This weekend Diablo III beta will be open for all to stress test battle.net before the game releases may 15th. News post here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963739/Diablo®_III_Open_Beta_Weekend-4_19_2012#blog All you need to give Diablo III a spin before release is a legit battle.net account (I presume this means an account with some form of blizzard game attached to it). Thought this might be of interest to some if you didn't know about this already. Barb shout, out. o/
The only Diablo game I played was the first. I never bothered with patches, nor expansions either, if any existed. I hated the game. What is there to Diablo 2 and 3 that is worthy of note?
If you hated the first Diablo game, there's not really any reason for me to try and sell you on its sequels, they're just more of the same action'y - light rpg - kill hundreds of monsters and score their loots - funs. If you didn't like the first, it stands to reason that you won't like the sequels. Which is fine, to each their own, eh?
Diablo 2 is even bigger lootfest. Go, kill, grab loot, repeat. If you want better gear, go grind bosses because they have best drop chances. That is the whole game in a nutshell. I liked Diablo 1, it was something like a very simplified roguelike. Second one bored me after finishing one difficulty. I had no mood for grinding for the sake of it. And Diablo 3.....always online DRM - you cannot play singleplayer without connecting to b.net. If you lose connection for any reason, guess what? Also IIRC you cannot even go idle for more than 15 minutes (not sure about it, though), then you get kicked. And this for 60 Euros, no less. I will do the same as I do with Starcraft 2 - untill I find the game with all of the expansions for ~30€ (20-25€ for Diablo 3 because of the DRM), then I do not bother myself playing it. Of course, Blizzard and lowering prices over time does not go together. If it does not happen, I could not care less about their games.
Diablo 2 greatly improved upon Diablo 1. The most significant change was the way characters improved over time - the skill trees in Diablo 2 were really interesting, and led to lots of interesting and oddball builds. (Especially after the 1.10 patch). I made more than 30 distinct characters in Diablo 2, and almost all of them had really interesting & unique ways to progress through the game. The endgame became a bit more homogeneous, and the PvP was never especially compelling. But those are just for crazed fans, not regular players. I loved Diablo 2 for the same reason I love DoD - because making a new character concept, and then making it work (or dying horribly) was a ton of fun. A few characters I'd play through the end of the game, but (as in DoD) most only made it about half way before I dropped them in favor of a new skill experiment.
I enjoyed Diablo and Diablo 2 a bit -- never played it anything but solo, and grew tired of the latter before I finished the game (I think I gave up at some big boss battle). So I'm not sure if I'll purchase the game, or wait for some half-priced sale (too many other games to play). I don't do well with most real-time games, as they tend to bore me after a bit (plus it doesn't help that my brain doesn't work well at a fast pace, and has gotten worse over the years).
I'm actually not that stoked for Diablo III, myself. I was big into Diablo I and II, but I don't think III looks anywhere as fun as I was hoping for, I guess I can thank my own hype expectations for that. Also, the decisions to put in always online restrictions and RL cash auction houses make me throw up in my mouth. I don't know. I've been the biggest Blizzard fan for a long time but after WoW: Cataclysm, Starcraft II and what Diablo III looks like so far, I can't really say I recognize the game company anymore that I had come to trust to always release really high quality games. At the moment I am much more looking forward to the release of Torchlight II. Torchlight was great, if the sequel brings in good multiplayer while expanding on all the stuff they did right in their first game, its going to be big. I didn't actually get to try the Diablo III open beta either to make up my own thoughts on the game, because I could not even install the dang thing! The installer kept telling me my OS wasn't supported, despite it being in the system requirements list. Struggled for hours with the thing before I finally just had to give up, bleh.
