Diablo III Review
Diablo III is a devilishly captivating and addictive action role-playing game.
The Good
- Powerful abilities and tight controls make combat enjoyable
- Flexible, customizable character classes
- Endless, alluring loot
- Varied locations that cry out to be explored
- Harder difficulty levels change up the game significantly.
The Bad
- Online connection requirement can cause some serious frustrations
- Weapon system flies in the face of traditional RPG logic.
Once upon a time, the Diablo series defined the hack-and-slash action role-playing game, setting the standard by which all games in the genre were measured. Now, Diablo III feels more familiar than genre-defining, relying on refining the same hooks that have always made this series so compelling. But what a refinement it is. The controls are responsive and pleasurable; the diversity of character classes and skill customization options is impressive; and the constant stream of gold and treasure you earn is irresistible. Blizzard has the recipe for crafting a habit-forming loot-driven action RPG down to a science, and in Diablo III, the results of that recipe are more exciting and more addictive than they've ever been.
You begin your quest just after what appears to be a flaming star falls from the heavens and crashes into the cathedral in Tristram, the doomed town where the events of Diablo took place. This cosmic occurrence has the unfortunate side effect of reanimating the dead, and the people of New Tristram find themselves besieged by corpses long ago put to rest. Diablo III's story is unremarkable, but it weaves in plenty of references to and appearances by characters from earlier games and enriches the established lore of the series. Fans of Diablo and Diablo II will immediately feel drawn into this world.
You certainly don't need any familiarity with the series to jump right into Diablo III, however. If you've played earlier games, you'll likely get even more out of Diablo III--the music that plays in the New Tristram area may send nostalgic shivers down your spine--but the gameplay is welcoming and easy to grasp for vets and newcomers alike. You choose one of five character classes, and though they become quite distinct at later levels, they all start with nothing but basic offensive skills that are performed with clicks of the mouse.
That may sound dull, but in fact the rate at which you acquire new skills is part of what makes Diablo III so hard to pull yourself away from. You very quickly open up slots for new types of abilities; if you're playing as a demon hunter, for instance, you begin with a basic archery attack, but you can soon supplement this with resource-draining skills like a rapid fire ability, enemy-slowing caltrops, acrobatic somersaults that can get you away from enemies, and other techniques.
These skills are divided into distinct categories--primary, secondary, defensive, and so on--and by default, you can have only one skill from each category equipped at a time. This is a sensible restriction if you're a novice player, because it helps ensure that your character is well rounded, with a complementary assortment of abilities. However, if you prefer a greater level of character customization, you can turn on what's called elective mode. With this on, you can opt to equip whichever skills you want in your available slots, rather than being limited to choosing one from each category. But if you do this, be mindful of your character's resource pool. If you select two monk skills that cost spirit (the monk's resource) and no skills that generate spirit, you're going to have some trouble slaughtering the legions of hell spawn you encounter.
Choosing one skill always means not choosing another, since your number of available key bindings is always equal to the number of active skill categories you've unlocked. (Once you've unlocked all six skill categories for your class, for instance, you have just six bindings to which you can link skills.) But you can change your selected skills at any time, giving you free rein to tinker with your abilities until you find a combination you're happy with.
You never sink points into skills to make them more effective, so you never have to worry that you're not making the best choices. Rather, as you level up, you unlock both new skills and new runes you can apply to existing skills. From level 13 on, for instance, witch doctors can apply the numbing dart rune to their poison dart attack, which adds a slowing effect to this offensive ability. You can eventually unlock a total of six runes for each active ability, though you can have only one rune at a time activated on any ability. This system prevents you from squandering your character's growth by sinking points into skills that leave you ill-equipped for challenges to come, and lets you customize your abilities on the fly to better tackle the challenges you're currently facing.
Carolyn Petit has been reading GameSpot since 2000 and writing for it since 2008. She has a particular fondness for games of the 1980s, and intends to leave the field of games journalism as soon as she hears that her local Ghostbusters franchise is hiring.
I have played Diablo 3 to inferno.
I had enough of the game now after the latest patch and I am never gonna touch it again. But overall I can say the game was enjoyable untill late game experience, but to me it does not deserve a 8,5 in score.
