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[Mizhara]

You really don't get it, do you? It's already been stated, repeatedly: No one minds having to log on for fucking multiplayer. Forcing SINGLEPLAYER to have to log on to Battlenet is absolutely fucking retarded and serves absolutely no purpose. Who cares if a singleplayer character carries around fifteen Shakos and sprays a hundred SoJ when they sneeze? It affects no one but themselves. (Besides, you didn't need to cheat for any of those. Bugging Mephisto solo or on an mp server (or just straight up bitchslapping him) took less than two-three minutes. A single day and you had several SoJ and almost anything else you wanted.)

And yes, it's dumbed down into retardation if you get every last skill and every last rune handed to you for free. No choices, no trees, no nothing. That is -very- dumbed down. It doesn't matter if there's a thousand different combinations of skills and runes when they're handed to you for free and you don't have to sacrifice anything to get it. It's about strengths and weaknesses. You are given ALL the strengths and none of the weaknesses. Get killed by a boss because you're AoE? Herpaderp, respawn right outside the boss chamber and reset skills to whatever is your class' singletarget roflstomp. Reset to AoE and go lulz around the rest of the map afterwards. Dumbed... the... fuck... down...

No balancing your build so you can do it all or make yourself excellent at something and terribad at something else. No thought going into builds and stat allocation. No CHOICES. Doesn't matter if you have to set some skills and not get -immediate- access to the rest when there's absolutely nothing stopping you from just spending ten seconds setting up a new set of skills + runes.

Diablo 2 was nowhere near perfect with it's skilltree system and it's stat allocations. The respecc option introduced once Blizz had played around with the same skilltree system in WoW for a while fixed some of it. The rest has come along in various games over the years through simple balancing and so on. Hell, even the Rune system in D3 is a very welcome addition.

Complete removal of skilltrees, stats and fucking options? Retarded. Dumbed down into retardation.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

You aren't having options removed, though.  You have more options.   This is a good thing.  Diablo II would be the same thing if they did the smart idea and had you have fairly easy respecs.  The way they handled it even when they finally added them was that you had three over the entire course of your characters career.  This helped a lot, don't get me wrong, but it still meant that you had the risk of having to trash an entire character because you accidently misclicked or misread bonespear for bone armor or something stupid like that on your third and final go.

You have a point with the online only thing, you really do.  I just disagree that it is as huge an issue as you are making it out to be, but in the end thats your choice.  Cool?

[Myyona]

As an EVE player I embrace penalties and consequences for actions, be them good or bad.

I think I will stick with Shogun 2 and perhaps get Diablo 3 when it goes on sale...

[Mizhara]

You aren't having options removed, though.  You have more options.   This is a good thing.  Diablo II would be the same thing if they did the smart idea and had you have fairly easy respecs.  The way they handled it even when they finally added them was that you had three over the entire course of your characters career.  This helped a lot, don't get me wrong, but it still meant that you had the risk of having to trash an entire character because you accidently misclicked or misread bonespear for bone armor or something stupid like that on your third and final go.

You have a point with the online only thing, you really do.  I just disagree that it is as huge an issue as you are making it out to be, but in the end thats your choice.  Cool?

You are having options removed. When you are given EVERYTHING, you can choose nothing. You get the choices to make a character the way you want it taken away, because none of the options matter five seconds from now. This is a very bad thing. Coupled with fucking Checkpoints(!) and insta-respawns with just a piddly durability loss on death, it's a HORRIBAD thing. No weaknesses. None. THAT is dumbed down.

You may be happy with it and you may enjoy having all the risk taken away. (Seriously, if you had to trash an entire character, you fucked up so badly you god damn deserved it.) A lot of the rest of us want that risk. We want choices to fucking matter. We want fuckups to matter. It's okay to let you have some emergency outs like an expensive respecc or something, but this is taking it way too far. It's the complete removal of weaknesses and tit for tat.

