Diablo 3!

I guess Blizzard weighed all the money flowing in from the auction houses verses long term lost sales down the road from a damaged reputation. Thanks for finally listening to your fans, Blizzard! That is the single best announcement they could make to get people to buy the expansion pack.

What next, are they going to reinstate skill point allocation? Add a non-story mode?
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
So basically everything that I could have gotten off the AH for 100,000 gold yesterday is going to cost 2 billion now? THANKS BLIZZARD! :iva:

Kidding aside, I wish I'd held onto to a lot of cool stuff I had that "I could always buy back."

Groovy Metal Fist said:
What next, are they going to reinstate skill point allocation? Add a non-story mode?

Actually, they are adding skill points with the paragon levels apparently. Also, there is a non-story mode, it's called the escape key (people forget that most of the stuff they hate about this game is also optional =).

I don't know if this will really change anything, or if the people that complained so much about the AH are actually going to come back (the whole bitch about it seemed more ideological than anything), and the auction house isn't so much the problem as the drops were (as for really hearing the fans, they could just be doing this to bring it in line with the console version). So, auction house or not, if they can fix the drops and add a little uniqueness to the class builds, that'll be a plus, "Just make it like Diablo II." Still, no matter how much they fix it that may never change the perception of the game, but it would be pretty cool if it actually became even remotely as enduringly good as D2 post expansion.


Update:

DIABLO III: REAPER OF SOULS CASH - $39.99! ($59.99 Collector's Sucker's Edition!!!)

Is this what Blizzard meant by a new loot system? I mean, any time you can sell a bunch of recycled resources and necessary fixes that should have been included into the most infamous game of last year for 60% to 100% additional cost to your remaining consumer base, you HAVE to do it. Count me out though unless I steal it or get it at a reasonable mark down at a walk in store (remember when D3 was $10 at Toys R Us? =). At this point I think I'd prefer stealing it in any case though. Fucking gross, Blizzard.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Griffith said:
Is this what Blizzard meant by a new loot system? I mean, any time you can sell a bunch of recycled resources and necessary fixes that should have been included into the most infamous game of last year for 60% to 100% additional cost to your remaining consumer base, you HAVE to do it. Count me out though unless I steal it or get it at a reasonable mark down at a walk in store (remember when D3 was $10 at Toys R Us? =). At this point I think I'd prefer stealing it in any case though. Fucking gross, Blizzard.
Well as I understand it, the auction house will be removed and game rebalanced in a patch that comes out just prior to Reaper of Souls--which is applicable for anyone who has D3. Reaper of Souls is just new content for $40.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
Well as I understand it, the auction house will be removed and game rebalanced in a patch that comes out just prior to Reaper of Souls--which is applicable for anyone who has D3. Reaper of Souls is just new content for $40.

And soylent green is just new food content made from people. =)

Kidding about the arguable outrageousness of this aside, they've been doing their "rebalancing" act to no avail since day one and I don't really care what they do with the auction house. To be honest, I'm actually more annoyed by its removal than excited for what they have in store (the Diablo you know, after all). It was an optional feature, and the real problem was and is the drops.

In any case, $40, two thirds of the original game's initial asking price, seems to me an obscenely steep amount for a quarter of the content, and for relatively little at that: an extra act of redundant environments and monsters, one new boring class, and a lousy 10 extra levels along with some new item mechanics that may or may not be better. I was already unimpressed by what was being promised, and it feels bad enough to continue playing this game without being made to feel like I'm getting swindled in the process. I'd like to think that price point represents Blizzard's confidence in the quality and quantity of new content, but it feels more like exactly how much they think they can get away with.

Maybe this is the norm though and I'm just out of line with it. Maybe Blizzard figured that smaller DLCs are already overpriced for even less content, and people pay it, so for something amounting to a quarter of new content and maybe a meaningful overhaul, why not double or triple the price. To the point of charging as much for the "special edition" DLC as the original game itself. It's not even so bad when you think about it, since for some games the total cost of the DLCs ends up being about as much or even more than the game itself (I'm looking at you, Mass Effect DLCs I never have and likely never will play).



For fun I googled the price to see the reaction (I knew it would be good =), and even Forbes has published an article essentially calling it a ripoff:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/12/20/diablo-3-reaper-of-souls-when-is-an-expansion-just-overpriced-dlc/




Also worth considering is Diablo III's competition: https://www.pathofexile.com/

Better and free.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Griffith said:
It was an optional feature, and the real problem was and is the drops.
Yep. And fixing the shitty drops is all I really meant by "rebalancing."

