DiabloFans

Quote from trocadero_fuerte

And I'll counter that Torchlight 1 was utterly shit. Talk about calcified, no room for innovation, me-too garbage. Torchlight 2 is better, though.

Maybe, but it was also the best ARPG released in the year it came out, as was Torchlight II! If only that was saying more.

I thought Torchlight 1 was decent enough for a game that was developed in less than a year by a dozen or so people.

Big corporations like Blizzard tend to attract people that are really, really good at writing exposition on a released product that seems generally reasonable, and almost insightful, and almost totally irrelevant in terms of being able to fix hard-wired design decisions.

They don't attract people that fight to clean up these messes back when politically powerful people are still attached to them before release.

Quick pop quiz - how many ARPGs did Jay, Wilson and this guy collectively work on before D3?

I'd like to thank all the "anti-elitists" for sharing on this thread.

They can go back to freecell, farmville and minesweeper now. Thanks!

Quote from Henno

Is there a chance to delete this thread?

There's a chance, but this isn't battle.net, so adult, well-reasoned posts without personal attacks that actually discuss the series usually stay up. Sorry.

Quote from Bagstone

To all the people claiming that Diablo 3 was already developed for consoles: That's BS.

Actually, this is a case where the haters/conspiracy types are accidentally right.

Look at Wilson's credit list, look at the credits of the other folks that made the game. Almost all of them are industry pros that joined Blizzard 2006-2008, and have not worked on PC exclusive titles before. Think about it - almost everyone's background is in working on platform-agnostic (usually PC and major consoles) titles. It's a little silly to expect them to think differently, seeing as how there's only one person left on the team that worked on Diablo II as of release. That PC-centric ARPG culture left (along with a few other key things) with Blizzard North. Blizzard Irvine has their own PC-centric development cultures, but those guys are on the other franchises, and, if they have any seniority and talent, were able to talk their way out of avoiding D3.

Quote from Bleu42

as proven by the CONTINUOUS sales after release.

Really? Currently #49. http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Video-Games-PC-Hardware/zgbs/videogames/229575#3

Glad that the game will finally be available for the audience it was designed for.

Lol, I read the topic and assumed this was a discussion of the game itself.

Quote from bruteMax

That would be Andrew Chambers.

As long as I'm doing some historical clean-up, might as well cover this, someone recently had them mixed up.

There are two Andrew/Andy Chambers, and they've both been associated with both Games Workshop properties and have both worked at Blizzard in the past decade (confused yet?).

Mobygames even conflates them, and wikipedia calls Andy the current "creative director" at Blizzard, which is ridiculous.

Andrew Chambers currently works on the D3 team, and worked with Jay at Cryptic, including a credit on "Homeworld", which is fondly remembered by many gamers.

http://www.blizzplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/blizzcon-2011-andrew-chambers.jpg

Andy Chambers is a writer who worked on Games Workshop's titles, most notably WH40K. He worked as a writer on SC2, but left Blizzard years ago after working there for only a few years.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/f/fa/AndyChambers.jpg/100px-AndyChambers.jpg

He's British, and a little older than Andrew.

I know this confusion was keeping many of you up at night, YWIA.

Quote from overneathe

Rob Pardo is executive producer of Diablo 3. Ex-boss of Jay Wilson and Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard.

He has worked as designer on:
Diablo II
StarCraft
WarCraft II

Sorry, overneathe, but you're way off.

Rob wasn't hired until '97 - meaning he missed War 2 by a good margin, and, also he didn't have a design role on Diablo II, no one in Irvine did. He was on the "strike team", which was basically elite QA, but far from design.

I don't mind revisionist history from the fanbois here, but expect a little more from you.

I stated documented facts, you respond with unsourced, undocumented wiki quotes.

"Only about a dozen Blizzard North people went to Flagship"

"Where you get a "dozen" is beyond me..." uhhh. You're right? It was less? Of course other folks moved on.

