It's well over a year too late.
They probably saw the success and good press over the console releases and realized how much better the game was on consoles with the year of needed polish, minus the AH. Whoops!
If Jay Wilson was less of a yes man and less of an inferior designer then maybe this nonsense would have never happened. Forget the whole not having a proper beta test. Just the whole fact that they thought they could have an AH system WITHOUT bind on equip items just blows my mind. It was a major failure on several fronts. Unfortunately, it was obviously going to be such a massive failure and yet Blizzard still went forward with it.
Now you are going to have the gold AH get taken down with a completely dumbed down version battle.net supporting the trade community. Trading might become even worse than it was in D2. Trading in D2 was perfectly fine, but your comparing a system created in 2012 thats inferior to one thats older by over a decade.
It's hard to believe that some of you thought trading in D2 was bad. It wasn't. Hell, even if you wanted to buy an item from a 3rd party site it was quick, easy and secure. Plus trading with other players or banks was a fun and interesting experience. If you couldn't find what you needed after hours of looking, you were either completely incompetant or there just wasnt any stock availible.
An entire player driven economy was created on its own with D2 and the game lasted for a decade, and here some of you are upset that they aborted this disaster they call an AH. Some of you are not true Diablo fans. For shame.
- asfastasican
- Registered User
-
Member for 15 years and 10 months
Last active Mon, Dec, 14 2015 17:20:57
- 2 Followers
- 450 Total Posts
- 23 Thanks
-
Sep 20, 2013asfastasican posted a message on Diablo III Auction House is Shutting Down on March 18, 2014Posted in: News
-
Jun 3, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Power Leveling, Item Level Update, User Questions Answered, Blue Posts, and Diablo WallpaperI'm surprised some people are offended by power leveling. There are much more offensive things that players are doing and Blizzard is doing. lol.Posted in: News
As for this magical 35 point list, it's in my personal opinion that if you did every single one of those 35 things, you would not even increase the fun or replayability of this game one bit. What a worthless feel-good fluffy-puff list of changes. It's crap like that that lets the dev team look like they are listening to player concerns while not hitting the real problems hard. It must be so nice to be a Diablo 3 dev where all you have to do is make a game for the nice WoW crowd that the WoW devs pulled in and give them what little you can to please them. Sounds like a year-long vacation to me. You give them a patch every 6 months and they just smile, endure through the awful parts of your game and then bake you a sheet of fresh cupcakes. -
May 31, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Global Play Reminders, Blue Posts, Diablo III API Update, Sword of Justice Issue #4, Speed KillsPosted in: NewsQuote from DarkSzero
I lol'd at the Athene video. Never saw any video of him before, but it's so obvious he's just trolling everyone and not being serious.
Yeah, only a handful of WoW players think Athene is a jerk irl. He just puts on a show for people and plays the part. Gotta get dem views!
It's like telling someone that Simon Cowell was a real a-hole when American Idol first came out. He's a nice dude irl. -
May 13, 2012asfastasican posted a message on What Is Diablo III, Character Profiles ,EU Install Client Update, Jay on Items, Blue Posts, Soundtrack----Posted in: News
-
May 13, 2012asfastasican posted a message on What Is Diablo III, Character Profiles ,EU Install Client Update, Jay on Items, Blue Posts, SoundtrackFinally! A Diablo 3 video that has good in-game footage of finalized zones! I am satisfied in that regard.Posted in: News
That Eternal Conflict track was alright. The intro was alittle meh and almost sounded like a below-average ocremix.org remix with the instrumental... but it got better towards the end.
Good job on reporting all of this information every day up until launch guys. -
May 11, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Full List of Achievements, Monster Affixes, Item Affixes, and More, Interviews, Blue PostsPosted in: NewsDesign
- The Health Orbs system comes from the very first game Jay has worked on - Blood.
- One of the lessons that they learned in development was people’s memories of Diablo II were way different than the reality of Diablo II. People remember all kinds of stuff that never actually happened in that game. They remember what it was like in hell difficulty. They don’t remember what it was like in normal difficulty. They remember something that's visually darker than it ever was. They remember a variety and depth of monsters that was never there.
- One of Jay's mantras is, if you’re going to be an M-rated game, don’t be a soft M. Embrace it. Sometimes they had to push people — "you can be gorier than that, you can be grosser than that, go more in!"
