Blizzard: Diablo 3 end-game "just not enough"

Blizzard has responded to player criticisms of Diablo III's end-game, admitting that there isn't enough on offer for "long-term sustainable" play.

While Diablo III now offers Inferno difficulty - its equivalent of Diablo II's Nightmare - many players have complained that Inferno cannot be reasonably tackled with standard loot drops and levelling alone, necessitating the use of Diablo III's in-game auction house - an accusation Blizzard doesn't address in its response.

"We recognise that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game," admits community manager Micah 'Bashiok' Whiple. "There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they're going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already).

"Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks.

"But honestly Diablo III is not World Of Warcraft. We aren't going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it's not there right now."

Accusations that the game is deliberately balanced to nudge people toward the auction house - sales from which Blizzard takes 15 per cent, and an additional 15 per cent from any proceeds withdrawn to PayPal - shouldn't be taken at face value. The community did, after all, ask for a significant challenge.

But a number of players claim that Diablo III's Inferno loot drops compare unfavourably with equivalent Diablo II finds, lending more weight to the issue, with the best items restricted to rares, and fallen champions and bosses. This is compounded by Diablo III's level cap of 60 - Diablo II's was 99 - meaning that maxed-out players who spend time unsuccessfully grinding for the items they need to progress in the game are left with nothing to show for their time. 

It's also worth noting that Diablo III currently offers no PvP component. While that will be added by a patch in the coming months, Whiple goes on to warn that those expecting a true end-game will be waiting for some time.

"We're working toward 1.0.4, which we're really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out (and we'll have a bunch of articles posted with all the details as we get closer), and we're of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas," he continues.

"I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they're not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it's a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which [is] itself still a ways out."

While Whiple's candour is refreshing, it's telling that the accusation that the real-money auction house was a factor in Diablo III's design has been left unaddressed. Blizzard has more experience than most when it comes to player retention, having learned from the ebb and flow of subscribers to its genre defining MMORPG World Of Warcraft - and obviously, there's a huge difference between a persistent online world and a singleplayer-focused hack and slash - but Blizzard will need to act quickly to extend Diablo III's appeal if it wants the game to endure for as long as its predessor did.