Diablo 3 release Date: May 15 2012

No need for blatant sarcasm.

Over-polish. That's what happened to Diablo III over the years. Instead of improvements, many down-to-earth mechanics and RPG systems either got completely removed or became so streamlined that the player does not even have a part in them.

Sure the game will be fun, but its longevity is quite compromised due to the above reason.

 

Glad we have an official release date now

 

I have the CE edition on pre order from Amazon, but I'm starting to wonder if the $40 premium is worth it for the few in game items that interest me. Artbooks and making of DVD's don't interest me, and I don't exactly need a copy of D2.

 

The flash drive and the white box are the only items that interest me.

 

Enough time to get a new monster laptop...

 

Dunno if anyone pre-ordered from Amazon. But it appears you have to cancel and reorder according to Inc Gamers

 

When I used to play WoW I would order any/all Blizzard CE's but since I quit...yeah I'm probably just going to get the digital download from the blizzard store

 

Ya i've been straight CE since WOTLK expansion. Already had my preorder in to local place like 2 months ago, just dunno if they are big enough for a midnight release.

 

what sarcasm are you talking about? I am dead serious, the alpha would have been better...

 

I think he means the oversimplification:
-removal of stat choices
-simplification of skill and rune systems
-unlimited respec/respec on demand

With each iteration they have removed character specialization and uniqueness and replayability.

Some changes seem logical, but each time they simplify they cater less and less to the audience they originally planned for.
D2 always was a hack-n-slash good time... but each build did it differently and it was fun to see how it all turned out... even when your build turned out to royally suck when it hit nightmare or hell.

In D2, you had many many viable builds in each character... and playing a skelemancer was different than playing a amp/ce 'mancer, daggermancer or a bone mage. (or even a zoomancer) Even the same class within a tree could be played differently, and some people built odd builds like meleemancers or melee sorcs!

Now, one wizard is at one time is everything... its just which build for what moment. Something not turn out right? Switch builds for the best result at that point in the story, then change back when you no longer need that attribute.

While I won't miss prereq skills and wasted points, I will miss planning a character and how I am going to deal with a build's weaknesses as well as its strengths.

 

Skyrim (Nope haven`t played it yet), Bioshock Infinite and Diablo 3. All in the summer. New notebook with next generation GPU and Ivy Bridge/Trinity.

GG life

 

...and downloading the preload of it right now. so slowwwww. i think blizz needs moar bandwidth!

 

I wonder if the new GPU or new sager 150em will come out before diablo 3. I hope so cuz my current laptop cannot play D3. Hibernation begins at may 15...LOL

 

Haha, yeah. It was a nice idea to allow the preload of it up. >_<

 

Well-said. Diablo III's iterative process changed its intended audience completely. A lot of us D2 vets have always been hoping for a sequel that expands and builds upon all the mechanics of Diablo II (including skill trees and pre-req skills not to mention non-instanced loot, 1-sided hostility, etc everything that makes the game brutal and visceral to play), not one that completely grinds away all these systems and implements entirely different ones.

Edit: that being said, my personal distaste for this change of direction is by no means an objective attitude. Diablo III will surely be appreciated by many, likely more than Diablo II ever had.

 

yeah dude, that's why I said alpha would have been better... they dumbed the game to the point that, you can even switch between selected skills in the middle of nowhere, disassemble anything without anything, just stay in town.. townportal is a button in GUI I don't know, maybe next they will put a single char, able to switch from barbarian to wizard

 

Anyone else gonna get it retail? I just like having physical copies if possible.

 

To be fair you did say "horrendous alpha" so I immediately assumed that you hated the alpha.

 

I hope Diablo 3 has a better Battle.net than Starcraft 2. >_<

 

bought it, downloaded it...and now the waiting begins! Blizzard hasn't disappointed me yet. And honestly, the masses don't know what they want...leave it to the developers...i have faith

 

oh, by horrendous I meant the bugs, alpha/beta versions are put out for debugging purposes mainly (in this case, dumbing the gameplay )

 

Indeed. Otherwise come release day, a lot of the people that bought it digitally or are getting it through WoW's annual pass would be hosed.

Finally after about 8/9 hours, Diablo 3 finally finished preloading, never really went up past 4-450kbps even with peer-2-peer transferring on.

 

"Dumbing" is not quite the word I'd use to describe the changes, I think they're trying too hard to 'streamline' the game, and eliminate any edges, so to speak. It's like trying to use sandpaper on an angular sculpture to make it nice and round - doesn't work.

 

definitely a much better way to say it but I am damn frustrated as I am literally waiting since the moment the uploaded their first gameplay video of barbarian in 2008 (seriously, I could have been one of the first to watch it ) and bought not one, but 2 laptops in anticipation of D3

 

Haha I was in the same boat. Remember that gradually cracking ice page days before the Paris event? I was sure the eyes looked like a protoss at the last day but when it turned out to be D3 I nerdgasmed quite hard.

