The item hunt is broken because
1) The items aren't interesting or diverse (made better in 1.0.4).
2) The Auction House provides an extreme shortcut to getting the items you want.
3) The ilvl system is junk. When an individual identifies an ilvl 63 item it could either be the best item in the game or vendor trash. The ilvls should be more spread out, so that when someone gets an ilvl 68 (let's just say that exists) the chance of it being great is pretty high. Instead people are constantly let down by ilvl 63s.
4) There should be more ways to "build" items through reagents. Crafting isn't very well done. Basically you should be able to "hunt" things that aren't weapons or armor in order to slowly create a high level item.
5) Too much focus on champs (made better in 1.0.4).
6) There's too much focus on particular stats. Like with weapons if it doesn't have min/max and %damage it can't be good. Same for AR with armor.
7) As for the low drop rates, it is what it is. If the drop rates were higher you'd have an even bigger problem. I'm not a fan of the AH, I think it's terrible, but the drop rates have to be low because of it.
I have never read such drivel in my life. Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. WoW subscriptions have ALWAYS fluctuated during periods of lack of content. ie. at the end of an expansion. Diablo 3 is a great starting point for a game. Is it the best it could be? Not even close. Is it still one of the best made games in terms of gameplay (not including loot drops, because we all know how crap they are 99.99% of the time)? Probably. It can only get better. The annual pass was merely a way to get players to get Diablo 3 for free if they knew they were still going to be playing WoW for a year. It wasn't forced on you. You had a choice.
Mists of Pandaria will more than likely increase WoW subscriptions by a huge amount, if not bypassing the highest amount of subscriptions WoW has ever had. Blizzard is a great gaming company and they know what they are doing. Did they milk the cash cow with Diablo 3? Yes. Is it biting them in the ass? Yes. Are they going to fix it and make it what it was supposed to be? More than likely.
Troll #1: Bypassing the most they've ever had? LOL nice. WoW subscriptions flucuating? Flucuation is up and down, WoW subscriptions just go downward.
Thank you, OP, for one of the most baseless and frankly hilarious conspiracy theories I've ever seen. Good laugh.
1. D3 (and SC2) were not in development for the entire time between their release and their prequel's release. It was actually more like 3-4 years each or so.
2. a game that lasts a month is a really good game. How many other games actually last that long? The people that managed to play D2 for years are the minority, and even they didn't play every day: they will have taken breaks. Also, you can't say a non-sub game is 'dead': it's something that can just be picked up again at a later date.
3. SC2 poorly accepted? So all those esports and competitions mean nothing, do they?
4. most of those subscribers that WoW lost were from 1 of 2 places: either they went to D3, or they were in the east which uses an entirely different subscription model. Western subs, for the most part, didn't change.
Honestly it's just funny. So many assumptions, no evidence, no logic. Just emotional garbage because you can't handle the fact that your tastes in gaming have changed. You can't take responsibility for yourself: it's always someone else's fault, never yours. Grow up.
Troll #2:
1) The reason they weren't in development for the whole area of time since LoD's release is that, like the OP said, Blizzard used to move from game to game in their development. And it's obvious that from the time WoW was conceived, it was going to be Blizzard's focus. Honestly I still think Blizzard functions like this in a sense. You get the feeling that the people developing SC2, MoP and D3 are second class to whatever they're doing with TITAN.
2) A game that lasts for a month is NOT a really good game lol... You've been conditioned to think that games are meant to be disposable. In terms of $$$ per hour of entertainment it's great, but in terms of quality, 1 month is terrible.
A non-sub game can't be dead? Dead just means that people aren't playing it... pretty simple. I guarantee there are far less people playing D3 today than a month ago. Funny how you say non-sub too, since in a few years subscriptions won't even exist in video games. So I guess no game will ever be considered dead... especially FTP ones.
3) SC2 is a far better game than D3. But it's barely played in South Korea for example. "All those esports and competitions" The same ones that Blizzard explicitly doesn't support lol? Esports = Other people making money off of Blizzard's game, that's the truth. It's difficult for Blizzard to actually make money from supporting esports apparently.
4) Yeah, this is just wrong. WoW has been losing subscribers for a long time, D3 was released 3 months ago. Ask anyone at Blizzard and they'll tell you that FTP games are the biggest problem in losing subscribers (while others outside Blizzard would also point to the reduced quality of WoW).
