I do not want to advocate WoW in this discussion but what Dimebog says is true there is hardly any grind in WoW atm... and thats just about as much grind as you will get is tring to get that item... and they actually want to get you away from the grind cuz those some of those dungeons can only be run once per week... but there are many many quests to do to lvl you up to 80... currently the hardest part of lvling in wow is like lvls 55-58 cuz its like o shit im running out of quests lol! but differnt classes have a differnt experience lvling with quests. some classes are better at certain kind of quests than others...
another major major difference people say WoW is a grind is you will never see a char go from lvl 1-75 in less than a day like you can in D2... mabey a month if your good at questing and stuff but then that can kinda be considered a grind if you get to be that good lol.
But im not advocating WoW... Alot of people like grinding... im just saying what Dimebog said is very true.
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"Always respect the purity of battle. For only in the heart of combat are all pretenses of nobility and quality stripped away, replaced by survival and death."
Depends how you view grinding. When you do as many quests as you do in an MMO, they all begin to repeat their missions over and over again. Go kill this monster, go kill this monster so many times, give this item to this person, find this thing.
To be honest, WoW's quest pre-TBC and in TBC were like that. But I have to say that WoTLK quests (content designed for leveling from 70 to 80) is actually pretty damn amazing. It had almost no repetition, and it was heavily involving with a lot of great sequences, and a lot of lore being fed to the player in a very enjoyable manner. Everything from large-scale events to detailed re-enactments of WC3 sequences.
Quote from "Magistrate" »
However, like I said, with Diablo III, they're mixing this typical feature of MMO's with Diablo's ARPG structure. Random quests will in all honesty function the same way.- redundant quest basics being rehashed over and over again, like in an MMO.
Yes, but questing is a big part of Diablo, and pretty much everyone argues that it's not about reaching a certain goal, but going there, and replaying that. In MMO's (at least in WoW) questing is the smallest part of the game. They're basically a tutorial that prepares the player for real content.
EDIT: Oh, and random quests in D3 (from single-player perspective) are nothing different in concept than D1 random quests. But I really can't think of them as a bad thing. Sure, it might get boring, but how do those set 27 quests in D2 don't?
WotLK quests are unlike pre bc, and bc... cuz they almost take you right into the main story right away... especially if you do dk... for questing purposes WotLK has got the best layout so far cuz they are actually very story compelling and intreguing at points with many apperances from the Lich King... but i also do think that blizzard realizes that WoW is going to lose its thunder with the defeat of Arthas... So many people are complaining that Arthas is what made WoW.. im not one of them but i have heard this alot... so is why i think they are comming out with games in the other two franchises and another MMO. Blizzard knows it needs to come out with a kick azz SC 2 and Diablo 3. I do think they still want to be knowen as Blizzard Entertainment not WoW entertainment... and if so they really do need to do a GREAT job in these other two titles... because these communities have made alot of people into WoW haters... and if they mess up with D3 and SC2 they might turn into Blizz haters.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Always respect the purity of battle. For only in the heart of combat are all pretenses of nobility and quality stripped away, replaced by survival and death."
To be honest, WoW's quest pre-TBC and in TBC were like that. But I have to say that WoTLK quests (content designed for leveling from 70 to 80) is actually pretty damn amazing. It had almost no repetition, and it was heavily involving with a lot of great sequences, and a lot of lore being fed to the player in a very enjoyable manner. Everything from large-scale events to detailed re-enactments of WC3 sequences.
Was that all added in WotLK? I honestly had no idea it even added sequences. Are those similar to cutscenes or something? Or is it a string of quests?
Yes, but questing is a big part of Diablo, and pretty much everyone argues that it's not about reaching a certain goal, but going there, and replaying that. In MMO's (at least in WoW) questing is the smallest part of the game. They're basically a tutorial that prepares the player for real content.
Hm... Maybe I'm just misinterpreting what you said, but you did say that quests is how people level up in WoW. If so, than aren't they integral, and not a small part?
