Diablo III: Not Just a Vitality Race!

[MammonAzrael]

You have the skills. You get them as you level up. And you get to choose which ones to use. I don't see a problem there. Ability scores you don't get to assign.

I would think the difference is the vast disparity in customization in D2 and D3.

[Katana_Geldar]

You have the skills. You get them as you level up. And you get to choose which ones to use. I don't see a problem there. Ability scores you don't get to assign.

What I am seeing us that I unlock a skill, but there's no choice of skills of that level that I can assign a skill point to, like in DII. It looks as if the game has decided for me what my character is like and I have no choice as to what to get at that level. Or even as I used to, wait until on level up so I could assign points into a particular skill.

I want a freaking manual!

[Othesemo]

I'm talking about making choices, like in DII. I'm talking about adding points to my ability scores, which I have yet to see. You guys talk about builds for characters, but with bring unable to make the simplest of choices as to what skills my demon hunter has, how does it work.

Personally, I prefer this type of customization. In DII, if you made any serious errors in your build, you were just screwed (as evidenced by my poor, poor level 30 bowazon). In DIII, you can test out every possible permutation of abilities (I think there are several hundred, or more if you use elective mode) before settling on the one that you like the most. I would argue that Diablo 3 has even more customization than its predecessor because you can not only create your build, but also change it later.

As for ability scores, I enjoy not having to deal with it. There wasn't any real customization in Diablo 2. It was just a numbers game with a hundred different ways to mess up your character.

[MammonAzrael]

What I am seeing us that I unlock a skill, but there's no choice of skills of that level that I can assign a skill point to, like in DII. It looks as if the game has decided for me what my character is like and I have no choice as to what to get at that level. Or even as I used to, wait until on level up so I could assign points into a particular skill.

I want a freaking manual!

You're at level 7, so there aren't really any options. You're just unlocking the basics right now. But soon you'll have multiple skills to select from for each mouse button and the 1-4 keys.

[Traab]

You have the skills. You get them as you level up. And you get to choose which ones to use. I don't see a problem there. Ability scores you don't get to assign.

Honestly, I understand being annoyed by that. There is something visceral about adding in ability points and seeing your spells damage stats increase. Its way less visible in d3. The only time I knew my barb was stronger was noticing random crits were getting higher numbers. "Oh wow, that shot just did 650 damage! last time I paid attention it only did 475!" As it stands right now, there is no real feel of your character being special. Every barbarian has the same abilities, the same runes, and can copy every other build out there at will. Unlike in d2, where you made a choice and your character could do things that others of the same class werent capable of.

[AgentPaper]

The main customization is later on, you will start getting runes that add in all sorts of different effects to your spells, as well as even more spells and abilities to juggle around.

As far as loot goes, Ignore all greys and whites, blues drop like rain from the sky. Truthfully, most of my cash comes from what gold I pickup from mob drops, and I salvage my blues that I wont wear so I can have the materials to craft decent gear. Anything below blue is worth very little to a vendor, its just not worth the hassle of going back to town every 30 feet due to sheer volume of worthless loot.

I said this before, but it bears repeating: Don't salvage items. Subtle Essence and Fallen Teeth sell on the AH for 20 gold each, and higher difficulties aren't any better. The only items worth salvaging are ones you get in inferno, since those are the only materials that actually sell for decent cash.

Even if you want to craft, you're far better off just selling something for 100-300 gold even in hell difficulty, and then buying whatever materials you need off the auction house as you need them.

It's possible that this will change some time in the future, but the prices have been steadily dropping since the game came out, and I doubt they'll go up any time soon.

[ChaosOS]

...Except high level play in D2 had at most 6 builds per class, counting the ones that required a party like a curse necro. On the other hand, high level D3 has a bunch of different builds. You're not going to honestly tell me that you have a specific favorite build you want to run, that is completely the same as my build? Make a DH build: You're only the same as me if you're using Hungering Arrow, Rapid Fire, Vault, Preparation, Marked for Death, and Multishot with the exact runes I'm using. Otherwise, you're different

[AgentPaper]

Another tip for leveling: Once you reach level 20 or so, it becomes worthwhile to buy items on the auction house. When doing so, your most important tool is the Max Buyout field on the bottom right. You should be able to get very good gear for as low as 5000 gold each at that level, and even at level 53 I'm buying things for 30k at most, 50k for a really key weapon, and often finding good stuff for even less than that.

