Diablo III

[Tavrobel]

All in all, I'd have to say more of the same as Diablo II, except it has a graphics and skill update. And a different economy. Mostly these are improvements of mechanical fixes.

TL;DR: Plenty has changed but not enough for me most people to say, OHH WOW THAT'S NEW AND EXCITING. The formula is still there, you take a relatively overpowered hero, and slam into hordes and hordes of mooks, and expect them all to die. The very few who don't are an actual challenge, but you can't plan on it. They've cleaned up a lot of the champion mods, and each one presents a significant challenge. Some are worse than others, although I have found Health Link, Damage Reflected, and Extra Health to be relatively pleasant. Frozen/Mortar and Vampiric/Desecrated are easily the worst ones I have seen. I can only imagine it to be worse if it were Frozen/Mortar/Plagued or Vampiric/Desecrated/Waller. Arcane is dumb, but I'd take that over Fire Enchanted and Mana Burn all day. DIII is intended to be difficult. DII has mods that do 512 times more damage than intended.

Economy should be much healthier. With the introduction of the auction house, DIII has taken a step in the right direction. If Blizzard really is concerned about the in-game economy more than what they cared in DII, then this is right on every level. In the last game, nothing could be done safely on realms or Hardcore without the supervision and organization of D2JSP, and even then, there's the risk of scamming. Some people just didn't care. With the impersonality of the auction house, it just makes everything easier, and manageable for Blizzard. It's like they took the black market and realized that it's only black because someone forgot to turn the light switch on in the room.

I'm mostly upset that the Auction House is not inside of the game, and is in the selection lobby. The code for the Mystic is still in the game, but just completely disabled. They could just replace it with an Auction House vendor (like how I.Eye and Nexon did with Dragon Nest). Some people are a little ridiculous in their demands, but that's the problem with people, not the system. I am a little upset that you can't take down items early, there's no postage fee, and that there is a posting limit. Also, when you search for "All Damage" it won't work, making it very difficult to isolate items like "+4-8 Damage" Rings.

The skill switching system is absolutely brilliant, but I miss the allocation system where you can choose which stats go where. This kind of makes it hard to do anything outside of the designated class role. Ultimately, the Wizard will always be magical DPS, the Demon Hunter will always be ranged physical DPS, the Witch Doctor is a Summoner/magic DPS, and the Barbarian is a Tank/physical DPS. The Monk can switch between area DPS and full support. I predict soon that people will just play a party with 3 Monks and a glass cannon, or even worse, 4 Monks. It's overpowered, like the Paladin class, but for slightly different reasons. This could potentially be problematic a few years down the road, but in DII, it took people years to find Life Tap working on Smite, and another few years to realize that it works with the runeword Grief, and Blessed Hammer didn't do anything until they added the damage synergy from Concentration and the runeword Enigma.

I'll have some more observations later. I've taken too much time to work on this.

EDIT: So, a major gripe I have with the game is the server instability. Blizzard knew that this game was going to be played, with the dedication that players had shown on the previous game. Why were they not prepared for this? Why did they not take down WoW servers and turn them into DIII servers? People shouldn't be playing WoW anyway. Every single hour I am plagued with problems with either the Auction House, connection in general, or playing the game. The game is really well made. Everything goes along so easily. There's thought but there isn't much that obstructs you or is intrusive.

Everything keeps you in the game, except for the stability issues. Right now, I'm sitting in a chat with other people, bitching about the auction house, because I am losing gold right now. I have 10 items, with prices that are low (I mean low) and should have been bought instant. They are all sitting there, and my friends can't even see my items. So they can't be bought.

Does anyone know how irritating that is? To have a capped economy? Blizzard is all like "well we only want people selling their best items." Not a single person there has read an economics book. The economy is consumer driven. There is a demand for items at every level right now, why am I marked? How often do people buy stuff from the supermarket? How often do people buy stuff from the Lamborghini people? Blizzard is saying "hey we only want you to sell Lamborghinis." But I don't need a Lamborghini. I need cash and food.