As for the comments, I always give a second review.. Its obvious the haters who didnt get everything they wanted on the first week of the game release call it boring and AH intensive..
Yet they always state how they played Diablo 2 for 2-3 years straight though.
Cough Cough, bullshit.... The fact you expect to have all the loot in a week in itself, the thought is moronic at the least bit of considerate thought.. It's downright disrespectful and you clearly are not a Diablo fan nor do i doubt you played Diablo 2 at all to say such nonsense let alone 2 years straight.
I greatly enjoy D3, but it definitely has flaws, the biggest one of which is the itemization and how it relates to progression.
The big problem is that character power is much more dependent on gear this time around, especially compared to D2. Unfortunately, having completely random loot doesn't really work anymore, because if the RNG isn't on your side, you can hit a pretty big progression brick wall as early as nightmare difficulty. Yes, you can use the auction house, but for me that just kind of sucks the fun out of the game. Without loot it's just a pointless grind for gold (or EXP until 60).
Blizzard needs to adjust loot tables so that level appropriate goodies drop much more frequently, and certain items need to be made a little less random. A wizard specific hat should NEVER have STR as a primary stat on it, and I shouldn't be getting items in Inferno (or even late Hell) with +EXP on them, for example. Also, class-specific items should have some sort of incentive for using them over a non class-specific one which may be slightly better stat wise. Seeing Wizards running around with 2H battle axes makes me die a little inside.
Anyway, I give this game a solid 8 now, but a 9+ if they can fix itemization.
Spotty B.net service? Really? I haven't had any lag or any disconnects since the day after launch. Either you are lying or you have had some pretty horrendous luck.
I have been playing this for about a week now and the only 'lag' or 'rubberbanding' I have experienced has been due to me being on a wifi connection. [mod edit]
On what planet have you been on holiday since launch? I would like to know, so we all can travel there too!
[mod edit]
As all the Error 37 and Error 73 jokes, constant server downtimes and maintenance (especially here in Europe!!) , endless complain threads about it (both on official forums and these and other forums), videos about it, etc.... that is all fake??
[mod edit]
I have been playing this for about a week now and the only 'lag' or 'rubberbanding' I have experienced has been due to me being on a wifi connection. [mod edit]
I LOVE this game and am severely addicted to it at the momant, but still I think maybe 8.5 is a little too high. The only problems with it are, the campaign is less than 24 hours long, and B.net is still very shoddy atm (in Europe atleast, I hear the Americans have no problems). Actually, even though it's 4:50am, the only reason we're not still playing RIGHT FUCKING NOW is because the server just came down.
Although the campaign is short, I'm still going to be gearing up in Inferno for a long, LONG time to come, they're adding new legendarys soon too. The gameplay is outstanding, so fluid and addictive. I'm itching for the PvP patch to come out already, and cannot wait to empty all your pockets on the RMAH (It's good that Blizzard are making repair costs 6x more, this means gold will likely keep its value, and you'll literally be paying the good half of the players out your pockets for your deaths. So you guys in pub's can still abuse the quick res & player tele system, but you better have a lot of gold, or a deep pocket to do so).
Anyway, server being down = bed time.
_________ Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
Decent review, though it seems most reviews have a lot of text about what they don't like then the final verdict doesn't match the text. As for 10/10 longevity... that seems to be a bit overstated. How many people will be playing in a year if the game doesn't go on sale?
I bought D3 because I wanted to play with friends. It definetly feels more shallow than D2. I agree with the comments on initial difficulty.. the only way you die is if you're not watching the screen or if you encounter a gimmick mob for the first time and don't realize what is happening... like trees and their poison plants (yes, that was me).
I was not thrilled with the final battle. Even on "normal" difficulty, you would think there would be a challenge, but it felt like any other boss fight. Blizzard's vision of how this final battle / boss would look is even underwhelming. The boss should have looked and felt more significant.
With all that said, I enjoyed playing with friends. I seemed to get disconnected less when I was in a multiplayer game. Played solo several nights and was disconnected frequently, though that may be coincidence.
If this were D2, I would have still played the online version so that I could play any of my characters with friends, so the always on DRM doesn't bother me... but I understand how it bothers those that played D2 solo, so I'm not discounting your complaints. Still, my issue isn't with the always on DRM, its the fact that you can't stay online, even weeks after launch, without being disconnected. Sometimes its hours, sometimes its minutes. When I don't have problems with most other online games, don't tell me to go adjust router settings to fix my problem.
D3 is a decent game, but it just doesn't live up to D2, even when I remove my rose colored glasses. Still, I had fun playing with friends, so I can't call it a failure. It's just not a masterpiece... which is what most of us wanted even if we weren't really expecting that.
Diablo fans need to buy this because they can't help it. Everyone else? Buy it if you have friends playing, it will still be fun... but if you're not sure about it, then save your money.
I have to agree with the commenters who disagree about the longevity score. Currently I'm incredibly bored with this game. Sometimes I log on and do an inferno butcher run to grind some gold, but most of the time I log on, check my stuff on the AH, and then log off. Actually playing the game is getting less and less entertaining, as I really can't see why I should spend endless amounts of time grinding to kill bosses I've already killed plenty of times.
On top of very little PvE endgame, the PvP endgame is currently non-existent, and I can't imagine it'll be very balanced immediately upon implementation. It is going to require some tweaking, and by the time they can put the PvP in place and get it to a relatively balanced place, I will have lost interest entirely or be primarily playing another game.
Seriously, a 9.5/10 for longevity? Its like knowing that Anakin Skywalker is going to turn into Darth Vader, why bother after you already know thats going to happen?? You know what happens after your first easy run through and then other than a loot grind there is no point in playing again. In fact, i'd guess thats why only 1.9% of the games population has unlocked inferno mode. They just got bored after playing. I agree with a lot of what you said in this review but I can't believe the 9.5/10 for Longevity...and I would wager to say that if Blizzard offered a satisfaction or money back guarantee, they would only have 1.9% of the game sales they orginally had when it first came out.