In any case, $40, two thirds of the original game's initial asking price, seems to me an obscenely steep amount for a quarter of the content, and for relatively little at that: an extra act of redundant environments and monsters, one new boring class, and a lousy 10 extra levels along with some new item mechanics that may or may not be better.
No argument here. The additions sound super boring to me, and it's still not the classes I had hoped for in this game. But regarding the price, Lord of Destruction was $30 at launch in 2000. Here's a GameSpot review from back then (written by the guy that later made Bastion, btw). http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction-review/1900-2782000/


(I'm looking at you, Mass Effect DLCs I never have and likely never will play).
Two of the ME3 DLCs are pretty rad. Good luck working up the appetite to step back into Shepard's shoes, though :beast:

Also worth considering is Diablo III's competition: https://www.pathofexile.com/

Better and free.
I really, REALLY enjoyed the little amount of time I've spent on it so far.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
Yep. And fixing the shitty drops is all I really meant by "rebalancing."

And we're still relying on the guys who broke it, when they had a template, and still haven't been able to fix it. I don't have faith that another $40 is going to make the difference.

Walter said:
No argument here. The additions sound super boring to me, and it's still not the classes I had hoped for in this game. But regarding the price, Lord of Destruction was $30 at launch in 2000. Here's a GameSpot review from back then (written by the guy that later made Bastion, btw). http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction-review/1900-2782000/

Love those pictures btw. :ganishka:

I actually think it was more like $35, but that's beside the point in today's market (including the quality/reputation of the product). I had heard the $40 price point being banded about based on the cost of other Blizzard DLCs, but I was hoping for something more like $30 (in reality, giving this team's product even another $20 feels like charity). That seemed a fairer price, more in line with this amount of content for this game, and they would have had precedent on their side even though we're talking one of the most popular games ever versus one of the... best selling. Important distinction. =)

Walter said:
Two of the ME3 DLCs are pretty rad. Good luck working up the appetite to step back into Shepard's shoes, though :beast:

I assume you mean Leviathan (which sounds pretty essential) and Citadel (something of a last hurrah), which I'd like to play, but... I haven't even shelled out the credits for the Shadow Broker DLC. Also, yeah, it would be hard to jump back into the deep end of that pool anyway.

Walter said:
I really, REALLY enjoyed the little amount of time I've spent on it so far.

Ironically, I haven't played it more precisely because I previously put so much into Diablo III.
 
Don't worry too much about the initial video game price. This thing will be on sale for like a $1 in a month. I'll wait to see what word of mouth says, not video game reviews churned out within a week or less, to see how the long term end game turned out.

If you want to take look at the new Act, here's a let's play. The crusader = Jason Statham.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVF-oa46tLI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQYdOCo-PGs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN1VtJpLthY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy-u9FhLaq4

I'm going to go back to playing Diablo 1 now. There's really nothing quite like it.
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
Groovy Metal Fist said:
I'm going to go back to playing Diablo 1 now. There's really nothing quite like it.
I was actually just watching some old Diablo 1 quest playthroughs, and it got me feeling all nostalgic. I miss Griswold! :judo:

Regarding Path of Exile, I got into it a few months ago, and it is by and far a much more rewarding/exciting experience compared to Diablo 3. It makes me sad to say that, because when I first started D3 I was really looking forward to getting into the atmosphere and characters (multiplayer was fun, but I'm one of those weirdos that prefers to play Diablo in single player :casca: ). I felt that the Path of Exile experience was much richer without trying to explain as much to the player. More show, less tell.
 
In Diablo 1, the small touches really helped with the atmosphere. Your screen centered when you took a major hit. Your mana didn't regenerate over time, so machine gunning spells was not always a good idea. Monsters zig-zagged around like crackheads making them extremely difficult to to hit. Sometimes I would wait for a monster to get close to me or follow me in a vertical or horizontal line just so I could sink a hit. I pay so much more attention to choke points, walls, and the overall layout of the room in this game than any other dungeon crawler. I love the look of the game just as much as when I first played it 11 years ago. The music is uniquely creepy.

Battle.net servers are still up despite the fact that there are less than 40 games being played world wide at any given time. If you have Windows 7 running in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode with all the compatibility settings checked, this game runs perfectly fine, provided you don't minimize the window.

If any of you haven't played Diablo 1 before, skip the blood soaked, corpse filled room on level 2 and don't get hit by the black deaths on levels 3-5.
 
RanShi said:
Anyone still playing? In Europe? Add me, GrandShi. Need some people to kill demons with. :beast: barbarian, lvl 60/25

What platform do you play on? I have Diablo 3 on the 360. I play the Witch Doctor and I'm around lvl 40 something. I haven't played for a bit but I'd definitely like to pick the game back up again soon.
 
Halcian said:
What platform do you play on? I have Diablo 3 on the 360. I play the Witch Doctor and I'm around lvl 40 something. I haven't played for a bit but I'd definitely like to pick the game back up again soon.

On my macbook so I guess PC. Can't we play with eachother if u play on console?
 
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Diablo-3-Reaper-Souls-Coming-PS4-Xbox-One-PS3-Xbox-360-August-64015.html

The Expansion is coming to consoles in two-three months
 
Top Bottom