I'm pretty excited for the expansion, I love the franchise, it's a not really a question whether I'll be picking it up. My playtime with D3 is not close to what others have put in, but I played a decent amount.

While I didn't like some of the choices Blizzard made (story, AH) the actual gameplay was far and away better than D2. Just go back and play that game (which I just beat again BTW) and you can see the actual core gameplay is greatly improved.

Since ROS will remove the AH completely and give you the option of not playing the story I can only see this as a great improvement.

Shame the updater has been broken for me since December and I can't download any patches or the Beta, hopefully it'll come to PS3 and not just PC/PS4

I read the thread yesterday and it seems like legit problems and concerns to me, by the game's MVPs no less.

FYI for duders itt who are curious: Most complaints revolve around what will be the new endgame for lvl 70 in RoS. Lifesteal is gone(weakly replaced by LoH and regen)in the RoS beta and the cool down on elite and champ damage is apparently off and unfair in terms of mitigation above Torment 3(the new diff past master, and the equivalent to the old monster powers above 5 or so).

Item trading is available only in the co-op game as drops happen, and all legs are currently account bound so there are concerns with that, understandably. Legendary drop rates are extremely low and those item stats on what drops are not commensurate with frequency. I'm only playing on the PTR and I can vouch for most of that complaining. The new mystic will be the new time sink and leg gamble to get improvements using the 'bad' legs as the mat is my understanding.

Monster xp is less than live in the PTR and beta and paragon lvling is much slower as an effect; perhaps in reaction to the new 'paragon points allocation' feature(great idea on its own imo)and the paragon cap elimination.

Sounds like the new Crusader class is too weak currently, mainly offensively, and exacerbated because of the current drop rate and weak RNG affixes still on legs, considering the new torment diffs specifically. Also, the latest beta/PTR update is bugged in terms of primary affixes(level reduced on items instead of any primary stat)on most rare drops, which means smart loot is broken for now(this particularly baffles me).

I think these guys are very passionate about their fav game and just want the D3 team to listen and react. They've made a ton of sensible suggestions too. Cancelling preorders seems overly dramatic, but I get their desperation. Overall it's a beta still and things will be fixed and balanced at some point, but on the other hand it is concerning considering the expansion is just two months off. Can't blame the invested D3 player for not wanting to go through the endless patch/update process with RoS when it drops, especially considering what has been the never ending process with D3 live up until now.

So some forum babies declared it bad and hence it must be?

Yeah no.

Blizzard has been on a downward spiral since Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne if that's your "reliable source."

I dunno, you guys. It looks like more clicky-clicky-killy-killy, so I'm good.

Hell, it's miles away from being Sacred 2!

I dont think you are one of the few. It got it fair share of hate, but I think it was a typical case of a vocal minority leading the crowd.

I personally loved the game. All of the problems it had are true; the drop rates were poor and the auction house was shady, but the gameplay was incredibly solid. I will buy it the expansion as well. I am sure all this shit is blown out of proportion as usual.

The only thing I don't like about the Reaper of Souls expansion right now? It's likely not coming to PS4 day and date with the PC version, but rather during Holiday season 2014. I don't think I'll be able or willing to make time for it then. For shame!

Seriously, most major developers manage simultaneous releases on all platforms. Seeing how Blizzard's sales on PC have been declining over the past 5 years, it's baffling to me that they don't put a bigger emphasis on establishing a foothold in the console market.

Its still in beta, i dont get why the official forums are exploding when theirs 2 months to fix what are easy issues to fix, the main complaint is still just drop rates, i mean fixing that and having interesting loot will solve 90% of there issues. Say what you will about Diablo 3 but it has the tightest feeling combat in any hack and slash since Diablo 2.

So wait, are people confused about which is more realistic? Is it more feasible a small and vocal minority think this game is a completely lost cause and will ship utterly broken in March or that everyone else who is skeptical is a Blizzard fanboy apologist?

Where are you hearing that? I was hoping the Blizzard site would provide some indication of release date but it doesn't really say much

Read it in some article googling the PS4 release date of it.