As for stats, for normal difficulty just focus on getting as much DPS as you can. In Nightmare, you're going to want to start getting significant amounts of vitality, but you can still focus most of your stats on damage. Once you get to Hell, start pumping vitality and other defensive stats almost more than you pump damage stats. I'm actually aiming for a fairly even spread of strength and vitality on my barb, as well as plenty of physical resistance and armor. (I also use a shield and lots of defensive abilities)

When selling things on the auction house, keep two things in mind: 1) You can have a max of 10 auctions going at once, including stuff like essences and such. (each unique stack of items counts separately), and 2) You have 5 minutes after you post an item to cancel it, then after that you cannot cancel that item for two days. Stackable items are an exception to this rule, and you can cancel them at any time.

What this means to you, is, you should be very selective of what you put up for sale, and make sure to do a bit of research to see what that item is worth to ensure it's rapid sale. Feel free to stick on a very low bid price, so that even if it doesn't sell immediately you can still get a decent amount for it, but try your best to make sure that the buyout is fair, since an item that sells quickly lets you put another item in that slot, getting you more gold in the long run.

[Spuddles]

I said this before, but it bears repeating: Don't salvage items. Subtle Essence and Fallen Teeth sell on the AH for 20 gold each, and higher difficulties aren't any better. The only items worth salvaging are ones you get in inferno, since those are the only materials that actually sell for decent cash.

Even if you want to craft, you're far better off just selling something for 100-300 gold even in hell difficulty, and then buying whatever materials you need off the auction house as you need them.

It's possible that this will change some time in the future, but the prices have been steadily dropping since the game came out, and I doubt they'll go up any time soon.

Perfect gems for int and vit are only 200-500 gold on the AH right now (double that for the other two colors). That's dirt cheap, cheaper than upgrading them from flawless!

[ex cathedra]

Auction House Tip:
Weapons with additional DPS are more valuable than nearly any other items in the game. Higher level items have higher DPS. The auction house filters items for your character based on the level of the item itself. However, there exists a property called "Reduces Level Requirement" that does just that. When you search for a level 45 weapon (or simply search for a weapon for a level 45 character), you won't see higher level weapons whose requirement has been reduced. This has hidden many of these items from most auction-house goers and so it is possible to acquire relatively significant weapon upgrades for much cheaper would normally be possible. To do so, simply change the smart-search bar from (Character Name - Wizard) to simply (Wizard). Then filter by weapons reduced level requirement. Happy hunting.

Personally, I prefer this type of customization. In DII, if you made any serious errors in your build, you were just screwed (as evidenced by my poor, poor level 30 bowazon). In DIII, you can test out every possible permutation of abilities (I think there are several hundred, or more if you use elective mode) before settling on the one that you like the most. I would argue that Diablo 3 has even more customization than its predecessor because you can not only create your build, but also change it later.

As for ability scores, I enjoy not having to deal with it. There wasn't any real customization in Diablo 2. It was just a numbers game with a hundred different ways to mess up your character.

There are flaws with both of these points. The ability the change your decisions once you've made them doesn't actually influence the decisions themselves. You're comparing D3's skill/stat system with the fact that there weren't respecs in core diablo (they were introduced in a later patch). That doesn't make any sense.

In D3, you have access to a total of ~18 skills and each of those skills has ~5 variants. However, you can never benefit from more than 6 active skills and 3 passive skills at one time.

In Diablo 2, each character had access to a total of ~40 skill spread out over the course of 3 trees, and each skill had ~2 or ~3 synergies.

Diablo 2 actually had a sense of choice and customization. Diablo 3 mostly lacks that. My choices feel unimportant and ephemeral, since it's the game that decides when I unlock something and more often than not what I unlocked at any given level isn't very good. Having access to 5 variants of each skill is good on paper but it's meaningless when there exists no sense of balance between them. For the majority of skills, one or two of the skill runes are simply superior to all of their competition, and the same can be said of the skills themselves. In a way, Diablo 3 gives the player the illusion of choice and customization. D3's skill system isn't any less full of traps and poor decisions for players than D2's; the fact that respecs are easy and frequent simply disguises that weakness and others.

I'm personally pretty opposed to the nature of D3's respecs. Respecialization options are important for any game in which a player spends a lot of time on one character, but I don't think that they should be free or it teaches me, as a player, that my decisions don't matter and aren't important and that there's no incentive to stick with anything in particular. Inasmuch as games like Diablo can give me a sense of immersion, it's immersion-breaking.