EDIT: Oh, and random quests in D3 (from single-player perspective) are nothing different in concept than D1 random quests. But I really can't think of them as a bad thing. Sure, it might get boring, but how do those set 27 quests in D2 don't?
Ah, like the ones that aren't in the direct storyline, but can be activated by going to a certain place of talking to a certain NPC? I was thinking by "randomized" they meant an endless array of cookie-cutter quests that randomly appear. Like for instance, you kill a really unique monster and it drops some random quest item and you go through a cookie-cutter quest following that. Since they'd be cookie-cutter, the game could take pieces from databases or files and make new, random quests from cookie-cutter quest pieces, like kill this monster and get this item, or return this item to this NPC. Oh well.
They weren't boring to me the first few time through but yeah, after that all I wanted to bother doing was getting leveled up so I could MF, find items, help other people with stuff, etc. That's when people basically just get in to the rushing mentality.
I mean, I still go through them all every now and then when I just feel like running a mode with a new character, but nothing like the first time I went through them.
I think you would like the KotOR MMO that Bioware is coming out with... every class has a different story line and from what i understand you lvl up pretty much the whole way through quests and almost all the questing is different for each class. And one of the biggest plusses is there is not $/month lol!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Always respect the purity of battle. For only in the heart of combat are all pretenses of nobility and quality stripped away, replaced by survival and death."
Was that all added in WotLK? I honestly had no idea it even added sequences. Are those similar to cutscenes or something? Or is it a string of quests.
Long quest chains, visiting old locations and witnessing things of the past (like a live action cutscene), phasing (entire areas changing in epic proportions just for the player that finished certain quests). For example you get to see the scene with Arthas and Muradin in the Frostmourne cave, and learn something groundbreaking that you didn't see in WC3, or kill yourself temporarily and talk with the abandoned spirits on the island where Arthas left them in that one mission where he had his mercenaries sink the ships. The content is jam-packed with that type of quests. You don't go around collecting 10 boar tails as some people would have you think.
Quote from "Magistrate" »
Hm... Maybe I'm just misinterpreting what you said, but you did say that quests is how people level up in WoW. If so, than aren't they integral, and not a small part?
You level up from 70 to 80 in a week. In Diablo, you level constantly, that's all you do.
Quote from "Magistrate" »
I was thinking by "randomized" they meant an endless array of cookie-cutter quests that randomly appear.
Probably a mix of both. They said they are reimplementing the feature from D1. Basically, a set of quests either spawned or didn't spawn when you started playing D1 again. In multiplayer terms, it probably means that when you host a game, a random factor decides which quests that are not essential to the main storyline ones will be spawned. It's just that we expect the scope and variety of random quests to be larger, and made better with the fact that monsters and small events are also completely random (in D2, you always knew where to find which monster, but not like it made a difference either).
Some very good points are being brought up here. I do agree that, at its core, grinding in Diablo is more fun than grinding in WoW. The reason for that is because in Diablo you have more going on at once which gives you more things to focus each time you play. But what makes MMO grinding "fun" for me is that I know that eventually I will need better items because I know that more of the story is yet to be told and I will need to be prepared for it. This is one thing that I wish they can accomplish in Diablo 3.
I think the two in-game things that scare people the most about MMO's is the grinding and the dependence on other players to gain substantial progress in both story and statistics (i.e more hit points, more damage etc...). As an action RPG I don't believe that Diablo 3 should have any of these elements, but what I would like to see is an attempt from Blizzard to give me enough to do so that getting to level 99 isn't repititious.
Diablo 2 is a great game no question about it, but a fundamental flaw in the game for me is that by level 33 I already know everything about the storyline and what happens. At this point I can decide to play through the game again on a higher difficulty to continue leveling but ultimately what's the point? The reason I play RPG games is for story and progression, but I can't say that I like progression for progression's sake alone. I need some kind of "convincing," if you will, that there will be more things to come that I need to prepare myself for.
