Diablo III

[Tawmis]

Amazed there's no existing thread for this already?

Anyway, I enjoy Diablo. My wife has enjoyed I and II. So sure enough, when I got III, she asked me how it was.

Moments later, I lost my computer to the wife playing Diablo III (which I didn't mind, I love it when she games and has fun!)

Anyway, at long last I was finally able to do this as she slept...

[Qbix]

I intend to buy/play it in the future, but all those messages about hacked accounts, failed servers logins are a bit scary.

Is it more like Diablo I or II ?

[Tawmis]

Well, I have no issues logging into the server (did on day one... but I only tried twice). And account thus far isn't hacked. But really if someone hacks it, I won't get bent.

And as for which it's closer to... closer to Diablo II than it is Diablo I... but ... you will be ... pleasantly surprised by the many references to Diablo I.

[misslilo]

Not my type of gameplay - so you won't see me, sorry

[Tawmis]

Not my type of gameplay - so you won't see me, sorry

No worries. Don't expect every game to be for everybody!

I love it, because it's good therapy killing things after a very long day doing help desk work, where there's 70 calls holding, pretty much all day long...

[Collector]

a very long day doing help desk work, where there's 70 calls holding, pretty much all day long...

Oh god... when you get hammered with a big queue all day, by the end of the day you can end up feeling like you have been physically beaten.

[Maxor127]

I might get it if I see it on sale, but I remember saying the same thing for Diablo Battlechest, and that seemed to never go on sale. I don't really like the Diablo games. The first one was cool and interesting just because it was something new and different. But I don't like dungeon crawlers in general. And Diablo 2 was more of the same, so I never finished that, although I was inspired to reinstall Diablo 2 since D3 came out.

I prefer games like Baldur's Gate where I control a group and can explore cities and countrysides instead of dungeon after dungeon. And I like interacting with lots of NPCs and receiving lots of side quests. Diablo might be more fun multiplayer, though. I tried Baldur's Gate multiplayer and it was kind of annoying how dialog would interrupt everyone playing.

[Rudy]

What is Diablo III?

[Moon Dragon]

What is Diablo III?

The game that come's after Diablo II, Duh :-p.

Joke aside. It's a hack'n slash rpg where you basically slay your way through many, often demon related, enemies devided onto 4 acts until the end of act 4 where you have to fight the prime evil thus (hopefully) saving the world from becoming an ultimate hell.

Anyways...

About the log-in issues: It was just that the servers didn't aknowledge you as being active in the game unless you wrote something in the general chat (just one message before loggin into the game). This has been fixed now.

i liked the game and even though i never got around to completing the others, I might play them now, in order to get the full experience.

[Rath Darkblade]

What is Diablo III?

The game that come's after Diablo II, Duh :-p.

Joke aside. It's a hack'n slash rpg where you basically slay your way through many, often demon related, enemies devided onto 4 acts until the end of act 4 where you have to fight the prime evil thus (hopefully) saving the world from becoming an ultimate hell.

Anyways...

About the log-in issues: It was just that the servers didn't aknowledge you as being active in the game unless you wrote something in the general chat (just one message before loggin into the game). This has been fixed now.

i liked the game and even though i never got around to completing the others, I might play them now, in order to get the full experience.

Hmm... am I the only one who found Diablo II to be rather boring, compared with other RPGs? It basically felt like this:

Act 1
1. Start in town, talk to generic NPCs, buy basic equipment, get quests;
2. Hack, slash, slash, feint, hack, slash, back, forward, stab, hack;
3. Go back to town, get better equipment, use gems if any;
4. Repeat #2 and #3, ad nauseum, until you either die and have to revive and go back to where you died to retrieve your stuff, or until you beat the Big Bad. Assuming you do, move on to...
5. Hurray! You get a thoroughly exciting video of you beating the Big Bad, and then some minor character does something completely stupid to re-awaken the next Big Bad.
6. Move on to Acts 2, 3 and 4, which are exactly the same as Act 1 except in a different (and harder) setting, until you finally beat Diablo. Having done so, move on to...
7. Hurray! You've beaten Diablo! And now an even WORSE Big Bad comes along, and you have to move on to the expansion, and the exact same thing happens once again (except there's only Baal to beat), which you eventually do... but...
8. ...as usual with Blizzard games, the (or one of the) most sympathetic characters in the game "sacrifices himself". (Think of Grom in WC3: Reign of Chaos, or Tassadar in the original Starcraft).