Blizzard was undeniably the best game developer at the time when Vanilla WoW were at it's highest.
I really thought WoW was a great game up until WotLK. Particularly Vanilla was really enjoyable. It's gotten progressively worse though as they've put in more and more of the elements that cater too much to a casual audience. Everything has just been made way too linear. It's all about doing what Blizzard lays out for you in order to get a reward, without any uniqueness to it.
But then, for every 1 person who feels the game is too casual, there are apparently 900 who would prefer the game hand everything to them. Which is why video game audiences are getting more and more splintered today. Back in the day there were a lot fewer titles that a person would likely be playing, but today it's more about games that fill a particular niche.
So you end up with modern day Blizzard, creating games that appeal as best they can to the largest possible audience, but critically are a disaster. Unfortunately, this is why a lot of people don't think TITAN will be as great as it could be. It seems unlikely they would deviate from the current WoW model... but I really hope they do.
It was originally said that WoW would have 5 expansions. MoP is the 4th WoW expansion.
Blizzard sees itself as an MMO company at this point. With TITAN being their major plan for the future. Diablo, Starcraft and WoW will likely end around the time TITAN is released.
Keep in mind though, this isn't completely Blizzard's fault (though they did make a lot of bad decisions). The expansion of the console market, and the rise of micro-transaction (FTP) games has really diminshed Blizzard's ability to sell $60 games.
Their best hope for the future is to focus 100% on the MMO market and create one of, if not the only, MMO left that can convince users to pay a monthly subscription. That game would be TITAN of course.
The reason that WoW's subscription has dropped so drastically isn't just because the game has gone steadily downhill since WotLK... the FTP market has had something to do with it. But you can only keep a game going for so long. 15 million people for 6 years would be ridiculous. So many people quit even before BC came out.
It shouldn't really be a shock. Of course Blizzard is going to focus on the game that's the most popular and brings in the most money. It's pretty obvious they used D3 as a way to get people to prolong their WoW subscriptions.
Anyone who has played WoW can attest to the fact that the game gets EXTREMELY dead before an expansion comes out. Blizzard likely had to do something to stop the bleeding.
Like I've said before though, Blizzard is in for a rough few years until TITAN comes out. All their titles are extremely stale and there are A LOT of people who bought Cata / SC2 / D3, who will not be buying anymore Blizzard titles until TITAN comes out... myself included.
a start would be fixing the pets. a playable build like in d2 with summoner necro is just needed to increase the diversity for wd's at least.
In order for pets to be viable they have to be made WAYYYY stronger (defensively) because they're only meaningful when they can tank champs without stacking defensive stats. Pets will never do damage in D3 because Blizzard specifically doesn't want people playing D3 like they played necros in D2.
No one will use pets unless they can hold champs in place.
Cooldowns are absolutely fine and are in line with other classes' cd's. CD's also an essential part of VQ builds which adds good diversity. I do think VQ should only require 3 abilities on CD though because 4 is too limiting, or perhaps make it so that each ability on CD adds another 100% regen which would make regen smoother and allows much more variety (allowing to either either gear more regen with less cd's or gear less regen with more cd's).
Cooldowns aren't exactly fine. Long cooldowns that is.
Here's why:
When you get to the point that you're encountering champs more than once every 2 minutes (or 90 sec for Devoted Following) they become really useless. You'll use BBV/FA on one pack, and then 1 min later fight another pack and be unable to use those cds.
You can swap between each cooldown using 1 per champ pack, but BBV is pretty awful without having a way to tank the champs.
Of course that's a tradeoff the player decides on. But the point is that the abilities are fairly useless if you don't stack MF gear (lowering your farming speed) and can kill champs faster than once every 2 min.
Also, the idea that long cds are good for VQ is wrong. Long cds are terrible for VQ really. They become placeholders.
White mobs don't matter in this game, all that matters is champs. If you spec into FA and it comes up 30 sec before you encounter a champ pack, you use it to clear a few white mobs, you've essentially just wasted a cooldown. Now you fight a champ pack without a really powerful ability. The alternative is to just run out of mana clearing the way to champ packs, depending on your damage. Or you spam 4 short cooldowns (Grasp / SW / Horrify / SH) just to fire off a few more Bats. Most people will go with at least 1 long cooldown even though it's useless a lot of the time, just to avoid having to spam 4 abilities in a row to get regen for 10 sec. The best for this is Devoted Following.