More like 7,5, the game is not great just good.
The people giving the game a rating 5 or less must just be angry at the way Blizzard makes you play the game, not the game itself.
Cause what made me quit playing this game was Blizzard.For example always online in a singel player game with co-op options is not OK. Well it is their game and they do what they wan't so I have to live with that.
So I bought the game and just had to realize I can't play everywhere,
like on a long car trip somewere.
But then as almost everyone know, at the launch date you coulden't play the game, well that figures.
Maybe the next day? nope not that either.
So here I can agree that people should be able to return the game and get their refund. Cause Blizzard promised something they coulden't keep and you have the rights to get your money back for a game you can't play on the date they said you could play it.(Well thats my opinion)
But I stuck with it and waited until I could play, I was happy when I played it it was an ok experience. Nothing special in story, characters or classes, just the same old cliché you have seen before. But I looked forward to the Inferno difficulty they promised would be insanly hard. When I heard that I was thinking of games like Demon souls or maybe old games like Ghosts N' Goblins.
But when I got there it was not hard, just gear based.
Well some kiting skill is needed, but that is not hard it is just dumb.
So what Blizzard think is insanely hard is kiting and getting good loot drops.
(the good loot drop part is probably true.)
I tried it out for a while, but grinding my way act trough act is not fun, neither hard,
it is just time consuming. It was not a test of my skill, just a test of my patience.
To gear based game and every gold/rare drop spots is getting nerfed by the hour. Why nerf gold and loot spots in a singel player experience?
For blizzard it was apparently high priority cause every singel gold/loot drop spot that gives you high amount of gold or rare loot is now nerfed.
Maybe not all of them but most of them. And why is that?
Ah thats right. AH in D3 is the main reason all the gold and rare loot spots is nerfed, and it is also the main reason for D3 to always be online.
Why would they make a singel player with co-op options always online if they diden't want people to not cheat and must use their AH to get better gear.
Cause who the fuck cares if you cheat in your game or not, does it hurt the other singel player players if you cheat in your own game.
(Or maybe they can sense you are cheating with their electroreception, cause they are a weird platypus mutant thingy that take extreme offence to people cheating in their singel player games.)
Well the main idea behind AH is that every casual player will after a while tire of farming gold and eventually use real money. And they also take 15% from gold AH, and that is just to take away as mutch gold as possible from the game.
So after I realised something I should have realised after wow bc expansion is that Blizzard is just in it for the money now. And you will see the next expansion for Diablo 3 will raise the lvl cap just like wow and the hunt begins a new, your gear is useless and you must get new one, either with 500+ hours of gameplay or 500$ in new AH gear.
For me personally I have tired of Blizzard games, they used to be fun before vanilla wow, but now it is just time consuming and not worth my time.
I personally will not sponsor a greedy company like Blizzard anymore cause they are just in for the money and do not care about the people playing the game.
Enjoyable experience or not they just want you in the game and waste your time on something that is not worth wasting on.
So in short:
If you looking to play trough the game once or twice with yourself or with friends, the game is a nice experience and quite fun. Even though it has cliché stories and characters.
But if you wan't to have great gear and max lvl: You should like kiting (not the fun kind), like looking for overpriced gear on Auction house and grinding hours and hours for no good loot and gold.
// Sorry for the long post folks.
And for all you out there who don't like people saying things you don't agree on about your game, you should listen and make your own arguments instead of saying we are haters. Important thing about our posts, (if they are not dumb) are that you get both view of something, and there is many people out there who has not bought the game yet and is thinking about it, and they need to get both sides before making their decision.
I had been looking forward to this for so long that it was thrilling to actually play Diablo again. Ultimately it just couldn't hold my interest though, there is absolutely no reason to keep playing what is basically the same story over and over and over again. Enjoyed the story first time round, tried it with another class, interesting but not more than that, so the 3rd run through with a different class never even made it through Act III before I gave up and moved on to more interesting games. Hard to justify the GS 8.5 rating tbh. Great for an occasional hack and slash hour or so but little replayability imo.