This review is a total joke. How can you give a game a 7 in gameplay and a 10 in longevity? How can you review a game that has major features missing? What is the basis of these categories? Social? Really?! How about technical?
Professional game reviews are really becoming a joke these days.
The game runs on a wide variety of machines, but also has a wide array of errors and functionality problems. The always-on feature of Diablo 3 is a major drawback, and it prevents players from playing offline at all. This can also make the game unplayable for long periods of time due to AH or game crashes. For a single player game, people tend to frown on the always-online model, especially for a worldwide release. In rare cases, people pay for internet subscriptions by the hour, and in other cases, people in the world still use dialup. There are also a number of sound and graphical issues, including the inability to scale chat font size, a horrendous graphics bug that can crash you to desktop, and a soundbug that can switch your sound card on and off at random times. To its credit, the game also has a wide array of gameplay updates, and they are rolling out fixes, but is by no means a technical masterpiece. This is partly by design. Although the game can be controlled with fewer buttons than most controllers have, the game lacks controller support of any kind.
Objective:
* 1-4 Players
* Constant Online Connection required, even for solo play.
* 10-30 hours of unique replay, with repeatable quests.
* Friend Lists.
* Achievements.
* No ladder mode.
* No PVP. "Coming Soon"
* Similar itemization to Diablo 2, though slightly less robust.
* Random generation of levels returns in only a very minimal way.
* Real money auctions planned.
Subjective:
In my opinion, some of the technical problems in this game should have been fixed during the four year beta process. Additionally, some features we saw in alpha, or even in Diablo 2, were not present here. Finally, we have Blizzard Irvine trying their hand at rendering hell. In my opinion, D3 fails to capture this, except in rare portions of Act II, and a rare instance during the many dialogues in the game. This hurts the overall experience of playing. Furthermore, the game features blacksmithing and jewelcrafting across shared characters, but the problem with the game is that these crafts have costs which far outweigh the rewards. Diablo III is listed as an ARPG, but in reality it is an action game with no RPG elements at all. With the removal of skill trees, one would think that there would at least be a few moral choices ala Starcraft II, (especially considering the M-rating), but these never make an appearance. A new Nephalem Valor mechanic is in place, whereby players on harder difficulties recieve a buff for sticking with one spec for a short time. In theory, this allows players the identify with their build, but in practice, it simply penalizes players for being different and trying new things. Additionally, some of the skills in the game are basically useless, regardless of which class you play. Are you sure this game had a beta?
On Nightmare difficulty and above, elite mobs come with powers that make them more powerful than the bosses themselves. Many of these powers force you to stay at range, so if you ever intended to play a melee character from start to finish, you are sadly mistaken. That's right, the game forces you to play ranged against certain elite mobs. You might think you have some good tactics planned, but when you face an "arcane + frozen" mob that does 800 DPS on nightmare and keeps you frozen in place, tactics do not matter.
To the game's credit, the new skill system can only gimp a character for a short time, and there are many fights and situations that bring back the old Diablo 1 +2 feel, but when you start facing lackluster bosses and terrible voice acting, the nostalgia quickly fades and you're left with a very rushed game.
My overall subjective opinion? 4/10
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What kinda disappointed me is, that many of the runes look like fillers. Gain a little bit of life, gain a little bit of mana, reduce the cooldown. That stuff shows up a lot. It might be interesting on a tactical level, but when I play the game, and I know that for the next few hours nothing interesting will change on my character, then I get bored and my motivation to play drops.
Stuff like the rune where the zombies form a tower to fall down on people: now that's interesting and worth playing for. Stuff that reads "gain 3% life"... that just blows.
6.5/10 from me, graohically the game is fine but it suffers greatly in the gameplay dept, No decisions to make about yoru char just makes it feel more like a worse-than-a-korean-grinder slog thru the same area's over and over. The ecnomy blows, They really need to increase what items sell to npc for especally if they are going to make ilv 60+ stuff cost 4-6x what it currently does to repair. I also was right, i figured the drop rates would be made shit to force the player to depend on the ah/rmtah, the fact they uped them to something decent is proof of this. The game to me is just a boring slog thru repetivie as hell area's with no real variation, and you honestly mean to tell me they want us to go thru the same exact area's 4 times with 1 char? In d2 it was fun because you had char builds and each build could play diffrently, where as in d3 no matter what skills you chose its the same shit with no real variation. Bascally I rate the game low because its just far to repetive even for a hack and slash title.
After being 10 years in devolopment or some such how the hell was the game we currently have the best they could do? I've seen indie games devved over a year that are far more intersting to play than diablo 3 ever can be. 1.03 patch will make the game a bit more playable but it won't fix all the underlying issues the game has. They need to make single player be offline (maybe connect for a few sec to make sure your using a legit copy) this way players can mod the game adding much more replayability to it. Its why Torchlight 2 is honestly far better of a game, never mind the fact that TL2 on its own is much more fun/intersting than diablo 3 was. I already pre-ordered tl2 Its gonna be a far better game overtall even some diablo hardcore fans who have played both games, say that honestly torchlight 2 is a far better game overall. I got a lv 25 or so Witchdoctor and honestly, the game still has not gotten intersting, still using Grasp of the dead and poison dart (with varying runes) because honestly other than the summon skills all the other skills I have gotten thus far sucked compared. If d3 had offline sp with an offical modding kit, i'd have given d3 a 8 or 9/10, but because its forced online even for single player (and imo its just unacceptable to die due to network lag in a single player play session), I just can't rate it above 6 or 6.5/10 with the gameplay it offers. A Sequel is supposed to be better than its predecessor, its noit however supposed to go so far backwards its even simpler than diablo 1.
Its to late for me to get a refund on D3 now, I'll just wait for a few patches to see if they game becomes worth playing. As it currently is, I haven't really logged in after my 2nd day of owning the game, because the game just puts me to sleep with how boring and repetive it is, its worse than a f2p korean grinder, at least in those you can customize your char usually.