[Spuddles]

Honestly, I understand being annoyed by that. There is something visceral about adding in ability points and seeing your spells damage stats increase. Its way less visible in d3. The only time I knew my barb was stronger was noticing random crits were getting higher numbers. "Oh wow, that shot just did 650 damage! last time I paid attention it only did 475!" As it stands right now, there is no real feel of your character being special. Every barbarian has the same abilities, the same runes, and can copy every other build out there at will. Unlike in d2, where you made a choice and your character could do things that others of the same class werent capable of.

Diablo 2 was extraordinarily cookie cutter. 1.10 came out, and suddenly every paladin spammed hammers.

[ex cathedra]

Diablo 2 was extraordinarily cookie cutter. 1.10 came out, and suddenly every paladin spammed hammers.

It sounds to me like you're projecting a bad D2 experience onto these conversations. FWIW, there were a variety of different and viable paladin builds that excelled at different areas. Hammerdins were likely the most popular because a) hammers were cool, b) they excelled at Baal runs, and c) they were the single most viable magic find build available to Paladins. And mfing was kind of a big deal. Other Paladins shined in different situations, especially when it came to Uber-areas, as far as I recall.

[Spuddles]

It sounds to me like you're projecting a bad D2 experience onto these conversations. FWIW, there were a variety of different and viable paladin builds that excelled at different areas. Hammerdins were likely the most popular because a) hammers were cool, b) they excelled at Baal runs, and c) they were the single most viable magic find build available to Paladins. And mfing was kind of a big deal. Other Paladins shined in different situations, especially when it came to Uber-areas, as far as I recall.

It sounds to me like you didn't play enough D2 to realize its shortcomings

[Traab]

Diablo 2 was extraordinarily cookie cutter. 1.10 came out, and suddenly every paladin spammed hammers.

There will always be a "best" build. That doesnt remove the fact that you get a far wider range of choices to make in d2 than you do in d3. The advantage of d3 skills is that you can switch back and forth as the situation demands. My skellymancer SUCKED in arcane sanctuary and the maggot lair. I couldnt get more than 2-3 warriors to attack at a time in those narrow passages, and especially in the maggot lair, the tunnels curved so much that my mages rarely could add anything into the mix.

Nightmare and hell SUCKED in act 2 because of that. I could go off and make a sandwich in the time it would take to clear each batch of spawns. (Or at least i could if I didnt have to pay attention to resummon stuff) But in d3, I was able to switch my barbarian from an in your face damage dealer to a sprinting kiter when I had to fight a boss that would basically two shot me if it ever laid its hands on me. If I had hit that scenario in d2, I would have been done playing as there is no way I could have killed him with my original setup. So that is an advantage, the flexibility.

I just liked the feeling of seeing yourself get stronger with each skill point you assigned. Getting closer to that ultimate ability you are after. But then again, I was also one of the people majorly against lowering respec costs in WoW, because I firmly believe in making a choice and sticking with it. I felt it cheapened things to be able to switch talents on a whim, and being able to fulfill any role your class was capable of with the press of a button. But this game seems to have been built around needing to switch out skills like crazy, so its ok here.

[Othesemo]

There are flaws with both of these points. The ability the change your decisions once you've made them doesn't actually influence the decisions themselves. You're comparing D3's skill/stat system with the fact that there weren't respecs in core diablo (they were introduced in a later patch). That doesn't make any sense.

Not at all. I am comparing both systems, and choosing to focus on a single aspect to make a point. I make no claims regarding the qualitative differences of two completely disparate things.

In D3, you have access to a total of ~18 skills and each of those skills has ~5 variants. However, you can never benefit from more than 6 active skills and 3 passive skills at one time.

In Diablo 2, each character had access to a total of ~40 skill spread out over the course of 3 trees, and each skill had ~2 or ~3 synergies.

Even utilizing more than four separate skills in Diablo 2 was a mess of easily-forgettable hotkeys, and using two skills in rapid succession was all but impossible. Even if you had forty different skills, changing between them was a headache. I once got a necro up to hell difficulty, and I still had trouble remembering all of the different hotkeys that I had assigned. While it was theoretically possible to benefit from more skills in D2, it took drastically more effort than it does in D3.