While I understand to some extent, it does suck to be disconnected from your single player game, as a person who planned to play coop anyways I love the always online DRM concept. If it can successfully combat the hacking that was so prevalent in d2 that it was the number one complaint with d2, then it will have succeeded in it's purpose. The fact that it makes piracy difficult is no doubt a bonus they don't mind, but if you ignore the fact that they're trying to solve the 'greatest complaint' of d2 then you're kind of being purposely blind. As far as the RMAH goes, really? It was going to happen anyways, why should you care if it happens in a safe environment for people who want to use it? It isn't going to affect you unless you choose to take part. If it was purchasing gear generated by Blizzard for real cash instead of just people buying gear from other people playing the game and getting the gear like they otherwise would, then I would understand the problem (and I would also have a massive problem with the game on principle). But it's not like that at all. As far as the problem with installing Hybelkanin, you really shouldn't let that color your experience of the game (though I understand being wary of risking money on it if you don't think you'll be able to get it to work). After all, Betas are Betas, not demos. I am fairly sure they have a demo version in the works, so you could give it a try that way before spending your money. I encourage you not to just whitewash me as some Blizzard-fanboy and instead think about what I've said. It is definitely not the same game as the previous diablos, but in my experience so far, it is shaping up to be much, much more fun.
Making piracy difficult? Tell that to illegal WoW servers. Even fabled Assassin's Creed DRM was cracked anyways. Also what would make the game worse if the singleplayer was offline? Even in Diablo 2 you could not access your ladder b.net characters, they were stored on the server. If one wishes cheat so badly, let him/her cheat in singleplayer where it would mean jack shit. When playing online, use as draconian DRM as you wish or ban the hell out of anyone you point at for even thinking about cheating. But yes, Blizzard can afford to do anything they wish. People will still buy their overpriced games like crazy because of the Blizzard logo on the boxes. Blizzard would earn money from it anyways, they will take a cut off every purchase. They used to be a great company, now they are sinking to the EA/Activision level for me.[/quote]
I thought Torchlight was a decent game and something I could play with my nephew (I doubt his father, my brother, would approve of him playing any version of Diablo). My main problem with Torchlight (and games of its kind) is how repetitive it is, which means that I could never play very far into the game before getting bored with it. Then again, similar things happened to me with Diablo 2. But Torchlight, at least, has the virtue of being a much brighter environment to engage the OCD that is grinding.
On the subject of RMAH, I've always been strongly opposed to all forms of paying for advantages in games. The notion that people are going to do it anyway through "the black market" doesn't justify RMAH for me at all, but sadly there is a growing acceptance for paying money for in game advantages. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint for Blizzard to cut into the cash that would otherwise be going through unofficial channels, but it is still wrong to do so. RL cash for advantages in multiplayer games is never ok, in my book. I will agree that if the online restrictions manage to keep the closed battle.net free from map hacks, duped items and all that crap stuff, then that's a big bonus. What I don't like so much is when it affects you playing single player games. Also, what goes on in private games, or open battle.net in the case of Diablo II, or private WoW servers doesn't concern me the slightest, as long as it doesn't affect my own games. That's one of the reasons I am looking forward to Torchlight II as well. If I want to make my single player experience wacky as all hell with a number of wildly unbalanced mods, I am completely free to do so.
What would you who shall go nameless who support draconian DRM say if our beloved DoD had it? Would it still be justified when there is no multiplayer option? Or does it turn into pure excrement? DRM is a bad idea in all cases in my opinion. Same for buying an advantage in a multiplayer game. Any time I see that real money can be spend to buy an advantage in a multiplayer game I see that that is a game I could not play without getting pissed. Fair is fair. Fair is not something you have to pay money for. That is cheating in my book. Cheat all you like in a single player game. But do not cheat in multiplayer or risk being murdered by crazy people like myself who hate that to an extreme.
Game publishers have a right to protect their intellectual property, just as I have a right to refuse to spend money on it if I feel that protection is overly intrusive or draconian or creates real problems or even inconveniences for me. Believe it or not, but piracy protection has gotten a whole lot less intrusive and painful since the old days, when you had to look up codes or identify the 6th word on the 12th line of the 32nd page of the manual, or even use a code wheel, or an almost unreadable, and almost invariably lost scrap of paper printed in purple ink on dark red paper (They were designed so that you could not photocopy them, but unfortunately, that also meant that the average person would strain an eye muscle just to be able to read them). In most cases, I much prefer having to log into a service than the more ancient alternatives. But if a game is good enough, I'm willing to put up with at least a little inconvenience. It may be nonsensical, to me, but then again, I'm not an investor in those companies. I'm not a person who needs to be reassured that the game cannot be pirated. It's all a mater of what you personally will tolerate, and we are all different as far as that's concerned.
