Difference between WoW and Diablo?

[With Rye]

I've played World of Warcraft but not Diablo and I'm wondering what the essential differences are. Skimming the Diablo site, the skills and magic and weapons, etc. all seem familiar. I've heard Diablo described as hack-and-slash, but isn't that what WoW basically boils down to?

[Jragon]

It's actually a bit hard to explain if you haven't played both. Pretty much every attempt I've made to put it into words has failed. They definitely share a lot of surface similarities, but the entire FEEL of gameplay is different. Maybe somebody else will be luckier than I am at describing it.

[Bigshift]

WoW is an open world MMORPG.

Diablo is a click-to-move co-op RPG (but you can play solo if you wish).

[Jragon]

Originally Posted by Bigshift

WoW is an open world MMORPG.

Diablo is a click-to-move co-op RPG (but you can play solo if you wish).

Yeah, but he has a point. Both, ultimately, revolve around running through a limited set of areas getting better loot to gear up a character. Both involve cutting down swaths of monsters (albeit Diablo tends to throw a lot of little enemies versus WoW sending a few big enemies). A lot of the core design philosophy is the same, but yet they turn out quite different in practice.

[Snarky_Kong]

The entire gameplay. It's like saying Doom and tabletop DnD are the same because they both have demons.

[Palooka]

They're fundamentally the same game. The material differences are that WoW sets you back an extra $15-per-month, but is much larger in scope, uses a fantasy theme, and you kill one thing at a time. Diablo 3 is about 1/5th the scope of WoW, uses a gothic theme, and the more action-oriented "loot explosion" model.

Both are a great way to pass time, especially with friends. Both are ultimately bad for you if you treat it as serious business.

[Apocalypso]

Diablo is faster paced and more arcadey. Wow is slower and more drawn out. Also Diablo is played in small games wheras Wow is set in a persistent world with thousands on the same server. They seem similar but are night and day.

[Nava]

In WoW there's always other people around; what little I've played of Diablo had me alone. No bumping into other people running to the same quests, no chat - the whole world is instanced (that's what people mean when they talk about "private games") until and unless you choose to play with other folk.

[Chronos]

D3 did certainly borrow some mechanics from WoW: For instance, the barbarian now has some attacks that build up a pool of rage, and others which expend it, which as I understand it is how some of the warrior-types in WoW work. And each class has a different resource that they manage for using their skills. In D2, though, everyone had a pool of mana, which slowly regenerated or could be replenished by potions or other effects, and almost every skill cost some amount of mana to use.

[Smapti]

I haven't played D3 yet, but the best way i've found to explain the Diablo series is that it's basically a highly sophisticated and well-made Roguelike.

[Jragon]

Originally Posted by Smapti

I haven't played D3 yet, but the best way i've found to explain the Diablo series is that it's basically a highly sophisticated and well-made Roguelike.

Diablo is in no way a roguelike. Roguelikes are stochastic puzzle games at heart. You're given a set of tools, and a set of problems -- all completely random -- and you have to use your resources to survive. In most roguelikes, even your class, stats, ans starting abilities are totally random. Diablo has an element of randomness -- randomly generated terrain and loot, but it's all too well crafted, too well defined, and has too much player control over character development to compare it to a roguelike.

[Chronos]

In every roguelike I've seen, the set of problems you face is a bunch of monsters that want to kill you, and the set of tools you have to solve those problems is a bunch of weapons and armor. I've also never seen one where you can't choose your class.

[cckerberos]

Originally Posted by Jragon

Diablo is in no way a roguelike. Roguelikes are stochastic puzzle games at heart. You're given a set of tools, and a set of problems -- all completely random -- and you have to use your resources to survive. In most roguelikes, even your class, stats, ans starting abilities are totally random. Diablo has an element of randomness -- randomly generated terrain and loot, but it's all too well crafted, too well defined, and has too much player control over character development to compare it to a roguelike.

It's gotten less and less like a roguelike with each game, but its origins are definitely in that genre. At its heart, its a dungeon crawl through a randomized dungeon.

As an aside, what roguelikes have your starting class as a random element? I can't think of any roguelike where you couldn't choose your class (assuming there were classes, of course.)

[Brainiac4]

What cckerberos said. The original Diablo was unabashedly roguelike, although the series has moved steadily towards arcade and away from puzzles. Torchlight, which is very much inspired by Diablo, moves back towards the rogue/nethack end of the spectrum, IMO.

The key difference between D3 and WoW, in my opinion, is the perspective and control system. WoW is first-person or third-person, with the ability to spin the camera to any perspective and movement primarily controlled by the keyboard (although you can do click-to-move), and has oodles of control options - by 10th level, you'll have more than a dozen skills or other effects you can trigger with keyboard or mouse click. By max level you'll have more than 50, possibly more than 100.

D3, on the other hand, is fixed-camera isometric top-down perspective, with only click-to-move and a very small number of skill options - by 10th level you'll have three skills (bound by default to left-click, right-click and keyboard 1). You'll only have 4 activatable skills ever.

This makes it sound like D3 is a much shallower game, and in some ways it is - it's really a high-quality graphic arcade overlay on top of a very simple roguelike. But it's a rich gameplay experience nonetheless, and it's the distilled essence of kill-things-and-take-their-stuff.

[Airk]

Originally Posted by Brainiac4

It's the distilled essence of kill-things-and-take-their-stuff.

This; Both games are this.

That said, if you prefer your killing things to require skill and planning instead of having accumulated lots of stuff by killing OTHER things, neither game is for you.

They're essentially exercises in making numbers go up. (And before some smartass suggests it, no, this is not how all games work.)

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by Chronos

I've also never seen [a roguelike] where you can't choose your class.

Well, there's always Rogue.

[Airk]

Originally Posted by Tom Scud

Well, there's always Rogue.

Touche, but it's still not RANDOM.

[mlees]

Originally Posted by cckerberos

It's gotten less and less like a roguelike with each game, but its origins are definitely in that genre. At its heart, its a dungeon crawl through a randomized dungeon.

As an aside, what roguelikes have your starting class as a random element? I can't think of any roguelike where you couldn't choose your class (assuming there were classes, of course.)

I don't know the definition of "roguelike".

Skyrim is "classless". Is it a roguelike game?

[Miller]

Originally Posted by mlees

I don't know the definition of "roguelike".

Skyrim is "classless". Is it a roguelike game?

Roguelike. Skyrim is not an example of the genre.

[mlees]

Originally Posted by Miller

Roguelike. Skyrim is not an example of the genre.

Thanks!

[Jragon]

Originally Posted by cckerberos

As an aside, what roguelikes have your starting class as a random element? I can't think of any roguelike where you couldn't choose your class (assuming there were classes, of course.)

Powder, doesn't have classes, per se, but your starting skills (and equipment, and really everything except gender and name) are completely randomized.

That's my most played Roguelike, I actually thought Nethack was random too, but I guess I forgot you could pick for some reason.