Viral Harvest
Every Knee Bent Too Shall Break
Recession? What recession? I'm dropping out of college, quitting my job, and raising a family on white picket fences and Diablo 3! I hope you don't mind full-time stay-at-home employees, Blizzard! 
Diablo 3!
- Thread starter xfool
- Start date
I'm fully aware that the micro transaction business model is extremely profitable, but what's profitable is not always what's fair. I didn't mean to indicate that Blizzard was just being lazy or evil.
My hope was for the regular economy to operate like the hardcore economy. It's almost like some people feel that Hardcore Diablo 3 is a legitimate game whose integrity can't be undermined while Diablo 3 with a traditional death penalty is not to be taken seriously. Hardcore Diablo 3 is certainly more intense but I consider regular Diablo 3 a legitimate game as well even if it isn't an e-sport or has the harshest penalty possible. I take issue with a game where your chance of victory can be so heavily swayed by how much money you're willing to sink in as opposed to your actual skill and time you spent. People should not be able to get a competitive edge in a video game just because they spend more.
Blizzard may be curating the market, but in Jay Wilson's own words, "it's a player driven economy". Chinese Gold Farmers will just shift their operations from chat channels to the RM AH. Without the risk of lawsuit or the inconvenience of operating in the shadows, they will be more active than ever. Blizzard will make a ton of money from all the transactions but the virtual gold currency will eventually inflate and become worthless. That's what unchecked gold farming will do to any game. In turn, actual money will become the currency that wins out.
Another problem is that if someone gets an extremely rare and awesome item, he's not going to put it on the gold auction house. If he can make $200 by selling a randomly generated weapon, he will undoubtedly pick the real money auction house. The greatest items in the game will never be available on the gold auction house. If you want the best weapons, you will have to pay up.
I don't support 'if you can't beat 'em join 'em' in this case. In any society, there will always be rule breakers and a demand from the people who conduct business with them. Not even Blizzard can eliminate all WOW gold farmers just as you can't eliminate all counterfeiters. The best you can do is make what they're doing as risky and inconvenient as possible.
I would be okay with compromise, however: Blizzard can make a set of non-hardcore servers without the real money auction house in addition to non-hardcore servers with the real money auction house. That way players who want to play Diablo 3, but don't want permanent death or a micro transaction based economy can have their way and players who want to buy their way to victory can have their way too.
My hope was for the regular economy to operate like the hardcore economy. It's almost like some people feel that Hardcore Diablo 3 is a legitimate game whose integrity can't be undermined while Diablo 3 with a traditional death penalty is not to be taken seriously. Hardcore Diablo 3 is certainly more intense but I consider regular Diablo 3 a legitimate game as well even if it isn't an e-sport or has the harshest penalty possible. I take issue with a game where your chance of victory can be so heavily swayed by how much money you're willing to sink in as opposed to your actual skill and time you spent. People should not be able to get a competitive edge in a video game just because they spend more.
Blizzard may be curating the market, but in Jay Wilson's own words, "it's a player driven economy". Chinese Gold Farmers will just shift their operations from chat channels to the RM AH. Without the risk of lawsuit or the inconvenience of operating in the shadows, they will be more active than ever. Blizzard will make a ton of money from all the transactions but the virtual gold currency will eventually inflate and become worthless. That's what unchecked gold farming will do to any game. In turn, actual money will become the currency that wins out.
Another problem is that if someone gets an extremely rare and awesome item, he's not going to put it on the gold auction house. If he can make $200 by selling a randomly generated weapon, he will undoubtedly pick the real money auction house. The greatest items in the game will never be available on the gold auction house. If you want the best weapons, you will have to pay up.
I don't support 'if you can't beat 'em join 'em' in this case. In any society, there will always be rule breakers and a demand from the people who conduct business with them. Not even Blizzard can eliminate all WOW gold farmers just as you can't eliminate all counterfeiters. The best you can do is make what they're doing as risky and inconvenient as possible.
I would be okay with compromise, however: Blizzard can make a set of non-hardcore servers without the real money auction house in addition to non-hardcore servers with the real money auction house. That way players who want to play Diablo 3, but don't want permanent death or a micro transaction based economy can have their way and players who want to buy their way to victory can have their way too.
8 Minutes of Diablo 3: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/02/dont-mention-the-war-8-minutes-of-diablo-iii/#more-68294
That settles it, my first playthrough will be as theBarbarian , no the Demon Hunter, no the Monk. ... They're going to make me choose, aren't they?
It's hard to follow the action since we don't know any of the abilities yet. It's basically just a light show.
That settles it, my first playthrough will be as the
It's hard to follow the action since we don't know any of the abilities yet. It's basically just a light show.