Diablo 2 actually had a sense of choice and customization. Diablo 3 mostly lacks that. My choices feel unimportant and ephemeral, since it's the game that decides when I unlock something and more often than not what I unlocked at any given level isn't very good. Having access to 5 variants of each skill is good on paper but it's meaningless when there exists no sense of balance between them. For the majority of skills, one or two of the skill runes are simply superior to all of their competition, and the same can be said of the skills themselves. In a way, Diablo 3 gives the player the illusion of choice and customization. D3's skill system isn't any less full of traps and poor decisions for players than D2's; the fact that respecs are easy and frequent simply disguises that weakness and others.

The word that you're looking for is 'mitigate.' Diablo 2, with over twice as many skills, had no more balance than Diablo 3 does (possibly less). The difference lies in the fact that, in Diablo 3, making a mistake doesn't mean that you have to start a new character.

For example, if a witch doctor decides to focus entirely on making zombie dogs, he's good. If a necromancer decided to sink a dozen skill points into Skeleton Mage, his chances of beating diablo are roughly equivalent to his chances of turning into a pot of petunias and a very surprised whale over the Himalayas.

I'm personally pretty opposed to the nature of D3's respecs. Respecialization options are important for any game in which a player spends a lot of time on one character, but I don't think that they should be free or it teaches me, as a player, that my decisions don't matter and aren't important and that there's no incentive to stick with anything in particular. Inasmuch as games like Diablo can give me a sense of immersion, it's immersion-breaking.

If you want system mastery to be a requirement for even playing the game, try hardcore mode, or impose some sort of Nuzlocke-esque requirement on your skill choice. However, I maintain that having additional options is never a bad thing.

[ex cathedra]

It sounds to me like you didn't play enough D2 to realize its shortcomings

I'd estimate that I've sunk well over a thousand hours into D2, D2 mods, and D2 clones over the course of the last decade, so i'm willing to accept that it might just be a difference of opinion.

[AgentPaper]

An important aspect of the skill system is that, once you hit level 60, you are heavily discouraged from switching skills on the fly. You get a stacking bonus called "Nephphalem Valor" whenever you kill an elite mob, and that buff goes away if you change your skills or leave the game. (It persists through death) That buff is very important, because it gives you additional gold and magic find, and then when you kill a boss, it will cause that boss to drop additional loot (on top of the magic find bonus).

This means you need to choose your build carefully to be able to kill whatever rare mob you run into, as well as normal mobs and bosses, because if you switch even a single rune on a single skill, the buff goes away and you're back to square one.

I think the system works out rather well, actually. Through normal, you're learning the basics of the game, seeing the story, playing around with all the skills and learning what they do. Then, on nightmare you've got all of your skills and you can start playing around with builds, seeing which skills work well together, testing out different runes, but still not being challenged so much that you can't experiment.

Then, Hell comes, and you've got most of your abilities unlocked, and you're really pushed to start refining your build, maybe even having to switch builds completely, but you're familiar enough with your skills that you can do so without making your character useless. (and there absolutely are useless builds, otherwise the system would be pointless)

Finally, once you've reached 60, you've figured out at least one "perfect" build that you've refined and learned how to use expertly. Once you're at this point, it becomes a lot harder to change your build. You can switch your skills out easily enough, but it takes a lot longer to get used to playing that build, and even if you're copying someone else's build, you're almost certainly going to want to tweak a few things here and there to personalize it to your own tastes and play style.

Then you need to find the gear that supports that build, which is almost certain to be radically different for many builds. Do you want tons of crit? How much armor and vit do you need? Are there specific elements you want to protect against that your build fares poorly against? A build with less mobility might be more afraid of arcane damage from arcane-enchanted mobs, or perhaps a more mobile build really wants stuff to reduce stun, charm, and fear duration?

With all of that put together, changing builds becomes a much more involved task, requiring a lot of time, effort, and practice before you can really do anything with those skills you just switched to. Yes, you don't have to level a character completely from level 1, but that doesn't mean changing builds is as simple as a few clicks.

In return, we gain the ability to truly customize our characters and test builds without having to rely on theorycrafting or making a hundred characters before we really get it right. I think that this will ultimately lead to a far more diverse field of characters being played in diablo 3.

[GolemsVoice]

I'm with the others here, Diablo 2 really punished you for making the wrong choices, and rectifying your mistakes meant making a new character (until very recently). Besides, some skills are cool in normal, but useless in Nightmare or Hell, and some skills SOUND cool but are essentially traps that you only realize 10 levels later.


