Off topic....Diablo 3...wow

[Billybgame]

I did not realize, in this age, where so many are offended by DRM, and boycotting sites like Steam, and other DRM laden games, Blizzard still are going ahead and putting DRM and online only play required into Diablo 3.

Good thing for me I never buy games right away. By the time the dust settles and the prices come down, maybe this will be resolved or there will be appropriate hacks. Either that, or like many I'm reading on Amazon, I just won't buy the game.

I do not endorse or support DRM products. We should all band together and do the same, and the message will get louder and more clear.

[Lucifer666]

All right man...finally somebody who doesn't drool all over the mention of D3...I'm with ya bro!!!

[thepsycho2]

Yeah, I am disappointed at the fact Diablo 3 is going to be an "online only" game. Hope this changes somewhat..

[Billybgame]

Yeah, I just don't get it.....not sure if you guys have checked out Good Old Games, but no DRM is one of their mottos. They get it....they know gamers deplore this stuff. Amazing how these game companies themselves don't. If people hold to what they are saying, they will surely hurt their own sales figures.

[Stabby_McTwist]

I did not realize, in this age, where so many are offended by DRM, and boycotting sites like Steam, and other DRM laden games, Blizzard still are going ahead and putting DRM and online only play required into Diablo 3.

IMO, people who boycott and rage at Steam are people who will never be happy.
Steam isn't perfect... but then, nothing ever is. Steam is the probably the best balance between freedom and security for games. I've had my current steam account since the start of 2008, and I've never had an issue playing or accessing the games I own (the exceptions are when certain free games flat out DO NOT work due to the game's DRM like nProtect GameGuard), and frequently those who do have trouble accessing games/content have issues with the game itself, not Steam (i.e. EA requiring authentication).


But back to Diablo III, not surprised but if I cared I'd be {filtered}. They did the same with Starcraft II, which (last I checked) requires an internet connection even in the Guest/"Offline" mode.
Personally I think Blizzard should just 'bite the bullet' and scrap the singleplayer content from their games and label them "online games".

[Lucifer666]

Man,I simply don't like games that require me to be online,I'm living in a crap country with crap connections so half the time I can't even connect to the internet... Also I watched some of those spoilers on YouTube and I must say that I was NOT impressed,seriously I was more impressed with Eastern Sun when i started playing it...
Yea D3 LOOKS better,but what is actually better there than in D2 or ES for that matter,some new skills???NO...nothing is better,gameplay is almost the same...

[thepsycho2]

Well, I'm not one to immediately jump on board when it is released, I rather wait (like billybgame) when the dust settles and it becomes a little more established. Main reason? They ain' got a stable release date...

[Billybgame]

Well, I'm not one to immediately jump on board when it is released, I rather wait (like billybgame) when the dust settles and it becomes a little more established. Main reason? They ain' got a stable release date...

Yup....and get all the bugs out...heck maybe even like I did with Diablo in general...wait until there's a Battle Chest:) It requires patience:)

Like Lucifer was saying.....there's no guarantee it's even going to be a good game. If I'm not mistaken, all the talent that created these early Blizz games are long gone.

[theyellowlemon]

ive been in the beta for a long time and am losing hope for the game with every new patch. theyll make one good change followed by two bad ones. they just keep dumbing it down and simplifying it to the point where it feels like a console game.

[Xc0n]

I just feel the same as you all, it just seems that blizzard is really trying to forge the game like an mmo setereotype and im my opinion its going to kill it in the long run by shooting itself in the foot. They've implemented a real money auction house to keep illegal gamesites from selling their crap and spamming chat channels and games with bots, but they will be there one way or another, and this non sense of being always online for you to be able to play your singleplayer confortable without anyone messing with you and without lag to kill the gameplay away from you. No, they screw us consumers with the bullcrap of gamehacks and illegal copies being the reason behind this decision, lol seriouly by now they should have guessed that their games sell no matter what and even with the illegal hacked or whatever is on the net they still profit big on the PC market.

As for me ill be pondering to buy the game maybe on the 1st week of release after some reviews and see if its worth it or not the aquisition, and I'll be keeping a close eye on Torchlight 2 also cuz this game still holds some resemblace and i loved the 1s one and this guys really know what they are doing, and they embrace their community, not like blizz that always focus on numbers only.