A friends and family beta has launched for people specifically invited by Blizzard employees and there is no NDA.
http://www.youtube.com/user/synark123
http://www.youtube.com/user/Nastydude1989
Here are my impressions from the footage I've seen: This game seems awesome and that's in no small part because of all of the sound effects. The music complements the game play nicely and is better than the Diablo 2 music in my opinion (though not as good as the Diablo 1 music). I was also pleasantly surprised by the Leoric boss fight; they added a brief cut scene, multiple phases to the fight, and a means for him to threaten both melee and ranged classes. If this is just an early mid-act boss, I can only imagine what they will do for the later end-of-act bosses. I liked the voice acting for the most part and the story is actually interesting to follow this time. Diablo 1 put almost all of it in the instruction manual, Diablo 2 did it through long expositional monologues in town, but Diablo 3 shows it through brief conversations, the enemies you encounter, and soliloquies that play in the background while you fight. I'm not saying its plot is going to be Bioshock quality, but they're definitely using similar techniques to present the story.
There's also just something appealing about watching an actual player play the game as opposed to watching promotional footage. I liked watching characters low on life charge for an orb or engage enemies strategically so that an orb might eventually drop. This system looks much better than spamming potions or taking cover to regenerate health.
The environments and spell effects are visually appealing, but I can't say the same about the character models who lack detail. The zombies and scavengers in particular look kind of plain.
There also seems to be a lack of customization considering that all players have access to all of their class skills, can swap out skills on the fly, and have the same base damage for all skills. I also liked the idea of picking from a wide pool of traits once every 3 levels instead of the new 3 slot passive skill swap system. It seems like the only way to customize your character this time around is through equipment.
The classes don't appear well balanced either. The wizard and demon hunter both had low maximum health and did not do heavy amounts of damage. The barbarian on the other hand could leap and take out 5 enemies in a single strike. Perhaps that might change later in the game, but the Barbarian definitely seems to have an early advantage.
I'm also hoping that this becomes the very first RPG without an obnoxiously time consuming or overly simplified inventory system. If you have continuous access to your stash and the auction house (assuming gold doesn't become worthless) whether you're outside of town or not, I think this game will have created the most bearable inventory system for an RPG ever. It will certainly be a step up from Diablo 2 which probably had the worst inventory system ever.
http://www.youtube.com/user/synark123
http://www.youtube.com/user/Nastydude1989
Here are my impressions from the footage I've seen: This game seems awesome and that's in no small part because of all of the sound effects. The music complements the game play nicely and is better than the Diablo 2 music in my opinion (though not as good as the Diablo 1 music). I was also pleasantly surprised by the Leoric boss fight; they added a brief cut scene, multiple phases to the fight, and a means for him to threaten both melee and ranged classes. If this is just an early mid-act boss, I can only imagine what they will do for the later end-of-act bosses. I liked the voice acting for the most part and the story is actually interesting to follow this time. Diablo 1 put almost all of it in the instruction manual, Diablo 2 did it through long expositional monologues in town, but Diablo 3 shows it through brief conversations, the enemies you encounter, and soliloquies that play in the background while you fight. I'm not saying its plot is going to be Bioshock quality, but they're definitely using similar techniques to present the story.
There's also just something appealing about watching an actual player play the game as opposed to watching promotional footage. I liked watching characters low on life charge for an orb or engage enemies strategically so that an orb might eventually drop. This system looks much better than spamming potions or taking cover to regenerate health.
The environments and spell effects are visually appealing, but I can't say the same about the character models who lack detail. The zombies and scavengers in particular look kind of plain.
There also seems to be a lack of customization considering that all players have access to all of their class skills, can swap out skills on the fly, and have the same base damage for all skills. I also liked the idea of picking from a wide pool of traits once every 3 levels instead of the new 3 slot passive skill swap system. It seems like the only way to customize your character this time around is through equipment.
The classes don't appear well balanced either. The wizard and demon hunter both had low maximum health and did not do heavy amounts of damage. The barbarian on the other hand could leap and take out 5 enemies in a single strike. Perhaps that might change later in the game, but the Barbarian definitely seems to have an early advantage.
I'm also hoping that this becomes the very first RPG without an obnoxiously time consuming or overly simplified inventory system. If you have continuous access to your stash and the auction house (assuming gold doesn't become worthless) whether you're outside of town or not, I think this game will have created the most bearable inventory system for an RPG ever. It will certainly be a step up from Diablo 2 which probably had the worst inventory system ever.
