With Blizzcon right around the corner, the Diablo III community is gearing up for what they are hoping is a release of new information, and hopefully a release window. A lot about Diablo III is still unknown, with only vague details given to the community via the offical Battle.net forums. The fifth and final class is yet to be anounced, the 'End Game' content - said to justify the lowered level cap of 60 - hasn't been discussed at all and of course the widespread concern for the general direction of the game has yet to be really addressed in any meaningful way.I myself am a massive Diablo II fan; I still play it to this day. While Torchlight kicked the original Diablo out of the picture entirely, and it's sequel hoping to finally kick Diablo II off of it's throne, Diablo II is still the best Hack 'n Slash money can buy. World of Warcraft used it's item and 'drip feeding' loot system to great effect, and with eight years worth of development time, Diablo III is set to claim Diablo II's title with some innovative gameplay changes. Unlike Blizzard's recent Starcraft II, which changed so little about the game, Diablo III is really changing a lot. Gone is the 'Potion Dependancy' of nearly all Hack 'n Slash titles, and in it's place a new focus on the WoW-esque 'Ability Bar', promising to deliver varied and interesting combat.Is anyone else looking forward to the Diablo III? What annoucements, if any, are you hoping to see arrive out of Blizzcon?Unfortunately, it's difficult to talk about Diablo III without mentioning the shift in tone from the previous games, as the die-hard fans - and they are legion - are rather upset about it. Instead of going into great detail, I'll simply show it in pictures:Diablo IITorchlightDiablo IIIFan Reaction:Note: The bottom of these two is the final art direction for Diablo III.Thoughts?
He is saying that SCII isn't for him.
It's also not for me but not for reasons described so far in this thread.
I am however looking forward to D3. I just hope my recently purchased computer will meet or exceed D3's recommended reqs.
-.-
He dosnt relise his pricing mechanics are all wrong. The nxt 2 wont be 60bks. There expos.....so theyll be rrp $40 to start out but nobody will pay that and find it for cheaper somewhere. And there wont be monthly subscription fees. This is not WoW.
Region restrictions are just... blah. Perhaps someone should remind Activision that online gaming is global. Hell even my Wii let's me play across borders and the online components for the Wii are weak as hell and barely supported.
Yeah, blah is putting it mildly.
Best regards,Steven.
methinks you're seriously exaggerating. look for deals. SC2 cost me $69 on release day. that's cheaper than what i was paying for master system games 20 years ago.
I know I'm bumping an old thread, but I didn't feel this deserved an entirely new thread to discuss.
As some people might know, Diablo III is now going to include an Auction House. Two, actually. One, allows people to put items on their for in-game gold. The other? Allows people to sell items for real money. No, this isn't a joke.
Despite Blizzard's known stance against people selling items for money, particularly World of Warcraft's in-game currency, it seems Blizzard has agreed with the old "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude. The benefit, of course, being that Blizzard now takes a cut of all items posted on the Auction House - both in-game gold and real money.
What are people's thoughts on this?
So far, the community reaction has been basically negative: some are optimistic that this will enable people to progress, however the major issue people have is that who in their right mind would use the Gold Auction house, when they can earn real money instead - which, essentially, kills trading for anyone unwilling to open their wallet.
Imho the big difference in stance comes from the fact that Blizzard aren't making money from subscriptions. In WoW, they wanted people to play as long as possible so it made sense to not allow people to buy characters or items. In diablo 3, the relationship is reversed. You've already paid for the main product, and every hour you spend in-game after that is a cost for Blizzard.
I don't like trading since you didn't earn the item yourself but this is a good thing.
People want great gear. People are willing to buy gear from 3rd party sites so why not take advantage of that? Now, with Blizzard as the middleman, 3rd partysites just recieved a suckerpunch
As for gold vs real money. Doesn't matter to me. I would never pay for anything in Diablo III and will only buy from the goldhouse. I'd try to sell on the real money AH though
One fansite had some really dumb people posting though. Complaining that "there's no need to play the game, just buy your gear" <--- I'm sorry, ooor actually I'm not but are you f'n retarded?? If you consider gear to be more important than the gameplay experience then....I don't know what to say!