AoE at the expense of singletarget power. Maybe massive amounts of both, but low survivability. Mobility focused character with high singletarget pew vs tank focused target with massive AoE. (Zealadin vs Hammerdin for instance) None of these weaknesses or balances exist when you can just go from one to the other in less than five seconds. So not a good thing.

[Morwen Lagann]

[Victoria Stecker]

Lack of offline single player seems kinda silly, but it's the decision they made for the programming structure of the game. As Tibs said, you could cheat in D2 (even and especially in multiplayer) because of how much was done client side. The solution is to run more server side. The problem is that this requires connection to the server. The solution to that would be to essentially program two different games - D3 single player to run client side, and D3 multi to run server. They decided not to do this. It sucks for people who don't want to deal with an internet connection, but it's the design decision they made. After the lack of LAN support for SC2, this isn't a huge surprise, even if it pisses me off something fierce.

The removal of corpse runs, however, is a tragedy, plain and simple.

The issue with skills seems like the direction games are going, unfortunately. The almighty dollar demands that you make a game that appeals to more people. People like to be able to change their mind without having to make an entirely new character. Thus, permanent, irreversible decisions like the old D2 skill trees, etc, are going the way of the dinosaur.

Depending on your point of view, this is simply the way game design is going, or it's the dumbing down of the game, or the improving the user-friendliness, or the end of the fucking world. I'm not sure I really like it, but it is the way most games with skill trees are going. Having grown up on D2 and more recently playing Bioware RPGs, I was shocked when I saw this in Borderlands. But then I got used to it - the goal is to make the game fun, and being able to swap skill builds for a few bucks adds to that, even if it removes a certain intangible something.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

If I could like your post, I would, Victoria.

Miz, it seems like you are angry about the easy availability of respecs, and the removal of prerequisites beyond level, is that correct to say?

Personally, I loved D2.  I am loving D3.  One of the things I didnt like about D2, though, was the process of building my Meteorb Sorceress, one of the few 'hell-viable' builds you could do with the class (which meant that every sorceress ended up being a Meteorb sorceress eventually, in most cases).  Levels 1 to 30, all I was doing was putting single points into prerequisite skills.  When I got access to synergy skills at level 18 half way through the game, I put skill points into those synergys, but they weren't really good enough.  This meant I had to be carried through the game, for a large part, on the backs of my friends.  Once I hit 30 I was fucking awesome, though.

With Diablo 3, I can go into it with a level 60 build in mind, and say "This is what I want to play when I have access to all the things I want", but in the mean time I can try other things, play around, have -fun- with my game.  That is worth having it be built on MMO architecture, for me.

I like having fun when I play video games, and Diablo III is fun for me.

[Ken]

I've finished the first act (of four) with a Wizard character.  It took about 7 hours playing solo and exploring the majority of the environment.  I've read some complaints that the game is too short (reports of speed runs of <5 hours), but I don't get that sense.  Plenty of content.  Rapid completion times are probably possible if you run straight for the next quest objective, but that's not really the point of a hack/slash/loot game.

-
The game has always-on DRM.  It probably will accomplish what the publisher wants it to accomplish.  It is also a travesty and poisonous to the goodwill that should exist between creators and those who consume their creations.

-/+
The visuals are dated, but enjoyable.  (This was the exact same feeling I got when I installed and played Diablo II on launch day: disappointment with the lack of graphical innovation followed by contentment as I came to embrace the style and execution.)  The cartoonish element helps to convey the uniqueness of various settings and characters by emphasizing particular colors, shapes, and movements.  All I can say is... it's a style.  Maybe not everyone's favorite, but it works for what it is.  Haven't played enough to tell if the game is "dark enough" for those who expect a lot of :grimdark: from their Diablo.  Recommend setting your gamma low if you need more.

The cinematic sequences rock.

