Diablo III - Discussion Thread

Err, speedruns are exactly that. Speedruns. They just rush past everything, straight to the final boss. I suppose that's one to play a game :|.
I am frankly disappointed it took them this long considering this was 4 Koreans rushing through Normal difficulty. Each Korean has the gaming ability of 3 non-Koreans.

If you think 7 hours is short, you should look up how long a D2 speedrun takes. 4 minutes and 22 seconds for ALL 3 difficulties.
That's right, 4:22 minutes for 1 guy to go through Normal + Nightmare + Hell difficulty in D2 :).

And apparently, that 7 hour run is a fake report. The most accurate reliable report so far with some semblance of basic proof has been of a 12 hour run through Normal difficulty.
But I have little doubt that once people learn the game inside-out, speedruns quicker than 6 hours won't be out of reach.
 
Has anyone tried "Path of Exile" which was having an open beta last weekend? Its a diablo clone and will be f2p (not pay-to-win) on release sometime in June. I wonder if it makes sense paying $60 and then hoping the server works when you want to play it. I am sure if this game was called anything else, it would not have done this well.
 
Played about 2 hours of diablo 3. The game absolutely rocks!

Pros
- The action is superb with the sounds and animation really making you feel that you are hitting somebody with bodies , blood and gore flying.
- Crafting is great and is really fun and since the item properties are random, you can keep on doing it to score nice items
- Joining friends to play with is easy and seamless. Was playing with somebody who teamed up with me from the NBR forums and we had lots of fun with coop
- Positives of online only are that your character and items are saved online and u can access them from anywhere. No more messing around with save files.
- The auction house is pretty cool so far and u can score some good items with normal in game gold

Cons
- The online only sucks especially since they had server problems and i couldnt play yesterday night
Hopefully the server problems are behind us as the people playing the game even out. In short, when it works the game is awesome.
 
Yea, Metacritic user ratings? Not really the best way to judge a game.

Imagine all the kiddie ragers who are mad about the always-on DRM on every Internet forum around the world.
Now give them a platform where their perceived rating goes into a system and is counted towards the final aggregate.

That's Metacritic user rating for you.
It's a pretty interesting phenomenon, look at the ratings provided by professional online publications, most have rated it 90+ on Metacritic.
Then look at the ratings from users who are simply mad at Blizzard's inability to handle 2 million users trying to log-in at the same, they have rated it anywhere between 0-5 crashing the overwall rating.

Metacritic rating + common sense = actual rating :p

---------- Post added at 12:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:36 AM ----------

Watch this space for accurate Metacritic ratings.

Watch this space for angry people looking to vent over temporary launch issues.
 
Imagine all the kiddie ragers who are mad about the always-on DRM on every Internet forum around the world.
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So are you saying this is acceptable even when one just wants to play a single player game? Also as someone mentioned earlier, you are kicked from the server if you tend to have a high ping. Add to that, the frustration arising out of trying to log in takes out much of the fun. No doubt everything will be resolved in due time but won't you be pissed if, after paying full price for a game, you cannot enjoy it without these annoyances?

It's a pretty interesting phenomenon, look at the ratings provided by professional online publications, most have rated it 90+ on Metacritic.
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I find it laughable that these "professional online publications" tend to review a game so quickly without considering the overall experience for a normal user. As someone mentioned, media outlets were not given advanced copies for review. So these scores are based on the beta as well as ONE day of gameplay on possibly a very reliable internet connection. The DRM is very much present and active for players not fortunate enough to have good internet connections.

I don't think these issues are permanent but everyone who has paid for a product has full right to voice their opinions if they are unsatisfied. Hopefully, the scores will improve as issues get ironed out.
 
It's not acceptable at all, but it can't be helped. It's 2 million people trying to connect to the same servers at the same time.
This drama happens everytime a new Blizzard game launches. Hell, WOW is nearly 10 years old and still everytime a new expansion comes out, the B.net servers come to a screeching halt.

So while it's definitely unacceptable, it's also not really an accurate reflection of what the game actually will be like once the initial bull-rush calms down and the servers have had a chance to dig their feet in.

D3 Metacritic User ratings as they stand right now, they might as well be a rating of how current gen TCP protocols fall face-flat when faced with an overwhelming amount of connections rather than the game itself.
I doubt any server farm in the world can smoothly go through a launch consisting of extremely high density traffic.

Just give it 3 weeks, if these issues still persist, then I'd start worrying.
Until then the reality and limitations of current gen technology can't be worked around.
 
It's not acceptable at all, but it can't be helped. It's 2 million people trying to connect to the same servers at the same time.
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Nope you're wrong there. Access for Asia/Europe was provided much earlier than US. Even in US, they opened servers at 3 AM ET (12 AM PT) so I doubt all east coast players would be jumping in at that time, specially Tuesday being a working day.

Everything else is agreeable but I still think they should provide a workaround to being online even for single-player campaign. That way, they can ease their server load while at least letting consumers play one mode of the game without having to worry about connection problems.
 
D3 is as much a singleplayer game as L4D is.
I don't think D3 even has a singleplayer option. You actually just start a private multiplayer game.

Diablo is ALL about the item-hunt and D3 has a real money auction house. So giving players control over things where they can edit game files to give themselves the best gear would hurt the game much more than temporary launch issues.
One only needs to look back to the Stone of Jordan duping in D2. End-users will abuse any amount of direct control given to them.