That first video was epic, no less.

Then over the last few years everything went down the drains. I used to have 6 irl friends who swore by Diablo II and would play D3 with me, now all of us are too repulsed to buy the game after seeing what happened to it.

 

man, I just watched the announcement at Paris again, back in that time, I was thinking of building a statue of Mike but now I just wanna punch him in the face... (or Jay, I don't know, one of two )

 

When I read the negativity, I thought some of you were exaggerating, but after I researched it ...man is it ever dumbed down. I guess Blizzard is trying to appeal to pre-teens with the simplicity. Now, I'm just not into the hype that much anymore. I'll still buy the game, but my expectations are lower = /

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Maybe some of you can answer this - Will it be separate servers like in WoW?

Some people I talked to said no, others yes. Because I'm trying to get my friends on the same server if there are servers. I assume the list would be made public near release.

 

I'm not really sure, but I think it's going to be like in D2 except without the East and West, so... US, Asia, blah balh.

 

I don't think D3 will have servers like in wow, it should be battle.net based like SC2, D2X, WC3, etc.

 

I'm getting the retail. I like having the box set.

 

I got it free with WoW Annual pass.

 

Haven't been following the news to this game lately, but are all the levels linear? I remember hearing on some IGN review that they are but that was last year.

 

I was looking at D3's requirements but I cannot tell if I willbe able to enjoy it with my Lenovo X220T, any thoughts?

D3:
Windows® XP/Vista/7 (latest service packs) with DX 9.0c
Intel Pentium® D 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ X1950 Pro or better
1 GB RAM (XP), 1.5 GB (Vista/7)
12 GB available HD space
DVD-ROM (required for retail disc versions only)
Broadband* Internet connection
1024x748 minimum resolution

X220T:
Intel HD3000
Core i5 2520 - 2.GHZ
8GB RAM
160GB SSD

Windows Experience Gaming Graphics: 6.0

 

According to Diablo 3 And Your Graphics Card. Is Your Video Card Enough? | BrainLazy.com you can run it on Low settings. I am putting together an eGPU just for this game (and emulated FFXII...in which I own the original disk).

 

I'm so gonna play diablo 3. It is the best game ever in the history.

 

I wouldn't say that it's the BEST game in history because it sure won't triumph in the FPS game genre, lol. There will be games that will be better than Diablo 3, imo, like Lineage Eternal and GW2.

 

well, I am a geek after all, I would say Heroes of Might and Magic 3 for best game ever

 

In my opinion, the best games in history are the ones which define their specific game genres. E.g. for me, they are Dwarf Fortress (management / sim), Diablo II (action RPG), Half Life 2 (FPS RPG), etc.

 

Dwarf Fortress is more than just a game. It is a way of life.

 

Or the lack thereof.


Lol ok that's a bit harsh. Still I recall doing stretches of 20-hour DF sessions whenever a big patch comes out.

 

It IS after all Blizzard. They have made some really good games.

However, I do have to say they have been kinda slacking off lately.
(SC2 blows and WoW is now insulting the intelligence of pre-teens)

Keep in mind... as the massses play D3, the game will grow.

D2 at release is nearly NOTHING like D2 is now.
D2 is much more complex than it was at release.

D3 will develop as its player base does.

As elder players, it will be our job to educate the masses.
Post on their forums, educate the new players, make absolutely broken builds with common gear everyone has and TELL Blizzard about it.

The best version of Diablo will be about replayability. Bored players means Blizzard loses money. Interested longterm players mean they win.
While they want to appeal to lots of people the devs specifically are looking for "easy to get into, hard to master".

Remember, Bliz gets a cut of everything sold in their store for real money... eventually the price you pay to get the game will be NOTHING in comparison to the residuals they make from sales of in-game items.
Blizzard will be financially rewarded for keeping their audience interested.

Honestly, in a way, Blizzard may have just found a way to kill off piracy.
Sure, you could pirate the game and play on a hacked server, but you lose the ability to interact with their large audience and lack the user id and account info to make real use of the game.

I have hope for D3... its just gonna need some TLC from their Diablo fans.

 

For my opinion, Blizzard did a great job in Diablo 3, I think people (especially those enthusiasts) needs to adapt to these innovative changes (just like we are adapting to new technology these days ).

Cause not all people have the luxury of time to create multiple barbarians for example, just to test out different builds/skills. So I think it is a good change for their new stat and skill system (It is like simplifying things but the core is still there).

On the other hand, I rather prefer to have this RMAH, not because I will be spending on it nor sell on it, but I would love to have that instead of a subscription fees, like the one they have currently on WoW in order to support the servers and etc.