As much as I like Dustin Browder or try to respect guys like Wilson, I never really understood why they had to include stupid gimmicky mechanics from their former, much less successful games. It's fine if Blizzard wants to take a feature that actually adds gameplay value to the game and reinterate it, that's cool. That's Blizzard's method. They did a lot of that sort of thing when creating Warcraft III and WoW. Most of their other games just took concepts from their own titles (a.k.a. town portal scrolls from Diablo I being in Warcraft III.)
I disagree with them acting the players that actually played D2 (not the ones that claim a bunch of crap and talk nonsense) have somehow forgotten how their game experience was. They could only get away with saying something like this, because this is a Wall Street Journal article and they have no clue about what manner they should present information about their game in for WSJ. I could argue that a large handful of the D3 devs game simply didn't play D2 enough or didn't take it as seriously. Diablo 2 isn't just DARK because of a shitty brightness level setting. It also had mutilated/tortured/ severed human corpses all over the landscapes and as doodads. Maybe the devs have conveniently forgotten that those existed to make the game more of a "Soft-M" type a game? How ironic. Let's just hope that I just have Beta Syndrome.
As for "underexplored barbarians" and "no evil heroes," I'll just chalk that up to Jay's dev team not understanding Diablo 2 at all. Many players look to the D2 barbarian as extremely bad-ass and will see the D3 as softspoken. Sorry Jay. Moon Physics and partical-effects are a cheap way to show off imaginary strength. Go watch the Avengers a 10th time and maybe you'll see how the Hulk should be portrayed properly. I think it's hilarious how it seems like the devs had a more clearer understanding of how their characters should be portrayed 3 years ago. We went from "characters that exist in a morally grey setting to "this character is a good guy or is a rebel good guy that used to be apart of a larger group of peers." I'd link the youtube where they discuss that several years ago, but I'mpretty sure it was the 2009 Blizzcon Diablo 3 Lore Panel and I couldn't find it on youtube. -
May 3, 2012asfastasican posted a message on RMAH Information, Monk Animation Changes, Male VS Female Animations, New Skill Videos, Blue PostsI like how you guys are pointing out fractions of seconds of images that mean absolutely nothing, when the most important clip was in 00:11-00:12 of the first commercial.Posted in: News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ZA7NLSRhg&feature=player_embedded#t=10s
As for the monk stuff, these so-called changes are somewhat unnecessary and the animations were fine as they were.
Think about it. Can any of you even remember the differences by memory where your barbarian's bash or hammer of the ancients had a different animations when wielding different weapons? Chances are, you can't. As far as I remember, most (if not all) of the Barbarian skills don't look any different and don't depend on what weapons are equipped. Also, can you remember if your Wizard did something different when casting one spell with different weapons are equipped? Yes? No? Maybe? Can't remember? Why is the monk any different?
Whatever they decide on last-minute doesn't matter too much, as long as the animations are high quality. It makes me shake my head is when I hear news about them changing something insignificant 1-2 weeks before the game is released. It makes them look indecisive and inefficient. I don't think there's any part about this game where they actually had a gameplan from the start and executed it with any sort of confidence. It sounds like it's been 6 years of shooting from the hip.
God bless the programming, art, and cinematic teams though. At least they still create high quality work and maintain a level of consistency that's to be expected from the Blizzard brand. -
May 1, 2012asfastasican posted a message on New Diablo TV Commercial - It’s Not Safe, Jay Wilson Interviews, Wizard Sigil UnlockI'm sure the 100% unlock will be nice, but the commercials certaintly aren't giving me Nerd Chills ™. They are pretty meh to me for a couple of reasons.Posted in: News
1. There's no in-game footage. Sure, Blizzard makes great cinematics just like Squaresoft and some other developers, but why sell a game or even base a game on cinematics? These commercials rely entirely on brand-recognition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTSxUPJtIjQ
For some reason, no matter how tired, sick or jaded I am, either my hair stands on end or my blood starts flowing when i watch this nearly 10 year-old trailer. I have a funny feeling it's because it's a trailer is pretty much 90% in-game footage and also because the narrator saying "Blizzard Entertainment proudly invites you..."
2. A good sign of a bad movie is usually when a commercial or trailer shows you most of the plot in one session. I'm getting alittle bit of that vibe from D3. Even though SC2 had a polished SP experience, it's trailers and reveals were put out their in trailers and even artwork before the game was released. It was a precursor to finding out that the story was pretty meh and that Blizzard is slowly losing their talent at "world-building."
