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[Mizhara]

Always-On DRM. Nothankyou, assholes. That does not belong in a game purported to have a singleplayer option. Force that god damn real money auction house on other people that way, I'll wait until Uncle Bay the Pirate can lend it to me.

[Mizhara]

Judging from the anguished cries and howls on my Steam friendslist, it's not even 'always on' it'd seem.

[Bacchanalian]

WAT GIES A GAME THAT BROKE EVERY ONLINE PREORDER RECORD IN EXISTENCE ISN'T FUNCTIONING FLAWLESSLY LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER LAUNCH WAT I DON'T EVEN

Seriously, the fact that this is remotely surprising to anyone a) acquainted with Blizzard in the last 10 years or b) acquainted with any online game release in the history of online gaming is the only surprise to me.

[Mizhara]

Definitely true, of course. It is a bit surprising that no one ever seems to learn on the dev's side, though. Blizzard has released a ton of games using Bnet by now and they shouldn't be taken with their pants down every damn time. Releasing a big title? Haul out every damn backup server and call in every favor you can from every damn ISP out there. There'll be some major data traffic going on, both on the login and game servers. This is not news.

So yes, while the gamers really shouldn't be surprised, neither should the devs at this point.

[Valadeus]

It's kind of upsetting how terribly the launch went for D3. Blizzard used to be such a strong company in terms of product quality and customer service. Right around the end of Wrath of the Lich King from World of Warcraft, and with the merge with Activision, things have apparently gone down hill for them.

I fully understand the development side and the demands on a network for this kind of thing, but this has become a repetitive issue for Blizzard lately. A few troubles here and there is completely understandable, but when those troubles become a repetitive issue, something should be addressed. Blizzard used to be on top of these kinds of things.

[GoGo Yubari]

WAT GIES A GAME THAT BROKE EVERY ONLINE PREORDER RECORD IN EXISTENCE ISN'T FUNCTIONING FLAWLESSLY LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER LAUNCH WAT I DON'T EVEN

Seriously, the fact that this is remotely surprising to anyone a) acquainted with Blizzard in the last 10 years or b) acquainted with any online game release in the history of online gaming is the only surprise to me.

Well....

It's kind of a single player game - is many people's argument.

My own beef is more about not getting it to work (install) at all.

[Mizhara]

WAT GIES A GAME THAT BROKE EVERY ONLINE PREORDER RECORD IN EXISTENCE ISN'T FUNCTIONING FLAWLESSLY LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER LAUNCH WAT I DON'T EVEN

Seriously, the fact that this is remotely surprising to anyone a) acquainted with Blizzard in the last 10 years or b) acquainted with any online game release in the history of online gaming is the only surprise to me.

Well....

It's kind of a single player game - is many people's argument.

Don't say that anywhere else. The horde of raging howlermonkeys on crack will come down on you with a vengeance. Apparently playing any of the Diablo games singleplayer is some sort of massive sin. I personally hold the same viewpoint and would actually have paid for the damn thing if the singleplayer was offline enabled, but Blizz is hellbent on pushing that auction house on everyone.

Then again, right now I'm kind of glad I've saved that money. Friends of mine I spent a lot of time with in D2:LOD are furious. Apparently Blizzard managed (somehow, personally I can't even contemplate the concept without my brain herniating) to dumb down the game. There's no stat management, no skilltrees or anything. Every level whatever of whatever class will be -exactly- the same except for gear. No skilltrees, nothing. There'll be no Blizz Sorcs, no Summonmancers, no Hammerdins or Zealadins, Javazons or anything. Every character of the same class and level will be perfectly similar.

If that's not fucking retarded, I don't know what is.

[Desiderya]

There's no stat management, no skilltrees or anything. Every level whatever of whatever class will be -exactly- the same except for gear. No skilltrees, nothing. There'll be no Blizz Sorcs, no Summonmancers, no Hammerdins or Zealadins, Javazons or anything. Every character of the same class and level will be perfectly similar.

The point in time when I learned that about the game was the exact point when I lost any interest I had. And since I've played the crap out of D2, that means it was not a tiny amount of interest.

[BloodBird]

WAT GIES A GAME THAT BROKE EVERY ONLINE PREORDER RECORD IN EXISTENCE ISN'T FUNCTIONING FLAWLESSLY LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER LAUNCH WAT I DON'T EVEN

Seriously, the fact that this is remotely surprising to anyone a) acquainted with Blizzard in the last 10 years or b) acquainted with any online game release in the history of online gaming is the only surprise to me.

Well....

It's kind of a single player game - is many people's argument.

Don't say that anywhere else. The horde of raging howlermonkeys on crack will come down on you with a vengeance. Apparently playing any of the Diablo games singleplayer is some sort of massive sin. I personally hold the same viewpoint and would actually have paid for the damn thing if the singleplayer was offline enabled, but Blizz is hellbent on pushing that auction house on everyone.