The way that WoW has implemented this is dwarfed by none in my opinion. The game is easy to learn, hard to master, and they don't tell you everything withing the first 33% of your characters journey to max level. I believe that you can please more people this way because you're still hooking the players that love the character progression, but also luring players that need more than just numbers to encourage them to play. Now is that an "MMO" philosophy? I'm not asking to be required to spend 5 hours a day to get anything meaningful accomplished; the game can still revolve around a single player or small groups. But at the very least the storyline should be strected out much farther than the first 33 levels of gameplay.
Diablo 2 is a great game no question about it, but a fundamental flaw in the game for me is that by level 33 I already know everything about the storyline and what happens. At this point I can decide to play through the game again on a higher difficulty to continue leveling but ultimately what's the point? The reason I play RPG games is for story and progression, but I can't say that I like progression for progression's sake alone. I need some kind of "convincing," if you will, that there will be more things to come that I need to prepare myself for.
This is very true. After awhile it is spite for your *nemesis* or the interaction with your friends that keeps you on D2. The fact that it will be an MMO should solve this, in my opinion.
A Diablo MMO would ensure new quests and challenges all the way until the end game, I agree, but I can only imagine that there would be three factions in a Diablo MMO to choose from: Human, Angel, and Demon. Or possibly only two factions: An army of Humans and Angels that fight for good, or an army of Humans and Demons that fights for evil.
Would each faction have a special quest line and storyline to follow? It's tricky to ponder about.
but i also do think that blizzard realizes that WoW is going to lose its thunder with the defeat of Arthas... So many people are complaining that Arthas is what made WoW.. im not one of them but i have heard this alot...
I actually used to wonder that myself, but I don't think it's hard for Blizzard to just simply add new content with new heroes and villians. Having said that, I just finished The Sin War Trilogy in exactly 8 days (couldn't put it down) and I was beyond impressed. It has so many moving parts which open up so many possibilities for story archs and progression; much more than the Warcraft storyline ever had. In my opinion this franchise has MMO written all over it.
To bring this back to my original point though, I really want to see the story spread over more of my characters career. One thing that Diablo 3 should take from WoW that has nothing to do with MMO's, in my opinion, is how they dealt with story progression versus character progression.
I actually used to wonder this myself, but I don't think it's hard for Blizzard to just simply add new content with new heroes and villians. Having said that, I just finished The Sin War Trilogy in exactly 8 days (couldn't put it down) and I was beyond impressed. It has so many moving parts which open up so many possibilities for story archs and progression; much more than the Warcraft storyline ever had. In my opinion this franchise has MMO written all over it.
That's the exact same thing that crossed my mind when I finished the series. I have a feeling the Nephalem, or the Edyrem in the Sin War books will be making yet another appearance - probably in the end of Diablo III, therefore setting up the MMO quite nicely.
One thing that Diablo 3 should take from WoW that in my opinion has nothing to do with MMO's is how they dealt with story progression versus character progression.
Yes, they made that very interactive. A part of me worries they will try to keep some bad things from D2, misinterpretting our latest upsets.
This is very true. After awhile it is spite for your *nemesis* or the interaction with your friends that keeps you on D2. The fact that it will be an MMO should solve this, in my opinion.
I really hope you are right on this. In my opinion Blizzard has gotten only about 10% of what they could potentially get from the lore that they've created about Sanctuary. The best thing about it is that they keep it very political, and Knaak stresses many times that all good is not good. The Nephelem give the story so much more life because there isn't a clear linear progression to the story like in WoW where the good guys and bad guys are made so obvious. The Diablo universe adresses the dichotomy of good an evil which is probably my favorite philosophical debate. Ok I promise I won't go off-topic anymore lol.