[Stabby_McTwist]

They've implemented a real money auction house to keep illegal gamesites from selling their crap and spamming chat channels and games with bots

HA HA HA HA HA! YEAH RIGHT!! You'll be seeing this all the time:

STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!1
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!2
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!3
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!4
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!5
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!6
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!7
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!8
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!9
STAFF OF DIDDILY SQUAT $0.99 CENTS ON AUCTION HOUSE!! BUY FAST!! GOGOGOG!!!!0

(They'll add the end numbers just to avoid the repeated message spam filters.)

There was a TON of similar spam in World of Warcraft when I played (when it was more populated), and that was just for ingame mone... for REAL LIFE money? People will be spamming for a literal living.



Also, Diablo III DRM will be cracked inside a month. Obviously online play won't be (and therefor online auction house) available, but it'll be defeated in short order... again hurting only people who bought the game and not those who downloaded it.
But given that it's a Blizzard game... I won't be surprised when a keygen (or "keygen" (i.e. an app that goes through a list of leaked/stolen keys)) makes it's rounds. I've known a few people who used keygen'd keys to register a copy of the game and play online for Diablo II/Starcraft/Warcraft III.

[Perfect Cell]

I'm still looking forward to this game. I'm really, really hoping that it's as mod-friendly as DII was, but I'm not holding my breath.

[rogertaylor1988]

May 15 is the release date, I'll buy it on May 15 Couldn't buy D2 (was too young, no income ), but D3 - definitely. I'll lose social life for some time, but what the hell

[thepsycho2]

Diablo 3 will bring in a different kind of playstyle. I surrendered to the hype and made a digital preorder. All I do now is wait..

[erilon]

Also, Diablo III DRM will be cracked inside a month. Obviously online play won't be (and therefor online auction house) available, but it'll be defeated in short order... again hurting only people who bought the game and not those who downloaded it.
But given that it's a Blizzard game... I won't be surprised when a keygen (or "keygen" (i.e. an app that goes through a list of leaked/stolen keys)) makes it's rounds. I've known a few people who used keygen'd keys to register a copy of the game and play online for Diablo II/Starcraft/Warcraft III.

Easily in a month of release, DRM is already being crack in beta. Google mooege if you get the chance it's an emulater used in place of Battle.net servers. It's buggy now still but within a month you'll have private networks cropping up i bet.

[Cheveyo]

I'm still looking forward to this game. I'm really, really hoping that it's as mod-friendly as DII was, but I'm not holding my breath.

It won't be, I can almost guarantee it. The always-online bit and the auction house seem almost like they're going out of their way to make modding, at the very least, highly inconvenient.

And that's the main reason I'm not buying it. D2 was okay, but it was much better with mods. The same's true of a lot of PC games. Modding, in my opinion, is one of the most important strengths of the platform, and I have a hard time convincing myself to buy a (non-indie) PC game that doesn't easily accomodate that.

[Billybgame]

What Cheveyo said......I'll wait and see what the jury says.....saves $, and saves from buying garbage:) Don't like what I'm hearing about it.

Got to remember, it may be Blizzard, but the core that made D1 and D2 are long gone.

[Hans]

I'm still looking forward to this game. I'm really, really hoping that it's as mod-friendly as DII was, but I'm not holding my breath.

All mods are banned.

Remember that Blizzard is not using any protection for the Beta. They do not want to have hackers hacking away at the protection during the Beta and would rather have it up when the game is live.

I was really looking into getting D3 until about December. Everything that had me looking into the game is basically gone or nerved. I was really looking forward to the Mystic but she is gone. They are nerfing Infernal mode. Besides no mods and offline mode. At least with SC2 you could play it offline as long as you have authenticated it least once.

I have been playing a lot of Torchlight right now and I am liking it a lot. Torchlight 2 will likely be out soon and the game will be much larger and you can play it offline, lan, with mods. The whole works. Plus a few people from Diablo 1 and 2 are there. Max Shaeffer is there as well Matt (forgot his last name) who made the music for Diablo is there.

[thepsycho2]

Yeah, the only thing that I don't like about Diablo 3 is the fact that it won't be modable. Almost everything is online-based (even the starting up part), and I don't really blame Blizzard for choosing this way of DRM, but think of the golden thing that they are working on.. >_> The Auction House... >_>

But I think, after procrastinating on it for months on end, I might wind up getting Torchlight and give that a try.

