# Are you going to play Diablo III: Reaper of Souls? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [February 5, 2014, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615 "2014-02-05T22:59:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/41 "2014-02-12T01:26:40Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And again, if they only had crappy drops, the auction house wouldn’t work. That part is actually true. Making it easy for buyers and sellers to find each other dumped the virtual economy on its head. Market efficiency matters. I’d be surprised if anyone who played diablo3 more than 50 hours or so is wearing three pieces of gear they found themselves, on any character. On platforms where the auction house is unavailable, good gear drops at an incredibly, outrageously higher frequency (something like 14,000%) AND the monsters stats are nerfed, just to make the game equally hard as the PC version. The AH turned the game from a treasure hunt to a lottery. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/42 "2014-02-12T02:52:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And again, if they only had crappy drops, the auction house wouldn’t work. If they _increased_ the probability of crappy drops though, which is what AeM seems to be saying, the auction houses would work, and someone who didn’t want to use them would have their game experience be negatively affected. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/43 "2014-02-12T04:37:30Z")
the single players’ expectations that they operate at the same level as those who come together to trade the best items are unrealistic. if you want to play alone, you cannot expect to get the same level of items as people who pool their resources together. as a single player without those resources, you should not be able to survive in Inferno at all. the highest level of difficulty would be a joke if a single player could handle it by their lonesome. crappy drops are relative. a level 10 item is a nice upgrade when you’ve got a level 3 item equipped, then anything above level 10 would not be crappy. that progression goes out the window when you buy that level 999 item and complain that nothing good ever drops for you as you scrap that level 20 item that just dropped. no, the problem is not the drop rate - it is the items themselves that are crap. unlike D2, which is more than 10 years old now, i don’t even remember a single epic item from D3 at all; except for a vague recollection of a weapon that froze everything when combined with a high attack speed. it ended up being used by my follower because it was utterly useless to my character as it lacked dps. no items stood out because they were all just sockets to carry the same primary stats. bleah. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/44 "2014-02-12T07:15:17Z")
As far as Diablo2 online play, the only reason I did it was the fact that it allowed me to “mule”. I could log in one of my mules and, if I was quick enough, I could log in another character and pass gear to the mule. And the the mule could pass that gear to other characters who could make better use of it. Not sure if I can do that in D3. ---
**Author:** ![Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrogance_ex_machina/32/192_2.png) [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrogance_Ex_Machina)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/45 "2014-02-12T11:14:08Z")
You guys are acting like the loot difference between PC version with its AH and the console version is some sort of crackpot theory when Blizzard devs themselves have commented on the issue and openly said console version has better loot. [This isn’t all that great a cite](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125575-Diablo-III-Console-Version-Makes-it-Easier-to-Get-Loot) but I’m not going to go through all the 350k search results to find a better one. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/46 "2014-02-12T12:56:22Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Not sure if I can do that in D3. Your characters have a shared stash, so there’s no need for the dicey game switch anymore. > [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](#): > > Blizzard devs themselves have commented on the issue and openly said console version has better loot. Well, the good news is that’s the loot system that’s going to be put into place, and I don’t think you’ll even need to get the expansion for it. ---
**Author:** ![sohvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sohvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sohvan)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/47 "2014-02-12T13:33:44Z")
> [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](#): > > It’s because the game was designed around the AH with crappy drops, requiring you to buy things from it to keep progressing. The console versions that launched later had better drops since they had no AH to compensate. So use it or not, it affects you either way unless you get the console version instead. I think the Normal-Nightmare-Hell progress was balanced around no Auction House, and they intended Inferno to be something people would slowly progress through. I remember they said they didn’t have an auction house in their internal tests, and it surprised them how much the AH sped up the gearing process. The original game didn’t have monster power levels at all, because they expected inferno to take longer to clear. What happened was that a few powerful Demon Hunter and Wizard specs could clear all of inferno with relatively poor gear while only focusing on dps stats, and seeded the auction house with powerful gear. You could do the original game up to Inferno without any auction house fairly easily. I remember taking one of my early character to the auction house around lvl 20-25 or so. After spending about 20.000 gold (very small amount), I quintupled my damage and health and proceeded to basically one shot everything for the next couple of acts. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/48 "2014-02-12T17:15:05Z")
> [@BlackKnight](#): > > I suspect there were many, many players of Diablo II who not only didn’t trade, but rarely or never went online in the first place. I was one of them. > > I was excited for _years_ about Diablo III. Then, I chose not to buy it due to it being always online. I refuse to reward a company for making an ostensibly single-player game that they can and will change at their whim with no recourse from me. (I know that _now_ they say their focus was always on co-op, but that contradicts many things they said before it launched about how it was totally for single-players too. No game can serve two masters.) Exactly. I had even pre-ordered the game, but canceled as soon as I found out it was on-line only. Nothing wrong with MUDs, but I have little time, and a slow connection. I wanted D1/ mk3, not WoW/Mod Diablo. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/49 "2014-02-16T05:19:20Z")
I have a hard time trying to prove this, but I’d be extremely doubtful that even a bare majority of players ever went online for Diablo 1/2. And I’d suspect most of those who did spent only token time. Why? Well, because even by the time of Diablo 2, large portions of the market didn’t have a very good internet connection available. Dial-up _sucked_, but it was almost all people could get at the time. D2 came out in 2000 - and while the market for Diablo games may be more internet-savvy than most, I suspect even among them most people didn’t go online constantly. Certainly not like today. The fact that early [Battle.net](http://Battle.net) was a nightmarish mess of hacklers, bugs, and lag didn’t help. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/50 "2014-02-16T18:56:34Z")