So let's just wait and see what Blizzard will cook for us on this third installment of the Diablo franchise.

 

If you don't have the time to fully explore a game, its fine, but this also means the game is cutting out content.

In D2, the most potent builds often required saving points for the good stuff while making due with pre-req skills. The absolute most fun builds USED lower skills on purpose and built upon them as you levelled. Finding these few treasured builds or wading through the first 17 levels of the "wait for it" builds and playing them through was part of the fun.

With the current system, You make no commitments as you level so it also means every barbarian is the same. You use this skill combo for every mobs like X and that combo for every mob like Y. No planning or long-term strategy is necessary. It seems Blizzard is completely removing the ability to fail from the game... which also means they are removing most of the challenge. (let's face it... Diablo mobs are not very intelligent and are meant to die in droves) Indeed, too much easier and you will have a movie where you just press one button sometimes to advance it.

Streamlining content would be fine... but there still needs to be some commitment at each level. Be it stats or skills or whether or not to specialize yet... and yes, to some degree it needs to be available to everyone by being meaningfully built into the character, not just for those people using "sword of 1000 truths" or whatever.

 

Point taken KernelPanic. However I think this is a case to case basis when it comes to that scenario whereas every Barbarian is the same (Maybe in skills set but not in equipments).

I think one of the things that they removed from Diablo 2 is the character redundancy, whereas players are creating multiple characters from a same class just to test out different build or because they put a point/s to a wrong stat/skill.

Also as another example when time goes by, there will be some players when they reach their peak and be going into PVP, let's say some of them will be posting their PVP build, and some people will copy it due to it's awesomeness/effectivity, and in the end it will be the same exact scenario as "Every Barbarian is the same" of D3 (but much longer to achieve). I think they just remove the time consuming part of it from the creation of another character plus farming of level and gears.

 

In regards to what you're saying about having to make multiple characters to test out new builds, sure Blizzard has cut out a great deal of "content", but it's "content" a very insignificant portion of players had any interest in exploring. It sucks enthusiasts are missing out on it now, but their loss is the gain of the vast majority of people that will play Diablo 3.

Ive played Diablo 2 on and off since it was released, and even though I love the game, i cant say ill miss having to re-roll a character if i picked a skill that sucked, etc. Nor is it fun to sit on all your skill points just so you can dump them somewhere once you hit level 30 (or whatever).

Also, sure, all characters of a class will have access to the same skills, but since you can only use 6 at a time, there will be much much greater variation in builds than there were in Diablo 2. Unless blizzard does a pathetic job in balancing them. Furthermore, look that gives +bonuses to certain skills will also shape what skills people take, further diversifying the choices people will make.

 

You can respec at any time... there is no commitment to any build ever. Just switch when the situation calls for it.

Oh look I am fighting *insert mob here* or a *insert class here* load this template to own them without effort... maybe that's too hard, so maybe the game auto-chooses the template or just doesn't bother and hits the "1-hit-win" button. (Wait I think we just got into the press-button-to-play-movie thing)

This added to the fact that a maxed character in D2 took some time. Apparently a level-maxed toon in D3 is less than a week of casual play. A power-gamer will be done with a level-maxed toon in a couple days. We aren't going to have the "too hard" conversation over something that doesn't even take a week of casual play are we? Given the fact you can move equipment around, it really isn't that big of a deal to make a new toon.

Heck, I can even deal with a "respec" system... but anyplace anytime, with no cost, no side-effects, and no loss?

If we are really catering to the "too hard" crowd, I sometimes wonder why they have such people level at all.

There has to be a balance... sure, it can be more streamlined than D2.
However, I am hoping they aim a little higher than pre-teen ritalin-generation.

 

I`m probably cursing in the church now, but screw innovative skill system etc. Diablo is about hack and slash in my humble opinion. Don`t really care about in depth abilities other than being able to do some cool whirlwinds with the axe or throw lightning at people etc. Not do I care too much about the story either, other than cool and dramatic scenes. In the end, killing that last boss will be pretty sweeeet anyways

One thing though, there MUST be a secret cow level in this game. If not I will be greatly disappointed

Yeah I know, I am simple soul

 

IIRC, I think its Pandas, based on Mists of Pandaria. Though, the story is awesome, lol.

 

Aye, hack and slash... which is why it needs something more in the framework to give it more than a week of gameplay.

Does anyone really want a Diablo 3 where you beat it in a week with all the characters and there is literally no point in playing it ever again?

Maybe I am the only person thinking 1-2 years down the road... I still want to enjoy D3 long after I have tried every weapon and skill. Much like I still enjoy D2.

 

Just a small note, the D3 Collector's Edition is back up on Amazon for sale.

Amazon.com: Diablo III: Collector's Edition: Video Games