Diablo 3 would be a perfect opportunity to set up the diablo franchise for an MMO. It would be able to accomplish the same things that w3 did to set up WoW. I don't know if this would be good for the diablo games as a whole (hopefully they don't really skew the diablo storyline just to accomadate this), but I have little doubt it would be good for blizzards bank.
If blizzard was to change any of their games storylines around to accomadate a new genre, I'd rather see a starcraft MMOFPS. But I don't even know if another game company has been able to make such a game.
Why not just insert all of the 'dynamically changing world, quests, endings etc.' into a non-MMO Diablo? What would be the problem then?
Quote from "Airandius" »
RPG = Role Playing Game; you asume the role of a character (in this case a hero)
Incredible explanation.
Quote from "Airandius" »
Around 4 people playing will be enough. We do have to realize Blizzard makes games for more lower end computers, so that more people can play it.
If 4 heroes were on your screen casting sick spells, it would result in a fps drop.
But for lower end pc it would lag like.. well alot.
Brilliant as well.
Diablo is NOT an rpg.
Paladin88, 04.04.2009 - Gamer Extraordinaire
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Quote from "KonataX" »
lol it can still easily be a ranger since who said you cant shoot arrows at melee distance xD
Quote from "Archie" »
The Barbarian is from Arreat, a very cold snowy mountain top, but they are much tougher than normal humans, so they don't need warmth.
Quote from "Archie" »
Where are Barbarians originally from? Sumeria, or more specifically Mesopotamia, AKA Europe. Think the Alps and the Pyrenees
It was made to be a single player game (Diablo 1). Diablo 2 also followed this line but online play was also of good quality.
I think Diablo 3 will be around the same lines as Diablo 2. Around 4 people playing will be enough. We do have to realize Blizzard makes games for more lower end computers, so that more people can play it.
If 4 heroes were on your screen casting sick spells, it would result in a fps drop.
But for lower end pc it would lag like.. well alot.
I wont mind, but diablo is and will always be a low-multiplayer/singleplayer game.
Don't dare comparing it with WoW.
----
Little input: Diablo 1, 2 and 3 are all RPG games.
I have seen far to many posts with poeple saying it's not.
RPG does not mean online.
RPG = Role Playing Game; you asume the role of a character (in this case a hero).
Most people compare it with I think MMORPG = Massif Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (As in World of Warcraft).
Google it up if you want.
I see no substance to your first argument. Before Warcraft was ever an MMO, it was a RTS game. Did anyone think that when Warcraft 3 came out it was definite MMO material? I know back then that I certainly didn't imagine Blizzard getting into the MMO market, and I can recall many people being very sceptical about how good WoW would be after it was announced.
Quote from "Lydeck" »
As far as people talking about MMO races:
If there was a Diablo MMO, there would not be multiple races. You would be human, and that is it, but there would be a huge plethora of classes.
It would make absolutely no sense to let people be demons and angels. That's not what Diablo has ever been about.
I think this could somewhat depend on how the Diablo 3 story is told. Referencing the novels, it could be realistic to suggest that at a certain point the Naphalem could harness their powers enough to be able to fight angels and demons alike. We see this at the end of The Veiled Prophet where the edyrem are going toe to toe with the immortals during the last battle. Based on what Uldyssian was capable of doing towards the end of the Trilogy, and assuming that a MMO Diablo would take place in the world of Sanctuary, it is conceivable to think that the Naphalem would have some sort of advantage from being in their own realm, thus leveling the playing field even more.
All I am saying is that it's possible that Blizzard could completely open up this storyline if they felt that it would make a great game. As I've said, it's presumable - lore wise - that all three "races" could be equal. And since the Nephalem are capable of spreading their powers to others, it's safe to assume that many of Sanctuary's inhabitants would be "hero-like," hince the MMO feel. Can you imagine what that kind of PvP would be like?:D
another major major difference people say WoW is a grind is you will never see a char go from lvl 1-75 in less than a day like you can in D2... mabey a month if your good at questing and stuff but then that can kinda be considered a grind if you get to be that good lol.