What flawed, core Diablo 3 experience? I know a lot of people hate the game for some weird reason, but I have had nothing but a great time with it. The only thing I really felt took something away from the game was the lack of awesome loot and the auction house, both which seems to be fixed.
You know what? If the people who say the expansion will be shit are the same people who say the core game is shit, then I bet I will love the expansion to bits.

The complaints I saw seem very esoteric and constrained to people who are basically playing D3 like I never did - farming endgame content. I've played a bunch of games that have claimed to be the true successor to D2 based on some arbitrary criteria (like their shitty map, looking at you, PoE) and none of them are as good as D3. And I'm not just talking about gameplay. People talk a lot of shit about D3's story, and admittedly, it didn't cause me to shed any tears. But which recent aRPG is it that has done better?

I guess in a nutshell what I'm saying is that if RoS ends up being broken, it's only going to be broken for people who play it obsessively.

@veektarius said:

Same here. As someone who plays almost entirely in hardcore mode, the meat of the game (i.e. the combat and perfecting a balanced build) is a blast, and the "endgame Inferno MP10 gear grind" (what seems to be the primary source of complaints) isn't something you spend very much time doing, if at all. Additionally, with the console versions, the loot drop rates, auction house, and "always online" are all non-issues too.

I'm not saying that those complaints aren't valid, but I don't like how the more vocal D3 critics seem to act like how complaints about softcore level-cap endgame (or PC legendary drop rates, or whatever) are something that affects everyone, or are something that we should all be outraged about.

Their sales on PC declining? Like what, when D3 sold 5 mil first week of launch and about 12 mil before the console versions came out? When D2 hasn't sold as much in it's lifetime as D3 did it's first week. They've just released the best selling PC game besides the Minecraft/WoW/Sims trifecta. And the console versions sold only 2 mil altogether by November.

They also don't exactly release new games that frequently for there to be any kind of visible trend, there's just been SC2 and D3. WoW expansions slowly declining over time is hardly a surprise, it's hella old, people move on.

Gamestar recently made a report on Blizzard, where-in they stated that sales overall are growing soft for various franchises. Sure, all their franchises still sell great, but they don't sell as well as expected. Since 5 years, despite releasing Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, Blizzard's bottomline is shrinking. Negative growth, so to speak. The PC market is more than ever dominated by the free 2 play business model. It becomes harder and harder to still justify the purchase of a full price game or even subscription game, in the light of ever higher quality free 2 play offerings.

Also 5 millions is peanuts for top sellers on consoles. GTA 5 sold like 30 million copies. Call of Duty games regularly breach 20 million copies sold. Battlefield games do up to 15 millions. If Blizzard treats the console audience as equals, and not as second class citizens, they'll definitely sell more. It may take awhile to grow a similar fanbase, but that's an effort they definitely should make. Just like Blizzard is trying to get into the free 2 play market now, with their digital TCG and DOTA clone and whatnot, they should put equal effort into establishing their brands on consoles as well.

Why bother releasing Diablo 3 & Expanansion a half a year late to consoles? The very fact that it isn't day and date makes me less excited for the game. Zeitgeist is precious, and much of it is lost for the console launch, if it is indeed delayed. That's not how one captures an audience. That's not how one builds a fanbase.

It kinda seems like a pretty thin expansion to me. One new class and one new zone? The Acts in Diablo games only take a few hours to beat. The only way to get a lot of value out of it is to play through from level 1 and the new class doesn't look that interesting to me...

I'm not sure what Gamestar (whoever they are) expects then? For Blizzard to release a game that sells the most ever, every time, each time?

I've already provided the stats. 5 mil was just the first week of release. They sold 12 mil. Top 4 best selling PC game, ever.

F2P is an entirely different business model, their player base numbers are a whole separate thing.

Of the standard full priced games Blizzard sales have not gone anywhere.