GEARWHORES!
I'm sure D3 will be successful and have a ton of people playing it.
I just can't get passed always on, kicked out of your single player game if you DC concept. I realize that D3 is in some (significant for me) ways a fundamentally different game than D2 was.
I remember hours and hours of D2 and LOD LAN games with one of my closest friends. We'd often order pizza, crack a case of beer, and kill a weekend. We can still do that with D3 I guess, but there's something about the required connection that bothers me. Maybe its an artifact of the fact that I've spent so much of the last decade living in locations without access to the internet. I don't know. At least SC2 you could play without being connected once you registered.
I get the feeling that many early meetings around the development of D3 had conversations about how to take the success of WoW (leading to constant monthly revenue) and replicate it in D3 without making D3 a competitor of WoW. And the final answer was to monetize everything EXCEPT your ability to log in and play the game. We don't see that yet (although the money AH is certainly a first step since Blizzard gets a cut), but I expect it to be coming.
Or maybe I'm just getting old and D3 style systems are the wave of the future. Who knows.
Entirely irrelevant to me, since I don't see me ever using it, but I've got nothing against it.
As others have noted, seems a blindingly obvious add for Blizzard to squeeze some extra money out of the game throughout it's lifespan.
So Kudos to them! I guess I would only object if the players who didn't want to interact with the feature were somehow forced to interact with it, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Diablo III is the, I mean **[THE]** game for me.
I don't see the big deal about an in-game trading feature that functions using real, albeit worthless, money.
In fact, most of us have traded our own liberties for money, but yet we don't call foul in this instance?
I think our priorities, as a human race, are screwed up.
Personally, I'm pretty irate. Of all announcements on D3, this is the one that has seriously made me question how much I want to play it.
My complaint has two sides. One, I don't like always-on internet. But I can live with it. And I don't like real-money sticking its tentacles into the game world. But I can live with it.
It's the two, combined, that I have a problem with. My only desire, at its core, is to play D3 single player, never interacting with the community, the market or Blizzard/Activision's long-term business plans.
I no longer have that option. I don't have it because the game is now conceived of with a money-market in mind, from the ground up. There is no separation between the two. Whatever changes Blizzard makes to the game because of the market (be they totally justified ones or the Snidley Whiplash kind of manipulation everyone worries about), everyone gets saddled with, even people who expressly avoid the market by choice. There is now a good chance the game will get managed based not just on what's relevant to game play, but what's relevant to the market.
I don't like financial motivations with my gaming. I was talking with another friend and he was like "hell yeah, I made $400 selling items in D2, I can't wait." I could just hear the greed in his voice. That's not why I game, and I cringe when I think about the Chinese Forced Labor Farms (yes, they are real) and that Blizzard is essentially legitimizing all that, and adherence to supporting those markets may end up meaning more to them than the actual game.
So yeah, call it emo if you want. But Blizzard had plenty of opportunities to let us opt out. They chose not to because they want each and every one of us as potential customers (read as: repeat customers, because $60 just isn't enough these days.) I would care nothing if they'd allowed us to be unplugged from all the hype and extraneous BS. But because they refused, I'm now seriously considering not getting the game on principle. I love Diablo, since the first one. And I really wish Blizzard had waited for this shit until their new IP. But I know that's not being realistic. D3 is gold mine and they want to turn it into a diamond mine.
Or maybe just your's?
Actually the DC bit is a deal breaker for me, so I won't get the game. The AH stuff is irrelevant as far as I am concerned, but maybe you're right and the two are connected.
D2 is an old favorite. Spent many a happy hour.
D3 seems an entirely different game. The classes do not seem up to par. Never liked Barbarian anyways. Where is my Druid? Maybe there will be a Druid and they just haven't said. And what is this Witchdoctor? Not me, no thanks.
