All good demons go to... um... sequel? - Diablo 3 Announced

[espressojim]

I am loving my Wizard. Playing through normal I’m basically just pumping my damage at the expense of nearly all else. ‘Kill stuff before it can hurt me’ is my preferred method of crowd control so far. I am loving Blizzard, it makes me wish for a non-channeled version in WoW, the slow plus AoE damage is great, toss in some Nether Tempest and an Arcane Hydra and you have an awesome killing field! I got a 40-something massacre before I logged last night.

I really like the Tempest rune that adds a 6 second 15% arcane vulnerability debuff. It synergises nicely with the arcane rune for the Hydra and the Magic Missile. I tend to prefer AoE or pseudo AoE signature spells for non-boss fights, chain lightning and the fire version of the first electricity spell are my favorites.

The sheer number of ways I can combine different skills already, just at level 29 is amazing. I get 3 or so new things each level, too. The only thing I’ve found I can’t live without, so far, is Diamond Skin. I kind of want to bind teleport as well, because just occasionally I find I really want to use it, but not that often. Also, I suspect it’s mostly when I have just made an error and want to bail out that I want it, so better to just not make the error in the first place.

Teleport with the 30% protection when you port + diamond skin has saved my ass in boss fights in nightmare.

That said, wait until level 30. I think the wizard has the coolest level 30 ability of the classes I’ve played with (all but witchdoctor, no idea what they do at 30.)

This game has gotten a bit more fun in nightmare, and as a party of 4 we can’t instantly blow up everything in one shot. I need to actually think about positioning now, and my damage isn’t sufficient as “crowd control”, even though my “damage” on my stats page is 750 ish.

[RepoMan]

Jesus fucking christ. It’s not supposed to be an MMO anything. And I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut what Blizzard’s excuses are. I want to play my game when I want it . And anyone that thinks that’s being stupid can piss off.

Rich, you’re a cool guy, so it is with a friendly spirit that I say: it’s not like you didn’t know what you were buying. If you want to bitch about it after the fact, that’s your prerogative, but really you’re saying “look at me! I spent $60 on something that I knew I would hate!”

If this aspect bothers you that much, why the fuck did you buy the game?

Personally I hate piracy so much that I am glad Blizzard went the service route, even though it means I’ve played only 75 minutes total so far.

(And here things are up and running at the moment, but I’m replying to you? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME)

FWIW, here’s Blizzard’s actual excuse:

Diablo Players:

We’d like to extend a very sincere thank you to everyone who joined the global Diablo III launch celebrations this week, as well as to everyone who was ready to jump into Sanctuary the moment the game went live.

To that end, we’d also like to say that we’ve been humbled by your enthusiasm – and we sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs of demons, but by mortal infrastructure. As many of you are aware, technical issues occurring within hours after the game’s launch led to players experiencing error messages and difficulty logging in. These issues cropped up again last night for the Americas and Europe servers. Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough.

We’ve been monitoring the game 24/7 and have applied several optimizations to help our systems better weather the global rush. As of late last night, specifically 11:50 PM PDT on May 15, all systems have been online and running relatively smoothly. We’re continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region.

In order to make sure everything is continuing to run as it should, we’ve decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. We’ll post further updates on that in the near future.

Aside from the tremendous number of players simultaneously logging in to the game, one of the launch-day service issues was linked to the achievement system. Some players began to notice early on that achievements were either not being earned properly, or not being saved between multiple logins. We’re investigating this issue and will provide a specific update as soon as possible.

We greatly appreciate everyone’s support, and we want to sincerely apologize for the difficulties many of you encountered on day one. Please visit the Battle.net Support site or Support forums for the latest service-related updates or for help in troubleshooting any technical issues you may be having downloading, installing, or while playing the game.

Thank you again for your patience while we reinforce the gates of Sanctuary and further strengthen it for your onslaught.