To be honest, I really don't like Blizzard's business decisions (including what they did to Warcraft with WoW, and to a lesser extent, to the Starcraft franchise)... to me, Starcraft 2 looks like Blizzard trying to cash in on the legacy of the original Starcraft (particularly as they're releasing it as 3 different games), whereas World of Warcraft, as far as I'm concerned, is just a gigantic cash cow for Blizzard.

I will say that what I've heard about the levelling mechanics of D3 sound very cool. However, the whole must-be-online-even-in-single-player part... and the real-money-auction-house part... not so much.

But hey, it's Robert Kotick's big business, and he's in business to screw everyone out of their hard-earned money! And he's not getting mine.

[Tawmis]

Hmm... am I the only one who found Diablo II to be rather boring, compared with other RPGs? It basically felt like this:

If you're going to break down Diablo... care to break down a Sierra game, say like - KQ3? With picking up random items, and using them in random puzzles?
And repeat over and over. Until you beat the game.

Break any game down to its most basic form, and it's going to sound ridiculously boring.

To be honest, I really don't like Blizzard's business decisions (including what they did to Warcraft with WoW, and to a lesser extent, to the Starcraft franchise)... to me, Starcraft 2 looks like Blizzard trying to cash in on the legacy of the original Starcraft (particularly as they're releasing it as 3 different games), whereas World of Warcraft, as far as I'm concerned, is just a gigantic cash cow for Blizzard.

Wait. So you played Starcraft, and by the sounds of it, Warcraft (not WoW)... and... you complain about Diablo... with hack and slash? And doing it over and over and over and over and over? Really?

I will say that what I've heard about the levelling mechanics of D3 sound very cool. However, the whole must-be-online-even-in-single-player part... and the real-money-auction-house part... not so much.

The online portion is annoying. But it's the best way to make sure it's not hacked. As for the real money auction - you can chose to use it or not. They have the regular auction too. You have to hit a button to see the money auction. It's on the normal auction by default.

[Rath Darkblade]

To be honest, I really don't like Blizzard's business decisions (including what they did to Warcraft with WoW, and to a lesser extent, to the Starcraft franchise)... to me, Starcraft 2 looks like Blizzard trying to cash in on the legacy of the original Starcraft (particularly as they're releasing it as 3 different games), whereas World of Warcraft, as far as I'm concerned, is just a gigantic cash cow for Blizzard.

Wait. So you played Starcraft, and by the sounds of it, Warcraft (not WoW)... and... you complain about Diablo... with hack and slash? And doing it over and over and over and over and over? Really?

Well, okay, fair point. I guess that I was only turned off by Diablo II (but not Starcraft or WC3) because I only played WC3 & SC1 offline, by myself, so I had the time to play it at my own pace and immerse myself in the story.

On the other hand, when I played Diablo II, I was playing it with a friend or two online - and although they tried to co-op, they were constantly irritated when I asked questions about things that I didn't understand. I was constantly expected to know the things that they knew, even though they'd played the game for years, and I was new to it. (Throwing the newbie to the wolves, or the orcs or whatever, is not the best introduction to a game!) So I ended up hating the experience.

It didn't help that, even when I stated at the outset, "Look, I can't stay up past [whenever] - I have work tomorrow, must get sleep", they insisted that I should keep playing "just to get as far as [point X]". Then, afterwards, they bombarded me with questions about what I thought of the story, and character XYZ, and this and that... when all I wanted was to get some sleep.

None of this is the game's fault, sure. Diablo II itself (at least the mechanics) feels like every other Blizzard game I'd played. But the experience of playing it was vastly different, which is why I just couldn't (and didn't) like it. *shrug*

[Tawmis]

Well, okay, fair point. I guess that I was only turned off by Diablo II (but not Starcraft or WC3) because I only played WC3 & SC1 offline, by myself, so I had the time to play it at my own pace and immerse myself in the story.

That's what I do with Diablo III. The first day, a bunch of co-workers and I were all excited - but they were burning through the story without the dialogue - so I bailed on the multiplayer and just did single player. Beat it (as mentioned in the first post) with my barbarian. And now casually playing (ie: when bored and/or just in need of killing something!) with my wizard character (which was originally made to hold my extra items rather than purchasing chest space). One thing I like is the chest and skills are shared between all characters. So whatever you put in your chest with Character A can be accessed with Character B. And your skills (Blacksmithing and Jewel Crafting) are also shared between characters, so you don't have to do it for each character.