Meh good game but not great. I'd say 8.0 would be a fair score, if you ask me the whole WoW brought blizzard down maybe not financially but in terms of game development. Starcraft/broodwar, warcraft(not wow), and the first two Diablo's are leaps better than starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 in terms of lore and variety. I'm more old school I guess, I'm not into the whole playing online all the time thing I prefer a game that you could play solo and still have a great experience with the choice of venturing online.
I haven't played diablo and D2 before , but even I could see this is a typical simplified game . Lack of variety and full of repetition . DRM was what made it worse but you can see its the least of your worries.Its like someone kicked your balls and in return you give them a Bjob.
Blizzard, you were a good reference for good, quality games. With the advent of World of Warcraft phenomena the decadence started. And by the looks the crash will be big. I played wow for 3 years and i always had to adapt with lags, frustrate raids, maintenance days and so on. I quit because of my work, dedication time imposed by raids, time to farm items and put them to auction. I quit when i finally defeated the Lich King and then finish the story that started at the end of Warcraft 3. I felt i had fullfiled my mission in Azeroth. When you play a game for so long you start do notice and find out how bad Blizz put effort in character mechanical modifications. Even monster modelings are the same. And i face them for so long. Several expansions and patches later and the same monsters were there (the only thing that changed were the size and color). The big disgrace was the pvp. Characters totally unbalanced and predictable. Like, palading kill warrior and hunter, while wizard and warlock own paladin. I did this little introducion so that you guys could understand what is going on with D3. In the beginning i was happy like everyone else, because the most famous franchise of hack and slash was back. The enchant last little, very little. High latency (i did not suffered this fortunately, but millions did) dozens of bugs, exploits that turned the game acessible to a myriad of scumbags, that ruined the economy of the auction house in less than 5 days. High inflation in order of millions of gold pieces. The game become a nightmare more felt for hardcore players, due to lagspikes. As if the normal tension is not enough. Hardcore playing does not combine with online playing. Yesterday when i uninstall the game i suffered a lagspike (which lead my latency to 2400 ms. Well of course my char died to mobs in inferno mode) Latency apart, i have the sadness to inform that ALL classes are unbalanced. Heavily. (most affected is the barbarian) The first char i made was a barbarian. Until nightmare everything was fine. To pass Hell was a torment and Inferno is not doable for most at the present time. I had high resistances, strong damage, ok armor and so on. But if i saw an elite pack i saw myself running at the opposite direction. I tried all skill combinations and nothing worked for me. I say before hand that of course exists several other players better than me. I dont consider myself bad, quite the contrary, but Inferno for the Barbarian is very, very hard. Exist a difference between very hard and impossible, and Blizz made the game the last for 95% of the players. After that i made a wizard and i said it was the best thing i did. A wonder, a killer of infernal rats. The combo of hydra and blizzard is phenomenal. UNTIL i reached Inferno act 2. Guys, what Blizzard did to this game ? I played all act 1 and i did not died once. In act two i have to pray to Saint George to NOT encouter several combinations of elites. The ones that jail you is certain death. I take 5 hits and bye bye. The drop rate of bosses and elites is simply put, ridiculous. I just found two itens that fit to my character. This playing EIGHT times (four as a barb and 4 as a wizard). Droped 8 legendaries. Just one could be sold for 800k. None to be equiped. 190 hours for none useable item. REALLY ? What lead us again to the auction house again. Its here where my biggest complain comes. The game was build around the auction house. Skill ? Without good gear dont even think about it. At battle net foruns people are saying that this game is the auction house with subquests. The prices asked for good drops is in the order of absurd. From 10 to 80 MILLION gold for a top weapon. Not speaking the price for two rings, amulet, boots, pants, belt, chest, helm and so on. For the honest worker this is simply put prohibitive. You cant farm hour and hours to just have at the end of the daily session 300k of gold. I would have to farm form months to get all i want. No to speak in nerfs that can destroy in less than a week all your effor in gear and builds. What blizzar already did, let the truth be told. When all players are dependent of gold auction house, cames into scene the real money auction house. Its like they are telling us this: Look, you will have to farm for a looong time until you get all you want. Pay for the best gear and be the best immediately. Blizzard institucionalize in the gaming world the system PTW. Pay TO Win. I myself already bought the majority of the itens needed at the rmah. To be more exact all of them. My next bill will be 803 dollars. The will to win the game allied with lack of good judgment made me do it. Now i am screwed next month. I did all that i condemn as a gamer. If i can get a good from this is that i will never do it again. Ever. And as much i am ashamed to tell this, i felt i had to to really give you the picture of what this game is capable of. My wizard become powerfull. 