Well, the Demon Hunter might be exciting. But dual wielding cross bows? Lame! C'mon!
Monk is a hopeful sign. How can you screw up a monk? Wizard also looks pretty good. But what the game needs is an Engineer!
Just IMHO, Torchlight 2 will probably be a better game overall.
Or, just load up D2: LoD and install Brother Laz's free mod, Median XL Omega.
On a positive note, well there will be a decent crafting system. Crafting systems are good!
The always-online thing is a deal-breaker for me. I won't be playing Diablo 3.
The auction-house system comes as no surprise; I've been anticipating them to announce such a system. Blizzard always had a love/hate relationship with cheaters in Diablo 2; on the one hand they gave the game a shady and unscrupulous dark side, but on the other hand these were some of their best customers, loyally repurchasing the game after every "mass ban" (which were always infrequent enough to give cheaters enough time to turn a handsome profit). Adopting a system that brings legitimacy to these formerly shady operations while still allowing Blizzard to monetize makes a lot of sense. Whether this will be good for the community is another question entirely, but it's a no-brainer from Blizzard's perspective.
The DRM alone made it go from sale to no sale.
Not surprised by anything else.
Only things really bugging me is no mods and constant internet connection...
I was on the fence about the game but now I won't be buying it.
Region locking, online play only, no single player campaign, auction houses that legitimize Chinese goldfarmers, pay to win structure, no mods, etc.
DiabWow/Blizzard has jumped the shark.
People can laugh at me all they want but I'm sticking with Torchlight II.
No region locking, offline play is fine as well as Lan play and online play, single player is fine, no auction houses/pay to win, very mod friendly, etc. Also less than half the price of DiabWow.
Made by the guys who made Diablo I and II, these guys still "get it."
I tried to get worked up about the auction house thing, and really couldn't do it. It's not a PvP game, so there's no real competitive issue. It's also something that's ALWAYS happened no matter what they do about it.
If they're running it, people have a place to buy stuff that won't infect their computers with malware. They won't get hit by credit card scams. A lot of shady stuff goes on to power the gold/item selling market. Blizzard's dealing a huge blow to that market in the only way that'll ever actually work: giving the buyers a better option.
The efforts to curtail this stuff are usually wrongheaded and pointless because they ban sellers and such. That never works. The war on drugs in reality is the ultimate proof of that. If you have buyers, sellers will find a way to provide the product. By taking the buyers away and redirecting them to an official market, you force the sellers to go to the same place and a lot of problems vanish. Plus I can throw up an item if I don't want it.
I don't plan on buying anything on it, but it's a pretty good plan to solve a lot of problems.
This was a game I was near assured to get. But Diablo III's online restriction is even worse than Civ5 and steam. It's all going to shit! After passing on Civ5 I thought E:WOM would fill the bill. But that's not working out. Then I thought... finally Diablo III's coming out. Based on the first 2 I figured the new one would be a good bet. But they went and monetized it to death. For me anyway. Must be online to play the AI!?! No thanks!
I never used to give much credence to the gaming analysts who'd say that PC Gaming was in decline. But its hit rock bottom for me. I've officially lost all interest in new games. Lucky for me I missed out on all the wonders during the golden years. Just today I bought Heroes of Might and Magic 1-4 + Chronicles. And the Might and Magic RPGs 1-8. 13 quality games + 7 expansions for a price which is about $10 less than 1 new game. And no DRM (from GOG.com)! I've still yet to play much Alpha Centauri, Free Space 2, Port Royale 2, Conquest of the New World, The Witcher EE, Temple of Elemental Evil, Fallout 2 & 3, Patrician 3, and Master of Magic. Then there are the Age of Wonders mods. And aaaaalll the greats I've yet to get. The list is looooong. Then there are the emerging indies! Screw the publishers. GOG set me free of those bastards!!!