Well, consider this - Diablo III is, out of all Diablo games so far, the “best case” for multi-player being dominant. They don’t force you to play multiplayer, but they sure as heck want you to. They force you to be constantly connected to the Internet, through their [Battle.Net](http://Battle.Net) service, even if you’re only playing single-player. So, in this best-case-so-far scenario for multiplayer, do most people play multiplayer? No. “Blizzard: Single-Player, Not Co-Op, ‘Is The Clear Choice’ of Diablo 3 Players” > **[GameSpy: Blizzard: Single-Player, Not Co-Op, "Is The Clear Choice" of Diablo...](http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/diablo-iii/1225710p1.html)** > > Blizzard: Single-Player, Not Co-Op, Even Blizzard admits that most people don’t want multiplayer Diablo. (Well, technically, Blizzard pretends that we all really _do_ secretly want multiplayer, but that they haven’t pushed it enough yet. Or something.) Nevertheless, I routinely hear that “everybody” played Diablo II online, with other people. I think this is a perfect example of confirmation bias. If you play a game online, with other people, then you look around and see that everybody you _can_ see is playing online, with other people. Unconsciously, people just assume that this is a representative sampling. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/51 "2014-02-16T19:15:58Z")
> [@BlackKnight](#): > > Even Blizzard admits that most people don’t want multiplayer Diablo. (Well, technically, Blizzard pretends that we all really _do_ secretly want multiplayer, but that they haven’t pushed it enough yet. Or something.) > > Nevertheless, I routinely hear that “everybody” played Diablo II online, with other people. I think this is a perfect example of confirmation bias. If you play a game online, with other people, then you look around and see that everybody you _can_ see is playing online, with other people. Unconsciously, people just assume that this is a representative sampling. I will admit to confirmation bias. I know about half a dozen dudes who played DII, and a couple of them tried Online, but they did not play that way after a few tries. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/52 "2014-02-16T23:57:40Z")
I will concede that most D2 players didn’t realistically have the option of playing online. But I played it first solo, and then online multiplayer, and I can say that in my experience it was vastly superior as a multiplayer game. I believe that this was by design, given how many features of the game show up only or to a much greater extent in multiplayer play. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/53 "2014-02-17T01:55:56Z")
I honestly don’t understand why people don’t play D3 more multiplayer. There’s no downside, other than not wanting to ramp up the monster power - which is a minor factor in some cases, and a desirable factor in the vast majority of other cases. Can anyone who’s gone to the single-player end of the spectrum give me some insight? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/54 "2014-02-17T04:52:53Z")
Probably because most people online are idiots, and folks don’t want to deal with them. Not everyone has a message board full of cool online friends like we do. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/55 "2014-02-17T14:17:13Z")
I dunno - I haven’t played with anyone here, and I tend to just open my game up to the public for people to join. 95% of the time, I get good/great parties to play with. There’s little people can do to be idiots in D3, since there’s no item stealing or TKing. The only thing that can be done is to play other parts of the map (experience is shared only within the same area), or to rush through too quickly leaving mobs to kill the rest of a team. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/56 "2014-02-17T14:19:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Probably because most people online are idiots, and folks don’t want to deal with them. Not everyone has a message board full of cool online friends like we do. That’s the biggest part of it, yup. ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/57 "2014-02-24T22:10:58Z")
Well, I remember playing multiplayer D2 with Chronos and a few other dopers, plus my son and we had a blast for a while online. I kind of split my time half and half of grouping up with others in D3 now, including hardcore. I’m trying to get all 5 of my HC classes to lvl60 and my regular DH to paragon 100 by the time the expansion comes out. Just a mindless goal I have in mind, if I have to retire one them for the new crusader class (not sure if we get two more slots for a reg crusader and a HC one). I’m kind of that point in my life where I just want to do mindless pixel-killing and weapon/armor upgrades, so I will just keep staying on this game for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I’m turning into a boring old man. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/58 "2014-02-25T14:42:00Z")
Patch 2.0 is up - I’m excited to play with the new loot system and difficulty setttings. ---
**Author:** ![Rucksinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/898d66/32.png) [@Rucksinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rucksinator)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/59 "2014-02-25T22:32:36Z")
I came to find or create a new thread about the new patch, but I guess this thread will do. So, who’s up for making/joining a SDMB community or clan? > [@Munch](#): > > I honestly don’t understand why people don’t play D3 more multiplayer. There’s no downside, other than not wanting to ramp up the monster power - which is a minor factor in some cases, and a desirable factor in the vast majority of other cases. Can anyone who’s gone to the single-player end of the spectrum give me some insight? The patch is still downloading, so I can only speak about the pre-patch days. IME/O, trading your follower for another player was not enough of a help to offset how much harder the monsters got. Maybe it’s because I wanted to play at the same MP I’m accustomed to (which is 1 lower than the one where I am constantly dying). Unless you have a well planned team that sticks together (I am constantly towning because I pick up and salvage or vendor all blues), it’s rough out there and it gets frustrating. After reading the patch notes, there’s no telling how much this will change. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2014, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615/60 "2014-02-25T22:43:07Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > I honestly don’t understand why people don’t play D3 more multiplayer. There’s no downside, other than not wanting to ramp up the monster power - which is a minor factor in some cases, and a desirable factor in the vast majority of other cases. Can anyone who’s gone to the single-player end of the spectrum give me some insight? The downside is playing with other people, i am not sure what the upside is supposed to be. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-going-to-play-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls/680615.md?page=4)