59K HP with a build with glass cannon and force weapon. My damage was around 46k. Crit for 60,70k. Useless in act two inferno. You need to pray to not face around certain types of elites combos. Damn, i was with the best gear available and i spend an awfull lot of money and the game was punishing me this bad ? This game is not for me really. I uninstalled and i am relieved. What joke of a game. The story is all the same, everything is equal and i dont have the vocation to be the monkey test subject for Blizzard. Not to become the zumbi gold hunter. Coming back to the rmah. I saw at battle net foruns that dozens of players put their itens for sale and the majority never sell a single piece. There is a strong sentiment that Blizzard frabricates them and put them to sale, keeping all the money for themselves. The community is demanding that the names of the sellers be shown, thus ending the secrecy of the rmah. If Blizzard did this its beyond vilany, its a crime. Another thing that pissed me off is that D3 loses a lot of his original characteristics. It suffered a wow lobotomy. Lets see, we need to level until level 60. Same as wow vanilla. D3 has the same hit button pattern as wow. Legendary itens has the same colour as wow. Orange. Also, everybody noticed that legendary itens are far inferior as many blue itens. After some consideration i realized the real intention of this. How a company like Blizzard would commit such grotesc error in D3 most powerful itens ? Simple. Do you remember that in wow we have at the beggining of each expansion acquire blue itens (yellow in D3) for then progress to the epic gear (in wow purple and D3 orange) Blizzar itself said that it will "fix this in a future patch. Why is that ? Becouse you will have to spend more real money to acquire them. Mostly in pvp that will be implemented later. At the release of this game we had exploits, gold seeing advertises and lots of other things and Blizzard did almost nothing. One day before the release of rmah came to light, there were a wave ban and suddenly all was secure. It was like they intentionally wanted that inflation existed in gold prices. Well i was a client of Blizzard. NOT ANYMORE. I did not paid for a game to actually have to work and become more tense than my actual real job. Thanks God the money i stupidly gave them will not hurt me a lot and i intend to get them back fast. Just one more thing. Next patch (1.3) we will see the increase of repair cost. Be smart guys, because they will sell gold too, so the expensier the repair, the better for Blizz. Man you need to PAY for EVERYTHING to be able to play. This is ridiculous. Simply put, the major aberration i already seen in the gaming world. And i thought Duke Nukem was the biggest failure. Not anymore. You did it Blizzard. Jay Wilson is indeed THE killer of Diablo, The frachise i mean. Edit Your Review »
juliano001 You paid $803 for in game items? 803 real dollars? Well man, at least you are honest. I would recommend next time you feel the need to hack n' slash, buy Torchlight 2 when it comes out. I'm pretty sure it keeps to the KISS rule - Keep It Simple Stupid. And it'll only cost you $20.
juliano001 $803 - you are their dream customer!
A lot of complaints about Blizzard's games always has stories of people who played it for 5000 hours and in the end thought it sucked. It always amazes me, games used to hold the attention for about 8-12 hours play time... now if it doesn't keep people appeased for over 100 hours people aren't happy.
To spend so much money on a game is crazy. My recommendation for you is to reinstall it and get all of those items back on the auction house - 1 so that you get some of your money back, and 2 - so that you don't return and start buying more!
meh.... OVERRATED!!!
Still yet to buy this game... I was putting it off cause I didn't have the time but now I have to get a new video card cause mine crashed -.- might as well buy it while I'm at it :D
8.5 is too low ,should be at least a 9 or 10
gsx1100 the only reason the user score is 7.4 is because the casual gamers like you haven't even made it to Inferno yet. Enjoy paying to win when PvP is released (if it even makes it out of development.) I don't normally pay full price to play a Beta. The only respectable thing I can say about Blizzard is that they issued my refund promptly after I asked for it, even though I played the game over 200 hours. I was dsgusted by their implementation of a real money AH. I thought it was an Action RPG game, turns out it was Auction House Tycoon Simulator 2012.
