Thanks, Tuco. Almost spit out my coffee. +1 sir.
AA, honest question - if you hate the game so much, why post in this thread? Why try to convince people not to play it? You aren't going to win anyone to you side, especially with comments like that. I get that Blizzard, in your opinion(and many others), shit all over the franchise. Hell, I even agree to a small portion of what you are saying, but this game isn't D2. It's D3. It's essentially made by a different company, with different ideals as a business than the one that created D2. D2 isn't coming back. You love PoE if I remember correctly? Why not spend some positive energy over in that thread, instead of shitting all over this one.
Also, to be clear - I'm not defending Blizzard or D3 by any means. I'm not even saying it's a great game. I'm just saying some of us will try it out, for better or worse. Isn't that OK for us to do with our time and money as we see fit? Our goals and wants and desires don't have to align with yours. The world will still turn if Diablo 3 RoS sells millions of copies. Deathwing won't hang himself because you asked him so nicely, either.
That's a good question and I think it deserves an honest answer. I think it's important to hold companies / people accountable when they take a legacy IP and twist it into something completely different, especially after they've already got your up-front box purchase of $50+. It's analogous to bait-and-switch, but in my opinion a lot worse. So, the short and sweet answer is = accountability. And forums generate noise, and that's not always a bad thing. People read forums, and so do designers.
What they did with Diablo 3 is unforgivable. They preyed on the fans' love of the original two games in such extreme ways, in many devious ways. Yet, there is no accountability for this. No answering necessary. Their entire policy around customer management is the worst I've ever witnessed - openly deleting forum threads that disagree with their bottom line, actively ignoring attempts for insight and clarity into their decision making.
Sure, you could say that I take this shit a little too personally, and that might be a douche thing to do, and you would be correct - this is the only time in the history of my 35 years as a gamer that I've felt so repulsed by the decisions of the company that blatantly moves the game away from what made it so great, and into the territory of simple money grab from cross-over franchises. It's a personal insult to anyone who modded Diablo 2, played the game for over ten years because of the elegant design, etc. And you could also say; "Diablo 2 had bots! Diablo 2 had hacks!" - yeah, but I didn't (and still don't) care about *any of that shit*.
I played the game for the uniqueness of character builds, the careful allocation of stats and skills, the game-changing uniques that added real value to different builds, the strange and sometimes frustrating trading economy, the challenge (non-powerlevel) of leveling to 99 (seriously - go back and try this now!) legit, the dark and haunting atmosphere and music, and the understanding that bosses yielded the best loot in the game - and therefore I could set a simple run in motion to log in for five minutes, hit up Mephisto, and log out. Or not - maybe just one more run. (Note that all of these are gone from Diablo 3.)
It feels as though fans of Diablo are powerless against their destruction of the franchise. They don't listen to their forum MVPs who represent the voice of the customer, when it comes to necessary changes to the game that would greatly increase enjoyment of the game.
But don't listen to me, I'm just some fuckhead on a forum in the middle of the interwebs.
Instead ask:
Why are there less than 1,950 active games in Diablo 3 on this fine Sunday?
Why is the auction house still live, 5 months after they decided to remove it?
Why is there no outreach from the development team in an honest way of any kind (non-twitch "no discussions allowed" sessions?)
And most importantly,
Why does everyone complain about replayability in Diablo 3?
See, and again at the risk of looking like a big douche face, the idea of Diablo being something special is still strong in my head. Year after year, I would return to the game for the next ladder season, the next run, and to try that next character build that I'd never attempted. All of that is gone, and in it's place we are left with a shallow husk of a game that is being molded, twisted into something much different than any of us expected (except, perhaps - those who are new to the franchise, and who were pulled in by Blizzard's marketing team from cross-franchise promotions.)
Battered lover syndrome, I guess.
