Curious what you think of D3

Yes, I would say it is fun.  MP is the usual crap-fest with the General chat channel being as bad as Barrens chat (never played WoW but that's pretty damn bad bad), bot inflation, and item duping, but SP or co-op with friends is endless and enjoyable monster slaying.

PROTIP: +Vitality items are completely necessary in this game, and you will die later on if you aren't Life tanking.  Armor has diminishing returns on protection, so if the choice is between armor points or Vitality, pick Vitality every time.  Stack up on +Vitality and +Life% items with some rings of Life on Hit or Life on Kill and an Amulet of Wounding and you'll be able to outlast enemies no problem.  Also, potions are utter crap since they're on a 30 second cooldown, so you're much better off without using them except in direst emergencies.

I played d2 for just SP and used all of the characters.  It was quite a bit of fun at that.  I didn't play over and over and over to get new items, etc.  Didn't really appeal to me.  I played D3 the same way. The exception being that I choose to grind through the multiple difficult levels as well.  I haven't played in a bit, but the game is well done, imo, and I'll pick up any expansion.  I just don't give a rip about grinding things out for better and better items.  I lose interest in that sort of things.

So - in summary - I think anyone that was a fan of d2 will get their money's worth out of d3.  There are enough characters with a reasonable variety to make it fun.  And then torchlight 2 will be out soon as well.  I'll play it the same way and be quite happy as well.  Good games.

D3- This is the negative: Needs to have the difficult bumped up all around just beat the game and have a hardcore at 24 or 26 (will go back to finish him to 60). No single player offline mode. Downtime for maintenance and down auction house (this also happens less often now). Lag is a problem has gotten better since launch but it still pops up. Bots sending you messages. I have been hacked so make a good password and get that security code app too. 

Good: I can actually say I like the auction house now ie more search options. The game is fun and you should get your money's worth. All I got left to do is get a 60 hardcore. 

Off topic but good to know, Torchlight 2 and later this year free to play Path of Exile (its not pay to win and most epic skill tree ever!). These right here the two true bastard children of Diablo 2. 

Out of arpg options at this moment I would only recommend Path of Exile if you like D2. It is the closest thing to a modern version of D2. 

This weekend is a stress test weekend open to anyone that registers at pathofexile.com

The game is currently in closed beta but you can get in (after the weekend when it is open to all) if you can get a key from someone or support the company with 10$ (which also gives you ingame credits that you can use to buy cosmetic items). It is soon (few months) going to get into Open Beta which is actually a release for the game.

D3 was barely worth the money imho because of

- no random map generation. Well, a few maps have some random elements but mostly you'll be running through the same map over and over.

- no epic fights. Well, the boss fights are somewhat epic but the bosses also drop worse rewards than everything else. So there's no sense of progressing through a level to reach the end rewards - rather the game rewards players that subject themselves to a constant grind.

- no character builds. Instead of assigning points to certain abilities and stats, everything gets unlocked in a true generic manner. You can still customize how you play the game, but you cannot build your character to this purpose as it levels. This leaves the game with no replay value - there is no reason to play another barbarian if you already played one.

- no long end-game. D2 to me was a game of huge potential because it allowed a player to sink hundreds of hours into it and still be far away from the maximum level cap. In d3, you reach it after maybe 25 hours if memory serves me right. After that, you gain "paragon" levels which are just generic boosts to core stats and gold/magic find (again, not something you get to select).

To sum up - you are playing repetitive maps that do not lead you to an end reward. As you play, you'll gain levels that do not allow you to customize your character in any way. If you are level 60 and come across another level 60, the only thing that will differ between the two of you is gear.

It is a good dungeon rpg. The combat feels brutal and coop is fun. It's just not a great game.

I like the way skills are done.  Sure, you and another level 60 have all the same skills unlocked and the same base stats, but you could still end up using completely different skills for your character when actually killing things, especially when runes are taken into account.  There's also elective mode, so you can use whatever skills you want in whatever slot you want.

Eur

i don't know much about this

Diablo III is one of the games I bought at full price and I kinda like it. I'm not gonna play it until some later patch since I much prefer finished games (don't mean that it is unfinished but f.e Torchlight won't get any more patches so I'll play that first).

Heavenfall is also spot on with "no character customization. Not being able to put points into your character prevents people from scewing their builds up (like I did with my Barbarian in Diablo II     300 Strength, lvl 40 something and died in 3-4 hits from Corpsefire in Hell....tried 5 times then uninstalled. I didn't knew I should have lvled up first....) and therefore noobifies it so much.

I haven't completed Act II though (died on the act boss....I only play HardCore).

That boss is the hardest boss of them all thanks to his exploding green vortexes of doom that cover the entire combat area.  Once you beat him it gets much easier.

It was fun for one play through.  Haven't loaded it since.

I have a level 60 Wizard, 50 Monk, 20 Demon Hunter and 20 Witch Doctor.

The thing is levels 1-59 don't matter. Sure they warm you up to the game but after getting 1 class to 60 you want to jump right into the other classes without the 40+ hour grind to inferno (the hardest difficulty).

It's hard for me to say Diablo 3 is a bad game. With nearly 100 hours of gametime so far, I've gotten my worth out of my purchase. And I really enjoyed the time I put in. There are a lot of bitchers and moaners in the Diablo forums, with a player base as large as it has it is only to be expected.