SKaREO playing a game 200 hours and demanding for a refund is complete bull... at some point you have to make a choice between playing or being refunded. at this point how much you like it or not doesn't count, you used the product extensively, you should pay for it. there's a difference buying a box of biscuits, eating one and throw up because it's so disgusting and asking for a refund and eating the whole box and then asking for a refund...
SKaREO Over 200 hours... in a month. Thats over 50h/week. And you ask for refund?! You are an idiot. Get a job or something.
SKaREO The only reason why user score is 7.4 is because idiot like you play it over 200 hours in a month, then come here and rate it 1/10.
facederaxx
Exactly, well said! NOT only that, but I wouldn't be a BIT surprised, if they were paid to do it, by another, ahem, game company. I mean,anyone that has played D3, and is being fair about all its game parts and mechanics, is not going to give this game a '1', or similarly low score. That would be ridiculous, a lie and non objective. Sounds like someone with a major attitude in need of AdJusting.
SKaREO "I thought it was an Action RPG game, turns out it was Auction House Tycoon Simulator 2012" - that made me lol.
SKaREO They really should have said no to your refund. 200 hours gameplay and you get a refund is ridiculous!
gsx1100
deserves a 7.0 gsx1100
Let me tell you my opinion on why 8.5 is way to high a rating for this game.
I've played over 170 hours and I'm sorry I have wasted my time and money with it.
Graphic wise you could say blizzard nailed it, when it works, it seems there are issues with the latest technology, if you are running on machines using i5 or i7 processor don't even try to check the fps, you'll have a bad surprise, it's not going above 20 fps with vertical sync and without it it will flicker around 30, even with a 2Gb video card.
After working hard, day and night (when the servers are up) on gearing the character, you will have the surprise that sometimes during fights, your character will look the same as when you entered the game the first time, naked.
About connection, yeah, nice job by blizz making it online only, just pray the servers are up when you have few hours for r&r; and you want to solo play.
About actual playing, to quote someone from blizzard, you can play any stile you want. True, if you are not intending to play a melee class beyond hell level act 3, if you actually intend of trying more than that, you should chose a range class, melee only goes defense from there. And as that was not enough, starting inferno you will quickly realize that you can farm as long as you want and as hard as you want the act 1 you will never get the items you need to get to the next act, everything that drops is barely enough to keep you alive and get you to this current act and being that you are already highest level possible and the items which drop there are mostly for level 57-60 you won't be able to get a good price on them at the auction house either because the people buying items at that level are interested in better than what you have, so no money. The randomness of things in Diablo is what made it great in the past, it's still nice but on inferno it's bordering insanity, you will find yourself in situations where you will have to skip entire packs of elites due to the affixes combination and the fact that you have a limited time to kill them until enrage.
Coming to the auction house, a nice place to chill for a little bit and try to get some better gear which might get you a little bit further towards your goal of killing diablo, but again, when it works. You might find yourself in the situation when you bought an item, the money is gone from your inventory but the item is not coming your way, don't worry, blizz will solve it, in a couple of days. Functionality of the auction house, is like trying to play pool with a noodle.
Last but not least, customer supper, when it's not absent (usually it's absent), it's investigating, and investigating, and more investigating, and the apologies, I've never seen in my entire life so many apologies as I've seen on diablo's forums from blizzard employees.
Bottom line, it's not worth money or the time.
This is my opinion and I'm sure there are more bad things that happened to others, I chose to focus on what happened to me and I didn't say anything positive about the game because there will be others who will do it, but for me a very bad experience, wouldn't accept it even as a gift.
VeryAngryBird Another idiot who spend 170 hours on a 60$ game and dare say it doesnt worth it. 60$/170h=0.35$/h..... look like one of the best deal ever.