Also, a thing I found out only recently: You can have more than one skill from the same group of skills in your action bar if you enable elective mode. Most of your probably know this, but I've only been told after I defeated Diablo for the first time

[Katana_Geldar]

Can I just say that I am very, very against the idea of an auction house with real money for a single player game?

And forcing us to log in to a server for a single player game?

I really don't like the idea that anyone could potentially hack into my single player game and get my stuff.

Blizzard, by being Nazis about copy protection, have once again penalised the good end users who purchase a copy legally.

Honestly, it makes me want to crack my game just so I'm not reliant on the servers.

Error 37 was a huge anti-climax after twelve years of waiting. Way to go Blizzard on having the worst game launch in history.

[Dublock]

And forcing us to log in to a server for a single player game?

I haven't really got the chance to take about this because I tend to avoid posting in the official forums but I will here :)

First off it will not be as easy to just crack your copy of D3 because the spawning of monsters, loot, and the areas itself are all done by the servers. You would either need to connect to some 3rd party server which would never be as good or self host the server on your own network or on your own pc.

Blizzard by having their own servers and forcing people to log on to those servers gives them more control over duping, hacking, and bots. Yes there are bots in the game right now but it will take time to get rid of them. There is/was a lot of duping in D2 and they did not want this to continue in D3 and having the client have this information would make it easier.

Also realize this is a form of DRM, and one that is becoming more and more common, Steam (not so new) and Origin (By EA and not as bad as people claim but another thread), and with the Battle.net system.

Also I wish I had bookmarked this post, but Blizzard said they view the Diablo series as more of a co-op game with online then an offline single player game. Obviously this isn't what other people have thought but if thats how the developers think, they will implement features to support this.

Ultimately I think the always online aspect would still be in the game even without the Real money auction house. Yes the duping, the hacking and such would significantly impact the value of those items (and Blizzard's cut, they are a business after all) but they simply don't want a repeat of D2's online experience.

Edit: I should have reread this before posting.

[Traab]

Can I just say that I am very, very against the idea of an auction house with real money for a single player game?

And forcing us to log in to a server for a single player game?

I really don't like the idea that anyone could potentially hack into my single player game and get my stuff.

Blizzard, by being Nazis about copy protection, have once again penalised the good end users who purchase a copy legally.

Honestly, it makes me want to crack my game just so I'm not reliant on the servers.

Error 37 was a huge anti-climax after twelve years of waiting. Way to go Blizzard on having the worst game launch in history.

Im trying to process the number of ludicrous exaggerations in this post, and its boggling my mind. I try to focus on one part then my eyes catch the next, even crazier one and I lose focus.

Being nazis? Really? You compare having to be online to play the game to blizzard acting like NAZIS?! Go ahead and complete the goodwin, call Robert Kotick Hitler.

Worst game launch in history? Are you insane? Or is this the first time you have ever played a new release game that revolves around online play? Yes there were and are issues, (I swear the rubber banding is getting worse) but for the most part the launch went probably smoother than any other online game I have ever tried to play on opening day.

You should have been around for when WoW was released. They expected roughly 1/10th of the traffic they got. Everything crashed, I think at a couple points we were even given free months credited to our accounts there was so much downtime before they managed to setup and debug the extra dozens of servers they needed to handle the initial traffic. There were login queues of 1200+ where people had to wait for a couple of HOURS just to log in. And if they missed their turn due to not wanting to stare at a screen doing nothing for a few hours, they went to the back of the line again. The diablo 3 launch is a freaking picture of perfection compared to that, and several other games ive been "privileged" to experience opening day for. It sucks that so many had issues and couldnt just install and play, but its hardly some end of the world, massive horror show that ruins everything forever.

[AgentPaper]

Can I just say that I am very, very against the idea of an auction house with real money for a single player game?

And forcing us to log in to a server for a single player game?

I really don't like the idea that anyone could potentially hack into my single player game and get my stuff.

Blizzard, by being Nazis about copy protection, have once again penalised the good end users who purchase a copy legally.

Honestly, it makes me want to crack my game just so I'm not reliant on the servers.

Error 37 was a huge anti-climax after twelve years of waiting. Way to go Blizzard on having the worst game launch in history.

It's hardly the worst game launch in history. I won't pretend that the errors weren't aggravating at the time, but looking back it all added to the experience of launch day. I mean, if the game just launched smoothly with no problems at all, then it would have been just like any other day.