Respectfully,
Blizzard Entertainment

Terribly ironic that all those people bit the bullet. I certainly believe it outdid Blizzard’s wildest projections. Every last one of them is free to bitch about how it tastes like lead after they’ve already swallowed it, but… why? What is the point? YOU ALREADY GAVE BLIZZARD YOUR MONEY! Too late to cry about it now.

Me, I’m happy to wait for them to sort it all out – plenty of other games to play in the world while they get their shit together. (Which they do seem to be doing, overall – the downtime trends are going in the right direction.)

[RichVR]

Please understand that what I wrote was from frustration not from ignorance. I knew that the game I purchased was going to be online only. But I guess I was more angry about the whole MMO comment thing. Which I now understand and accept as maybe a touch of hyperbole.

I apologize for my angry screed. As well I appreciate the people that said that they know I’m not normally like that. Because I’m not normally like that.

I am, though, pissed off about the online only crap. Regardless of my buying the game. Just a comment. Not a diatribe this time. Love you folks. Peace.

[krayzkrok]

All I can say is, I’m now quite happy that I won’t be able to play this until July! They should have it all sorted by then, one would hope. But until then… well, it’s just another game. My backlog is grateful.

[charmtrap]

You’d think with a budget as big as this one must have had, Blizzard could have afforded to hire an actual British child to play the Boy Emperor if they were going to give him a faux-Brit accent.

[ravenight]

So, booted from game repeatedly is annoying, but honestly, they will sort these issues out. Once I discovered how the locked servers worked on D2, I never went back to single player, so its not like there’s any way I’d have been playing D3 offline. What’s the point? I want to play with my buddies and trade on an AH, so why level guys I can’t use?

Still loving how varied the enemies and abilities are. I was really skeptical about the lack of putting a point into something each level, but so far I haven’t missed it at all. Which I guess points to the fact that D2 wasn’t really played that way either (you saved for particular abilities, then mindlessly dumped points into them, so this system actually adds strategy - choosing interim skills to use - rather than removing any).

[Becoming]

I can’t wait to binge on this over the weekend. Playing with friends while figuring out the best synergies for each class to demolish stuff is super fun.

[RepoMan]

Ahhhh, that was satisfying. Just had a solid two and a half hour Monk run (would have been three but I had to eat some dinner). Act I is longer than I thought! I’m level 13 and still have a bit more to go. No login errors, no rubberbanding, no trouble whatsoever.

Man, the monk skills are getting really cool. Crippling Wave is just a hoot, to be able to spam a 360-degree spirit-boosting addleblast. I just got Wave of Light (or whatever it’s called) and haven’t even tried it out yet. And getting past the skeleton king feels freshy fresh-ola – very fun exploring brand new terrain with each passing second…

ravenight, couldn’t agree more that the skill system encourages maximal experimentation as well as maximal joy as each new level comes up. Jeez, I can’t see how Torchlight 2can compete with the sheer amount of custom skill work they put into this thing.

If’n it weren’t so late I’d still be playing! And meanwhile Mr. Tom Chick has started his nightmare playthrough with his level 33 witch doctor – still leading the pack among my entire friends list… it’s like he does this for a living.

[Quaro]

Woah, auction house. Really recommend new players NOT even open the auction house for their first playthrough. You can get stuff better than any drop for a pittance.

I didn’t think to open it and I’m so glad I had the full loot experience: that endorphin rush every couple minutes as you hunt around for loot. And normal certainly doesn’t need to be an easier. Don’t do it! You owe it to yourself.

[MrPerson]

The AH feels like cheating, loot is so cheap. I decked my level 15 character in rare/yellow gear for about 1500g a slot, which is barely more than the blacksmith charges to craft a random garbage blue. I wonder what things will look like at the end game, but the non-binding nature of loot makes me thing prices aren’t going to be all that high.

My health and damage more than doubled, for about 10k gold…

[triggercut]

Do we have a Qt3 chat channel in game?

[lordkosc]

Do we have a Qt3 chat channel in game?

not that I am aware of, how do we create one?

