Diablo 3 - Devil in the Details

I played Diablo and Diablo 2, plus expansions, for years. It was fun to run through the various levels and try new things with characters (for example, doing all levels on a Druid set to cast, as were-creature, and as summoner). The way most of the dungeons were fairly random, and the way the bosses leveled up with each play level, and the random nature of the drops all made for an enjoyable time. And, don't forget the cow level! What a blast that was to do, getting surrounded and mooed at by copious quantities of cows, and then taking on the king cow.

My expectations for Diablo 3 were high. They had 10 years of graphics and computing advances. This one was going to be as fun as the previous two, but with better graphics, better combat animations and fight coding, and, of course, it was going to build on the detailed story from the first two.

The first two chapters of D3 were decent-sized and had some good story elements, but the last two chapters were tiny, with poor story elements, and incredibly railroading to the player. The inclusion of a marketplace where real-world money could be spent to buy in-game benefits really took something away from the game. The graphics were good, but the fight engine had the exact same hiccups and issues that the 10 year old D2 engine had. The feeling of immersion and surprise simply wasn't there.

All through the Beta (did I mention that I was a public beta tester for the game?) we kept complaining about how easy everything was. Some of us would run through it without any gear and would be able to defeat it. It became a challenge (you can find videos on YouTube.com) for us to speed through the beta with no gear in the least amount of time, solo and in groups. We argued that having both potions and the health globes was too much-- pick one or the other, but don't have both. We argued that drops seemed to be skewed. What we heard back was always, "Don't worry, this is only a beta."

I played through the entire game on standard and then the next highest level using a Monk. At standard level it was insanely easy. I had no deaths and never used a single potion. At Nightmare level, I had a couple of deaths but mostly because of me being an idiot or overconfident, not because of anything the game did. Drops seemed to have the same issues as in beta. The fact that the last two chapters were so short/small and railroaded me to the one conclusion possible made those chapters, well, boring to play.

I started a Barbarian and a Witch Doctor, my other two favorites from the beta. I have the Barbarian close to finishing the game at standard and the WD is in chapter 2 and ... I have no desire to continue playing at all. I have no wish to go to Hell or Nightmare difficulty, to continue playing the identical game with the two new characters, and absolutely no desire to play with the other classes. The repetitious nature of the earlier Diablos, where I wanted to play it again and again and try new things simply isn't there. The magic, put simply, was gone. I wandered back to Skyrim, and continued playing my weekly LotRO game, and found excuses to do other things than play D3.

What I found was, once you got the first multi-enemy attack option for whatever class you were playing, you locked that in and increased its ability at every chance and never used anything else. Why would you? It does excellent damage against single-target and multiple-target enemies, it usually has some nice perks you can add to make the range bigger and the power do more damage or have more effects attached, and you can plow through whatever number of enemies the game throws at you. Then you simply need a panic heal or defense option and you are set. You can take on the entire game and never worry about any other powers. On my monk and barbarian, I rarely used more than two or three powers and I could beat everything in the game. Why change that philosophy?

D3 is a success. Blizzard sold enough units in the first month to make their money back and a hugely healthy profit to boot. However, you don't see the sales continuing strong months later. I don't hear my friends talking about the game and we're not excitedly looking to multiplayer the game like we did with D2 and D1. I don't see the same level of involvement with the game and the community that existed with (especially) D2. While it is true that the original audience is 10 years older, Blizzard should have been able to capitalize on all of us and get us to convince younger audiences (our children even) to get into the game too. Instead, I think it is quietly and steadily going into its own game niche and going to die away slowly, rather than have the long-term success of D2.