PC gaming is only in decline if you buy into the "Steam is evil" BS. For the vast majority of people who don't have that problem, things are pretty good.
Also, Civ 5 works fine offline. There is no "online restriction".
I never said Civ5 didn't work offline. Though everytime I check the steam forums, I find threads where new people bring up the now old "I set offline mode but it doesn't stick" problem.
Forget steam dude. Think E:WOM. Think Civ4 at release. Think Civ3 when Atari sold to 2k. Think Dragon Age. Think a whole lot of games turned to cash cow crap. Or studios that just fumble like Stardock did. Or fucked up publishers like 2k and ea. And on and on. The decline of PC gaming in my mind, and on the minds of others I see, goes well beyond the control freaking of steam. And of the publishers who crave the user data that steam mines.
It's all over the industry. steam might help push them in a direction since steam has such a chunk of the sellers market. Their horseshit focus groups and the fracking attitude of "go big or go home". There's much more to the decline than a dwindling steam. And wtf? I thought you Tridus were smarter than to pull the "evil steam" horseshitted strawman. You've got a mind. You gotta know that crying "evil steam" in a discussion has no worth!?
Oh I dunno, go back a year on this very forum and there was a 20 page thread whining about Steam. I had to make a second Civ 5 thread so that there was one actually about the game because the Steam whinage was so strong it totally took over the first one.
And what do bad games have to do with things? There's always been buggy releases. There's always been bad releases. WoM isn't an example of the decline of PC gaming. It's an example of Stardock not having a clue what it was doing when it tried to make a 3d graphics engine. That's hardly new in the industry. I notice you specifically mentioned The Witcher EE as one of your "good" games, but you do realize it's the second version of that game because the first one was a buggy mess, right? That they cleaned it up and then made a much more polished (and still highly entertaining) sequel doesn't speak to me about the decline of PC gaming. Normally we call that an improvement.
Steam integration gives me one account and one friends list for all (well, most) of my games instead of the old method of having 80 accounts scattered all over the place. That's a good thing. The always online stuff has its annoyances but it also enables the battle.net social features that a few million people are enjoying. Just wait until they get Call of Duty integrated into that (and they will). With CoD, WoW, SC2, and Diablo 3 all on one network? Give it another couple of years and you won't see games trying to do their own thing on this anymore when they can instead integrate into one of a handful of big networks.
As for Diablo 3 monetization... no it's not. Drops play exactly the same way as they did in Diablo 1 and 2, except now lazy people can pay to get their items from other players instead of paying someone in the shadowy corners of the net or using a hacking tool that may or may not rootkit their computer. It's just facing reality: this happens if we want it to or not, so we might as well make it safe for the people who are doing it.
PC gaming is changing, like it always has been. Calling that "dying" is the online equivalent of running around telling kids to get off your lawn. It's actually stronger today then it's been in quite a while.
(There's also a certain amount of nostalgia tinted glasses being used here. The constant praise heaped on MoM on the Elemental forum gets over the top for a game that if it was released today instead of when it was would be blasted for terrible AI.)
Ya, pc gaming iv thriving. Maybe it's not the development you wanted, but the market did, and the developers did.
Frankly, old games are overrated. I go back and play some classic like Half-life or FF7. And you know what? They're not that good! I probably wouldn't even play them if they were released today. I think some people tend to idolize retro games and disregard advances made in new games. A lot of people are getting older and just not getting the rush they do any more from gaming. All they remember is that rush when they played that old game. But at the end of the day, you've changed as much as games have. Truth be told, if I played a game like Bulletstorm or Civ5 15 years ago, my mind would literally be blown. And yet, these games which are soooo much better than retro titles such as Civ or Quake somehow end up on my shitlist? I don't think so.
Complain all you want about where pc gaming is heading. I couldn't be happier.
Oh... Settlers and Dungeon Keeper. Those were pretty much the highlight of my rts life. And when I played them just recently, it was just painful.
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