Like you said CoD the behemoth gets around 20 mil sales, that's across all platforms. And CoD is a game for the masses. Blizzard managed to get 12 mil, on PC only, with a dungeon crawler. Same goes for GTAV, again that 30 mil is super nice, but once again it's across all platforms, and the marketing money they dump into it (like CoD) is insane GTA had buildings painted. CoD for example has been reported to cost more to market then to make.

None of these numbers we are talking are remotely peanuts by the way, they are the best of the best of the best when it comes to sales. Other great games that are not these few behemoths don't sell near as much, consoles or no consoles. Something like say Mass Effect games are 2-3 mill across all platforms for each game as an example.

Should they push into consoles? That's really up to them and how they are set up as a producer and what types of games they make being suited for it. They already dipped their toes into it. I'm sure if they like what they see they will try harder.

All of this speculation about a beta is complete nonsense. The real lesson here is don't pre-order games. Wait until professional reviews surface, then make a purchase decision.

Their bottomline is shrinking since 5 years. Sure, it was incredibly huge due to the phenomenal success of WoW. Nonetheless, no business entity likes negative growth. From certain perspectives, that's the same as losing, even if their games still sell well.

Diablo 3 on PS3/360 was their toe-dipping phase, Reaper of Souls should be more of a commitment to the console audience than it is, if it is infact delayed. I'm certainly a lot less excited to play a game feeling like a second class citizen. If Blizzard really wants to win a foothold in the console market, it shouldn't half-ass things like this. It'd be a missed opportunity.

Sure, they might not necessarily need it, but they're leaving money and potential growth on the table, in a climate that's bound to grow more and more difficult for Blizzard and its old ways of doing business. Blizzard right now is like Nintendo coming off the SNES or Wii. They're bleeding success, and if they don't start gaining success elsewhere, it's not great for them. Building a fanbase for the Diablo franchise on consoles should be paramount. The best way of doing that is to offer parity with the PC version. Make the console audience feel equal, not lesser.

Well when it comes to releasing Reaper of Souls on consoles day and date with the PC version I completely agree with you, it would serve them well to do so. Never argued against that.

I simply disagreed with the "declining PC sales" thing. Their bottom line is shrinking largely because of WoW, that is by FAR their biggest cash cow with monthly subs, which is also naturally shrinking over time.

The PS4 version is a day one purchase for me.

'Pandas? PANDAS? This Kung Fu Panda shit shows that Blizzard doesn't know what their hardcore fanbase wants. RIP WoW 2012. Subscription cancelled.'

... goes on to be the best WoW expansion since TBC. XD

I say this a lot but I think a lot of people look at a developer like the director of a movie or author of a book. Blizzard is Steven Spielberg or Tolkien. But Blizzard is a company. It's the people that work at Blizzard that are the authors. And the people that work at Blizzard today are not the same people who worked at Blizzard when Diablo 2 came out. In fact very few people who worked at Blizzard before last generation (as in before 2005) still work there now. The creators of Diablo haven't worked at Blizzard in a decade. Neither have most of the creators of Warcraft and Starcraft. Blizzard is like Rare or Infinity Ward. They are the same company in name only. Very little, if any, of the original staff remain.

A lot of people have written off Diablo style games because they weren't made by Blizzard but Diablo 3 has less of the Diablo 2 staff involved in its creation than Torchlight or any of the other recently well received Diablo style game. People don't jump up and down when, say, Legendary produces a new movie because they are a company. They produce a lot of good movies, like The Dark Knight, as well as a lot of bad ones, like Watchmen. And that is really the core of the thing. Because in gaming we still view a company, not a person as the author of a game, we get tricked when the people who made that company leave.

Yeah, I didn't phrase that correctly. Sorry.

You underestimate company culture. The presence of the people who built Blizzard and made it a huge success story is still felt, even if those people have left long ago. Most people who left Blizzard, have left Blizzard because they have moved on, and Blizzard could not keep up.

