Diablo III Review

This was a good review, up until that Blizzard sponsored line: It's quite brilliant.

Really? "It's quite brilliant."? It's pathetic. If Blizzard want to make a Diablo MMO, then they should do it properly. This mini-MMO crap has ruined a game I've been waiting for, for over a decade. And Social aspects like sharing achievements is somehow gonna change that? Hell... no! It's just an excuse to force the "always online" crap down your throat. If you can live vicariously through the achievements of others, then go right ahead. Enjoy the taste.

Should I buy Diablo 3? No. I'm disappointed, TechSpot. You claim not to like the always online "plague", but you're so easily distracted by shiny graphics and silly social features. Have some conviction, will you!?

This article reads like it was written by a child on a sugar-high.

+1

IF I buy this game, it will be when it's well on sale. and I'm talking at least a %30 drop, and on top of that I'm talking a %30 drop on sub $50... so in other words, I will not be buying this game, probably not ever...

Heh, no need to buy it, Torchlight 2 will be out soon for the delicious price of $20! Complete with offline play, room-based multiplayer and LAN based co-op etc. Not to mention the direly missed features of stat and skill point CHOICES! I can't believe they removed them from D3, talk about making a game for down syndrome children.

This is a fanboy review if I ever did read one. The entire review is riddled with the "boss-pleasing" nonsense that you'd expect from a "contributing editor" . I suggest disregarding this article and looking at an actual review from someone who isn't bending over with his pants around his ankles.

@BabyFaceLee

I agree that top-down view sucks. Notice the rage that your simple opinion can induce.
Give the people what they want but too bad this is what they want.

Thank you for this post. You are absolutely right. I know that it is difficult to post sensibly in a forum dedicated to rant and negation, but your post seems to single-handedly argue an appropriate and legitimate point--which is in contrast to the majority of this nonsensical and irrational drivel. (Sorry had to try my hand at trolling....ehm...not so much...)

I certainly appreciate your ability to reason sensibly.

Diablo 3's overwhelming sense of failure is unjustly amplified by legions of uninformed, irrational and impatient users who clearly have only a superficial understanding of the core mechanics of the game and its intended online component. Sadly, our sense of control is suppressed when our indiscriminant expectations are not met with instant gratification. Such is nature of the times I suppose.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't say that everything went perfectly as planned for Blizzard; certainly not. Yet, I sense that the overall criticism is unwarranted. Futhermore, I suspect that any forum contributor (reader) has not often engaged in a high-stakes/high-pressure performance wherein their reputation and competency has been at stake. And those who indeed have... might comment on the notion of compassion and understanding. (Or not...might draw to much unwarrented attention to yourself...oh wait.)

Nevertheless... your post was well received by at least one reader.... And I thank you.

The people pissed off about the online only play obviously never played Diablo II for any extended period of time (2+ years). Diablo II got boring and stale after you defeated Hell Baal if you didn't play on battle.net. Most of the allure to the game was finding the unique gear and getting the perfect set of equipment. Yeah, you could do that in the offline game, but the best part was being able to trade gear or items that you found for even better items that would be nigh impossible to find on your own.

This is where the AH, while not perfect, is great for trading. There is a single useful currency (gold), at least until the Real Money Auction House (RMAH) is created. This fills the void that the D2 Battle.net community lacked. There was a lot of speculation about what a certain item or set of items cost, and no real standard.

As far as the actual game content - I'll admit the game was pretty short. I expected Normal to take at least 50 hours to complete, but I completed it in less than 20. That was with doing every side quest, and exploring every map to its fullest extent. Clearly it can be done much faster than that. I'm hoping they release regular content patches like they do in WoW to keep the game fresh. I don't recall how long it took to beat Diablo 2 (without rushing) from beginning to end in Normal. I think it was about the same amount of time if you only count the original game, and not the LOD expansion.

I had am still having an absolute blast playing the game with friends and even solo. It's great to be able to talk to my WoW buddies while they're playing WoW and tell them about the cool stuff I find in the game. I'm still working my way to unlock Inferno where it supposedly gets very difficult. Hell is proving to be a challenge for my DH, and I die frequently to champs and rares.

All of the people pissed off about lag and disconnects are justified, but it is to be expected in a new online only game. Wow had the same growing pains, and with a system this large it will take some time to work out the kinks. I know they'll get it right.