All in all i'd never reccomend d3 to anyone, I'd tell them to get torchlight 2 insted, 33% of the price but a much MUCH better game overall, and with the ability to mod it with an offical modding kit, it means the game has virtually infinite content that can be generated for it, unlike d3 where the content is always the same and according to blizzard there is no current plans to add any new content to the game at all.
From what my best friend tells me who still logs in every once in a bit, the servers have become a near ghost town, his ping went from 300-400 to under 100, which means hardly anyone is playing d3 anymore. D3 just lacks any longliviety(sp?), TL2 has infinite longliviety due to a better dev team (its the ones who worked on d2 and such) and the modding community.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
What kinda disappointed me is, that many of the runes look like fillers. Gain a little bit of life, gain a little bit of mana, reduce the cooldown. That stuff shows up a lot. It might be interesting on a tactical level, but when I play the game, and I know that for the next few hours nothing interesting will change on my character, then I get bored and my motivation to play drops.
Stuff like the rune where the zombies form a tower to fall down on people: now that's interesting and worth playing for. Stuff that reads "gain 3% life"... that just blows.
Try being a witchdoctor, posion dart with the first rune you get, and Grasp of the dead with the higher damage rune are pretty much the only skills I use at lv 26 besides the zombie dog/garguantuan summon, because all the other skils I have gotten have been poor compared. Blizz also needs to fix the zombie dogs and gargantuan both die far to fast and have way to long of a cooldown. Since you can only summon 3 (or 4 if u have the passive) zombie dogs, and only can ever have 1 gargantuan why not just remove the cooldown entirely? I don't really see a purpose to it having a cooldown when its limited how many you can summon with no way to bypass it.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
I agree. I can't believe I am currently at 66% magic find and still not finding anything useful. That's just sad.
I had around 75% and even with magic find shrines I did not notice any big difference in what dropped. It does not affect legendary/set item droprates apparently, and it also does not seem to really change what sorts of rares and blues you get. If there is a difference, it is incredibly small and begs the question whether it is even worth it to stack mf gear.
My answer to that is no: I eventually swapped out all of my mf gear for other stats that were more useful and my game experience overall went up. I think over the space of the entire game run, I had found maybe one or two rares more with the mf gear than without. I tend to either sell or recycle 9/10 rares I come across because their stats aren't good. Like you wouldn't even be able to sell them on the AH for cheap.
Considering the fact that I am forced to play online for this game, even though I don't like playing sessions with strangers and pretty much play exclusively solo, and the fact that there is a lot of hacking going on, I just don't feel the urge to log into this game. I spent years playing D1 and D2 and I didn't even last a month in D3. The itemization is the third big factor for me staying away. I am overall pretty disappointed in how this title had turned out. I know it can change, but fact remains they will not add an offline mode for those of us who do not want to get hacked online and that to me will always make this game unappealing in comparison to other hack and slash non-MMO games.
I'd say the score is about right. The good thing is that they are on top of the problems and are already working to fix them.
As far as longevity goes. I've already played like 120 hours of D3. I have two chars in Inferno, plan to take a Wizard and WD there as well. I've also started a second Barbarian that will only use gear he finds or buys from vendors.
Given the fact that D3 has some work to be done even after 1.03, I'll probably give TL2 a try. TL1 only lasted me a week, but I'm hoping TL2 will last a bit longer. They've held on to some crappy design decisions from D1 and D2, but mods can alleviate those issues. I'm positive I won't get anywhere near the same number of hours per dollar spent with TL2 that I will with D3. But it should still be good for when battlenet is down.
I agree. I can't believe I am currently at 66% magic find and still not finding anything useful. That's just sad.
I had around 75% and even with magic find shrines I did not notice any big difference in what dropped. It does not affect legendary/set item droprates apparently, and it also does not seem to really change what sorts of rares and blues you get. If there is a difference, it is incredibly small and begs the question whether it is even worth it to stack mf gear.
My answer to that is no: I eventually swapped out all of my mf gear for other stats that were more useful and my game experience overall went up. I think over the space of the entire game run, I had found maybe one or two rares more with the mf gear than without. I tend to either sell or recycle 9/10 rares I come across because their stats aren't good. Like you wouldn't even be able to sell them on the AH for cheap.
Considering the fact that I am forced to play online for this game, even though I don't like playing sessions with strangers and pretty much play exclusively solo, and the fact that there is a lot of hacking going on, I just don't feel the urge to log into this game. I spent years playing D1 and D2 and I didn't even last a month in D3. The itemization is the third big factor for me staying away. I am overall pretty disappointed in how this title had turned out. I know it can change, but fact remains they will not add an offline mode for those of us who do not want to get hacked online and that to me will always make this game unappealing in comparison to other hack and slash non-MMO games.
You shuld buy torchlight 2, offline SP with an offical modkit coming out shortly after release, and it has multiplayer by I think Lan, internet or via a direct ip connection. D3 depressed me, so much time in dev and such a budget and they came out with a game thats a piece of shit compared to a 20 dollar low-mid budget title. The reviews it gets on sites like ign, gamespy etc, they probally got bribed to give it higher than it deserves, because I don't see how d3 warrants anything higher than 6 maybr 6.5 tops with how the game currently is. When the game is less intersting than even a f2p korean grind mmorpg/game you know the game has some serious issues. As I said the session spoofing (that blizz knows about and refuses to fix at all) and the fact you can die to network lag in a SINGLE PLAYER play session is just unacceptable by any stretch at all. My ping back when I played was usually 400+, I can connect to any other game server anywhere in the world and usually have a ping of 50-180.
Also if D3 didn't have diablo in its name I bet no one would really care about it. Its sellign based on name alone and not on the games merits (not that it really HAS any in the first place), If I played d3, under a diffrent game name, there is no way I would have bought the game. I also figured the game would get better later so decided to buy it and take a chance, but alas it doesn't, its just the same overly repetive shit from start to finish.