+
The audio experience is excellent.  The music works well and the sounds effects are varied and impactful, especially with a good set of headphones.  Class-specific banter between your champion, his/her followers, and the enemies adds some extra fun.  I can't speak for the voice acting on all characters, but I have no complaints about the male wizard.  Little snippets of lore are delivered through journals found in the environment and when killing a new type of enemy for the first time (an optional bestiary-like reference is delivered by a variety of voiced characters).

-
Death in "softcore" mode has virtually no consequence (10% hit to equipment durability that is easily repaired in town) and tight situations don't evoke a lot of tension.  Hardcore will definitely be the way to play in the long run.  As I understand it, the auction house for hardcore characters is to be separate from the rest.  This should lessen the spoiling element to some extent for those taking the HC route.

(In case you don't know, hardcore mode is the same game but you only get one life.  So... plenty of consequence.)

+
Administrative tasks like town portals and identifying items are now entirely that.  Click a button at any time for a town portal (short casting animation).  Right-click any rare item at any time for identification (short casting animation).  This is convenient.  I can appreciate those who want to haul scrolls around or find a costly spellbook to learn town portal or who want to bring their unknown treasures to a sage for identification, but I don't miss the added inventory space, clicks, and time needed for those tasks.

-
Player choice feels reduced.  This is always a bad thing.  You do not allocate attribute points, skill points, or really any points of any kind to your own champion.  New abilities and modifications to them (runes) unlock at given benchmarks as you gain levels.  The only choice left to you is how to arrange them among your six action buttons (left & right mouse, and keyboard numbers 1-4; the number buttons unlock progressively, so your choices are limited to start with).  Oddly, followers receive two skills every five levels from which you can select only one, but these can be re-speced at will.

Each class has enough abilities and variations on them to make these transient selections at least somewhat meaningful.  As there is no proper pause function and newly-allocated abilities must charge for 5-10 seconds before being available, swapping these mid-combat is not easy.  Playing up to level 16 with the wizard, I now have several more ability/rune combos than I do slots and I have found that different situations and different combat style preferences call for different choices.  I do not at all feel like I'm building a character that is uniquely mine, but I do feel that I have some freedom in how I play him.

This is not the classic hack/slash/look RPG experience from the Diablo series.  It is more casual, but there is something to be said for the convenience.  If I want to try something different, I don't need to roll a brand new character and grind him up through the levels to see if I'll like a different build.  What the streamlining/dumbing-down/convenience boils down to is that I'll end up playing less Diablo 3 because it doesn't take as much time to experience every possible choice.

+
Hacking and slashing is very rewarding.  The combat wasn't terribly challenging for me in the first act on normal difficulty (died twice, once being during the act's final boss fight), but it was still entertaining.  It's much fun to watch my spells and abilities tearing through bad guys.  The pace is just about right and named/unique enemies can pose a challenge if you aren't careful.  In a party and on higher difficulty levels, the combat will certainly ramp up.  As some people say, the real game starts on the highest difficulty.

+
There is still fun in finding loot, which is good since it's an integral part of a game like this.  In addition to selling stuff you choose not to equip, you can salvage it for components.  A blacksmith follower (who stays in town) can use said components to craft new (randomly-generated) magical items for you.  You spend gold to train him and unlock new items for him to forge.

Overall...
So far, I'm having fun playing Diablo 3.  I expect once I finish the campaign and move on to playing higher difficulties with hardcore characters and/or playing MP with the wife and friends, I will continue to have fun.

[Vikarion]

I loved D2, and played it in single-player (with no cheats or mods) for years. I loved the classes (especially the necro), the hack and slash, and the hunt for items. The plot wasn't bad either. What I didn't love was having to save up skill points until level 30 and completely sucking until then, and I also didn't enjoy having to come up with a completely new character every time Blizzard decided to nerf an ability or buff the enemies.

