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[General Article] Diablo 3: Diablo Redux
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Diablo is a huge franchise for Blizzard Entertainment with ardent fans following the game for almost two decades. In Diablo Redux, we take a look back at the history of the IP. Join us on Memory Lane and then leave your own remembrances in the comments.
Diablo changed things for RPG fans like me. It brought to life a frightening world full of atmosphere and danger. The game's graphics were incredible, its music instantly branded itself on your brain, and best of all, you and your friends could experience it simultaneously. You'd expect this dark vision to have been built inside an abandoned castle or hidden bunker, but in fact, Diablo took form in the sunny clime of the Bay Area peninsula. It was the collective brainchild of three close friends: David Brevik and brothers Erich and Max Schaefer (Fun fact: the Schaefers were born in my home state of New Mexico.) The three formed a company called Condor Inc., within which they employed their distinctive garage-band approach to make games like Justice League Task Force, and NFL Quarterback Club '95 and '96.
Read more of Neilie Johnson's Diablo Redux.
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Comments
Man...just looking at those piles of gold, the remembrance of my gear spewing all over a dungeon if I died and hysterically searching for a guildy to help me retrieve it after spending all that gold on alternate equipment and...failing.
Good times.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yep, as will a lot of us.
I actually played Diablo II again just a year or so before Diablo III was released. But i couldn't even bear to play through the beta until some of my friends got access, too. And none of us bought it, we simply couldn't justify spending €50+ on this when there are games like Torchlight 2 etc. that cost €20 and less. Heck, the 4-pack costs what one copy of D3 costs, and thats without any sale - something D3 will never see.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
D1 was great for my self and hometown friends .... until we started 'pranking' each other in the harder areas...
Picture this .... You and your friends in modem mode happily delving into the beasts lair .... One of you has a full pack and needs to go topside to sell ... pop out a townport and go up , sell your items and then let your buddies know your ready to come back.... One friend says to the third ... "Hey watch this" ... He opens a return portal ... "inside the area with the Boss Mob" and says "Okay, Come on down" ... **snicker, snicker**.... Sploosh ... cash and gear everywhere.... GOOD times
..... usually followed by swear words and Hours later ... "yay, yay.... this time it's SAFE" ... **snicker,snicker**
Interesting you state that about D1 and D2. I have one other friend that has the same opinion, despite it being a generally unpopular opinion. So, that makes me wonder..what was it about D1 that makes it better then D2?
*rant*
THEY BETTER GIVE US PC PLAYERS SOME COOL STUFF TO GO WITH THE EXPANSION FOR SUPPORTING THEM ALL THIS TIME(though most did not) CUZ CONSOLE EXCLUSIVES FOR A PC GAME REALLY PISSES ME OFF.
/rant.
My blog:
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Strayfe/
Better more straight forward dungeoneering and progression, more simple and to the point while challenging, perfect balanced gameplay "not easy, not impossible" while being not overly complicated, easy to join games and find people even if they didn't want to be found, lol.
I also prefer D1 and I respect that they tried to make the core design of D3 similar, yet they forgot the magic as listed above, it is overly complicated and unbalanced.
Like all older classic games the main thing I would say is perfectly balanced difficulty is what made D1 king.
I enjoyed D3 for a bit until I realized how incomplete their loot system was at launch. As soon as I get one whiff that major game systems are going to get revamped at some point I'm out right away.
It seems like they are still working on it. I was surprised to remember that D3 was released in 2012! It seemed like this summer lol.
Best thing about D3 is I found out about Path of Exile in the process. About level 30 I started to realize just how much meat is in POE. The game has loads of substance.
So.. if "a great many" of the 3.5 million launch day sales were free with WoW subs.. do you have an excuse handy as for why it sold another 10.5 million copies since then? Despite the fact that "much of the loyal Diablo fan base" rejected it?
Honestly, I don't know why kids on the internet find it so incredibly difficult to accept that just because they didn't like a game, it doesn't mean that nobody liked it.
I'd love to know why Blizzard never chose to make a sequel to LOD. I'm sure they could have come up with some great stuff.
Diablo 3 was one of my biggest disappointments in gaming history.
In my opinion D3 has great gameplay.
Yes I think the modularity and lack of unchangable builds adds to fun. Although some permanent choices would be welcomed too. (like for instance socketable skills as they planned to do but scrapped)
But , it fails in everything else. Making it all together horrible game.
I could only point to first D3 reveal and promised features. Which sounded awesome but most of them were scrapped by the release.
It is fine that people like it. But if you flash back to when it launched a lot of the people who went out and bought based solely on their love of past Diablo games were upset. It wasn't a small number of people who were upset. There is a reason it has such a terrible meta score from user reviews, because obviously many users weren't happy with the game. What I find just as interesting is when somebody loves a game so much they are willing to ignore the reality around them. Financially it was successful by selling on the coattails of D2, however the response from people bought the game was terrible, and is one of the lowest rated games on metacritic.
Diablo III is just...not good. I truthfully almost failed out of High School because of Diablo II. There were just so many addictive qualities to the game; homework couldn't hold a candle to a MF Hell Baal run on my bowazon (wielding a socketed n00b cannon) and a teleport necklace. Ah, good times...
I'd be hard pressed to think of a "happy" memory in Diablo III.
I love the diablo series, even #3 - actually I think D3 has the most strategic, tactical and in depth combat system of the series.
The first diablo was amazing because it was a really atmospheric dungeon crawler, the gameplay was simple enough, but utterly addicting.
D2 took it to an epic scale and took you on a journey with much much better character building.
D3 took away the permanent character builds (which I think was a mistake) and ruined the precious loot system (which they will rectify in the xpac), but the way your character interacts with the environment and when fighting enemies is really robust and enjoyable. Shame they ruined the addictive loot drops with the AH.
The story continued in D3, so they could have hacked in anything they wanted for a second D2 expansion. They also could have set it up such that the story didn't end with LoD.
I think Blizzard (South) was too focused on other things like WOW to give proper content to the Diablo fans.
I feel very nostalgic about Diablo, but as other posters have pointed out, now we have path of exile, it has so much depth for the modern gamer and its not a quick cash grab as blizzard releases seem to be turning into. If anyone has missed Path of Exile play it NOW!
I've played through all 4 difficulty levels on PC on my Monk, and played through the game once start->finish on Xbox 360.
I'm definitely buying Reaper of Souls, but hopefully for my Xbox One (woot Friday!)
I never played Diablo 1 and barely played Diablo 2 at all.
So D3 is the best Diablo game or 2.5D action/loot RPG I've ever played.
Torchlight and PoE just didn't hook me the way D3 did.