Then again, right now I'm kind of glad I've saved that money. Friends of mine I spent a lot of time with in D2:LOD are furious. Apparently Blizzard managed (somehow, personally I can't even contemplate the concept without my brain herniating) to dumb down the game. There's no stat management, no skilltrees or anything. Every level whatever of whatever class will be -exactly- the same except for gear. No skilltrees, nothing. There'll be no Blizz Sorcs, no Summonmancers, no Hammerdins or Zealadins, Javazons or anything. Every character of the same class and level will be perfectly similar.

If that's not fucking retarded, I don't know what is.

The only think that surprises me about this, is the fact that I found this surprising. How fucking retarded am I?

Dunno, but apparently it's pretty bad. I liked Diablo I allot because it was simplistic, easy to get into, entertaining, but hard. Dear god was it hard. I often ended up playing through half of the game then hitting a wall of hard mobs that I simply could not beat. Then re-start with that toon half-way done and do it again, JUST TO BE ABLE TO FINISH THE DAMN GAME AT ALL. Hilariously sad fact; I never actually did. I never once beat Diablo I.

Then came Diablo II and I was ecstatic. It was more of the same, the kind of game people could get into easily but not easily beat, though it was markedly easier than the first one. I did actually beat it, too. LOD as well. It was entertaining, and the variety of characters, play-styles and customizations able to you was very impressive - I could take a toon and play the game exactly however I wanted it. My only regret is that I was late out and at the time I had questionable internet access at best. So very little online play for me.

And now we have Diablo III, and I pretty much swore I'd never touch this shit.

Where do I start... oh yeah, the whole "Diablo FUCKING NUMBER 3" thingy. Diablo who? Oh yeah, that guy I killed in Diablo II, who is pretty much perma-dead, along with his fail-brothers, who also happen to be perma-dead. And now they make another game named the same. Right, so they either ride on a known game-name, ret-con the end of Diablo II, or whatever.

Then there is the pay-to-fucking-win issue with the auction-house where you keep paying real money for digital items to make you bigger, better badder. Gone are the the joy of beating the game or others fair and square - you can now enjoy losing to people who are not better than you, no - they prioritize their finances different from than you. Or just have more money than brains, alternatively. No thanks.

And if those two were not bad enough, now we got this, and another horribly Blizzard game launch. They never seem to fucking learn, do they?

I actually enjoyed WoW, when I played it. I honestly enjoyed kicking ass and having fun with RL friends, shoving frail-looking but well-armored Paladin-power Draenei hooves into the crouch-sections of Orcs, Trolls and Fucking Tauren everywhere, and to this day I miss that wonderful, fun race.

But I don't miss WoW. I don't miss the pathetic, simplified, brain-dead requires-no-skill game-play they introduced, and I don't miss their constant fucking around with classes, to the point where they made Warriors , perhaps my Number 1 favorite class, entirely obsolete. I will not miss Diablo III, and right now I'll spend the rest of the day wondering why the hell I did not see this failure coming. I knew it was going to be bad, but somewhere I still had a little faith Blizzard were going to make an interesting, challenging game. How very fucking stupid of me.

[Mizhara]

Further interrogation of those friends also reveal that death is apparently not problematic anymore. While death at a boss used to mean a VERY dangerous corpse-run and subsequent Benny Hill sequence while sorting out loot and gear, now it just means that you respawn with your gold and gear at the latest 'checkpoint'. That's right ladies and gentlemen, we have the equivalent of a pre-boss autosave. Apparently your gear takes a durability hit, but that's seemingly it.

This went from 'kind of special' to 'anancephaly' in no time.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Just a few notes: I am very much enjoying the game so far.  Its a lot of fun to play.

Addressing some of the criticisms.  There is no real excuse for the server issues that they've been having.  I 100% understand and support the decision to put the game online only (I haven't played Diablo offline since Diablo 1), as this is going to keep botters, hackers, and other forms of cheaters out.  The RMAH is Blizzard addressing the fact that this sort of thing was going to come up anyways, since sites like D2jsp and such are out there, and they want to provide a legal, and safe way to spend money on the game.  This also makes sure they get a cut of the action, of course.  As a friend of mine yesterday put it, "Why yes, I want to give my credit card number to a company that is already in business doing something illegal, of course!"

There's no stat management, no skilltrees or anything. Every level whatever of whatever class will be -exactly- the same except for gear. No skilltrees, nothing. There'll be no Blizz Sorcs, no Summonmancers, no Hammerdins or Zealadins, Javazons or anything. Every character of the same class and level will be perfectly similar.

This is incredibly wrong.  You have access to all the powers you can get at a certain level, sure, but you can only pick six of them at a time, and all of them are customizable to the point of basically becoming new powers through the rune system.  As to stats management... well, if you think that there was stats management in Diablo II, I don't know what to tell you.  The stat layout for -every class- was 'Enough Strength and Dex to use your gear, everything else into Vitality.  Energy? Pssht.'