But im not advocating WoW... Alot of people like grinding... im just saying what Dimebog said is very true.
-Leoric of Khanduras, The Craft of War
Yes, but questing is a big part of Diablo, and pretty much everyone argues that it's not about reaching a certain goal, but going there, and replaying that. In MMO's (at least in WoW) questing is the smallest part of the game. They're basically a tutorial that prepares the player for real content.
EDIT: Oh, and random quests in D3 (from single-player perspective) are nothing different in concept than D1 random quests. But I really can't think of them as a bad thing. Sure, it might get boring, but how do those set 27 quests in D2 don't?
WotLK quests are unlike pre bc, and bc... cuz they almost take you right into the main story right away... especially if you do dk... for questing purposes WotLK has got the best layout so far cuz they are actually very story compelling and intreguing at points with many apperances from the Lich King... but i also do think that blizzard realizes that WoW is going to lose its thunder with the defeat of Arthas... So many people are complaining that Arthas is what made WoW.. im not one of them but i have heard this alot... so is why i think they are comming out with games in the other two franchises and another MMO. Blizzard knows it needs to come out with a kick azz SC 2 and Diablo 3. I do think they still want to be knowen as Blizzard Entertainment not WoW entertainment... and if so they really do need to do a GREAT job in these other two titles... because these communities have made alot of people into WoW haters... and if they mess up with D3 and SC2 they might turn into Blizz haters.
-Leoric of Khanduras, The Craft of War
Was that all added in WotLK? I honestly had no idea it even added sequences. Are those similar to cutscenes or something? Or is it a string of quests?
Hm... Maybe I'm just misinterpreting what you said, but you did say that quests is how people level up in WoW. If so, than aren't they integral, and not a small part?
Ah, like the ones that aren't in the direct storyline, but can be activated by going to a certain place of talking to a certain NPC? I was thinking by "randomized" they meant an endless array of cookie-cutter quests that randomly appear. Like for instance, you kill a really unique monster and it drops some random quest item and you go through a cookie-cutter quest following that. Since they'd be cookie-cutter, the game could take pieces from databases or files and make new, random quests from cookie-cutter quest pieces, like kill this monster and get this item, or return this item to this NPC. Oh well.
They weren't boring to me the first few time through but yeah, after that all I wanted to bother doing was getting leveled up so I could MF, find items, help other people with stuff, etc. That's when people basically just get in to the rushing mentality.
I mean, I still go through them all every now and then when I just feel like running a mode with a new character, but nothing like the first time I went through them.
I think you would like the KotOR MMO that Bioware is coming out with... every class has a different story line and from what i understand you lvl up pretty much the whole way through quests and almost all the questing is different for each class. And one of the biggest plusses is there is not $/month lol!
-Leoric of Khanduras, The Craft of War
You level up from 70 to 80 in a week. In Diablo, you level constantly, that's all you do.
Probably a mix of both. They said they are reimplementing the feature from D1. Basically, a set of quests either spawned or didn't spawn when you started playing D1 again. In multiplayer terms, it probably means that when you host a game, a random factor decides which quests that are not essential to the main storyline ones will be spawned. It's just that we expect the scope and variety of random quests to be larger, and made better with the fact that monsters and small events are also completely random (in D2, you always knew where to find which monster, but not like it made a difference either).
I think the two in-game things that scare people the most about MMO's is the grinding and the dependence on other players to gain substantial progress in both story and statistics (i.e more hit points, more damage etc...). As an action RPG I don't believe that Diablo 3 should have any of these elements, but what I would like to see is an attempt from Blizzard to give me enough to do so that getting to level 99 isn't repititious.
Diablo 2 is a great game no question about it, but a fundamental flaw in the game for me is that by level 33 I already know everything about the storyline and what happens. At this point I can decide to play through the game again on a higher difficulty to continue leveling but ultimately what's the point? The reason I play RPG games is for story and progression, but I can't say that I like progression for progression's sake alone. I need some kind of "convincing," if you will, that there will be more things to come that I need to prepare myself for.