Blizzard have regularly been updating the game and the updates seem thoughtful.

Othello

This is exactly the reason why the game is stupid. This is MMORPG mentality, not aRPG mentality. Diablo 2 was fun and challenging for the whole playthrough, not after you finished Hell difficulty. D3 is easy, and not challenging until you hit Inferno where it is an item check and not skill check. 

Also the quests and story is for braindead people, I cannot force myself to replay it for this alone. 

Also no character builds just means more stupidity from the game.

Path of Exile suffers from none of these problems and that is why it is my game of choice. It has less smooth combat but it is superior in everything else.

Pretty much that, only I tried to keep going and found that it was a good cure for insomnia. This is a game with no particular longevity. I really feel like I got nowhere near my monies worth out of it and for a Blizzard game it was hugely disappointing.

The worst thing really is how much emphasis they put on the auction house as a thing. Who really wants to play Diablo in order to spend time finding upgrades at the auction house?

The Guild Wars 2 Trading Post works quite well though - and I like how they implemented paying for upgrades and changing between gold (game money) and gems (real money).  Upgrades don't mean you instantly win, they are mainly for conveniences and you still need skill to do well at the game.

Diablo 3's story is fine. If you're looking for a story read a book or watch a movie. If it took me 40 hours to read a book just to finish one story I would never read again. Video games have pedantic stories where the "gameplay" in between serves only to dilute the impact of the narrative, people give them more credit than they deserve.

The AH is a great side game in Diablo 3. If you don't feel like putting in the time to grind for gear, someone has and there is affordable gear that will carry you along until, if you choose to, grind the better stuff yourself. The RMAH is great too, you don't have to go through a third party black market if you want to purchase with real cash. I am not willing to use my expendable cash to purchase virtual gear but I will not be bitter to those who are. To some people spending $500 is no different than grabbing a Starbucks. I have paid $25 for a "mixologist" to make me a fancy jack and coke with a raw egg mixed in, if at the time I had to choose between the drink or a great piece of armor I would take the armor and buy some Big House Red on the way home.

The biggest problem with Diablo 3 is that people are nostalgic over its predecessor.

Othello

I'm guessing it wasn't the best drink you ever had?

A $10 drink with a $15 dollar surcharge for an educated bartender, attractive waitress and dress code.

Andy "Hot Rod" Samberg unfortunately did not make the drink.

I guess you are a target audience for D3 then. Both for story and wasting real money on their AH. Congrats sir, you win the braindead award...

Different people like different things in a game.  That is how I would put it.

D3 is a good game it's not by far a great game.

The problem with those kids of games is simple. Companies are making dumb games for dumb people. In the past you had hard games which were fun to play because the learning curb was hard and the game was complicated. IMO that is what makes a great game. Then fact that it's hard and it gives you the chance to make choices that will affect your game.

Anybody who played EQ1 will remember dying and having to get your corpse, every time you played there was a chance you would not get your stuff back. Dying meant something,. You splat ding on occasion.

Now you play WOW and you play games like D3 where dying means nothing where you have no choices because everything is dumbed down, because they think we are stupid. They want to attract as many people as possible instead of the real players.

So D3 is fun for a little while after you played a bit you notice that once you leveled a char there is noting left to explore. When you play D3 you realize that you are playing 4 times the same game and that the first three times are quite boring because everything is easy. D2 had random maps for most of the content. D3 has a set map for most of the content.

The only choice you have in D3 is which gear will you use. Other than that you know exactly when each skill will unlock because it's all been thought out for you.

D3 makes me think of a coin up arcade game that I use to play at the arcade. Nothing more than that,

If you can get it cheap it's worth it. I would not pay 60$ for it, but at the same time I would not pass by without playing some of it. Just expect and easy game that does not require you to think much.

Diablo 3's story is awful. The game wouldn't have been much different without any story whatsoever, as it adds nothing of value.

The AH is a total disaster. The entire point of this type of game is to go out and find loot. When you short circuit that by having people go troll an AH looking for loot, you're damaging the feedback responses to gameplay that are at the entire heart of the genre: the fun in finding a new super cool item. Let's not even talk about the RMAH with its high fees that exists soely as a profit driving mechanism for Activision to try and suck money out of people stupid enough to want to play Inferno. It also led to the removal of single player, and that gave everyone the joy that was Blizzard's pathetic excuse for launch week uptime. They managed to make Ubisoft look good, and that's an impressive feat.

Not that Diablo 3 has items that are fun to find given how boring the typical drop is. Woo, bunch of totally useless stats and 5 more DPS then what I had before! And of course the total crap legendaries that they had to fix in a patch. Hell, they're changing so much stuff in patches in such a drastic way that its hard to wonder why they thought it was ever release ready. When you see multiple skills being rebalanced by over 1000%, you know they had it WAY off.

The biggest problem with Diablo 3 is that people wanted a good game and didn't get it. Fortunately so far its looking like Torchlight 2 is better then Diablo 3 at pretty much everything.

Thanks for those replies.

Torchlight 2, apparently due out very soon, doesn't seem to whet my whistle, from what I can see of it from its website. But Path of Exile looks very interesting (to me). I have no idea how good the itemization will be, but looks like it is worth a shot...

There is a free "Starter Edition" you can check out of Diablo 3 that will give you a feel of the game available on their website. Otherwise, Guild Wars 2 has been nothing but impressive to me so far.

Othello