Actually, I agree. I forgot about Vampires: The Masqurade--Bloodlines (its full offical title, I think). I liked that game a whole lot, and it was one of the (relatively) few games I even finished. (Then again, I finished Titan Quest even though I despised it. Don't ask me why, I couldn't say.) As I recall, and it's been a few years, there was a moderate twitch factor in Vampires (not surprising when the engine was based on that of Half Life II, IIRC), though it did not completely dominate over character stats. That was my major gripe about Oblivion--although it had a lot of RPG-like stats, it was really a melee FPS and the ability to press keys quickly mattered far more than your character stats. So I guess there are a lot of elements that go to determining whether or not a game is a good RPG and my statement may have been a little too categorial (again, it is just my personal opinion). It helped that Vampires had a terrific plot (unlike Oblivion, where the main plot was utterly banal, generic, and uninteresting); I still remember the Vampires quest that required you to explore a haunted, abandoned hotel--it was utterly brilliant. In general, though, I still prefer RPG combat that is either turn based (like the original Fallouts) or can be easily paused to issue orders (like Baldur's Gate and KOTOR).

I will play Diablo 3 with much enthusiasm...when it is finally released Q4 2013.

Interesting Fun Fact: One of the lead artist on the D3 team was once a fellow Stardockian, doing most of the in-game GC1 cutscenes and modeling the original alien portraits. IIRC, the male Altarian was actually a self-portrait to learn how to model the human head (sans the fancy glowing face tatoos) 

And yes, we've known about the game for some time   Sorry guys.

Don't you mean dis-improvement? From decent macro level gameplay (except for casters, who were micro hell) to an even worse micro small group focus... bleh!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to finding out what happened to the world of Sanctuary after the destruction of the Worldstone, big time!

Or maybe the barbarian is just the same barbarian from D2

Witch doctors seem to be a replacement for the necromancer. Unfortunate since necros were my favorite class in D2.

Blizz said WD doesn't replace Necro but then their promises are rather vague... as is their support for stuff.

And concerning Barbarian, i forgot to mention i meant the skills. Didn't Blizzard say that the skills are redone?

More like a mix of the druid and the necro.

I didn't see the witch doctor transforming into a bear though

The only thing that disappoints me is that we have to wait 1-2 more years til it's release :>

Classic RPG's are really a niche market and I feel a similar way about flight simulations (combat ones). These games usually take more time to make while also having a smaller amount of people that enjoy them.

There is room for both action RPG's and classic ones and maybe one day a big company will take up the torch again. For now I think we have to keep our eyes open for small independent games of this nature.

Unfortunately gaming is similar to Hollywood in many respects now. Though this doesn't mean there aren't cool things going on out there.

Yeah, this must be it. I guess if people started spreading the word that Shack Fu was th e best people would start playing it.

The sad part about this is they may well be released about the same time - but at least Stardock says up front GC3 is several years away. If we see D3 before June 2010, I'll be pretty surprized, despite the fact they officially announced the game and had a fairly involved demo video.

Wait your saying that because Blizzard is a compuuter company they dont have "fanboys"?
I personally think that D3 will be an amazing game but this is coming from a total blizzard fanboy. I have played every game Blizzard since the original warcraft oncluding wow for a while. Blizzard has created some of the most memorable charcters, worlds, and stories that have ever been told through gaming or any entertainment medium.   

Well, by saying that Blizzard doesn't have any "fanboys", I meant the kind that blindly follows and defends a company without really looking at it critically. Console fanboys is what I had in mind. That's also the connotation that I got from his post up there when he claims that Blizzard's games are only held in high esteem because of the "fanboys". I took his comment to mean that Blizzard fans must be blind and have the lowest standards in order to consider Blizzard games to be good; no offense to those who are actually blind.

Like maudlin said, Blizzard does have fans and loyal customers, which is due to the quality of their games. I've also enjoyed Bioware's games too. Blizzard and Bioware are two developers that have consistently delivered a quality end product, in my opinion.

I also remembered that Blizzard also knows how to cater to their fans ala Level 70/80 Tauren Chieftain.

Gamespot says it Diablo 3 releases 12/31/08.
Don't know how much credit that can stand on, but we will see.



If it isn't broken, don't fix it.