Diablo 3 - You lose. Good day, sir!
Well it would seem as though the long awaited Diablo 3 was not all that it was promised to be. Many fans are greatly disappointed, and rightly so. Most all the 'new' features that were promised were removed and most of the things that made Diablo 2 so great was also removed.
Character customization (a big deal for many) was removed for being "too confusing". Really? The company that makes millions a year from WoW subscriptions alone can't figure out a way to make a simple character creator? Hell, they could have just simply copy/pasted it from the WoW code. They haven't been shy about doing that with other parts of the game, but I'm getting ahead of myself. No longer will you distribute skill and attribute points but rather you automatically get skills from leveling up and many of those skills are no more than ones found in WoW. Now you can say that this is a company wide change as these same changes will accrue in the next WoW expansion. But it removes most of the strategy elements that come along with mapping your own skills, and is an expected feature in the ARPG genre.
However, others are pissed about the new auction houses. Many have said that it promotes and legalizes gold selling and pay-to-win. This again is something they are planning for WoW. Many people even hated the overuse of scripted events. One of the biggest features in Diablo 2 was PvP and most all of it was remove save for a WoW-clone arena type mode, but even that has been removed for the time being because it "needs more work". Reports also claim that the voice acting was not that good in comparison to Diablo 2 as well.
Oh, and lets not forget the biggest problem of all, online only. Even when playing single-player you must be connected to battlenet. This has made problems of its own. Other then the fact that it pisses people off it also constantly kicks you from games. This was a problem they knew about and 'solved' it by adding checkpoints all over the place for you to hop back on to. Online also adds region lock, DRM, and no modding (another thing that kept Diablo 2 alive for over a decade), and a level cap of only 60. With all this it's no wonder Blizzards fans are mad at them. They have obviously shown that they are pandering to the casual market and that this is the same crap they pulled with Starcraft 2. All that and the story is said to be sub-par. One quote from a fan is all it takes, " Way to short, and boooring.".
All they want you to do now is wait and buy the rest of your game as an expansion some time down the road, but there is hope! The people that originally made Diablo & Diablo 2 no longer works at Blizzard, but instead makes their own game called, Torchlight. Torchlight 2 will be release in the coming weeks with a level 100 cap, online, offline play, co-op, pvp, mods, make your own character, DRM free, and skill trees. If you pre-order on Steam (for $20) you get the first game free. So if you were disappointed with Blizzard's recent offering, give that a try.
On one last note I would like to say that this game has gone through many different cycles and that no matter what you think it has not been in development for over 10 years. They may have started on Diablo 3 games in the past, but none of them were the one we all got. I believe that this version was only in development for the past 2 years. Which would explain a lot of the shortcuts that was taken for it to be released this year. This also just seems to be the thing for developers now days and the hope is that they will fix it later with patches and DLC. With all that said, none of the problems that people had can be fixed in that way. Sure you can raise the level cap and add more pvp options but that's about it. Everything else is so fundamental to the core of the game that if they were to change that it would break anything they might have been going for.
Character customization (a big deal for many) was removed for being "too confusing". Really? The company that makes millions a year from WoW subscriptions alone can't figure out a way to make a simple character creator? Hell, they could have just simply copy/pasted it from the WoW code. They haven't been shy about doing that with other parts of the game, but I'm getting ahead of myself. No longer will you distribute skill and attribute points but rather you automatically get skills from leveling up and many of those skills are no more than ones found in WoW. Now you can say that this is a company wide change as these same changes will accrue in the next WoW expansion. But it removes most of the strategy elements that come along with mapping your own skills, and is an expected feature in the ARPG genre.
However, others are pissed about the new auction houses. Many have said that it promotes and legalizes gold selling and pay-to-win. This again is something they are planning for WoW. Many people even hated the overuse of scripted events. One of the biggest features in Diablo 2 was PvP and most all of it was remove save for a WoW-clone arena type mode, but even that has been removed for the time being because it "needs more work". Reports also claim that the voice acting was not that good in comparison to Diablo 2 as well.
Oh, and lets not forget the biggest problem of all, online only. Even when playing single-player you must be connected to battlenet. This has made problems of its own. Other then the fact that it pisses people off it also constantly kicks you from games. This was a problem they knew about and 'solved' it by adding checkpoints all over the place for you to hop back on to. Online also adds region lock, DRM, and no modding (another thing that kept Diablo 2 alive for over a decade), and a level cap of only 60. With all this it's no wonder Blizzards fans are mad at them. They have obviously shown that they are pandering to the casual market and that this is the same crap they pulled with Starcraft 2. All that and the story is said to be sub-par. One quote from a fan is all it takes, " Way to short, and boooring.".
All they want you to do now is wait and buy the rest of your game as an expansion some time down the road, but there is hope! The people that originally made Diablo & Diablo 2 no longer works at Blizzard, but instead makes their own game called, Torchlight. Torchlight 2 will be release in the coming weeks with a level 100 cap, online, offline play, co-op, pvp, mods, make your own character, DRM free, and skill trees. If you pre-order on Steam (for $20) you get the first game free. So if you were disappointed with Blizzard's recent offering, give that a try.
On one last note I would like to say that this game has gone through many different cycles and that no matter what you think it has not been in development for over 10 years. They may have started on Diablo 3 games in the past, but none of them were the one we all got. I believe that this version was only in development for the past 2 years. Which would explain a lot of the shortcuts that was taken for it to be released this year. This also just seems to be the thing for developers now days and the hope is that they will fix it later with patches and DLC. With all that said, none of the problems that people had can be fixed in that way. Sure you can raise the level cap and add more pvp options but that's about it. Everything else is so fundamental to the core of the game that if they were to change that it would break anything they might have been going for.
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