Diablo III

[grs]

Ok, I bought the game now and after all the panic yesterday, it seems to run fine now. My battle tag is still the same as in the beta: Grookshank#2527. Just a small reminder: You can freely select the region (Europe, America, Asia) now, but your characters are stored on the reason you created them. Long story short: Select the region in the option before(!) logging in else you might end up on the wrong one.

[Shabbaman]

Diawhat?

[BCLG100]

Sayhuh?

[akots]

There is no review on gamespot or ign and the meta scores are around 7.5, so I presume this did not go well.

[ProPain]

Bought it at release, and was able to play a whopping 1,5 hours during the first 24 hours, due to the server being overloaded. That seems fixed now.

Dunno about the review scores but I think it's a good game. Not so sure what will happen when the real money auction house goes live though. Still I wasn't planning on buying the game beforehand but the open beta changed my mind. The story and pacing of the game will keep you hooked, like D2 did.

And I read somewhere D2 didnt get raving reviews at release either but a lot of people regard that as the best in the genre still.

[grs]

Originally Posted by akots

There is no review on gamespot or ign and the meta scores are around 7.5, so I presume this did not go well.

From my pov the game is really nice. Most negatives I saw are about technical stuff from the launch that has more or less been sorted out already. I played about 6 hours yesterday without any problems. The game is really nice if you want to play Diablo. Many complaints are about people expecting the game to be a different one, but it is a pure Diablo game = hack&slash. If that is your game, this is the one to go for imho. If you expect strategical combat and mmo-like storylines, it is not.

[akots]

I would prefer it to be a little bit less, ahem, mindless. At least some element got to be there, otherwise, it turns into a clone of itself or torchlight/fate. I really liked fate for about 3-4 days and it has some limited planning element which as I understand, D3 lack because it was removed at some point of development due to "overcomplexity". I relalize that to appeal to masses of general public, the game has to be quite simple. However, WC3 is not a simple game to master at all on higher difficulty settings and requires some careful planning. WC3 though is an RTS in its essence.

[ProPain]

All diablo's always have been simple hack and slash games. With the removal of skill point assigning, Diablo III is even more simple than D1 & D2 from a strategical POV. Personally I dont mind, if I want something more strategical I play SC or Civ. Gonna buy TL2 as well, I really liked TL1 and for 19$ you really cant go wrong imo.

I don't quite understand why you compare D3 to WC3. WC3 is an RTS game, D3 is not. Comparing WC3 to SC2 would be a better option imo. I didnt really like WC3, to much micro for me, it drove me insane. But my micro has improved a lot since then (from non-existent to poor) so maybe I should retry it sometime.

I do think the micro, creeper camps and items make WC3 one of the more strategical RTS's out there. Maybe that is the reason it never reached the popularity SC got, or SC2 for that matter. I fear WC3 will be most known for spawning the MOBA genre through DOTA and popularising the tower defense genre with it's heap of TD mods.

[akots]

Uh-oh, I think you severely underestimate the popularity of WC3. That is a very popular game even now. MP servers are busy-busy at all times, there are a lot of kids out there still playing with the mods and they like it. My younger son is a huge fan and is playing since he is 11 up to this moment when he is 17. Modding community is very active as well. Now, it is basically freeware with copy protection removed which adds to popularity.

D2 was actually quite reasonable and required some occasional thinking. I don't see this coming to D3.

Torchlight 2 might be better. It is usually a brand (fates, t1) with very polished products, essentially bug-free and not a resource hogs with nice dynamic play and excellent graphics even now, 6 years after the original fate. As to the replayability value, that is supposed to be low anyhow for this type of games. So, I'd give it 5-6 days. But I'm not buying D3.

[akots]

Originally Posted by ProPain

... With the removal of skill point assigning, Diablo III is even more simple than D1 & D2 from a strategical POV. Personally I dont mind ...

That is a very clear statement. I laughed for about 5 minutes non-stop and completely second this line of thinking when it comes to movies. These are expected to be a one-shot thing, you watch and forget that thing existed ever forever. But that would be 7-9 dollars.

I still expect something better for 60 bucks.