"So while none of us know it for fact" Can't argue there.

"Also, bear in mind that concept art is not final art and they almost assuredly did not use the final art from an MMO for a ARPG." Right, concept art for an MMO is totally different from... no... wait...

"D3 development, by Blizzard North, started in 2001, not 2000. Nice attempt to squeeze out another year on the timeline to attempt to make them look even worse."

I'll humor you, even though I've posted this one more than once here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgGGY2DKC08

Go to 8:53.

Seriously, wait for the Craddock book, read it, no apology necessary once you have.

Quote from Xenocow

Quote from Gheed2010

Folks used to that quantity of content may not be terribly satisfied with a game that weighs in at a third of that size.

Ehm?
* You got 3 complete Act's (third comes with the Open Beta).
* Also you got Maps : Path of Exile's end-game areas are items called Maps. They grant limited access to a new world area that can contain great challenges and greater rewards. Like other items, Maps can have random mods that affect their difficulty. For more information, please read this development diary entry about the system.

And i am pretty sure they have way more Stuff on the Road to come. Dont forget, its still beta.

Quote from Gheed2010

"Savior" is a lot of pressure for a team with that level of resources.

For a team of 18 people they done a incredible job to be honest.
Mainly because they listened to the people who actually play the game.

Thats the major flaw in D3... they dont listen.

Right, the maps structure isn't terribly different from TL2's endgame (which uses as a maproom), and, of course, we've heard the "great game for the size of the team" line with that game, too.

I'm just noting that, in this genre, an act feels pretty empty when you only have ten or so monster types populating it, and the PoE experience may seem a little thin for those expecting a significant amount of SP content.

Hopefully, they overcome their weaker spots with the resources they have, and I wish them the best.

Quote from shaggy

The original Blizzard North team, which left and made for Jay Wilson and his team to be hired, spent about 3 years developing D3 as an MMO.

Your entire narrative is more than a little off. Some facts:

- Blizzard clearly stated in their commemorative video from a year ago that development started in 2000.

- Only about a dozen Blizzard North people went to Flagship, from a team of about 60 when it shipped.

- That crew left in summer '03, over two years before the studio was shut down.

- You - and no one outside of people at Blizzard circa 2004/2005 - know absolutely nothing about the nature of the project, its design, or its relative quality, aside from a few screenshots which were obviously part of a background artists portfolio instead of being a real demo of the game (one background art style, fully lit, character art totally deemphasized)

- Vik Lee has clearly dated concept art, released online, from before the studio shutdown, which obviously informed the final look of the game

Of course, the essence of your argument, that they "only had six years" instead of the full dozen, and that this serves as some kind of an excuse, is ridiculous enough even without the assumptions and speculations you stack on top of it. WoW alone had about ten billion dollars in revenue over those six years.

Quote from Betrayed

Path of Exile is our savior, embrace it!

I think PVPers will like it, and it obviously doesn't have some of the glaring design problems of D3 or cutesy graphical issues of TL2, but....

D3, TL2, D2/LoD all have around 100 unique monsters, and at least two dozen unique level types. Folks used to that quantity of content may not be terribly satisfied with a game that weighs in at a third of that size.

"Savior" is a lot of pressure for a team with that level of resources.

Quote from Crashhh1

They don't understand that the game sold 10 million copies at $60 not including RMAH, That's $600 million dollars the game made before RMAH.

Uh... no. Agreed with your point in regards to Bliz's general hugeness and the laughable nature of D3 relative to their resources, BUT, a big chunk of those "sales" were giveaways for WoW year subs, while the ones that weren't didn't make a straight 60 bucks in any case. Also, national TV campaigns aren't free - espn isn't known to give away half-minute slots.

The real point is that WoW has actually revenued more than D3 since release, and done it with much, much better margins. D3 is an R&D experiment/loss leader. It's the rat in the lab, not the dog in the yard (WoW) or cat in the living room (SC).