I also think they need to up the diffculty of normal because its just so easy that it gets boring really quickly. In path of exile, normal diffculty in it is probally hell diffculty in diablo 3 if we were to compare them. Normal in d3 is just a complete boring snoozefest as is nightmare from what I been told. Be nice if you could just skip norm and nm and just make a char in hell with some generic gear for the class.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
What kinda disappointed me is, that many of the runes look like fillers. Gain a little bit of life, gain a little bit of mana, reduce the cooldown. That stuff shows up a lot. It might be interesting on a tactical level, but when I play the game, and I know that for the next few hours nothing interesting will change on my character, then I get bored and my motivation to play drops.
Stuff like the rune where the zombies form a tower to fall down on people: now that's interesting and worth playing for. Stuff that reads "gain 3% life"... that just blows.
Try being a witchdoctor, posion dart with the first rune you get, and Grasp of the dead with the higher damage rune are pretty much the only skills I use at lv 26 besides the zombie dog/garguantuan summon, because all the other skils I have gotten have been poor compared. Blizz also needs to fix the zombie dogs and gargantuan both die far to fast and have way to long of a cooldown. Since you can only summon 3 (or 4 if u have the passive) zombie dogs, and only can ever have 1 gargantuan why not just remove the cooldown entirely? I don't really see a purpose to it having a cooldown when its limited how many you can summon with no way to bypass it.
To maji: uh, those little differences in runes actually can end up making a big difference. It is how you synergize your skills in this game. Sure the runes might seem boring, but actually they do a lot to change how your character plays. If Blizzard had designed the characters to have all life stealing runes, for example, at once, the characters would have been probably too powerful. It is interesting to note though that most of the really good runes happen at the lower levels rather than the higher levels.
To Siveria: I don't know why there is such a big cool down on gargantua. I think the zombie dog cool down is because of the sacrifice ability. Perhaps Blizzard wants to avoid the "explodacro" build in D3. I wish there were no downtimer either because sacrifice is the best way to do damage on the WD... most of the other skills are not that good for just getting fights done quickly. In my opinion, most of the WD summons are on too long of a timer, like the fetish army one.
You shuld buy torchlight 2, offline SP with an offical modkit coming out shortly after release, and it has multiplayer by I think Lan, internet or via a direct ip connection. D3 depressed me, so much time in dev and such a budget and they came out with a game thats a piece of shit compared to a 20 dollar low-mid budget title. The reviews it gets on sites like ign, gamespy etc, they probally got bribed to give it higher than it deserves, because I don't see how d3 warrants anything higher than 6 maybr 6.5 tops with how the game currently is. When the game is less intersting than even a f2p korean grind mmorpg/game you know the game has some serious issues. As I said the session spoofing (that blizz knows about and refuses to fix at all) and the fact you can die to network lag in a SINGLE PLAYER play session is just unacceptable by any stretch at all. My ping back when I played was usually 400+, I can connect to any other game server anywhere in the world and usually have a ping of 50-180.
(snip)
Underlined bit: you are preaching to the already converted there. I wish TL2 had come out before D3. I would be playing that instead. I have had my eye on TL2 since it was announced and am eagerly awaiting it.
Diablo III burst on the scene a few weeks ago to instantly become the best-selling computer game in history ....
Really?
Given how well the game sold in its first week, over the months and years when expansion packs come out and updates, the game will continue to sell, it could easily surpass 16 million sales if it made almost 7 million sales pretty quickly, it's almost halfway there.
The more I played the lower my score for D3 got and the less I liked the game. Pretty much everyone liked the game early on but the more you play the more you realize it's a shallow game that was poorly crafted. The loot tables are a joke. How can a company like Blizzard have this much time and a whole crapload of cash and design a game this watered down? I mean, they left out certain gems, prefixes, suffixes, runes, charms... the list is endless. The number of sets and *cough* "legendaries" alone is pathetic.
Garbage, game is garbage.
The rumors say that the reason Diablo 3 took so long to be made was because they were sorting out all the legal mumbo jumbo regarding the real money AH internationally.
When Diablo 3 first came into production there wasn't even a rael money auction house in the game.
Development for Diablo 3 began back in 2003 with the original Blizzard North team that made Diablo 2. A couple of years in the team asked Mike Morhaime to make a futuristic horror MMORPG. Morhaime denied this request. So the team left disgruntled to form their own studio and make the game they wanted to make... which would become Hellgate London which would have its server's shut off because of money issues.
The new team was made of like 25% of the original team and between the Hellgate London incident until 2009 they were working on the game. Around that time Blizzard looked at their progress, laid them all off and moved the Diablo 3 game to their main studio.
But yes a game that has been in development for 9 years should be 100% bug free on launch. It's absolutely unacceptable for a $60 game to be so bad. In truth it should have only been $30 all things considered.
The 'end game' for Diablo 3 is massively underdeveloped. In order to beat the hardest difficulty apparently (keeping in mind I"ve never played the game) you have to grind out millions of gold to buy gear good enough to beat anything at all.
A game in which you're just farming the same dungeons over and over and over and over in hopes of getting big gold or drops is really really lame.
Unfortunately the review only covers 1/4 of the game and because of that it can only be counted as a review for people who are playing the easiest mode possible one time through.
Wow! i was checking posts and i have noticed that my post was removed.
Im going to say it again then.
This score is offensive, for a site that is entitled as mmorpg giving a score to a game that is not a mmorpg is an offense to your community, beside that, the reviewer should give a score after playing the game until the max level, at lv30 everyone is enjoying the game.
If you delete this post again youll be giving me the point. Your call.
credits earned...move along...
IF there is any doubts that we were all riped off just see this gameplay 4 years ago and tell me how that looks so good 4 yrs ago and how could Activision ruined a game like that just for profit.
Overall, I think the review was fairly good but for two items:
"Longevity: 9.5/10"
No, I really don't think so. It has been discussed to Hell and back on the official forums but Diablo III is not like its predecessors in that regard. Itemisation is boring, and getting loot does not satisfy the old cravings. There's even a (halfway) scientific approach circulating as to why the loot in D3 isn't working.