VeryAngryBird
I can telll you are 'angry', gee, what was my first CLUE. HM,,,Well anyway, you are 100% wrong about most everything. They had to make it online only, because otherwise they would have been pirated to death, as evidenced by other game revenues, it cuts way down on cheating and players coming in and ravaging your game top death,and its just flat a wonderful social expereince, short of the ridicuous amount of gore, but FAR less than some games out there, thats for sure. I played diablo 2, and 3 does so much better on many levels. I agree with other reviews Ive seen, that its a masterpiece of gaming architecture. They did WoW afterall, you think all that talent and experience would just go to waste ? lol
Your point about apologies is ridiculous as well, as I've seen alot of whiny baby posters with ridiculous claims and seriously nasty replies, to for one second take most of their posts seriously on any level. Some are valid and done with respect,but many are a total joke and mockery of the hard work that went into this wonderful (albeit gorey) game ( yes, mature rating, I get that!).
I played Diablo 2 with good friend, and I enjoy this one too, for similar reasons. The game started near town and a few dungeons here and there ( not of the style from D2), but then in Act2 it opened WIDE up, to areas I was keenly familiar with; deserts and dungeons as I remebered them in D2; home sweet home it was,
I feel so sorry that you played '170 ' hours, but such a waste of time. Wow, how do you live with yourself , willingly commiting all those hours when eaisly just several hours into it, you should have known. Palease.
8.5 is way too generous for this turd. Personally I gave it a 1.0 to offset the shill reviews. But in all reality, a game designed to rob caasual gamers of their money, and to rob enthusiasts of a good game experience, it deserves no more than a 3/10
8.5 lol , what a joke, the only amazing thing in this game is the graphics...
i wouldn't give anything more than a 4 or a 5.
I am SEVERELY pleased with Diablo 3. I think this review is spot on with the pros and cons of the game. I love the loot, the gameplay, the skills. It's pretty much what I hoped for and expected, with a few caveats. Definitely the game I paid for and am having fun with, and intend to have fun with far into the future!
I love how one complaint is that the game is to repetitive and so boring while also being to short. How long does a repetitive hack and slash game need to be?
Its simple hack and slash, and Blizzard wants to make it more. They fail in one part, the loot. Im at inferno(the hardest) and cant get past Act 1 in this lvl.
Its not becouse of skill(got this far solo), but the loot that drops, even whit the lvl 60 5 stack buff, is poor. Here you can clearly see that Blizzard wants you to use the AH.
So if you want a game where you buy youre gear, and not gather it yourself this is youre game.
Such a shame and a big fail, i agree a 8.5 is way to high.
I'm not a typical hate rager but I now understand that for whatever reasons they had for this bogus review, I can now be quite sure that no reviews on gamespot are impartial. I'm naive I know. Diablo 3 is not just a disappointment it is a bore. DO NOT BUY.
HATERS!! 8.5 IS A GOOD SCORE FOR DIABLO 3!! SO CHILL OUT MORE UPDATES WILL COME...
To all the ''old fan'' of Diablo serie. Diablo 1 & 2 was M rated. Your mom should be ashamed to let you play this game when you was 10 year old kid! In 2000, there was much better game for the young adult whit real RPG element and real involving storyline. No wonder why you keep saying how longer and how better was the storyline in Diablo 2, for a 10 yo kid it must be very impressive. The skill tree must have been a real challenge for you to understand. HAHA im loving Diablo 3 even more now why all these reaction we see a real society phenomenon. It worth the wait just to see that.
I can see we as haters are coming together. However that doesn't excuse the fact that we made this trash "the fastest-selling PC game ever". We should be ashamed :(
Davulao Agreed. We all gave it a chance... only to be sitting there launch night. Waiting. Waiting. Then going to sleep.
So, how much did Blizzard pay Gamespot? I'm sure it was quite a lot. I'm kidding! Of course these things never happen in real life.
Diablo 1: 10/10, Diablo 2: 7.5/10 & Diablo 3: .5/10 (thats a point 5)
Velocity_man That is an accurate view of the game. I got my refund recently.
SKaREO
What view? There is no view, just gives some x/10 numbers with ZERO, NADA, ZIP, NONE, NO, VOID content.
All I see are unrealistic expectations for a $60 form of entertainment.
For those complaining this game is a hack and slash, I'd recommend you step up the difficulty because you will actually need to figure out how to combine items to be successful and work with your 3rd party characters and develop them to provide what you'll need.