The way that WoW has implemented this is dwarfed by none in my opinion. The game is easy to learn, hard to master, and they don't tell you everything withing the first 33% of your characters journey to max level. I believe that you can please more people this way because you're still hooking the players that love the character progression, but also luring players that need more than just numbers to encourage them to play. Now is that an "MMO" philosophy? I'm not asking to be required to spend 5 hours a day to get anything meaningful accomplished; the game can still revolve around a single player or small groups. But at the very least the storyline should be strected out much farther than the first 33 levels of gameplay.
Would each faction have a special quest line and storyline to follow? It's tricky to ponder about.
I actually used to wonder that myself, but I don't think it's hard for Blizzard to just simply add new content with new heroes and villians. Having said that, I just finished The Sin War Trilogy in exactly 8 days (couldn't put it down) and I was beyond impressed. It has so many moving parts which open up so many possibilities for story archs and progression; much more than the Warcraft storyline ever had. In my opinion this franchise has MMO written all over it.
To bring this back to my original point though, I really want to see the story spread over more of my characters career. One thing that Diablo 3 should take from WoW that has nothing to do with MMO's, in my opinion, is how they dealt with story progression versus character progression.
That's the exact same thing that crossed my mind when I finished the series. I have a feeling the Nephalem, or the Edyrem in the Sin War books will be making yet another appearance - probably in the end of Diablo III, therefore setting up the MMO quite nicely.
I really hope you are right on this. In my opinion Blizzard has gotten only about 10% of what they could potentially get from the lore that they've created about Sanctuary. The best thing about it is that they keep it very political, and Knaak stresses many times that all good is not good. The Nephelem give the story so much more life because there isn't a clear linear progression to the story like in WoW where the good guys and bad guys are made so obvious. The Diablo universe adresses the dichotomy of good an evil which is probably my favorite philosophical debate. Ok I promise I won't go off-topic anymore lol.
Paladin88, 04.04.2009 - Gamer Extraordinaire
If there was a Diablo MMO, there would not be multiple races. You would be human, and that is it, but there would be a huge plethora of classes.
It would make absolutely no sense to let people be demons and angels. That's not what Diablo has ever been about.
CyberPunk RP Nexus
If blizzard was to change any of their games storylines around to accomadate a new genre, I'd rather see a starcraft MMOFPS. But I don't even know if another game company has been able to make such a game.
Incredible explanation.
Brilliant as well.
Paladin88, 04.04.2009 - Gamer Extraordinaire
I see no substance to your first argument. Before Warcraft was ever an MMO, it was a RTS game. Did anyone think that when Warcraft 3 came out it was definite MMO material? I know back then that I certainly didn't imagine Blizzard getting into the MMO market, and I can recall many people being very sceptical about how good WoW would be after it was announced.
I think this could somewhat depend on how the Diablo 3 story is told. Referencing the novels, it could be realistic to suggest that at a certain point the Naphalem could harness their powers enough to be able to fight angels and demons alike. We see this at the end of The Veiled Prophet where the edyrem are going toe to toe with the immortals during the last battle. Based on what Uldyssian was capable of doing towards the end of the Trilogy, and assuming that a MMO Diablo would take place in the world of Sanctuary, it is conceivable to think that the Naphalem would have some sort of advantage from being in their own realm, thus leveling the playing field even more.
All I am saying is that it's possible that Blizzard could completely open up this storyline if they felt that it would make a great game. As I've said, it's presumable - lore wise - that all three "races" could be equal. And since the Nephalem are capable of spreading their powers to others, it's safe to assume that many of Sanctuary's inhabitants would be "hero-like," hince the MMO feel. Can you imagine what that kind of PvP would be like?:D
CyberPunk RP Nexus