Take Jeff Strain for example. He was there for World of Warcraft. Then he wanted to do something else. He founded and helped build ArenaNet and the Guild Wars franchise. Then he moved on and founded yet another studio (Undead Labs), which is responsible for State of Decay. Companies are defined and somewhat bound by their successes, the individual talent might not want to be constricted to repeat their past successes, and rather pursue new ideas, which they can't do without leaving the company they helped build and set on a path to success.

I read the complaints and they seem legit. But, by and large, there's 2 kinds of Diablo 3 players, and the problems won't really affect one of those 2. Casual players who aren't concerned with endgame will likely find little fault. Diablo 3's problems don't really come to the forefront until you hit the level cap. Those who DO care about endgame progression, ie. the long-term players, have problems with itemization and drop rates, which seems legit. Itemization looks like it hasn't really been fixed, still revolving around the holy trinity - vitality, all resist, crit chance, and then your primary damage stat (Str/Dex/Int). That's boring and limiting.

Compounding that - Blizzard has been SO SLOW to actually fix Diablo 3. In fact, they haven't. For such a large studio to not try to fix these problems and instead wait until an expansion so they can charge for it, that's pretty galling. Compare Diablo 3 to Marvel Heroes, a game made by a much smaller studio - that game's evolved so much in the last 6 months, almost EVERYTHING under the hood has been replaced with new, better systems, all the while adding new content. Perhaps Blizzard's gotten too big to be so reactive, or they're reluctant to actually make change, or they just don't actually know what to do, or they don't care - no one knows, because their communication with their community is almost non-existant, except for official releases. That's a bad way to be for a game so community driven. Say what you will about BNet, which can be a toxic shithole, they are the people that care the most and want the games to be the best they can be, by and large.

Take it with a grain of salt, but don't dismiss everything out of hand because it's Bnet. But also put things in perspective - if you're more of a casual player, you're probably gonna be fine. These are the concerns of players who want to play a great ARPG for hundreds of hours.

@raven10: And yet, when individuals spin off of companies to make their own spiritual successors, I feel like they fail more often than they succeed while the companies behind them often succeed, because it was the corporate culture that made it a fun and well polished game. The individual is responsible for ideas, sure, but once their ideas are already part of the public consciousness (when they made the first game), anyone can co-opt and improve upon them.

It's like if you hired a bunch of excellent authors and you said "We're going to make the Stand 2" and Stephen King says "I'm going to make the spiritual successor to the Stand". Who does better? I don't know, but I'd give King even odds at best.

@foolishchaos: I had one small hiccup with Diablo 3 when it was launched. Other than that Blizzard games almost always launch fairly polished and with minimal issues.

@veektarius: @seppli: Are you guys serious? Please give me some examples to back up that argument because I honestly can't think of any off the top of my head. I can think of a handful of developers who survived the resignation of their founders, Naughty Dog being at the top of the list, but the fact is that Naughty Dog replaced an incredible creative leadership with an equal or even better creative leadership with Amy Hennig who is arguably one of the best writer/designers in the industry. Now you might give an example of, say, System Shock 2 being a better game than the original and made by a different developer. But not only did Ken Levine get his start at Looking Glass, he is, again, one of the best writer/directors in the industry.

And the examples of companies destroyed by the loss of their top staff are quite numerous. Outside of Rare and Infinity Ward which I already mentioned, Team Ninja, Origin, Atari and Activision come to mind. One key aspect, especially in the case of the latter three, is that they were purchased by a larger corporation that changed company culture. Activision went from championing the art of game development to being the exact opposite. And the people behind that change are the exact people currently running Blizzard. In the case of Rare and also Silicon Knights, much of the perceived talent seemingly had to do with the influence of legendary designers like Miyamoto and Kojima. Neither company remained successful outside of the Nintendo fold.