[JM1]

It’s not like Blizzard were hiding the fact that online was going to be required. You knew that was the deal when you bought it, and you knew that sometimes internet servers fail because you don’t strike me as a stupid person. Pissing and moaning now seems kind of silly.

Plenty of people - like me, for instance - bought the game knowing that this was a downside.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have a middle ground between “I don’t care!” and “FUCK YOU BLIZZARD”. Something like, I dunno, “if it worked like Blizzard claimed it would, then it would be a manageable problem”?

“Sometimes servers fail” isn’t quite what we’re seeing here. Pissing and moaning because Blizzard have failed to provide a level of service that they promised is human nature.

On the flip side, when I have managed to play I enjoyed the difficulty far more than beta. More named mobs / champion packs, yay.

[Lazy_Shiftless_Basta]

The AH feels like cheating, loot is so cheap.

Really? I opened it briefly to see what people were selling, and while it was pretty neat browsing the cheapest thing I saw at level 20 had a current bid of over 5000 gold. Everything also had ridiculous buyout costs like 500,000 gold, or in one case 999,999,999.

I did like seeing that there are random magic properties that give you a chance to do things like freeze, chill, blind, fear, and knockback, though.

[Ginger_Yellow]

I can’t imagine playing hardcore given the intermittent lag I’ve been getting. Haven’t died (solely) from it yet, but I’ve been taken down to nearly zero health. On higher difficulties it would be instadeath through no fault of your own.

That said, I’m loving the game so far (a good way through Act II).

[aeneas]

Server has just gone back down. I’m midway through ACT IV argh. Oh well try and finish on normal tomorrow.

[Nephrinn]

I might as well kill myself now. Thanks blizz.

[Charlatan]

When I got on this morning (about 90 minutes ago) they said they were taking the servers down at 5 AM PDT for an hour. So the downtime was scheduled (not that it doesn’t suck, but it’s not as though the servers crashed).

[Teiman]

I only feel bad about the games released this days, like Nexuiz or that Max Paine game. Releasing the same day has diablo is like having your birthday the 25 of december.

I have grown bored of all videogames, all of then, but dungeon defenders and torchlight 2. For some reason I want to play Torchlight 2… I think is the itemization, the game just look cool wen you equip all the uniques and sets in the game in a weird Skyrim kind of way that I just cant explain.

I tried to buy diablo 3, expecting 40 or 50 eur, only to find it cost 60. So i am not going to buy it for some time, 60 is too much for a videogame and diablo3 dont feel to me all that special. After playing wizard in the beta i ended cold. I like a challenge in a room, but that was the only thing. The spells where boring and the loot boring. I love coop with random pugs but never managed to get in one of these, no idea why.

Diablo 3 is like a massive multiplayer online role play game where you only play dungeons, theres no overwolrd, but maybe that will be added later.

[DeepT]

What level are you? I am 24 and having a blast with the witch doctor. Obviously I can’t make comparisons as I have only been playing the witch doctor, but he doesn’t seem gimped to me. The one thing though is that my performance is heavily dependent on the skills I pick (this may not be true for other classes). Certain combinations work extremely well, others are terrible.

First tip, always have soul harvest as part of your set, and always aim to harvest 5 souls everytime you run into a big group. This will increase your damage a thousand-fold (an exaggeration, but not as much as you’d expect).

I really like the exploding frogs, even though you need to be fairly close range. Acid cloud is another skill that does copious amounts of aoe damage (with soul harvest). The dogs are fairly weak, but if you have jungle fortitude and zombie handler as your passive skills, them + the gargantuan help quite a bit and don’t often die.

Make the final skill whatever you want. Do that and you should be able to plow through large groups with blues and yellows with ease. I have also had success with other combinations, so it isn’t only one build that works well, but he seems to be sensitive to bad combinations.

My WD is only level 12 or so. I am playing him co-op with a friend. My friend is playing a barbarian. My solo-main is a barbarian and he kicks major ass. I guess I feel gimpy in comparison.