God bless you if you are getting excited over seeing Imperious rendered in a cinematic. I'm a little curious now to see how they would render heaven, if they render heaven, in-game. Stll, personally I know that it's more about what Imperius does and his dialogue that will shape how good the story is, and possibly even some of the gameplay elements. -
Mar 31, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Inferno Monster Levels No Longer Linear, More Fansite Q&A, Bashiok on Runes, Blizzard Facebook*facepalm*Posted in: News
I blows my mind how this dev team has been learning such basic design lessons as they are making this stupid game. Those guys really thought flat difficulty would work? Were you born yesterday? What another big waste of time. I sometimes think the Blizzard North team knew more about game design than this Irvine team does with 12 years of hindsight. Of course you need difficulty progression. DUH! Blizzard needs to hire Captain obvious on the D3 team or something.
All they need to god-damn do is make the last act an open-ended act with non-linear progression. That's all they need to do. It's so obvious to me and I pointed it out in my gigantic rant post about how I would make this game. Normal difficulty progression up until the last act with a non-linear structure. To bad they were too full of themselves to realize something was wrong a month and as half before release. Such amatuers. -
Mar 28, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Diablo 3 - From a modders perspective, Interview with a Fan Artist - Tepes, Curse Gaming BracketThe music in the modder video was great. Not really sure about the actual video though. Maybe if an actual mod was in the works, all of the dissecting would be more interesting.Posted in: News
-
Mar 6, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Wizard Spells, Enemies Will Do Double Damage, Twitter, ERROR_315300, GDC and CeBITDoubling mob damage during early levels, probably the most productive change this entire beta. Took them long enough. Maybe normal won't be a several act long tutorial afterall. Diablo willing...Posted in: News
-
Jan 25, 2012asfastasican posted a message on No BlizzCon in 2012 - Battle.net World ChampionshipToo bad there's no more Warcraft III. I'm only mentioning that seeing as though we now only have two games to watch.Posted in: News
-
Jan 25, 2012asfastasican posted a message on No BlizzCon in 2012 - Battle.net World ChampionshipToo bad there's no more Warcraft III. I'm only mentioning that seeing as though we now only have two games to watch.Posted in: News
-
Jan 14, 2012asfastasican posted a message on Development Article Soon, What's NOT Delaying the Game, Zarhym on "The Big Meeting"I apologize if this post or several of my former posts make me look like a negative nancy, but i have one question to ask. Zarhym is a diablo 3 community manager, correct? Is he a WoW community manager? Either way, I'm pretty sure he's a CM. Pardon me if I'm wrong in assuming that he is, but if he is, it's my opinion that this guy should be fired.Posted in: News
I honestly hope he helps out a lot with the project behind the scenes, because I haven't seen exactly what he contributes as a community manager. He's rather incompetant. I've mostly seen him trolling or writing walls of text like the ones above. If he knows what kind of fan base he is dealing with, he would know better and say very little in response to legitmate concerns. He should just reply with a few threads and be brief. He should stick to the point. Any of the diablo fan mods could easily do his job and do it in a more professional manner.
It's ok for celebrities to have a little fun with their twitter, but even they know better. Celebrities don't post on twitter for the sole purpose of getting their rocks off on writing pointless walls of text replying to people that want whatever they're selling. This is his actual job. The other Blizzard CM's do a pretty damn good job in comparison. Karune anyone? Remember his endless Q&A's he supplied to the starcraft 2 fanbase before it was released? He was excellent and professional. This Zarhym guy is a complete joke.
At least Bashiok has been somewhat forcoming and honest about the game not being ready yet and i'm not a big Bashiok fan in the first place. He deserves some credit for being professional. -
Dec 9, 2011asfastasican posted a message on Simplified Skill TooltipsThis blue post makes me shake my head. Is it really necessary to post about such minor design decisions? They have developed WoW for more than 6 years and have recently introduced simplified tooltips for low level skills. Nobody needed any explanation when they added them in WoW. Players could simply toggle the low level simplified tips on and off. Why didn't they just do this in the first place instead of double guessing themselves? Does it really warrant a blue post instead of a heads up in patch notes?Posted in: News
And about the website detailing every skill in length, that's been standard Blizzard practice for well over 10 years. Its something to appreciate and praise, but not get excited about.