Griffith
With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
John Smith said:
It would have to become an RPG first, of which there are many with better inventories than this'll likely have. If they keep it simple it should be fine though. As long as things die when we go click click click, it's working. If nothing else, Diablo II proved that formula is almost impossible to fuck up.
Blizzard is now shooting for an 'early 2012' release of Diablo 3:
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/news/?d=2011-9#231122
When Blizzard said that they were shooting for a Fall 2009 release of Starcraft 2, they missed their mark by almost a year. Perhaps Diablo 3 might come out within the second half of 2012.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. Considering how many times they've been changing around the skill, resource, and rune system, this was pretty much inevitable. What's really strange is that this game has been in development since 2001, if you count the art revisions, 2004/2005 if you don't. Yet within the first few seconds of the beta, so many bugs and game play flaws have already come up. Blizzard has even said that they will overhaul the demon hunter's resource system and I believe that force has mentioned that they are going to now rework all skills to be based on weapon damage.
When Blizzard gets asked why they take so long and switch so many things out, they say it's because they're making it 'polished'.
Not that the game doesn't look fun; I'm still going to be buying it within the first week. I just want to know why their development cycles have become so long. Brood War came a year after Starcraft. Frozen Throne came a year after WC3. Diablo 2 came 4 years after Diablo 1. Yet Starcraft 2 (well actually more like a third of it) came 12 years after Starcraft and Diablo 3 will be coming around 10 years after Diablo 2. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if Warcraft 4 came 20 years after Warcraft 3.
Side note: I never want to hear a game developer use the words 'mature', 'polish', or 'visceral' ever again.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/news/?d=2011-9#231122
When Blizzard said that they were shooting for a Fall 2009 release of Starcraft 2, they missed their mark by almost a year. Perhaps Diablo 3 might come out within the second half of 2012.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. Considering how many times they've been changing around the skill, resource, and rune system, this was pretty much inevitable. What's really strange is that this game has been in development since 2001, if you count the art revisions, 2004/2005 if you don't. Yet within the first few seconds of the beta, so many bugs and game play flaws have already come up. Blizzard has even said that they will overhaul the demon hunter's resource system and I believe that force has mentioned that they are going to now rework all skills to be based on weapon damage.
When Blizzard gets asked why they take so long and switch so many things out, they say it's because they're making it 'polished'.
Not that the game doesn't look fun; I'm still going to be buying it within the first week. I just want to know why their development cycles have become so long. Brood War came a year after Starcraft. Frozen Throne came a year after WC3. Diablo 2 came 4 years after Diablo 1. Yet Starcraft 2 (well actually more like a third of it) came 12 years after Starcraft and Diablo 3 will be coming around 10 years after Diablo 2. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if Warcraft 4 came 20 years after Warcraft 3.
Side note: I never want to hear a game developer use the words 'mature', 'polish', or 'visceral' ever again.
John Smith said:
Because they can afford it. Look at what Valve's doing with Half-Life. Same story. And at least in the case of StarCraft, its unforeseen popularity in e-sports made it complicated to produce a sequel.
John Smith said:
You're comparing expansion packs to sequels here though. Not quite the same thing. Heart of the Swarm is coming out next year.
*Shrug* Polish is sort of what makes Blizzard games stand out over others in the genre.John Smith said:
As for their slow releases, this has been a strange decade for them. They invested all of their teams in creating and expanding World of Warcraft. I think I read somewhere that they didn't start in earnest on Starcraft 2 until 2006 or so. Same with Diablo III, though the development of that game has a completely different story to tell.
And like Aazealh said, Blizzard and Valve release games at their own pace because they can afford to. With money constantly flowing into their coffers with or without a new release, there's not an incredible amount of pressure for them to rush anything.
While browsing the Diablo 3 forums, I found these two links:
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blue-defends-their-diablo-iii-openness
For Blizzard, developer transparency mostly seems to be a bad thing. There are many other games where developers constantly add, remove, tweak, scrap, replace, and merge systems, but when you announce so many of them to the public, you cause the fans to get worried and argue a lot and you have to sink in time to keep everyone informed.
I also see no reason to announce a game any earlier than a year from your projected release date; that's ample time to create anticipation. 2 months before beta would have been good. Announcing over 4 years in advance is just evil.
On a side note, this was amusing to read:
http://www.diablowiki.net/Player_Kill#Max_Schaefer_Defends_PKing
If you finish reading it, copy/paste it into word.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blue-defends-their-diablo-iii-openness
For Blizzard, developer transparency mostly seems to be a bad thing. There are many other games where developers constantly add, remove, tweak, scrap, replace, and merge systems, but when you announce so many of them to the public, you cause the fans to get worried and argue a lot and you have to sink in time to keep everyone informed.