I have not had a single problem with this game, it's delivered many many hours of entertainment for only $60.
Perhaps you folks complaining about issues, should realize that 100,000 of gamers are playing this game without a single problem ... maybe you need to take a look at your hardware/environment before making sweeping generalizations about it being all Blizzards fault.
This game has provided far more fun and hours of entertainment than MW3, Battlefield 3, Starcraft II, etc. etc. And yes, MW3, Payne 3, Battlefield 3 are much more repetative than Diablo 3.
But I have a feeling some here just enjoy hating ... since they keep coming back to share their hate. But that begs the question why would someone keep ranting about their hate if they don't like the game? Surely, if it's as bad as you claim, you would want to move on and not waste time with it?? Why keep returning to spread more hate without any substance, just hate for the sake of hate.
User reviews are still 7.4, so obviously a lot more people are able to find out how to enjoy the game.
robains You didn't have to type an entire novel, bro. You coulda just said you never played D1 or D2 and you just don't "get it" dude. =)
I'll let you in on a secret.
This whole episode we are currently experiencing is a sting to catch botting methods before they can do real damage. 1.0.3 has always been the real game, they put out this dumbness just to see what botters would do, and to secure warden.
This is the reason the uniques have been so silly stupid useless and stackables sell for no real value.
This first few weeks could have been a disaster to the economy and they felt this was the only way to expose themselves to these kinds of hacking/botting methods without tipping the botters off and without giving them anything of value.
The game feels hollow and broken, because they gutted it to the point where they thought people wouldn't quit en-mass.
Judge the game when 1.0.3 is live, if they borked it, this will be the time you know that for sure.
In my mind I can really only think of one way to "make darnn sure" the warden is secure and not give the botters anything if it isn't. The way they did it. Annoying and we should all feel used a bit, but as they say, it's for yer own good. Or it'd better be.
I never was a huge fan of Diablo 2 back in 2000. Guess why? Baldur's Gate 2.
Maybe i will be crying like some of Diablo fan here when they gonna screw up whit BG3! Peace!
http://www.gamespot.com/news/baldurs-gate-iii-a-long-term-goal-overhaul-dev-6366863
8.5 Seriously? The game rates a 6 at best, with mandatory online connection requirements constantly running into errors, repetitive gameplay who's only difficulty ratchet is so obscenely packing together abilities to where you have to spend hours farming gear at lower levels or even, feed their ambitions for a real money auction house, the game is a blatant money grab from start to finish and didn't even offer pvp at the start. Its unfinished and essentially in beta. Gamespot's rep took a serious hit for this rating in my book.
Blizzard went the way of Microsoft - corporate bureacracy, games designed by committees. Classic example, Microsoft's new "Flight". Look what happend to WoW.
There is some hope with indie developers, I think. Minecraft is an example - not that I like or play it - but it's just an example how you can start with a good, inspired concept and see it grow into a success.
they paid for the 8.5 through using adds as leverage against bad reviews. I worked with a metal fanzine and we would regularly get threats of having our adds pulled when we trashed stuff. We didn't listen and the add money still came in. So the webzines need to figure this out and that shilling isn't necessary
Chris_theViking
I've noticed this about Gamespot reviews lately. They are biased, definitely. Usually slightly higher than Metacritic scores, and a lot higher than player scores.
And my keyboard is not helping at all, sorry for murdering the english grammar.
And one more thing... Gamespot, you are part o this filure for selling yourself to companies that pays you to not rate them down. The reviewer closes her eyes to the hideous lag and poor optimization while other games like TERA that try to bring something new get bashed just for being in Blizzard's monopoly way. Diablo 3 isn't great. It tries very hard to be a 7.0, maybe a 7.5 if you like the game and try to blind yourself a bit from its problems.
We need you Gamespot to become imparcial. You are contributing slowly to the new crash of videogames were everything tries to be all flash, no substance. In the end, it will be your heads. We might be losing an entrtainment with that, but you are losing your jobs. Think about it now and become more critic about Blizzard. Remember what you did to FF14? I praised you for showing that Square dserved to apologize for such crap. You must remember that judjement for Blizzard as well.