Their job is to make the skills fun. If they succeed in making the skills fun, players will only need a simple description. If they want to go digging for information for the skills they love using, they can go research it. New players or casual players honestly won't care how many points of damage bash will do. They will just keep bashing the bad guys and stare at the enemy's red health bar. Other kinds of players will obsess over the numbers. Those types of players will understand the mechanics of the skills, then go look up the level by level numbers and statistics. Everyone leaves satisfied. Make the skills fun! Focusing your design around tooltips will not make a great game!
They should just get to releasing the game asap. Them nitpicking over easy design decisions is silly and it worries me. I hope the devs are on the same page with themselves at this point. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
0
They probably saw the success and good press over the console releases and realized how much better the game was on consoles with the year of needed polish, minus the AH. Whoops!
If Jay Wilson was less of a yes man and less of an inferior designer then maybe this nonsense would have never happened. Forget the whole not having a proper beta test. Just the whole fact that they thought they could have an AH system WITHOUT bind on equip items just blows my mind. It was a major failure on several fronts. Unfortunately, it was obviously going to be such a massive failure and yet Blizzard still went forward with it.
Now you are going to have the gold AH get taken down with a completely dumbed down version battle.net supporting the trade community. Trading might become even worse than it was in D2. Trading in D2 was perfectly fine, but your comparing a system created in 2012 thats inferior to one thats older by over a decade.
It's hard to believe that some of you thought trading in D2 was bad. It wasn't. Hell, even if you wanted to buy an item from a 3rd party site it was quick, easy and secure. Plus trading with other players or banks was a fun and interesting experience. If you couldn't find what you needed after hours of looking, you were either completely incompetant or there just wasnt any stock availible.
An entire player driven economy was created on its own with D2 and the game lasted for a decade, and here some of you are upset that they aborted this disaster they call an AH. Some of you are not true Diablo fans. For shame.
0
0
1. Understanding what combos actually do, like, for real.
2. Getting used to weapon swapping in combat (having two sets of weapon skills to mess around with during a fight)
3. Using dodge often and using it correctly.
If you get a handle on working in combos, swapping between two weapons in combat and dodging during that entire time, You'll see the appeal of what Guild Wars 2 has to offer.
Now, if you honestly and truely have gotten a handle on these things, and you still want to argue with walls of text about how you don't like it, then maybe the game really isn't for you. Or maybe you're just a goober. Not sure which tbh.
NOW if you want to complain that the game gets grindy past lv 30 or about how it's not like WoW (LOL?), then MAYBE you can make an arguement about it. I mostly see opinions and jibber jabber in the OP's post.
If it's not your cup of tea, no big. There's a crapton of games that have been released this past year.
1
They had three options when making this game.
1. Take Diablo 2's approach. Accept that you can't make an actual viable end-game with Diablo 2's model, but totally embrace the real facet of Diablo 2 that KEPT people playing for up to a decade. Encourage fun builds and class design that encourage players to make alts. The replaybaility comes from doing the same content, but with hundreds of different playstyles.
(The D3 dev team chose not to do this by butchering the skill system and making particular skills nessecary for basic survival. Every class is essentially the same playstyle no matter what you want to have your build be before you reach Inferno.)
2. Condemn Diablo 2's act-based/linear progression and make Diablo 3 a game with a more open world feel to it. You wouldn't necessarily have to "make it WoW" or other games, but make it so the progression isn't glued together with checkpoints or waypoints or tied down by quest-based progression. If Act 4 was an open-ended act instead of a rushed act with only 3 noticeable segments, there could have been tons more replayability. The replayability would have been in the "end-game" content, a.k.a. an open ended region of Heaven. Hell, Diablo 1 was basically 16 dungeon levels and DID have quests, but it wasn't quest-driven like Diablo 2 was. Who says Diablo 3 couldnt be more open-ended?
(The D3 dev team decided to go with checkpoint-based progression, thus completely destroying any notion or chance of having an open ended area anywhere in the game.)
3. Do what they did to develop Diablo 3, by stubbornly trying to reinvent the wheel several times during development, reject fan feedback, relearning extremely basic facets of game design and make themselves look misguided without leadership and inferior to D2's development team even with 12 years of hindsight. Doing things this way, made it sure they couldn't even "know" if their game was fun or not up until the last 6 months. After reaching that point of no return, with added pressure from investors and fans alike, they completely trashed and scrapped together the game's most basic systems and assume that there would be great replayability, just because.
