No offense to the Ironlore team, but the Wall of Zombies is cooler than any ability I saw in Titan Quest (admittedly I never got around to seeing colossus form). Titan Quest is a good game, but it’s not Diablo.
Didn’t Flagship say the same thing with Hellgate?
Edit: Also note that WoW has a complete adventure that’s playable solo (if you define a complete adventure as leveling from 1-70), yet it has a monthly fee with no offline component.
This post now irony free!
Bingo! I PRAY they haven’t lost one of the coolest replayable aspects of the series.
I am so, SO glad to be wrong about that teaser. :)
Looks good but I too didn’t see anything all that mind blowing. Kinda liked the witch doctor’s abilities of course, who doesn’t want themselves a good ol zombie wall? Nuking your pets to buff them more is also kinda cool, I love those types of synergies.
Of course just from a simple glance TQ utterly slams D2 but in reality D2 is still the better game, if not by all that terribly much. It’s the little things like character skills, equipment drop rate and design, etc.
So there are a few new things :)
I just skimmed the trailer with sound off and couldn’t notice anything particularly good.
Diablo 3?
Happy Birthday to me indeed!
Well I was wrong, yipppeee !!
Draikin > way to go with a shitty comparison. Diablo 1 2 and 3 were made by the same developpers (at least the same company), Fallout 1/2/3 were not. Interplay and Troïka are dead. Please grow up and move on. Plus, this is a Diablo thread, so get lost while you’re at it.
Flagship was more confused about its marketing than Blizzard ever was. Blizzard specifically mentioned Battle.net and that’s not a subscription service, just an optional matchmaking and ranking server for standalone games. If D3 was to be subscription-based they’d have to completely redesign Battle.net, and they haven’t said anything about that.
Edit: Also note that WoW has a complete adventure that’s playable solo (if you define a complete adventure as leveling from 1-70), yet it has a monthly fee with no offline component.
WoW doesn’t run over Battle.net. It has its own separate dedicated servers that work quite differently.
So Blizzard is still PC-only? That seems insane. I’d buy this game in a heartbeat if it were on the 360 or the DS.
Not PC only - simultaneous release on the Mac too!
Technically, a Mac is just a PC with a different OS…
Also, speculating about console ports will now get you banned on NeoGAF. Just noticed this latest insanity when I checked out the forum for the D3 talk.
Yeah, that PC-only stance has really hurt them. ;)
One reason Blizzard does so well is that they make sure that their games don’t push the technology curve too hard. They rely on art to make their games look good, not high system requirements, so people don’t have to invest a whole bunch of money upgrading their computer to play. And a game like Diablo III doesn’t really need to be on consoles. That franchise is so popular, it doesn’t need to go where the players are. Players will come to it.
Given that Blizzard is mum about potential online fees for Starcraft 2 and there specific mentions of “enhancements” to battle.net, which very likely will include an enhanced fee (and may just be a redeveloped game matching service), and I’m not as optimistic as you.
At best the game is identical (classes, equipment, monsters and environments), they doen’t require you to store your characters on battle.net or online authenticate, and the fee is only for things like maybe a battle.net wide auction house and mail system (not multiplayer in general).
At worst… well… it could be very, very, bad. Just because battle.net is one way now, doesn’t mean they won’t integrate a fee system for new games.
It was previously announced that Battlenet will continue to use ads and perhaps there will be an ‘enhancement’ to that. Roper has stated before that the HGL subscription fee is used to help pay for further development of HGL; I don’t see Blizzard needing the money that bad. OTOH, if Blizzard does intend for D3 to be significantly enhanced over time (much more than D2 was) then perhaps there will be a sub. I’m reasonably confident however that there will be a free online component, just like D2 has.
That’s what I would expect, and perhaps some downloadable content. Remember that Blizzard is already offering a subscription-based fantasy action-RPG. Honestly I didn’t expect them to do Diablo 3 at all, given how profitable WoW is, but since they do I’d say it makes no sense to offer two titles that offer not only similar gameplay and setting but also the same pricing model. I expect that free offline play (or non-Battle.net play) remains the distinguishing feature of Diablo 3 so that they can sell this title to people who really don’t want to pay subscription fees.
WoW really isn’t significantly updated. Blizzard waits for expansions to do that and they don’t mind charging a monthly fee in the interim.
I’m reasonably confident however that there will be a free online component, just like D2 has.
Well, let’s pray it isn’t a pricing clusterfuck like Hellgate. One thing we can be sure of, Diablo 3 will at least run pretty well at release (given they learned from the D2 and WoW’s launch).
That’s the best argument for them not to charge a monthly fee, but they may get an order from on high (blizz-o-vision or whatever) that forces them into a new model. I vaguely remember something about them turning all their properties into “MMOs.” I’m sure they define that based on whether they get cash from the players every month for the game.
Anyways, I’ll stop derailing other discussions with this and just cross my fingers (and look forward to Guild Wars 2).
Uhm… what? I’m guessing that you don’t play WoW, because you are utterly wrong. They have done tons of free content updates for WoW over the years.
female and male models for every class
It’s about time.
It isn’t complicated: if you want more women to buy your games, include them. Maybe this will filter down to all the dev houses who wish they were Blizzard.
I did play WoW (up until 6 months ago). Enough “free” content to warrant 180 dollars a year? How many expansion packs is that? So is it 6 expansion packs* worth of content every year? I’m not utterly wrong. That’s why the MMO model is so attractive. Not only does it practically stop piracy, but the content per dollar that developers need to create to maintain interest is very small compared to traditional games.
*I’m basing that on the average cost of expansions right now (roughly 29.99), but IIRC, Blizzard charged, er, 39.99 for The Burning Crusade.