And while you may play single player exclusively, that does not make this a single-player game. I played my barbarian with my brother and his friend from act 1 normal all the way to Hell, and I don't plan to play much single-player except to catch up, or maybe a bit of play here and there when I have a spare hour or something. While it does suck that you can't play offline in a few niche cases (very poor or no internet, servers being down, etc), I don't think the game could really have worked any other way, and in this day and age it's really not a big deal. It's certainly worth it to have a real, functioning economy in the game, rather than one filled with duped and hacked items.

[PEACH]

Can I just say that I am very, very against the idea of an auction house with real money for a single player game?

And forcing us to log in to a server for a single player game?

I really don't like the idea that anyone could potentially hack into my single player game and get my stuff.

Blizzard, by being Nazis about copy protection, have once again penalised the good end users who purchase a copy legally.

Honestly, it makes me want to crack my game just so I'm not reliant on the servers.

Error 37 was a huge anti-climax after twelve years of waiting. Way to go Blizzard on having the worst game launch in history.

I'm not sure whether this is really delayed rage, or slightly delayed rage from reading the Cracked article that hit the exact same points.

Basic things:

It's been known it's online only for months. I still don't get why all the rage is showing up now.

Blizzard has been very up front that their intent is to make a game that's good for the high end Diablo players. To that extent, they *have* to make sure that the integrity of the economy isn't compromised by dupers.

Because of that, it has to be online. And it was never really a "single player" game; it's pretty much a very very heavily instanced MMO, at least in the persistent online status aspect.

Comparing things to Nazis is stupid. Like, there's no reason to *ever* do that, unless they're actually committing genocide. As far as I know, that is not Blizzard policy.

Online only isn't about stopping piracy. At least, not as the primary focus; it's about stopping duped items and hacked accounts from playing offline from going online. Yes, there are better ways to do this (purely offline accounts that can *never* connect online, ever, along with online accounts).

Blizzard doesn't care that much if you crack your game and play on a private server; it's far better than the alternative where you get a legitimate copy and ruin the economy with easily duped/hacked in items; that's bad for their wallet (auction house is useless) and terrible for their community, whereas piracy is just bad for their wallet.

Nobody is going to hack your account. Why would they? Like... seriously, why? Do you honestly believe that, especially if you intended to play the game single player, anybody would actually care enough to explicitly target you? That's just absolutely paranoid; the effort it would take to hack any specific player simply isn't worth it, unless by "hack" you mean "my 'friends' put a keylogger on my computer."

So in short: Yes, a week after release, you can complain about a game that's been explicitly online only for months is, surprise, explicitly online only. You can complain that it's a terrible way to stop piracy, and call Blizzard a bunch of Nazis. You can do that because you're free to say whatever you want. But, and this is a big but: It's not a very sensible complaint.

Yes, there are a few annoyances, and they could definitely do a few things better; having an offline only character option would have solved a lot of the problems. But complaining for reasons that don't make sense isn't going to get anywhere.

EDIT: As for the auction house: It's a way to make money. It's not required, you can still trade for in game cash, and while it's a bit gauche, it's really just Blizzard's way of saying "I'd rather online sales go legally through us than through private transactions." Again, DIII isn't *really* designed as an explicitly single player game, or at least not as a single player, totally disconnected from the system game.

EDIT X2: Also, DIII's launch was... incredibly smooth. Like, I've had more trouble with patch day on League of Legends. One day of everything being hardly working and 2-3 days of a few minor issues is pretty damn good.

[The Glyphstone]

You should have been around for when WoW was released. They expected roughly 1/10th of the traffic they got. Everything crashed, I think at a couple points we were even given free months credited to our accounts there was so much downtime before they managed to setup and debug the extra dozens of servers they needed to handle the initial traffic. There were login queues of 1200+ where people had to wait for a couple of HOURS just to log in. And if they missed their turn due to not wanting to stare at a screen doing nothing for a few hours, they went to the back of the line again. The diablo 3 launch is a freaking picture of perfection compared to that, and several other games ive been "privileged" to experience opening day for. It sucks that so many had issues and couldnt just install and play, but its hardly some end of the world, massive horror show that ruins everything forever.

Additional instances cannot be launched...additional instances cannot be launched...additional instances cannot be launched...*twitch* *twitch*

[GolemsVoice]

Also, most people that complain about this issue do so where? On the internet, that's right.

Sure, it sucks for people with bad connections, and I really wish they'd implemented an offline mode that at no point interacts with the online world ever (and thus duping is a non-issue), but so far, the problems were few.