(Blizzard chose this option and now some of you are sitting here pretty clueless as to why you don't want to log on and several more popular and prominent "Gaming figures" are talking about how to fix the game on their boring livestreams.)
Here's a spoiler for you all. You can't fix stupid. You also can't fix this game when the devs had several chances to fix it for a few years before it was even released. Oh yeah, thinking that you can somehow get them to fix it at this point is also stupid. You don't work at Blizzard and several very sane and accomplished game designers wouldn't go there unless they were offered a substantial pay raise.
I wouldn't blame someone for going to work for the new Blizzard at this point, if it meant that they could get the money to support their significant others or their family or if they just want a new house. I'd be perfectly fine with that. But you see, that's the real heart of this problem. The new Blizzard is mostly (not all) game designers that are just there to make games and treat it as a livelihood instead of a passionate place to work.
0
I do agree with this point you made. It's amazing how a very unique series-defining feature that was developed 12 years ago was somehow considered worthless and not added to the 3rd game. It's basically pissing away the game's potential and replayability right from the get-go.
And if someone honestly thinks there's enough randomness to the maps as it is now, well then I won't bother arguing with them! I'll just play other games with more heaps more replayability and leave them to their variety-less game. :/
0
Huh? What? Your post contradicts itself. First you say you don't like the people whining but then you say you miss a lot of stuff from D2. Be sympathetic!
And why hate on complainers when all you just did was complain about some feature in a 12 year old game? I mean really? Did those charms steal your lunch money as a kid? Why pick on old man Diablo 2?
MAN! I REALLY hated those STUPID books from Diablo 1! That whole spell system was REALLY stupid! Why was a WARRIOR able to learn the same spells a MAGE could learn too? THAT CRAP MADE NO SENSE! If Blizzard brings back those spell books in Diablo 3, I'm just gonna have to choke a bitch!
1
Congratulations. I'm happy you'll be using $60 on something more important.
*Achievement Unlocked* [Escape from Hell] +10 points!
And to the poster above, it's entirely possible to get more than 60 hours of gametime from a multiplayer game. Most of them are free-to-play too. Just because some people can get more than 60 hours from a non-Blizzard game doesn't mean you should get butthurt about it. Some people just refuse to deal with bugs and poor account security. That doesn't make them whiny bitches for wanting a perfectly legal refund. It just makes them smart consumers.
Also, talking about how players (or even devs) shouldn't be "doing the same thing over and over or their skills will deteriorate" is pretty asinine. Blizzard made their money and will keep making it with the RMAH, whenever the hell that's coming out. Blizzard achieved their goal, but that doesn't mean this guy should not get a refund.
0
As for this magical 35 point list, it's in my personal opinion that if you did every single one of those 35 things, you would not even increase the fun or replayability of this game one bit. What a worthless feel-good fluffy-puff list of changes. It's crap like that that lets the dev team look like they are listening to player concerns while not hitting the real problems hard. It must be so nice to be a Diablo 3 dev where all you have to do is make a game for the nice WoW crowd that the WoW devs pulled in and give them what little you can to please them. Sounds like a year-long vacation to me. You give them a patch every 6 months and they just smile, endure through the awful parts of your game and then bake you a sheet of fresh cupcakes.
0
1
0
Yeah, only a handful of WoW players think Athene is a jerk irl. He just puts on a show for people and plays the part. Gotta get dem views!
It's like telling someone that Simon Cowell was a real a-hole when American Idol first came out. He's a nice dude irl.
0
Yeah, because you have 10k health in inferno. You must be so clever!
2
DO YOU WANT A BUILD THAT...
- Actually let's you have fun in Inferno with a Barbarian?
- Might actually convince you to keep playing the game after you have gotten bored of it?
- Is not gear dependent?
- Has a high skill ceiling and leaves plenty of room for micro?
- Let's you and your barb friends not cry salty tears of sadness in Act 2 or beyond?
- Will let you solo in peace but allow you to be an interesting group member?
- Allows for MF gear or any other quirky stat you prefer?
- Allows you to blame nobody for your death but yourself?
If you answered YES to any of these questions...