People made the same argument you guys are making about the film industry under the Studio System of the 30's through 50's. The idea was that the director and writers of a film didn't matter. Once someone had a good concept they just copied it. Then in the 60's the French New Wave created the auteur theory that was picked up by numerous US directors like Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Stephen Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Stanly Kubrick, and numerous other writers and directors who remain the most acclaimed of all time. The studio system didn't work. It made a lot of money for a lot of people, mind you, but look at the number of truly masterful films from that era and you'll only be able to name a few. One of those, the mighty Citizen Kane was made by a man given completely free reign to do whatever he wished. At the same time you saw movements like the Italian focus on realism or late German Expressionism which created masterful films that to this day are some of the best ever made. And many of the the Studio era directors made their best films after the end of the Studio System. Alfred Hitchcock for example made a bunch of mediocre films while under studio control. When given creative freedom he made films like Psycho, Rear Window, and The Birds. The same with Kubrick. His early stuff is good but compare something like Lolita to 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, or any of his other films after the fall of the studio system and you can see that they were vastly superior.

Point is, the best pieces of art, be they games, movies, books, plays, music, paintings, or anything else are created from passion. They are created by artists who deeply believe in the art they are creating. Anyone can make a new Diablo and make a fun, balanced, polished game. But like most of Blizzard's recent games, it would lack the flare that you gain when a truly creative artist creates an idea. If you don't believe in the importance of the directors of games, then look at how much more the best designers get paid. The top talent at Rockstar make millions every year. Ken Levine makes millions every year. Miyamoto, Kojima, Ono, Todd Howard, John Carmack, and Casey Hudson, just to name a few, get paid 10x or more what the average designer makes. Activision fired Jason West and Vince Zampella just because they made $10+ million on each game. Activision thought they could replace them and make something just as good. Call of Duty 3 and Ghosts would strongly disagree with that statement.

@raven10:

I'm merely saying that the men and women who birthed the idea that is Blizzard, who set it on its path of success, may no longer work at Blizzard, yet the idea lives on. They who work at Blizzard see it that way. Many fans see it that way. Just because you don't, doesn't make it true. It's undeniable Blizzard works a certain way, and they still do work very much in that way. If the endresult of that work doesn't do it anymore, it may be you, it may be the times.

Since we are talking about Blizzard, it's all the examples I need.

A Reddit link to a Battlenet forum post. I know all I need to know about what has been said in those threads.

On Team Liquid, the Starcraft/Starcraft 2 community site, the Battlenet forums are dismissed completely, and justifiably so. They're downright awful and full of the whiniest people. The only time any attention is given to that forum is when a pro player posts something, and it is usually immediately crossposted so people don't have to go to the Battlenet forum.

So many gamers are nothing but whiny, pretentious aholes these days. They can derive zero enjoyment from any game because if something isn't exactly to their liking then it is the absolute worst thing in the universe.

Just enjoy games. They're meant to be enjoyable... Stop being so cynical.

You care about this more than I do, so I'm not going to give you the reply you deserve, but what you're pointing to is basically the difference between films & books and games when it comes to the artistic quality of sequels. In a game, there's not much evidence to me that there's anywhere near as much creative bankruptcy inherent in sequelizing than there is in those other mediums. So when you take my example of the Stand 2, the problem isn't that the Stand 2 wouldn't be good, there'd just be no good for it.

Examples are hard to come by, because many companies just aren't old enough to lose their directors. But how about Final Fantasy? The director of X didn't even work on IV. Mario's moved on to a new director. Frankly Blizzard isn't even an example - Rob Pardo's still at the company. Warren Spector didn't work on Deus Ex: HR, but Eidos did, while Spector himself has gone on to have limited success in his own endeavors. Do these examples work well enough for you to calm down a bit?

@raven10 said:

Someone complaining about how broken a Blizzard game is on the official bnet forums? No one has taken those seriously for decades. Serious Wow players ignore the bnet forums as well where instead they go for the topic specific forums instead. The only time to take anything seriously on the official forums are 'blue posts' which people have made scrapers that specifically pull those posts out instead of sifting through the trash and garbage of those forums.

I just laughed reading that. Man, those complaints were hilarious.

I have never heard of this issue before, nor do i care about or own Diablo. But This could be the Disaster of my generation judging by what this internet guy who i only know from this single post says about this forum i have never been to and this product i have never played.

Well... this is awkward.