Since the reviewer only played through normal, he just assumes that things continue as he's accustomed to in other difficulties. They don't. D3's loot is not half as captivating as in the other games. Items are mere stat holders now instead of meaningful things you want to collect. And item acquisition is governed no longer by finding treasure yourself and trading a bit. It's about grinding money which you can then take to the AH to buy your gear. In short: Most people I know have quit playing once they realized that.
Plus, D3 does not feature any meaningful randomization of maps. I can see how this isn't really noticable if you play through the game only once, but it really is something that inhibits replayability. Overworld maps always have the same shape and monsters, only the placement of doodads (trees, boulders) differs. Dungeons are stitched together from huge prefabricated (and easily recognizable) building blocks. After playing through normal, you have seen it all. Everything. There is no longer any sense of exploration apart from "I wonder which event is up this time".
Third point: You cannot opt to skip the story. And that seriously hampers any replayability. Either you let that inane drivel wash over you time and again, or you hit your ESC button until it melts.
"Value: 10/10"
I nearly choked when I read that. I've shelled out 60€ for Diablo III. In over 15 years of gaming, I had never requested a refund for a game. With D3, i wanted my money back. I felt so cheated, I can hardly put it into words. I always liked the Diablo games for their immense replayability. That was what made them worth the money. Heck, I got so much enjoyment out of the first two instalments that I decided to purchase a second copy of each because I felt that otherwise I wouldn't compensating Blizzard sufficiently.
Not so with D3. The first playthrough was "meh", and I was seriously annoyed by the story. Also, it has (see above) no replay value for me.
And I'm not the only one. A lot of people are going for refunds. Just read through the offical and other fora. Anecdotal: A store in Copenhagen (I think) has even stopped selling Diablo III because they get so many refund requests.
Conclusion: Please note more clearly that your score of 8.5 comes from playing once through the game and that you really did not do the research on how much "Value" and "Longevity" this game has.
Giving the game a 7.8 would be generous.
P.S.: No word on the unskippable story? If you factored that in, we'd probably be down to a 7.0, if not less.
Comments
As for the comments, I always give a second review.. Its obvious the haters who didnt get everything they wanted on the first week of the game release call it boring and AH intensive..
Yet they always state how they played Diablo 2 for 2-3 years straight though.
Cough Cough, bullshit.... The fact you expect to have all the loot in a week in itself, the thought is moronic at the least bit of considerate thought.. It's downright disrespectful and you clearly are not a Diablo fan nor do i doubt you played Diablo 2 at all to say such nonsense let alone 2 years straight.
Regards,
Mike Cackle
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I greatly enjoy D3, but it definitely has flaws, the biggest one of which is the itemization and how it relates to progression.
The big problem is that character power is much more dependent on gear this time around, especially compared to D2. Unfortunately, having completely random loot doesn't really work anymore, because if the RNG isn't on your side, you can hit a pretty big progression brick wall as early as nightmare difficulty. Yes, you can use the auction house, but for me that just kind of sucks the fun out of the game. Without loot it's just a pointless grind for gold (or EXP until 60).
Blizzard needs to adjust loot tables so that level appropriate goodies drop much more frequently, and certain items need to be made a little less random. A wizard specific hat should NEVER have STR as a primary stat on it, and I shouldn't be getting items in Inferno (or even late Hell) with +EXP on them, for example. Also, class-specific items should have some sort of incentive for using them over a non class-specific one which may be slightly better stat wise. Seeing Wizards running around with 2H battle axes makes me die a little inside.
Anyway, I give this game a solid 8 now, but a 9+ if they can fix itemization.
I have been playing this for about a week now and the only 'lag' or 'rubberbanding' I have experienced has been due to me being on a wifi connection. [mod edit]
Woah, that's a high review.
I LOVE this game and am severely addicted to it at the momant, but still I think maybe 8.5 is a little too high. The only problems with it are, the campaign is less than 24 hours long, and B.net is still very shoddy atm (in Europe atleast, I hear the Americans have no problems). Actually, even though it's 4:50am, the only reason we're not still playing RIGHT FUCKING NOW is because the server just came down.
Although the campaign is short, I'm still going to be gearing up in Inferno for a long, LONG time to come, they're adding new legendarys soon too. The gameplay is outstanding, so fluid and addictive. I'm itching for the PvP patch to come out already, and cannot wait to empty all your pockets on the RMAH
(It's good that Blizzard are making repair costs 6x more, this means gold will likely keep its value, and you'll literally be paying the good half of the players out your pockets for your deaths. So you guys in pub's can still abuse the quick res & player tele system, but you better have a lot of gold, or a deep pocket to do so).
Anyway, server being down = bed time.
_________
Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
Decent review, though it seems most reviews have a lot of text about what they don't like then the final verdict doesn't match the text. As for 10/10 longevity... that seems to be a bit overstated. How many people will be playing in a year if the game doesn't go on sale?
I bought D3 because I wanted to play with friends. It definetly feels more shallow than D2. I agree with the comments on initial difficulty.. the only way you die is if you're not watching the screen or if you encounter a gimmick mob for the first time and don't realize what is happening... like trees and their poison plants (yes, that was me).
I was not thrilled with the final battle. Even on "normal" difficulty, you would think there would be a challenge, but it felt like any other boss fight. Blizzard's vision of how this final battle / boss would look is even underwhelming. The boss should have looked and felt more significant.
With all that said, I enjoyed playing with friends. I seemed to get disconnected less when I was in a multiplayer game. Played solo several nights and was disconnected frequently, though that may be coincidence.
If this were D2, I would have still played the online version so that I could play any of my characters with friends, so the always on DRM doesn't bother me... but I understand how it bothers those that played D2 solo, so I'm not discounting your complaints. Still, my issue isn't with the always on DRM, its the fact that you can't stay online, even weeks after launch, without being disconnected. Sometimes its hours, sometimes its minutes. When I don't have problems with most other online games, don't tell me to go adjust router settings to fix my problem.
D3 is a decent game, but it just doesn't live up to D2, even when I remove my rose colored glasses. Still, I had fun playing with friends, so I can't call it a failure. It's just not a masterpiece... which is what most of us wanted even if we weren't really expecting that.