I hate to again bring this up, but not all piracy is unwanted. Microsoft has said they want people to use their software because most people who do will end up buying it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit...racy_is_undesirable_to_digital_rights_holders "Microsoft has stated that if someone is going to steal software, they want it to be their software they steal. There can be real benefits to software makers to theft, since the unit cost of digital theft is zero, or near-zero, and their belief is that some software pirates will become trained in their software and eventually pay for it. An analogous argument was made in an early paper by Kathleen Conner and Richard Rummelt. A subsequent study of digital rights management for ebooks by Gal Oestreicher-Singer and Arun Sundararajan showed that relaxing some forms of DRM can be beneficial to digital rights holders because the losses from piracy are outweighed by the increases in value to legal buyers." DRM need not be a hassle. Code wheels were a hassle. Logging in to play singleplayer is a hassle too. Now back to the rails before I do my namesake action of derailing this thread like every other thread.
TL2 mods are completely unrestricted. Devs have said any modded items/characters/whatever can be freely imported into any vanilla game. The only option is "open b.net." I played Diablo 2 a great deal (more than I'd really like to admit) as well as modded versions. I spent a great deal of time following D3's development, went through the hate-rage of it not being D2. Then I played the beta and was hooked instantly. If you liked 2 at all and have the capacity to understand that 3 will not be a carbon copy of it, you'll probably enjoy 3 a lot.
Blizzard is Activision, they bought it a while back. This is one of the good articles on DRM I have found in a long time that I wish more developers would take note of. Though having dealt with SecuROM assuming I'm a pirate for simply having certain types of software (typically CD/DVD burning/emulation software) moving away from something like that is always a better move. It is though still disapointing that companies insist on making games that need to be online for single player but realy given the popularity of Steam (a DRM) and similar platforms, you can see why this kind of thing is becoming more prolific as the general assumption is people are online all the time anyway (not saying I agree, just that I understand). The thing I find amusing about Diablo II is it was heavily pirated, yet Blizard still made a killing on the sales of the game. As for Diablo III, I may look into it but happy enough to wait and avoid grouchey Beta Players, that dont realise its about testing not playing the game eairly.
Blizzard and Activision are both subsidiaries of Activision/Blizzard, which has the names of both, and is parent company of both, but not directly responsible for the decisions of either company. I can only assume it was named this way specifically to be confusing. Activision the company and Blizzard the company have nothing to do with each other, except being owned by the same company.
I am reminded of the joke of competition between Western Digital and Seagate. WD bought Seagate a while back and pretends to compete with them. The truth is that there is zero competition possible when both companies are owned by the same entity. Likewise I really doubt either of those companies are immune to influence from the other. The parent company decides everything, and I will believe that forever, even if God himself told me otherwise. (Not that i believe in him either.) They may on paper appear to be separate and capable of doing what they like, but once they step out of line that illusion would instantly evaporate.
Yep, I had my say in the first post I made. If you liked D2, give 3 a shot. I don't have much interest in further derailing, so I'm gonna leave it at that.
By mentioning these bootleg *ahem* private servers I merely wanted to say that "online only" means nothing as a form of DRM. It just annoys people with less than stable connection to no end. As Darkmere said, except for being owned by the same company, they have nothing common. As if DRM is actually protecting anything. Many games are available cracked a few days (or even hours and if leaked, then even before!) after the release. Steam games are being also pirated as if it was nothing. Heck, the *only one* instance where the DRM has worked was one Splinter Cell (or maybe some else, it was from Ubisoft) game, which was cracked after about a year. Other than that, more draconian DRM annoys legitimate buyers while pirates have no such problems.