Anyone remember how screwed a lot of Barb builds got with 1.10 (might have been 1.11)? Or Bonemancers? How about Amazons with bow build suddenly firing the equivalent of post-it notes at their enemies? Yeah, D2 definitely was harsh, but not the game part. The harsh part was having your character made too incompetent to live every few patches or so. Sure, in D3, characters become less distinct in build, but most characters in D2 only had one or two good builds anyway - witness the thousands of Meteor-orb sorcs and hammerdins. And I definitely appreciate not losing a character to every other patch, I really do.

Oh, and this online-only thing? Yeah, for that, Blizz can go sit on a pitchfork...and spin. Slowly. Seriously, it's one thing to not be able to log in for a few hours at launch. It's another thing to be offline most of the day. Even CCP, who can't find their rear end with five hands on expansion days, tend to do better than this.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Tend to do better than this, yes.  Haven't always, though.  I distinctly remember some times when Eve was down for 10 hours at a time.

There are other reasons the game is online only, though.  The game has a real money auction house now, since people were setting this up anyways.  This means they have to do everything possible to stop bots and hackers, and this means that a lot of the game files have to be stored on a server where these people can't get it, and with programs set up to catch people farming through the game 24 hours a day which is usually a good indication of a bot.  As I recall, they built up these security programs while dealing with botters in WoW, and most of the behavior is going to be the same.

[Vikarion]

Tend to do better than this, yes.  Haven't always, though.  I distinctly remember some times when Eve was down for 10 hours at a time.

There are other reasons the game is online only, though.  The game has a real money auction house now, since people were setting this up anyways.  This means they have to do everything possible to stop bots and hackers, and this means that a lot of the game files have to be stored on a server where these people can't get it, and with programs set up to catch people farming through the game 24 hours a day which is usually a good indication of a bot.  As I recall, they built up these security programs while dealing with botters in WoW, and most of the behavior is going to be the same.

Sure, I understand the reasons for being online only. I don't like it, but I understand it. But the problem, as I see it (and I'm just disappointed, not angry) is that if you decide to make something online only, you need to ensure that the infrastructure and code is built to handle it. People who get upset when they aren't getting what they paid for aren't being unreasonable, they're in the right. If I buy a burger and get only the bun, I'm unhappy. If I buy a car and it's missing the transmission, I'm going to be upset. If I buy a game and it doesn't work, my annoyance is not the result of an entitlement complex. It's the fact I spent money on a product promised at a certain date with certain capabilities.

Gamers seem to be fairly tolerant at times, and I know I myself tend to forgive a lot of things from developers that I would never accept from other producers of goods and services. I think that this is one of the reasons that game companies have become comfortable with releasing buggy products, day one dlc, and other "screw the player" gaming "enhancements". Imagine how you would take it if your car dealership operated on the same principles?

"Hello, we have a fine model here for 12,999. Yes, it comes with ONSTAR, in fact, you have to connect to ONSTAR if you want to drive the car - for your safety, of course. No, we can't promise that the service will always be up, please be patient when it isn't, and always be ready to pull over and drive something else if it quits. Also, the motor will shut down and refuse to start again if you hit the brake while turning left with your blinker on. A paint job is extra. In addition, to provide maximum service, we have installed a camera in the car, and reserve the right to decide if and when we will monitor your activities - for customer service reasons only, we promise!"

Yeah. 

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Oh, yes, thats a fair point.  Opening day launches, though...

Anyways, it looks like things are finally getting stable, and as such the number of posts on the official Blizzard forums saying that Blizzard is worse than Hitler are starting to die down.

[Mizhara]

Latest update from my friends is that they're experiencing lag and rubberbanding. They're not sure if it's Blizzard or the ISP at the moment, though. Apparently easiest to notice on ranged classes like Wizards. Lag and rubberbanding in a singleplayer game. Totally worth not having others cheat... in a singleplayer game.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Maybe it would help if you started looking at it as not a single player game? 

[Mizhara]

When you play singleplayer... it's a singleplayer game.