[IronWarfare]

The non moddability feature of D3 is a huge pile of s**t, worse than the "online only gameplay". I wanted to see Diablo 3 Eastern Sun

[Byto]

The non moddability feature of D3 is a huge pile of s**t, worse than the "online only gameplay". I wanted to see Diablo 3 Eastern Sun

Wow I didn't even think of that. I'd smoke too much and think I was Japanese playing that.

I stopped caring about D3 a while ago, it just doesn't seem like the same kinda game as 1 n 2. I was considering pirating it before, but I won't now. Maybe if they can crack the anti-mod modders could make a decent game outta it, but it just has too many terrible elements (I won't list em) making it a bad game. The most exciting part now will be diablo 2 bnet servers, after d3 comes out. Was it dragons people spawned online in the first game?

[Stabby_McTwist]

Stabby's Diablo III mini-review/rant/praise

Well... since I've finished up getting all the achievements in the Diablo III open beta weekend, and unlocking my uber sexy banner, I figured I'd do a mini-writeup on my experience for my favorite Diablo II site.
First off, I've got to say... I'm REALLY impressed with the game. That's not to say it's perfect. There are a few issues, some that have been mentioned as nothing more than speculation, and some I've discovered first hand by playing. But despite it's flaws, it's a pretty great game.

Issue #1: Online Only.
Zero offline content at all. You can't log in, you can't play. I doubt this will change with the retail release.

Issue #2: As others have mentioned, no modding.
Torchlight is a great 'Diablo Clone' and embraces modding. From what little I've played of Torchlight (the lack of online play killed it for me), modding was a godsend.

Issue #3 this is probably a biggie for many here: Simplified/Dumbed down characters and ZERO real customization/variety.
It appears you don't level up skills or stats anymore, you just unlock them as you progress in levels.
Active Skills are split up into 6 categories. Each category contains 3~4 skills, which can be enhanced with one of 5 Runes, which are also unlocked as you level.
By default you can choose one skill from each category to use. In the game options, you can set an option to allow you to 'map' any skill to any button, allowing you to pick two skills from the same category, at the cost of another category.
Passive Skills are unlocked every 10 levels, up to Lv30 currently with room for 2~3 more, for a total of 3. Each class has 24 passive skills that you can choose from.
I'd like to take a moment here to point out that 6 skill buttons looks suspiciously console-ready. That combined with the lack of customization and 'dumbed down' cookie-cutter style classes, I wouldn't be surprised to see another console Diablo in the near future.

Issue #4 and probably the biggest since it impacts gameplay: TOO MANY PHYSICS!!!
Seriously, EVERYTHING in the game relies heavily on physics. Sure, that barrel smashing into 30 pieces looks great, but that's 30 pieces of wood all needing calculations by the CPU. Even the most basic of spells use physics for reasons I cannot fathom, as they don't appear to interact with anything in a meaningful way -- sure spells that do damage will 'detonate' on impact, but that could all be handled with basic animations.
Note: All the physics calculations are done on the CPU, this means it is extra CPU intensive. Pretty much, if you have a single-core CPU, it's not going to cut it for anything more than solo. I have a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading (fake dualcore) and it lags a bit while solo. With 1 other person it's not too bad, but 3 or more people and it slows to what I would estimate is 1~3 FPS. I stutter-step more than a pro Terran Starcraft II player.
Unfortunately, this puts the pricetag of Diablo III at somewhere in the $300 range for me.

But even with the few issues mentioned above, I've had a blast playing Diablo III this weekend. It's like Diablo II mixed with World of Warcraft, with 2 more helpings of Diablo II mixed in for good measure. While it has some elements of WoW, mostly for the better I might add, it retains the feel of Diablo II.

[Lucifer666]

I have to say,that i don't like that description,no offense meant to anyone but those flaws you listed are totally big for me...

[thepsycho2]

As much as I wanted to, reality (amongst other things) has kept me from the stress-test

[Hans]

I did play the stress test.

The only thing that saved the sale was the level and art design. The game play was alright not epic enough unless you were playing at 5k lag and seeing zombies doing moonwalks.