a lot.

If anyone would like to exchange tags and play with me later I'd be glad to do so.

[wonkishere]

I got Diablo 3 and downloaded. I actually haven't played many computer games in awhile, but I used to and I thought I'd check it out.

To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed. There's no skill system in it at all. There is literally no difference at all between one characters mage and another. I suppose the skill system last time around was repetitive but I liked it. We'll see if it grows on me.

[Finnien]

I've found a pretty solid depth of skill differentiation depending on how you build and play, though some of that disappears at the highest difficulty, until they make some tweaks. But for wizards, there are 2h slow heavy hitters or wand/crit users, there are blizzard/hydra kiters or arcane orbers, there are signature spell users and people who just use ap-on-crit effects. What skills you select determine the gear you go after, your play style, etc. The system, however, does not commit you to something, so if new gear comes out, or a skill is nerfed, you can change without relevelling. It's essentially a very basic talent system with infinite respeccing.

That being said, if anyone else is playing, I've got more items and gold than is good for me, so I'm happy to help out lower/newer players.

[Mangara]

Not sure if I want to try this out or not! I became quite addicted to WoW! How does it play?

[wonkishere]

It's a very fast game, there isn't really a 'crafting' system as such. You cant put gemstones in items and such, but its very simple and doesn't require a lot of time. It's closer to being arcade action than being an mmo like World of Warcraft.

You can't make any mistakes when building your character, and you don't hany choices to make as far as which skills you learn; you do get lots of different skills to try, but you can change them as you play.

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

One word: Disappointment.


For one reason: ONLINE accounts only! What happens if you lose your internet connection?



Blizzard, Diablo II was the last good game you ever made. You sold out with WoW and the trend seems to have continued into the Diablo universe. It's a crime and shame that you don't seem to be willing to do real single player anymore.

[Rahl Windsong]

Originally Posted by Karn Maeshalanadae

One word: Disappointment.


For one reason: ONLINE accounts only! What happens if you lose your internet connection?



Blizzard, Diablo II was the last good game you ever made. You sold out with WoW and the trend seems to have continued into the Diablo universe. It's a crime and shame that you don't seem to be willing to do real single player anymore.

Totally agree with you... big huge dissappointment. In fact I saw an interview with the lead designer of D3, Mr. Jay Wilson, and he stated that he would rather have a game that is perfectly executed then a game that has innovative and new gameplay aspects. With Mr. Wilson at the helm it is painfully obvious that D3 was doomed from the get go...

so sad....but definetly true.

Here is a link to that interview...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrli-by8oOU

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Yeah...I saw that interview and wish that I never had.


I would have far preferred it to be more like its predecessor, but I suppose that Blizzard will never make a good game again.

[Dozmonic]

They do seem pretty doomed at the moment. The hate directed towards Jay Wilson on the blizzard forums is pretty intense. The game has been a massive let down. Don't get me wrong, I got a good amount of play time out of it. But it's part of the diablo franchise and I expected that level of quality and longevity. As it stands, torchlight 2 is probably going to be a better gaming experience.

[Rahl Windsong]

The really sad part about the whole thing is that shortly after Diablo 2's last expansion shipped, work started on Diablo 3 by the Blizzard North team. That team was dissmantled and closed a year or two later and from what I uderstand they were making Diablo 3 an MMO. It had tons of innovative new ideas and probably would have been the next big MMO for Blizzard to take over that market with again for the next 5 to 10 years.

Then when the current Dev team took it over the only part of it they kept was the Auction House, which in my oppinion is the reason D3 is such a poor game. How could any game designer think it is a good idea in an action RPG to be able to buy your way to victory? The whole idea behind an ARPG is to be able to find the gear, buying feels like I am cheating and I may as well just dupe gear and make items that are completely over powered.

Also with no open world PvP the whole game is a complete flop and a waste of any ARPG'ers time.

[Dozmonic]

The auction house could have worked, but the potential higher end drops were so massively superior to anything you'd find at your own level that it just fell apart. You had no incentive to farm anything but gold, unless you were the upper 1% farming siegebreaker and the like before the nerf.

Any RPG of any type where death is meaningless is going to suffer. The only way to keep them going is through constant content and a strong social aspect - neither of which d3 have (whereas WoW has content added and has a good social interface).

Edit: Darkfall Unholy Wars should launch in 3 days, now THAT is a game where death has meaning :-)