Pretty obvious that this style of gameplay is bad.
I mean I guess it's alright to have cooldowns that are good for lower gear levels (BBV / FA) and have ones that are more useful for higher gear levels (Horrify / ZW). But the problem is how it interacts with VQ. Once you get really good gear it makes sense to switch to VQ builds and drop the long cooldowns. But the long cooldowns make using VQ a lot easier, so people take something like Devoted Following, and just spam it everytime it's up just to use up a cooldown slot.
MF > GF.
Max GF is like ~500,000 / hour. Not very good overall. And the gear can still be expensive because bots use it.
For MF there's really 3 choices (maybe 4).
That's A1: Get 5 stacks from Festering, then clear to Butcher. You can go to the Northern Highlands, Defiled Crypts, stuff like that too. But the later in the Act you get, the better the drops are supposed to be. It's probably easier to just keep farming to Butcher rather than porting all over the place looking for more champs.
Another choice (once you get better gear) is to farm A3. Some people do Heart of Sin > Azmodan, some do Bridge > Siegebreaker... and some do Breached Keep > Azmodan. Depends on your personal preference and what you find easier I guess. Heart of Sin > Azmodan is what I'd rather do.
You can also farm WS which is also pretty decent... gives same drops as A3/4. Though ranged classes are better at it than melee. So if you're melee you probably don't want to do WS. And if you can farm A3 efficiently, you may be better off doing that.
The other choice would be farming goblins in A2... I don't do this. I'd rather do standard runs than look for goblins. But apparently it's a decent way of farming.
But for the most part... A2 and A4 are garbage for MF farming, you want to stick to late A1 and then WS or A3 once you get better gear.
As for GF... it's Sarkoth (Dank Cellar A1) or A3 NM runs (that's the spiders during Heart of Sin). You used to be able to farm the pots in The Royal Crypts, etc but they nerfed that.
The thing to keep in mind though is that a lot of people farm A3 with no MF gear, so you can still MF pretty well in A3 even with 0 base MF. But I wouldn't try that in A1, it's really awful.
MF is a lot better than GF in my opinion. Like I said, the people who buy GF are often botting. No real person wants to farm Dank Cellar for 10 hours a day... it'll drive you insane. And there's no excitement either. The only reason to GF is to get enough gold in order to buy MF gear to farm A1.
Hours can be converted into days, and vice-versa. Someone playing 7 hours a day in WoW probably found themselves bored with many activities as well - the issue with comparing the two comes with the fact that WoW had many times more activities to offer, by design.
The point remains: 450 hours played to this date is a really good indication that this person simply burned themselves out by playing way, way too much. The simplest way to solve this is to take a break for a while, and come back periodically. It's not a design flaw, it's a personal problem.
I dunno, I played WoW for more than 7 hours a day for quite a while and wasn't bored with it. WoW is a better comparison just because D2 was released so long ago, it's difficult to compare with the age difference. I wouldn't play D2 if it were released today to be honest. But both are hard to compare with D3. The social component of WoW should automatically disqualify it from comparisons I suppose.
I think it IS a design flaw though (depending on whether you believe Blizzard really did want to make this game last a long time).
D3 isn't like MMOs where there are multiple things to do, which is the point I was trying to make. There's a singular goal to D3 right now... that's get the best gear possible, and farm for more gear. There is nothing to this game beyond that.
That's why I said that time doesn't really matter. Because once you hit a certain threshold (different for each person) the game becomes very boring. 450 hours is a lot of time to have played the game by now, no doubt. But if that 450 hours was spread over like 4 months the result would be the same (ignoring PvP release / endgame enhancement). Because once you reach a certain point in this game, you're done with it. Hardcore players just reach that point much faster.
Really it's questionable whether you can even get "burned out" from this game and want to come back. There's literally nothing to do but farm items. Once you have gear capable of farming A3 comfortably (most people probably quit before this) why would you come back to just farm more gear to increase your gold supply? To sell on the RMAH so you can average like $3 / hour?