Diablo 3 simply shows that not all diablo series are excellent games.
Diablo = excellent
Diablo 2 = excellent
Diablo 3 = good
Diablo 3's gameplay is actually excellent, but if you will take into account its average looking graphics and unreliable server performance -- its final score from me boils down to around 7 out of 10.
I just bought my radeon HD 6850 a few months ago in preparation for this Diablo 3. Radeon HD 6850 is just a bit higher than the recommended radeon 4870 for Diablo 3, and I was disappointed to see that Diablo 3 graphics are average looking even at its maximum graphics setting.
It looks like blizzard has recommended radeon HD 4870 type of video card for Diablo 3 to create a false impression for pre-ordering fans that the game would have a decent graphics.

Played diablo and diablo 2 far too much , really enjoying diablo 3 so far. I'm not a fan of the AH or having to be online though. All I know is that when I'm playing I tend to laugh a lot of that huge pile of dead bodies I leave in my wake.

The sole reason blizzard forced ONLINE ALWAYS on this game, is so they can bleed people for real money in the auction house. That is clearly amoral practice. The old Blizzard is gone - they were consumed by the greed beast.

Im sorry to all the players who love Diablo 3 and God bless you all but this game in my opinion is a slap in the face to veteran Diablo players and to the Diablo franchise itself. The loot is boring and useless, almost zero social aspect at all, unending bugs and mysterious error messages, alleged hacking and account compromises, horrible lag, Elites mobs are 10 times harder than Act bosses, near impossible to gear up properly and D3 is devoid of any true customization and every toon you build will be cookie cutter. The RMAH (real money auction house) is the true driving force of the game rather than old school trading which in its own right forced players to interact and in the end formed a good tight knit community. Blizzard took everything that made Diablo 2 a long-lived success and just scrapped it thereby reinventing the wheel. If your a Diablo 2 veteran don't purchase D3 till it has some serious adjustments made. Sorry but those are my thought and I'm not alone.

This game is a huge waste of time. The Blizzard politics of WOW have taken this completely over.

it doesn't matter how high your magic find gets (which is really not very high) you will still just as rarely find anything as if not having magic find at all. The only increase you will get is blue and useless yellow items. They actually tried to promote that there is no limit to the magic find hinting that Diablo 2 was limited.

You will be around second act of hell mode when you realize you are 58-59 under geared and that the experience dulls because of the level cap of level 60 when you have to grind 1-2 million gold per piece of equipment to be able to have any kind of fighting chance to make it to Diablo in act 4 hell. This actually would have been remedied if the level cap was 99 like it should have been, then you would be able to experience becomeing more powerful instead of struggling against thousands of bosses just to grind enough gold to buy 1 object in the auction house.

The story line was a huge improvement by about 1000 times, it's just a shame most of it is in books you need to pick up, which you will not pay attention to and only pick up for achievements.

Diablo 3 is the perfect example of Capitalism gone crazy to make sure that you 1. go back to WOW and keep paying $15 per month until the expansion comes out.

I have been waiting over 10 years for Diablo 3 to come out and they didn't even make it full 3D. I feel very upset and cheated that they only tried half way to make this game a wonderful experience yet underhandedly reserving 80% what it should be to pad their pockets later.

DO NOT purchase this game! it is a huge slap in the face to loyal Diablo fans and is only meant to make addicts of the next generation of players, while discarding the old school players.

The whole feel of the game is that you know some executive little weasel is sitting in a throne some where undermining everything wonderful about the original 2, setting a stage to make you buy expansions of long waits to unlock little pieces of what diablo should be in 2-4 expansions of years of wait, to make sure you go back to WOW and pay your monthly fee and get ready for the next expansion.

you are also not permitted to comment on battle.net about diablo 3 if your WOW account is frozen.

I am a Diablo fan from 1, 2 and now 3.. I bought the game, and it was NOT a huge slap in the face. It was exactly what I had imagined. Diablo 2012.
Places like this are for the haters.. There are more happy people that read the comments but dont care to comment because they are happy with the product. All the flamers just feel that need to be heard because their parents didn't pay attention to them. There is no reason to cry in comments because you didnt like something. I dont like certain flavors of ice cream, but I know that some people do like those flavors.
Should I flame the Ice Cream makers Facebook page for making ice cream flavors I do not like? Should I find an article reviewing the flavor that I do not like and slam them for liking that flavor?

If you dont like the articles on a website and dont like the games that are being reviewed, then why are you reading the reviews and commenting on how much you hate them? Your opinion is not important to anyone but yourself.
When you hit the Return button after a flamer post, do you press it really hard and make a dramatic exit from your computer chair and demand that your mom get you some fried chicken skins?