I hope all server overload issues have been dealt with once I get my copy...
 
Seems like the server issues are resolved. Played about 6 hours of diablo 3 and finished Act 1 as Barbarian on Normal. 3 more Acts to go.

Someone was complaining that Koreans finished the game in 6 hours! Wow, they must have been flying through the levels coz i was pretty much making good time but exploring most of the areas and still took a little over 6 hours to complete the first Act!!

Gold has a lot of value here unlike the previous diablos where the loot was more than enough and gold wasn't needed as D3. I am always short of gold here as I keep upgrading the blacksmith or checking out good items on the auction house. And btw, the auction house is superb. You can find tons of items there which are much better than what the merchants sell. Pity that i keep running out of cash! :(

Since I am travelling on vacation tomm to India, probably no more gaming. :(

The good news is that I haven't found any downers in the game yet other than the stupid always online drm.
 
mayank4823 said:
Metacritic user score of Diablo 3 = 3.6
Diablo III for PC Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More - Metacritic
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Haha, reminds me of the MW3 metacritic score. User reviews are useful, although I agree they should be taken with a grain of salt. Users tend to highlight the worst of the issues. Professional reviewers always get the best setup to game on and they don't have to pay for the game so they are somewhat detached from the ground reality.

If I paid around 4K for a game and was unable to login for a whole day or have my rare items disappear when the server times out, I would probably not recommend the game to anyone. Blizzard has been in the MMO business for ten years, one would expect them to anticipate they traffic at launch day. As it is they have screwed over people with unstable internet, at least let the people play the game without hiccups.
 
Bad reviews by users on net (who cares!!) we all know that the game is good :angel:... by the way my colleagues said the game is good that's all i wanted to hear...
The only thing bothering would be the server overload and not letting users to log in and play..
 
Alias said:
Seems like the server issues are resolved. Played about 6 hours of diablo 3 and finished Act 1 as Barbarian on Normal. 3 more Acts to go.

Someone was complaining that Koreans finished the game in 6 hours! Wow, they must have been flying through the levels coz i was pretty much making good time but exploring most of the areas and still took a little over 6 hours to complete the first Act!!

Gold has a lot of value here unlike the previous diablos where the loot was more than enough and gold wasn't needed as D3. I am always short of gold here as I keep upgrading the blacksmith or checking out good items on the auction house. And btw, the auction house is superb. You can find tons of items there which are much better than what the merchants sell. Pity that i keep running out of cash! :(

Since I am travelling on vacation tomm to India, probably no more gaming. :(

The good news is that I haven't found any downers in the game yet other than the stupid always online drm.
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I guess I am playing lot more slower or I donno if I have reached the end of act one.. I have clocked more than 4 hrs now and am at the ferryman taking me to a different area. Ofcourse, I am making sure that i reach every nuke and corner of the map before clearing out the area. So far i could unearth only 2 rare items (that shows up in gold colour) have forged a few items myself.

Lets see if i can pool in more by the end of act 1.
 
jc36lect3r said:
Haha, reminds me of the MW3 metacritic score. User reviews are useful, although I agree they should be taken with a grain of salt. Users tend to highlight the worst of the issues. Professional reviewers always get the best setup to game on and they don't have to pay for the game so they are somewhat detached from the ground reality.

If I paid around 4K for a game and was unable to login for a whole day or have my rare items disappear when the server times out, I would probably not recommend the game to anyone. Blizzard has been in the MMO business for ten years, one would expect them to anticipate they traffic at launch day. As it is they have screwed over people with unstable internet, at least let the people play the game without hiccups.
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Couple of points here -

From IGN - Pro reviewers don't get best setups, they build their own. On many an occassions they do NOT get copies from Publishers. They do buy a lot of games contrary to popular belief that everything is free for them.

IGN, Joystiq, Gamespot all gaming sites and reviewers have been very openly criticising the Diablo III lack of prep for the big day, specially after spending 60 bucks. Error 37 jokes are trending on Twitter.

The game was not made public to them too, reviews are WIP.
 
Blizzard responds to server outage :
To that end, we’d also like to say that we’ve been humbled by your enthusiasm — and we sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs of demons, but by mortal infrastructure.
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Blizzard “did not go far enough” prepping Diablo III servers | VG247

---------- Post added at 02:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:16 PM ----------
quixand said:
Couple of points here -

From IGN - Pro reviewers don't get best setups, they build their own. On many an occassions they do NOT get copies from Publishers. They do buy a lot of games contrary to popular belief that everything is free for them.

IGN, Joystiq, Gamespot all gaming sites and reviewers have been very openly criticising the Diablo III lack of prep for the big day, specially after spending 60 bucks. Error 37 jokes are trending on Twitter.

The game was not made public to them too, reviews are WIP.
Click to expand...

Source? As far as I know reviewers get review copy to review the game, which is free. The reviewer might buy the same for personal use at home, but I doubt they review a copy bought out of their own pockets. In this case, although Blizzard did not provide review copies for anybody, I am very skeptical about whether the reviewers reviewed their own copes of the game or the one bought by the Website for this purpose.

If the game has serious infrastructure issues which denies thousands of players to play it when it was made available, shouldn't it reflect on the review? Why should it be treated as an isolated issue?
 
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