Diablo fans need to buy this because they can't help it. Everyone else? Buy it if you have friends playing, it will still be fun... but if you're not sure about it, then save your money.
My exact thoughts. Kinda reminded of the SWTOR review.
I have to agree with the commenters who disagree about the longevity score. Currently I'm incredibly bored with this game. Sometimes I log on and do an inferno butcher run to grind some gold, but most of the time I log on, check my stuff on the AH, and then log off. Actually playing the game is getting less and less entertaining, as I really can't see why I should spend endless amounts of time grinding to kill bosses I've already killed plenty of times.
On top of very little PvE endgame, the PvP endgame is currently non-existent, and I can't imagine it'll be very balanced immediately upon implementation. It is going to require some tweaking, and by the time they can put the PvP in place and get it to a relatively balanced place, I will have lost interest entirely or be primarily playing another game.
Seriously, a 9.5/10 for longevity? Its like knowing that Anakin Skywalker is going to turn into Darth Vader, why bother after you already know thats going to happen?? You know what happens after your first easy run through and then other than a loot grind there is no point in playing again. In fact, i'd guess thats why only 1.9% of the games population has unlocked inferno mode. They just got bored after playing. I agree with a lot of what you said in this review but I can't believe the 9.5/10 for Longevity...and I would wager to say that if Blizzard offered a satisfaction or money back guarantee, they would only have 1.9% of the game sales they orginally had when it first came out.
Fluff that ignores its MANY problems..
Exactly what everybody was expecting..
This review is a total joke. How can you give a game a 7 in gameplay and a 10 in longevity? How can you review a game that has major features missing? What is the basis of these categories? Social? Really?! How about technical?
Professional game reviews are really becoming a joke these days.
Game reviews should have 3 parts:
#1 Technical- How well the game runs.
#2 Objective- Flat list of what the game has and does.
#3 Subjective0- an uncategorized opinion piece.
How does D3 stack up in a nutshell?
Technical:
The game runs on a wide variety of machines, but also has a wide array of errors and functionality problems. The always-on feature of Diablo 3 is a major drawback, and it prevents players from playing offline at all. This can also make the game unplayable for long periods of time due to AH or game crashes. For a single player game, people tend to frown on the always-online model, especially for a worldwide release. In rare cases, people pay for internet subscriptions by the hour, and in other cases, people in the world still use dialup. There are also a number of sound and graphical issues, including the inability to scale chat font size, a horrendous graphics bug that can crash you to desktop, and a soundbug that can switch your sound card on and off at random times. To its credit, the game also has a wide array of gameplay updates, and they are rolling out fixes, but is by no means a technical masterpiece. This is partly by design. Although the game can be controlled with fewer buttons than most controllers have, the game lacks controller support of any kind.
Objective:
* 1-4 Players
* Constant Online Connection required, even for solo play.
* 10-30 hours of unique replay, with repeatable quests.
* Friend Lists.
* Achievements.
* No ladder mode.
* No PVP. "Coming Soon"
* Similar itemization to Diablo 2, though slightly less robust.
* Random generation of levels returns in only a very minimal way.
* Real money auctions planned.
Subjective:
In my opinion, some of the technical problems in this game should have been fixed during the four year beta process. Additionally, some features we saw in alpha, or even in Diablo 2, were not present here. Finally, we have Blizzard Irvine trying their hand at rendering hell. In my opinion, D3 fails to capture this, except in rare portions of Act II, and a rare instance during the many dialogues in the game. This hurts the overall experience of playing. Furthermore, the game features blacksmithing and jewelcrafting across shared characters, but the problem with the game is that these crafts have costs which far outweigh the rewards. Diablo III is listed as an ARPG, but in reality it is an action game with no RPG elements at all. With the removal of skill trees, one would think that there would at least be a few moral choices ala Starcraft II, (especially considering the M-rating), but these never make an appearance. A new Nephalem Valor mechanic is in place, whereby players on harder difficulties recieve a buff for sticking with one spec for a short time. In theory, this allows players the identify with their build, but in practice, it simply penalizes players for being different and trying new things. Additionally, some of the skills in the game are basically useless, regardless of which class you play. Are you sure this game had a beta?
On Nightmare difficulty and above, elite mobs come with powers that make them more powerful than the bosses themselves. Many of these powers force you to stay at range, so if you ever intended to play a melee character from start to finish, you are sadly mistaken. That's right, the game forces you to play ranged against certain elite mobs. You might think you have some good tactics planned, but when you face an "arcane + frozen" mob that does 800 DPS on nightmare and keeps you frozen in place, tactics do not matter.
To the game's credit, the new skill system can only gimp a character for a short time, and there are many fights and situations that bring back the old Diablo 1 +2 feel, but when you start facing lackluster bosses and terrible voice acting, the nostalgia quickly fades and you're left with a very rushed game.
My overall subjective opinion? 4/10
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Dude I just played GW2. Just wanted to say the I feel so glad I got rid of my D3 copy. Jeeezee
Music is the science of manipulating people trough sound.
What kinda disappointed me is, that many of the runes look like fillers. Gain a little bit of life, gain a little bit of mana, reduce the cooldown. That stuff shows up a lot. It might be interesting on a tactical level, but when I play the game, and I know that for the next few hours nothing interesting will change on my character, then I get bored and my motivation to play drops.
Stuff like the rune where the zombies form a tower to fall down on people: now that's interesting and worth playing for. Stuff that reads "gain 3% life"... that just blows.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
The reveiw is probably fair, but D3 is not an MMO, why is MMORPG reviewing it???