Diablo 1 and 2 were masterpices, Diablo 3 struggles to be good while fighting against the ferocious LAG and Bad Optimization prime evils. In the end, we all lost this war to a dumbed down version of Diablo2.. No, Diablo 3 isn't easy but it lacks choices we had 12 years ago.
MegamanX2011
Couldn't agree more. Lag and Bad optimization are the last of Blizzard's worries. The game itself is dumbed down to utter crap. The campaign itself is incredibly stale, boring, and dull. I never thought I'd say this but Blizzard has been on the decline since they merged with Activision. I don't know if it's Activision's to blame for their heavy influence, but at least I know how Activision is.. just didn't know Blizzard would fail from grace.
@kserpen Agreed. Blizzard screwed up, and it started on day one, in the design of the game. The designers need to be tossed. Diablo II was better in nearly every respect, from the skill trees to things as simple as chat rooms and joining games not to mention the cartoony art. Diablo 3 has been dumbed down to a level that it's simply not enjoyable. The inability to create unique builds (especially for hardcore players) is unforgivable. This game never would have been released in it's current form prior to Activision's purchase of Blizzard.
There needs to be a negative badge for DRM only that disables single player capabilities without internet. This game is so less than Diablo 2 in nearly every aspect. Don't see how it received an 8.5.
lagggggggggggggg
@Chris_theViking: Actually I've killed Diablo in Inferno and I'm farming Siegebreaker and Izunal. When I get bored of farming I lvl an alt or play with friends. Still I'm enjoying the game quite a lot.
I don't want to brag, but it looked like people liking the game were all lowbie and didn't know what'll be waiting for them.
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In general: It's way easier than D2 used to be. It took me months to clear D2, while it took a little more than 2 weeks with D3. People just don't remember how it was back in the late '90s. It's silly to read people complaining about few builds available later in the game... if you could clear the game with any build you would have complained that it was too easy. Also it's partially false, at least for Demon Hunters, you can clear almost all the fights with "open" builds. Of course some powers are mandatory (Smoke Screen, Caltrops), but others, like Maked for Death, can be switched with Bat Companion or even Stampede (or anything you might want to add to your build).
About nerfing classes. The monk being able to fight without ever being hit or the Demon Hunter with 15+ secs of continuous invulnerability were clearly too OP. You can clear the game with any class even after those nerfs, check youtube if you don't know how to do it. About lowering the difficulty. I know Blizz is thinking about that (devs nowadays think only about making all the online content available right away to all the players, like Bioware did on SWTOR, but then everybody gets bored after a short while), but I really hope they don't do it. It's already easy as it is. Inferno should be a place for hardcore players (not meaning hardcore mode ofc ^^), not for every player who hits 60.
You dunno WTF to do? Try different builds, change your gear or... there's a thing called youtube with loads of guides.
You don't have the right gear? I don't see how can someone be astonished by the fact that that you need to farm in D3 when in D2 you used to do the same.
Drops are kinda frustrating, but if every boss dropped uber loot every time, how long would the game have lasted? Hit 60 and get dressed up right away, easy fights so everybody can clear the game half afk eating chips and answering the phone... nothing to do after a month (like SWTOR and many other games who did the same).
The real problems:
- No offline mode is indeed a pain in the 4$$ (if you play at your friend's house Blizz will think you got hacked and most likely will block your account), but it's the only big issue of the game.
- There were servers issues but they seem solved.
- Multiplayer in Inferno sucks, each player joining gives mobs +100% hp and damage (this happens in all difficulties, it's just that in Inferno you feel it a lot more). Even if you can res each other it's still way easier to solo everything.
I'm not a fanboy of either Blizzard or Diablo, what I wrote is just about what I think of the game. Nowadays many people knows only how to complain. If a game is too easy they complain cos it's a piece of cake, if it's a little harder they complain cos it's impossible for them.
Game Emblems
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User Reviews
Diablo III could have been the best game of 2012 but fell way to far from finished to allow that
6 years of D2 - 25 characters 94 to 97, 7 years of wow- 10 85s, one each class. D3 is a beta, worst released game ever.
Diablo III
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- Publisher(s): Blizzard Entertainment
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release: May 15, 2012 (US) »
- ESRB: M