THEN YOU SHOULD USE "THE FED-UP THROWING BARB BUILD!"
http://d3db.com/tool...barbarian/25386
After clicking that link, you are either faceplaming, laughing or just blankly staring at the screen. Good for you and congratulations!
I made this build because I got bored of the Barbarian game becoming "Get these skills now or you are road kill." That crap is boring as hell! Since when did Blizzard think its was a great idea to make it so leaping into melee range was a bad idea?
"Oh shame on you! You walked up to a mob as a Barbarian and died because of it! What were you thinking!? You made the mistake of trying to do damage as a melee character. I hope you have learned your lesson, you silly barbarian, you!"
Do you want to know what my response to Blizzard lecturing us is?
SCREW THAT CRAP!
Instead of being bored as crap by dealing with inferior class design, I have decided to change all of Diablo 3 into an exciting and fun mini-game of Throwing Weapon Whack-a-Mole! Ohhhhh yeeeeeah!
WHAT DOES THIS BUILD DO FOR YOU?
It lets you use ancient spear and weapon throw to deal damage from far range while constantly feeding you rage to do so. On top of all of that, it gives you the ability to weaken, slow and kite the monsters around while killing them in a reliably fast and fun fashion. You stay alive by using sprint so you don't need to necessarily go sword and board. Throw in a cooldown like Call of the Ancients to spice things up and you got yourself a build that doesn't have you on your knees, praying and selling your soul to the infamous demigod, Revenge.
BUT WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO TO MAKE THIS BUILD WORK?
Well the steps are...
1. Equip a two handed weapon
2. ???
3. Profit!
Yep! That's right! All you need is reckless high damage rating and two brain cells to rub together in around to sprint around and chuck crap at the bad guys. You can even have movement speed boots, Magic find gear, gold find gear, or any other silly stat you are fond of.
YOUR SETUP IS...
Weapon Throw [Mighty Throw]
Sprint [Run like the Wind] (or other runes if needed)
Ancient Spear [Skirmish]
Threatening Shout [Intimidate]
War Cry [Invigorate] (Or another rune if you somehow think regen on the run is a bad thing)
Call of the Ancients [The Council Rises] (Or another Rage cooldown skill that you prefer)
RUTHLESS!
NO ESCAPE!
UNFORGIVING! (... unless you want another passive that's more helpful to you)
TIPS OF THE TRADE
- Use Ancient spear to build rage and do damage and constantly use it on cooldown.
- Pay attention to see if Ancient Spear resets itself with a critical hit
- Whenever you are not running, you can stop to shift+attack or left click attack the bad guys when you are at a safe distance.
- Use threatening shout and war cry on cooldown to build up rage and to slow/weaken mobs that are closeby.
- Never run up to a mob to debuff them if you're not sprinting. Debuff them if they are advancing towards you instead.
- Pop sprint liberally to keep distance between you and the bad guys and to do damage to them with dem tornados.
- Use Call of the Ancients to help deal with elites, champions or certain phases of boss fights.
GOOD LUCK AND ENJOY YOUR NEW "THROWING DART BOARD" MINI GAME!
0
In America's fruitless and pointless defense, they typically don't make many XXXL shirts for anything in the first place.
Don't bash on America! They invented the t-shirt afterall! Irony!
1
Back then, players embraced the fine little details, because every one of their releases were god-damned fantastic and they were hands down the best PC game developer. You could have put a couple of other companies next to them in comparison, but back then Valve only had one strong franchise, that being Half-Life. Blizzard had three, so other companies couldn't really match up to them, pound for pound.
Nowadays, a lot of Blizzard fans, both old and new, both worry that games like SC2 or D3 have been tarnished simply because Blizzard has been working on WoW for SOOO long. The fact of the matter is that there was roughly a 7 year gap (July 2003, TFT's release - July 2010, SC2's release) where Blizzard had most of their developmental man-power working on WoW. Entire franchies have had trilogies done in that amount of development time (such as Mass Effect or Gears of War, for example,) so it's perfectly normal for a group of fans to critique Blizzard from a number of angles.
If your company stopped making cake for 7 years and made Pizza instead, wouldn't you be apprehensive if they said they were going to make the next best cake sometime later this year?
So yeah, people nitpick the graphics, game mechanics and sever stability and compare those situations to what we have in WoW. I mean, hello? They even have server downtime for Diablo 3 on Tuesdays? Don't you think it's perfectly reasonable to compare the two products?