6.5/10 from me, graohically the game is fine but it suffers greatly in the gameplay dept, No decisions to make about yoru char just makes it feel more like a worse-than-a-korean-grinder slog thru the same area's over and over. The ecnomy blows, They really need to increase what items sell to npc for especally if they are going to make ilv 60+ stuff cost 4-6x what it currently does to repair. I also was right, i figured the drop rates would be made shit to force the player to depend on the ah/rmtah, the fact they uped them to something decent is proof of this. The game to me is just a boring slog thru repetivie as hell area's with no real variation, and you honestly mean to tell me they want us to go thru the same exact area's 4 times with 1 char? In d2 it was fun because you had char builds and each build could play diffrently, where as in d3 no matter what skills you chose its the same shit with no real variation. Bascally I rate the game low because its just far to repetive even for a hack and slash title.
After being 10 years in devolopment or some such how the hell was the game we currently have the best they could do? I've seen indie games devved over a year that are far more intersting to play than diablo 3 ever can be. 1.03 patch will make the game a bit more playable but it won't fix all the underlying issues the game has. They need to make single player be offline (maybe connect for a few sec to make sure your using a legit copy) this way players can mod the game adding much more replayability to it. Its why Torchlight 2 is honestly far better of a game, never mind the fact that TL2 on its own is much more fun/intersting than diablo 3 was. I already pre-ordered tl2 Its gonna be a far better game overtall even some diablo hardcore fans who have played both games, say that honestly torchlight 2 is a far better game overall. I got a lv 25 or so Witchdoctor and honestly, the game still has not gotten intersting, still using Grasp of the dead and poison dart (with varying runes) because honestly other than the summon skills all the other skills I have gotten thus far sucked compared. If d3 had offline sp with an offical modding kit, i'd have given d3 a 8 or 9/10, but because its forced online even for single player (and imo its just unacceptable to die due to network lag in a single player play session), I just can't rate it above 6 or 6.5/10 with the gameplay it offers. A Sequel is supposed to be better than its predecessor, its noit however supposed to go so far backwards its even simpler than diablo 1.
Its to late for me to get a refund on D3 now, I'll just wait for a few patches to see if they game becomes worth playing. As it currently is, I haven't really logged in after my 2nd day of owning the game, because the game just puts me to sleep with how boring and repetive it is, its worse than a f2p korean grinder, at least in those you can customize your char usually.
All in all i'd never reccomend d3 to anyone, I'd tell them to get torchlight 2 insted, 33% of the price but a much MUCH better game overall, and with the ability to mod it with an offical modding kit, it means the game has virtually infinite content that can be generated for it, unlike d3 where the content is always the same and according to blizzard there is no current plans to add any new content to the game at all.
From what my best friend tells me who still logs in every once in a bit, the servers have become a near ghost town, his ping went from 300-400 to under 100, which means hardly anyone is playing d3 anymore. D3 just lacks any longliviety(sp?), TL2 has infinite longliviety due to a better dev team (its the ones who worked on d2 and such) and the modding community.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
Try being a witchdoctor, posion dart with the first rune you get, and Grasp of the dead with the higher damage rune are pretty much the only skills I use at lv 26 besides the zombie dog/garguantuan summon, because all the other skils I have gotten have been poor compared. Blizz also needs to fix the zombie dogs and gargantuan both die far to fast and have way to long of a cooldown. Since you can only summon 3 (or 4 if u have the passive) zombie dogs, and only can ever have 1 gargantuan why not just remove the cooldown entirely? I don't really see a purpose to it having a cooldown when its limited how many you can summon with no way to bypass it.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
I had around 75% and even with magic find shrines I did not notice any big difference in what dropped. It does not affect legendary/set item droprates apparently, and it also does not seem to really change what sorts of rares and blues you get. If there is a difference, it is incredibly small and begs the question whether it is even worth it to stack mf gear.
My answer to that is no: I eventually swapped out all of my mf gear for other stats that were more useful and my game experience overall went up. I think over the space of the entire game run, I had found maybe one or two rares more with the mf gear than without. I tend to either sell or recycle 9/10 rares I come across because their stats aren't good. Like you wouldn't even be able to sell them on the AH for cheap.
Considering the fact that I am forced to play online for this game, even though I don't like playing sessions with strangers and pretty much play exclusively solo, and the fact that there is a lot of hacking going on, I just don't feel the urge to log into this game. I spent years playing D1 and D2 and I didn't even last a month in D3. The itemization is the third big factor for me staying away. I am overall pretty disappointed in how this title had turned out. I know it can change, but fact remains they will not add an offline mode for those of us who do not want to get hacked online and that to me will always make this game unappealing in comparison to other hack and slash non-MMO games.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I'd say the score is about right. The good thing is that they are on top of the problems and are already working to fix them.
As far as longevity goes. I've already played like 120 hours of D3. I have two chars in Inferno, plan to take a Wizard and WD there as well. I've also started a second Barbarian that will only use gear he finds or buys from vendors.
Given the fact that D3 has some work to be done even after 1.03, I'll probably give TL2 a try. TL1 only lasted me a week, but I'm hoping TL2 will last a bit longer. They've held on to some crappy design decisions from D1 and D2, but mods can alleviate those issues. I'm positive I won't get anywhere near the same number of hours per dollar spent with TL2 that I will with D3. But it should still be good for when battlenet is down.
You shuld buy torchlight 2, offline SP with an offical modkit coming out shortly after release, and it has multiplayer by I think Lan, internet or via a direct ip connection. D3 depressed me, so much time in dev and such a budget and they came out with a game thats a piece of shit compared to a 20 dollar low-mid budget title. The reviews it gets on sites like ign, gamespy etc, they probally got bribed to give it higher than it deserves, because I don't see how d3 warrants anything higher than 6 maybr 6.5 tops with how the game currently is. When the game is less intersting than even a f2p korean grind mmorpg/game you know the game has some serious issues. As I said the session spoofing (that blizz knows about and refuses to fix at all) and the fact you can die to network lag in a SINGLE PLAYER play session is just unacceptable by any stretch at all. My ping back when I played was usually 400+, I can connect to any other game server anywhere in the world and usually have a ping of 50-180.
Also if D3 didn't have diablo in its name I bet no one would really care about it. Its sellign based on name alone and not on the games merits (not that it really HAS any in the first place), If I played d3, under a diffrent game name, there is no way I would have bought the game. I also figured the game would get better later so decided to buy it and take a chance, but alas it doesn't, its just the same overly repetive shit from start to finish.