EDIT:
The real money AH hasn't launched yet, but I'm sure that one week after going online, it will be the most normal thing ever, and not even that frequently visited. Among my friends, I know noone who would ever pay real money for a Diablo item. Unless it's like 20 cents or something for a really good item.
And I'll take 20000+ gold over 20 cents or even 1 euro anytime.

[AgentPaper]

Honestly, the only complaint I have about the game (at least so far, I'm sure I'll have issues with abilities once I get to 60 and really figure them out), is that you can't cancel items you put up for auction. I didn't realize this as first, and put 10 items of varying quality up for trade, none of which ever sold. I was completely unable to use the auction house for two days (except to buy things) because of that. The ten item limit I can understand, since it reduces overall traffic to keep the AH servers from going down, and makes people think about the stuff they put on the AH more, but not being able to cancel stuff is just frustrating.

[Traab]

Additional instances cannot be launched...additional instances cannot be launched...additional instances cannot be launched...*twitch* *twitch*

Are you talking about when they nerfed stealth runs so you couldnt go through the same dungeon 5 times in an hour to stop rogues from chest farming? Or one of the earlier bugs? Honestly, there have been so many issues over the years its hard to keep track.

[VanBuren]

Eurogamer has penned two separate editorials on the benefits and drawbacks brought by Blizzard's always-online requirement for Diablo III, which has proven to be highly controversial. A snip from the first:

Right-click on any player - in game, from your friends list, or from a list of players you've recently played with in public games - and you can view not just their achievements, basic stats and game progress, but models of all their characters, complete with skill and rune selections and all equipment pieces. Although the character models can't be customised, the variety of looks and builds is entrancing, and you quickly come to feel a collector's pride in your roster. Even if you only play solo and have a few friends, your online presence still feels meaningful. It's Gamerpoints and an Avatar, but far more fun.

Blizzard has a complete mastery of this stuff, having learned enough about persistence, motivation and player identity from WOW to fill an encyclopedia. Another neat touch is your banner, a cross-character identifier that can be customised from a huge range of unlocks to both look cool and reflect your progress in the game. In the four-player co-op, banners for each player appear at home base in each game, and clicking on one instantly warps you to that player's location.

The speed and ease with which you can join a friend in Diablo 3 is truly remarkable. Thanks to the banners and a feature called Quick Join, you're a literal two clicks from the character screen to standing next to your friend in-game. If a friend has the option enabled (and it's enabled by default), Quick Join puts their name on a button on the front end that warps you instantly to their game. Then click on their banner and you're in the fight. (If it's not enabled, there's a two-click option to request an invite from a friend, or a prominent button to invite them to your game.)

And from the latter:

Customers should feel that they want to buy it. That's what we're up against here. We're being bullied into accepting a future where we don't actually want to buy the things that we're buying, because there is no other way to experience this phenomenal entertainment medium that we've all come to hold so dear unless we do so on terms that we find unacceptable.

The answer isn't to just live with it and try to make the best of a bad situation; the answer is to tell people that we don't want things to be this way.

I used to make the point on our podcast that the only way to vote on issues like this is with your wallet, and that when publishers say they are "listening to consumers" it just means that they are counting your money and using that to decide whether what they did was justified. But while that's true, of course I don't think it's hypocritical to buy Diablo 3 and at the same time make a stand against games that demand a permanent internet connection. If nothing else, it's our right to buy things in full knowledge of their flaws and then moan about them: that is pretty much the foundation of the internet! Publishers should listen to us anyway.

[Dublock]

Or one of the earlier bugs? Honestly, there have been so many issues over the years its hard to keep track.

I bet he was referencing one of the earlier bugs where you could not enter any dungeon for...2 days? Or more. Last time was back in WotLK (unless my memory is bad).

The cata launch was smoother for me then the D3 launch, but I think it was pretty good.

[Weezer]

And forcing us to log in to a server for a single player game?

I really don't like the idea that anyone could potentially hack into my single player game and get my stuff.

Blizzard, by being Nazis about copy protection, have once again penalised the good end users who purchase a copy legally.

It's not a form of copy protection. It's a way to minimize hacking and duping by putting the vast majority of juicy information in a remote location and not on the clients servers. Sure a side-effect is a DRM effect, but that is not the intention. D2 was chock-full of both of those, and blizz wanted to avoid that, especially with their goals of PvP and a real money auction house.