I'm not actually that hyped for Diablo 3...
Don't take me wrong. I did preorder it, and I'll definetly gona play it and I curse the gods that broke my home computer now of all days, but I don't think that it has as many strong points as Diablo 2.
I can't help but sound like troll telling this the day of it's release but please hear me out!
Ask your selfs:
Why did people liked Diablo 2 so much?
- It was a good dark single player RPG, with great combat and great character micro-managment!
- It was had also a great online mode, that made it at the time the closest thing you could find to an MMO without subscription at the time!
- The great skill system ensured that no two characters whould ever be the same (lie),
and the great list of loot gave players lots of reasons to play it again and again.
But Diablo 2 was far from an Ideal MMO:
- The world was not big enough, and to make up for that, you were chalenged to play the game 3 times instead to reach the higher levels.
- The characters them selfs where predesigned and you couldn't customize them aside from the stats and skills you got through leveling.
- It encuraged grinding for loot and levels, since the actuall story quests where very limited, and only a hand-few of them where nessesary to advance through the game.
- People where forced on instanced worlds of their owns to reduce the need to maintain many servers and keep the online free.
Now Diablo 3 is comming out, and I have no doubt that it'll have great gameplay and story (even though now it looks a little bit more comic-bookish), and there is no doubt that playing with others will be fun.
But, now MMOs
DO exist in various varieties and flavours, with the king of them is still owned by blizzard.
Diablo 3 is based on an idea that worked in the past because there were no MMOs at the time, and while they've added many new ellements to D3 like an action house, gender variations for the (again) predesigned characters, and better economy and ballance, the core of the game is still the same! In the past people were willing to let go of all the negative aspects of Diablo 2 because it there was nothing at the time!
To bring you an an example, take a look at the original Guild Wars!
It was builded by ex-blizzard stuff members that formed their own company called Arena-net.
It took the formula much of the gameplay of Diablo 2 and added more online ellements to make it self closser to an actual MMO. (search it out!)
It kept most of it's world instanced (just like Diablo 2) in order to avoid a subscription policy.
That little ambitious project ended up comming just a few months after WoW that ended up re-defining what to expect from MMOs, and it ended up being overshadowed!
Now the roles are reversed, and blizzard is releasing a game with archaic ideas about MMOs, while Arena-net is re-setting the standarts of what to expect from an MMO with Guild Wars 2!
And Yes!... I'm more excited for Guild Wars 2 than Diablo 3, dispite not liking the original GW.
What do you think?
I've got 5 days off work and the wait is killing me!