I also think they need to up the diffculty of normal because its just so easy that it gets boring really quickly. In path of exile, normal diffculty in it is probally hell diffculty in diablo 3 if we were to compare them. Normal in d3 is just a complete boring snoozefest as is nightmare from what I been told. Be nice if you could just skip norm and nm and just make a char in hell with some generic gear for the class.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
To maji: uh, those little differences in runes actually can end up making a big difference. It is how you synergize your skills in this game. Sure the runes might seem boring, but actually they do a lot to change how your character plays. If Blizzard had designed the characters to have all life stealing runes, for example, at once, the characters would have been probably too powerful. It is interesting to note though that most of the really good runes happen at the lower levels rather than the higher levels.
To Siveria: I don't know why there is such a big cool down on gargantua. I think the zombie dog cool down is because of the sacrifice ability. Perhaps Blizzard wants to avoid the "explodacro" build in D3. I wish there were no downtimer either because sacrifice is the best way to do damage on the WD... most of the other skills are not that good for just getting fights done quickly. In my opinion, most of the WD summons are on too long of a timer, like the fetish army one.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Underlined bit: you are preaching to the already converted there. I wish TL2 had come out before D3. I would be playing that instead. I have had my eye on TL2 since it was announced and am eagerly awaiting it.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Given how well the game sold in its first week, over the months and years when expansion packs come out and updates, the game will continue to sell, it could easily surpass 16 million sales if it made almost 7 million sales pretty quickly, it's almost halfway there.
You can get TQ+IT for about 5€ arround here
When Diablo 3 first came into production there wasn't even a rael money auction house in the game.
Development for Diablo 3 began back in 2003 with the original Blizzard North team that made Diablo 2. A couple of years in the team asked Mike Morhaime to make a futuristic horror MMORPG. Morhaime denied this request. So the team left disgruntled to form their own studio and make the game they wanted to make... which would become Hellgate London which would have its server's shut off because of money issues.
The new team was made of like 25% of the original team and between the Hellgate London incident until 2009 they were working on the game. Around that time Blizzard looked at their progress, laid them all off and moved the Diablo 3 game to their main studio.
But yes a game that has been in development for 9 years should be 100% bug free on launch. It's absolutely unacceptable for a $60 game to be so bad. In truth it should have only been $30 all things considered.
The 'end game' for Diablo 3 is massively underdeveloped. In order to beat the hardest difficulty apparently (keeping in mind I"ve never played the game) you have to grind out millions of gold to buy gear good enough to beat anything at all.
A game in which you're just farming the same dungeons over and over and over and over in hopes of getting big gold or drops is really really lame.
Unfortunately the review only covers 1/4 of the game and because of that it can only be counted as a review for people who are playing the easiest mode possible one time through.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
Wow! i was checking posts and i have noticed that my post was removed.
Im going to say it again then.
This score is offensive, for a site that is entitled as mmorpg giving a score to a game that is not a mmorpg is an offense to your community, beside that, the reviewer should give a score after playing the game until the max level, at lv30 everyone is enjoying the game.
If you delete this post again youll be giving me the point. Your call.
credits earned...move along...
IF there is any doubts that we were all riped off just see this gameplay 4 years ago and tell me how that looks so good 4 yrs ago and how could Activision ruined a game like that just for profit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtotXRiYimg&feature=related
We were all riped off. just check the video and listen THE MAIN DEV JAY WILSON talking about the game BEFORE ACTIVISION BOUGHT BLIZZARD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtotXRiYimg&feature=related
Beta tester maniac
Overall, I think the review was fairly good but for two items:
"Longevity: 9.5/10"
No, I really don't think so. It has been discussed to Hell and back on the official forums but Diablo III is not like its predecessors in that regard. Itemisation is boring, and getting loot does not satisfy the old cravings. There's even a (halfway) scientific approach circulating as to why the loot in D3 isn't working.
Since the reviewer only played through normal, he just assumes that things continue as he's accustomed to in other difficulties. They don't. D3's loot is not half as captivating as in the other games. Items are mere stat holders now instead of meaningful things you want to collect. And item acquisition is governed no longer by finding treasure yourself and trading a bit. It's about grinding money which you can then take to the AH to buy your gear. In short: Most people I know have quit playing once they realized that.
Plus, D3 does not feature any meaningful randomization of maps. I can see how this isn't really noticable if you play through the game only once, but it really is something that inhibits replayability. Overworld maps always have the same shape and monsters, only the placement of doodads (trees, boulders) differs. Dungeons are stitched together from huge prefabricated (and easily recognizable) building blocks. After playing through normal, you have seen it all. Everything. There is no longer any sense of exploration apart from "I wonder which event is up this time".
Third point: You cannot opt to skip the story. And that seriously hampers any replayability. Either you let that inane drivel wash over you time and again, or you hit your ESC button until it melts.
"Value: 10/10"
I nearly choked when I read that. I've shelled out 60€ for Diablo III. In over 15 years of gaming, I had never requested a refund for a game. With D3, i wanted my money back. I felt so cheated, I can hardly put it into words. I always liked the Diablo games for their immense replayability. That was what made them worth the money. Heck, I got so much enjoyment out of the first two instalments that I decided to purchase a second copy of each because I felt that otherwise I wouldn't compensating Blizzard sufficiently.
Not so with D3. The first playthrough was "meh", and I was seriously annoyed by the story. Also, it has (see above) no replay value for me.
And I'm not the only one. A lot of people are going for refunds. Just read through the offical and other fora. Anecdotal: A store in Copenhagen (I think) has even stopped selling Diablo III because they get so many refund requests.
Conclusion: Please note more clearly that your score of 8.5 comes from playing once through the game and that you really did not do the research on how much "Value" and "Longevity" this game has.
Giving the game a 7.8 would be generous.
P.S.: No word on the unskippable story? If you factored that in, we'd probably be down to a 7.0, if not less.