After playing and finishing Diablo II on normal mode, I have to say it was one of the greatest games I ever played. Very, very interesting game.
Anyway, I have a small handful of friends that have bought Diablo III. Each of them have different views of it.
Whether it’s a good view or a bad view, they have one.
Now I would like to ask a group of people who have hopefully experienced the gameplay of Diablo III.
So, is the game worth the money?
Yeah, it’s fun. Just don’t be one of those serious business folks. It’s a nice break from more intense games.
It’s fun one time around , I’d say. That is, beating it on normal is ok. Ater that (and I say this as a huge D2 fan, and someone who was really looking forward to D3) it gets boring pretty quick.
My biggest problem with D3 is that the cool skill system from D2 is gone, instead you unlock a new skill every couple of levels. For this there are no consequences, ie all characters of a certain class have the exact same skill set. This makes creating a new character of the same class completely pointless. 
Also, I’m not sure if there is any PVP at all…?
Dont buy any game which requires you to be online to play it.
This. If you have any stake in the idea of digital goods ownership, you should give this one a bye.
Personally, I don’t see how D2 or D3 would be interesting at all if you quit after beating them on Normal difficulty. Their charm is in the challenge (and items!) that lie beneath. That said, I am by no means a power player, and I am really enjoying it. The characters to choose from are all very unique (I still need to start a witch doctor - I’m jealous every time I party up with one - their skills are all so fun and colorful).
The criticism that it gets repetitive is valid - this game is much more on rails than the previous two. I think that has to do a lot with the fact that you can start your games in the middle of various acts, and you don’t have access to the waypoints in other acts. Either way, it’s not that big of a deal to me - the main farming areas are big enough to make me not notice. Though it would be nice if the “events” were a little more common - those are great interludes while you’re playing.
As for always being online, I couldn’t really care less. It means no duping and no maphack - and there are far fewer spammers because of it. It also means an enclosed free market ecosystem, which is a HUGE bonus.
VanillaGorilla - there is currently no PvP, but that’s planned for an upcoming patch (Blizzard says it’s “a ways out” though).
I’m not qualified to talk about either series but isn’t Torchlight supposed to be essentially the same game? I know people are waiting on Torchlight II to be released and, if you’re unsure about D3, maybe it’ll be worth waiting and seeing how Torchlight II is received before making a decision.
This would be valuable information if everyone followed suit. But it’s not going to happen, if you base your buys on this you will be playing solitaire shortly.
The game itself is fun, the opening of rares is fun and soon that will carry over to legendary items.
PVP is being implemented in the next major patch iirc.
The servers seem stable at the moment, so playing hardcore is an option. And finding new and better gear without using the AH is also a fun diversion.
It isn’t hard until the very end, and even then you can farm an earlier act of inferno for the gear now since the patch.
All in all, 60$ if you figure how many hours you will play, is probably a dirt cheap per hour choice of entertainment.
Most Blizzard games are high return per dollar of entertainment. This one isn’t any different.
I sunk a good 60 hours on it so far. I took a break to play the Civ expansion, and a couple of other strategy games I’ve been waiting for (Sins expansion and Endless Space) but I’ll be going back this weekend 
As mentioned above, the online aspect of the game translates into seamless player co-op, almost unheard of hacking and much less spam overall. Haven’t delved into the aution house much, but I plan to, and that’s only possible with this online environment.
This connectivity thing from games will only continue to become more and more prevalent.
With the ridiculous EU decision on purely digital goods being re-sellable by end users which is being championed by the clueless this push for online requirements will only grow.
Less spam than a game that isn’t always online? I find that pretty hard to believe.
It is worth the 60$, in that I have got more than 60$ worth of entertainment out of it.
It is not, as of yet, as good as it could be. The major drawback, in my opinion, is the stuff. This is a game in which, in earlier iterations, a big part of the fun was in finding great stuff occasionally. In D3, the chances of finding truly great stuff are very small, and the legendary & set items systems are broken - in that they aren’t very good.
Then I find it pretty hard to believe that you ever played D2 online - it was inundated with spammers on a constant basis.
Yeah, yeah - if you just want to play a single player game without the hassle of being online (which is such a huge hassle these days, what with AOL not being as big a player as it was 12 years ago), Diablo 3 may not be your cup of tea. Then simply don’t buy it, because that’s not the game it is anymore. But if you’re one of the small handful of people that actually has a home internet connection that you don’t have to pay for by the minute (the luxury!), and enjoy playing games online with other people, it’s simply not an issue.
I usually don’t want to play games online with other people. Because they smell. Also they’re ugly.
But I’ll admit I’m still enjoying Diablo III and the online thing is only occasionally aggravating. The patching process is mildly annoying, as by bad luck it seems like every time their servers are down to propagate a patch was when I was intending to play ( yes, I keep odd hours ). Other than that it has been more stable than I feared. I still don’t care for it as a general proposition, but in practical terms it hasn’t been much of a burden.
Is it as good as the original Diablo? No, IMHO. The original had atmosphere up the wazoo, something the sequels have failed to deliver as consistently.
Is it as good as Diablo II? Not yet - we’ll see if the inevitable expansion improves on the current product. Right now the storyline falls curiously flat relative to its predecessors ( I’m inclined to blame weaker writing ), it is a shorter game and perhaps most importantly the loot system does need tweaking. I haven’t yet messed with the AH, myself.
But is it worth the money? Yeah, to me it has been. It’s entertaining enough and addictive enough that it has more than paid for itself in entertainment hours. Which is a lot more than I can say for the most recent Starcraft ( an utter waste of cash for me ).
I never played Diablo 1 or 2, and I have no idea if they were the button mashers that D3 is.
My son wanted this game, he’s a great WoW player (one of those annoying teens that has way too much spare time to get good), so this was interesting to him. I was ready to get it for him, then he did some research that said that there is an error in the way they built the system, so that you lose durability more quickly than you can acquire items to fix it, that made it unplayable. This may be at higher levels, I really know nothing about the Diablo verse, or it may be factually incorrect. Can anyone confirm or disprove?
Thanks,
Shibb
It’s not true. If you die there is a penalty, but hardly enough to make it unplayable.
Also, Blizzard puts out updates pretty much every Tuesday that fix issues like this that arise. What was happening was that weapons were losing durability pretty quickly, and they had just made a change where repair costs for upper level items were increased. This really cut the margin between making a profit (outside using the Auction House) pretty difficult. It’s been fixed.
I got bored with it pretty fast and regretted buying it. Tried playing D2 to see if it was just rose colored glasses that made it so much more fun, nope still a lot more fun.
It’s a pretty good point. In my ( fairly overpriced ) neck of the woods a non-matinee first-run film in a theater costs $12 and that’s usually for less than two hours and comes with a suite of annoying commercials ;).