I also see no reason to announce a game any earlier than a year from your projected release date; that's ample time to create anticipation. 2 months before beta would have been good. Announcing over 4 years in advance is just evil.
On a side note, this was amusing to read:
http://www.diablowiki.net/Player_Kill#Max_Schaefer_Defends_PKing
If you finish reading it, copy/paste it into word.
Groovy Metal Fist said:
Wow, that Sirian may be the biggest tool I've ever seen in my life. Not only is he incredibly hostile and egotistical, but is arguments are hilariously idiotic. My favorite "essay" of his, though, is his followup rant after Max Schaefer stopped responding (go here and click on "Impatient?" if you want to read it). He throws another hissy fit about why it'd be a complete and total failure if Blizzard decided to make an MMO. I wonder how much crow he ended up eating over that little gem of "truth."
May 15, 2012 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU, BLIZZARD!
But yes, I've just pre-ordered on amazon. Check it out on their site; I'm not making this up.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/
THANK YOU, BLIZZARD!
But yes, I've just pre-ordered on amazon. Check it out on their site; I'm not making this up.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/
Groovy Metal Fist said:May 15, 2012 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU, BLIZZARD!
But yes, I've just pre-ordered on amazon. Check it out on their site; I'm not making this up.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/
Just pre-ordered mine too... regular or collectors? =/
frankencowx said:
Collector's. If you just want the game, you can pre-purchase a digital version online without having to deal with shipping costs or shipping wait time. Since May 15 is a Tuesday, there is no point in overnight shipping for me.
Oh, and PvP is going to be patched in after shipment. I know a lot of people won't like that, but I want the game yesterday. And that's something I said 3 years ago. Diablo 3 showed up in my dreams back when Starcraft: Ghost still existed.
I think we will get release day delivery from Amazon regardless, especially if you have Prime.
Walter said:
Dunno, its always been a personal preference of mine to have physical game copies. Also it will take forever to download the game, as our internet is terrible..
Walter said:
Because the collector's edition is exclusively in a boxed copy. Also, if you buy a boxed copy it's on your account forever; I can download and play it on any number of computers without ever looking at the disk again.
If given the choice between a physical copy of a book you were really excited about, an online PDF version of the book, or a physical deluxe edition with author commentary which would you pick?
EDIT:I just saw that Amazon had an option for release day delivery and it only costs 99 cents, which is cheaper than all the other options except free super saver shipping. Good business move by Amazon.
Walter said:All I know is, I got the physical game for Starcraft II, then just used the CDkey on my Battle.Net account. Didn't even bother with the discs. Downloaded and installed it, threw away the discs
I also bought the physical game, installed it once with the disk and then re-installed it on my new computer without looking at any packaging. I think the boxes look pretty; I still have my Diablo 1 box and my Diablo Battlechest (the old and better version). I'm more likely to use Steam or Amazon nowadays though.
I don't know about you all, but I've been following news of this game very closely, especially this past year. If you want to hear constant updates and discussion:
http://www.diablofans.com/
http://diablo.incgamers.com/
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5C2F514ECED855CA&feature=plcp
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/
Only 59 more days to go!
I know, double post, but I don't want anyone interested in Diablo 3 to miss this news:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963739/Diablo%C2%AE_III_Open_Beta_Weekend-4_19_2012#blog
The Diablo 3 beta will be open for this weekend 4/20 to 4/23 for a stress test! You will finally get a chance to actually try the game for once.
1,392 days down, 25 more to go.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963739/Diablo%C2%AE_III_Open_Beta_Weekend-4_19_2012#blog
The Diablo 3 beta will be open for this weekend 4/20 to 4/23 for a stress test! You will finally get a chance to actually try the game for once.
1,392 days down, 25 more to go.
I've been in the beta for about two months. It's not bad. The area that they have is rather boring, I think. There's one gigantic area that's a chore to clear out. But overall it's very polished, as you'd expect. We should totally do an SKnet group this weekend, you guys.
My battlenet name is SKNETWalter (#1627)
My battlenet name is SKNETWalter (#1627)
turkitage
ターク
I never got a beta invite so this was a nice treat regardless of it being a stress test. Think it takes like an hour to beat the beta but still it's nice to finally try out some heros. Yeah, as Walter pointed out the cathedral that you are in his huge and repetitive. I'll probably play it a few more times with some other ones heros to get a feel for them. I haven't really cared to check all the new stuff with this game but the skill system is rather a let down. They might as well auto select my skills for me..geez, why do I even need to bother clicking the only skills/runes available?
I'm Turkitage#1953 on there if anyone is interested.
I'm Turkitage#1953 on there if anyone is interested.