Mostly, what I am enjoying is the experimentation I get to do, figuring out how everything works.  I am playing a Wizard, and I switch up my build every time I play, working with new powers to see how they work together, figuring out what runes seem to work well with what style of play.  Best of all, I havent had to make a brand new character and go through 8 hours of gameplay to test each of them out.  Its incredibly satisfying to the vidyagame scientist in me.

[Desiderya]

This is incredibly wrong.  You have access to all the powers you can get at a certain level, sure, but you can only pick six of them at a time, and all of them are customizable to the point of basically becoming new powers through the rune system.

This is actually good to hear.

[Mizhara]

There's no stat management, no skilltrees or anything. Every level whatever of whatever class will be -exactly- the same except for gear. No skilltrees, nothing. There'll be no Blizz Sorcs, no Summonmancers, no Hammerdins or Zealadins, Javazons or anything. Every character of the same class and level will be perfectly similar.

This is incredibly wrong.  You have access to all the powers you can get at a certain level, sure, but you can only pick six of them at a time, and all of them are customizable to the point of basically becoming new powers through the rune system.  As to stats management... well, if you think that there was stats management in Diablo II, I don't know what to tell you.  The stat layout for -every class- was 'Enough Strength and Dex to use your gear, everything else into Vitality.  Energy? Pssht.'

Mostly, what I am enjoying is the experimentation I get to do, figuring out how everything works.  I am playing a Wizard, and I switch up my build every time I play, working with new powers to see how they work together, figuring out what runes seem to work well with what style of play.  Best of all, I havent had to make a brand new character and go through 8 hours of gameplay to test each of them out.  Its incredibly satisfying to the vidyagame scientist in me.

Ran this by my friends. Turns out, I'm actually right. Yes, you can only pick so and so many of them at a time, but it takes less than five seconds to switch out a skill and choose the rune for it, so it's pretty much no different from Diablo 2 in that regard. Secondly, there being no skilltrees mean that any level 30 whatever will have access to the exact same skills and runes that any other level 30 of the same class does. So in other words, no difference between characters. Dumbed down into retardation.

Secondly, the stat layout for different classes was far more variable than 'enough Str and Dex to use your gear and everything else in Vit' depending on your chosen class. That and your support for the always-online DRM for singleplayer makes no sense. What the hell does it matter to you or Blizzard if singleplayer people use cheats? Having to log on for multiplayer makes perfect sense, but there's no point in punishing singleplayer people with laggy servers and shitty login problems. Worse yet, taking away their game when the ISP decides to derp.

There's no excuse for the always-on DRM and there's no excuse for dumbing down the game into retardation. If there's such great problems with people screwing up a charbuild, set up some gold-chewing NPC that'll let you retrain if you pull your pants down and endure a stormy ride for a while.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Yeah.  Basically, the first rune you get for a power will almost always be "That power, +1", because Blizzard really wants you to use the rune system whenever you have it available. Other runes will then change the way that power works on a fundamental level.

Lets take the first power a monk has access to (Fists of Thunder), for instance (I am doing this because I haven't actually played a monk yet).
At base, the power does an incredibly fast attack that does 110% of your weapon damage, and every third attack does a limited AOE that knocks enemies back.

The runes that you can pick for this, and the level you get them at, are:
Thunderclap: Teleport to the target, and unleash an electric shockwave with each attack that does 35% weapon damage to all enemies within 6 yards in front of you: Level 6

Lightning Flash:  Increases your chance to dodge by 12% for 2 seconds (presumably with each attack): Level 14

Static Charge: Your primary target is charged with static electricity and takes 35% weapon damage whenever you attack a different enemy with Fists of Thunder: Level 30

Quickening: Critical hits generate an additional 15 spirit: Level 42

Bounding Light: Every third strike releases chain lightning instead of a shockwave.  Each lightning strike does 73% weapon damage as lightning: Level 52

That is one power.  The most basic power you get, in fact, and even with that there is an incredible amount of customization.  Some runes will work for some runes, and some will work for others.

And if you want to experiment, you don't have to reroll an entirely new character to figure out how Bounding Light works.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Miz, it's not dumbed down into retardation.  I said you have access to everything, and you do, but that doesnt mean you can USE everything all the time, or that every combination of skills is going to work with the exact same efficiency.  If I make a build that is entirely AoE focused, Im not going to be able to deal with bosses that well.  And yes, I can just switch out to something that does deal with bosses, but the Nephilim's Valor buff you start getting at Level 60 rewards you for sticking with your build and going through an act.  I don't think you're going to see as many Cookie Cutter builds as you did in Diablo II, and most importantly, you don't end up rerolling because you accidently stuck a point into bone shield or something.

Really, all I can suggest is trying it.  If you arent willing to do that because of the always online thing, that's okay too.

However, I understand the logic behind going online.  The reason why Diablo II ended up getting so inundated with Stones of Jordan and other high-value supposedly ultra rare items was because people were using the fact that so much was handled by the client-side of the architecture that it was very, very easy to cheat.  The fact that things are handled server side is making it much harder to cheat, but it requires that the client be connected to the server.  THis has its upsides and its downsides.  Personally, the downsides do not outweigh the upsides.