Like I said, show me someone who can make it to 1000 hours in SC on one character before the release of PvP or Blizzard's endgame enhancements and I'll be very very surprised. I think most people have a hard time making it past 500 hours.
Purchasing from a 3rd party in D2 is not the same as using the RMAH in D3. This is especially true when Blizzard does something to discourage buying items. The bottom line is that most people who played D2 did not use 3rd party sites to buy items because it wasn't rolled into the actual game. Most people assumed there was some degree of risk involved when dealing with 3rd party sites, there's 0 risk involved with the RMAH.
The same idea could be said about something like botting in D3. There are bots out there (not suggesting you use them) you could use to get gold faster, but do most people use bots? No. What if you could buy a bot off the RMAH? The game would be a total joke.
The ease of which you can access something is really important, and whether Blizzard does anything to stop it is important as well.
So you have at least 4 types of damage spells in D3.
1) Direct Damage
2) Channeled
3) Dots
4) Pets
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The way it appears to work at this point is like this...
[For Weapon A (20 damage/3.0 attack speed) and Weapon B (60 damage/1.0 attack speed)]
1) For Direct Damage spells, let's say a skill that does 150% damage and costs 100 mana. For A your damage will be 90/sec. For B your damage will be 90/sec. So it's the same damage. However, for A your mana cost will be 300 mana/sec. For B it'll be 100 mana/sec. So it's 3x the mana cost for the same damage.
For Direct Damage spells with a cooldown, attack speed isn't taken into account really. So the mana cost remains the same, but your damage is reduced using a Weapon A. So for direct damage spells with a cooldown, Weapon B will yield more damage.
2) For Channeled spells, it'll work much the same way. You'll do the same amount of damage in a given interval, but the mana cost will be your attack speed x the mana cost of the spell. So under the same circumstances, you'll have 3x the mana cost for the same damage.
3) Dots are different, because they have fixed mana costs. So no matter what your attack speed is, the mana cost will always be the same. However, with Weapon A you'll be able to spread Dots 3x faster than with B. This increase should basically equalize dots no matter what your attack speed is. But it discourages you from using Dots as your primary form of damage.
Another point is that Dots with cooldowns will work differently than dots w/o cooldowns. Dots with cooldowns should work based on your DPS because having a faster weapon doesn't mean you can cast them more often. So keep this in mind for skills like GotD, etc.
4) As for pet damage, I'm really not sure how it works. I think it makes the most sense if they work off your DPS though. So no matter what your attack speed is, the damage should be the same. Like with Weapon A and B, your pet damage should be the same. It doesn't seem to make sense otherwise because it's not something you should be constantly spending mana on.
__
So it would seem that slower weapons are guaranteed to be better after reading all this because there's a mana penalty for using a faster weapon with single target and channeled spells. And even though you can get Dots out faster with a faster weapon, if you're only fighting like 3 monsters, you may prefer the higher damage. Meaning that IAS for Dots will feel better against large groups.
The equalizer in all this... is that apparently only class specific items have resources on them. So if you're a WD who uses a 2H for a slow attack speed with higher damage, you're going to lose out on the + Mana that is attached to the MH + OH. So basically (for single target/channeled spells) if you have a Ceremonial Knife + Wanga Doll and your damage is like Weapon A, you should have enough + Mana on both those items to compensate for the increased mana cost. And Weapon B will do the same damage, cost less mana, but you won't have any + Resources on your weapons.
Now if you're comparing a slow ceremonial knife to a faster one, perhaps the game has been constructed so that the faster knives are more likely to have + mana on them. But that's going to have to be a choice you make based on the individual items.
As for Dots... you have to decide how easy it is to spread them. If you're talking about something like Haunt, a faster attack speed may be superior because you'll get those dots out much much faster with Weapon A than with B. And if you're using something like Consuming Spirit (health regen rune) for Haunt, getting the Haunts out asap will be much better for your regen. Also, a faster attack speed will allow you to cast a single target spell more.
1
1) The items aren't interesting or diverse (made better in 1.0.4).
2) The Auction House provides an extreme shortcut to getting the items you want.
3) The ilvl system is junk. When an individual identifies an ilvl 63 item it could either be the best item in the game or vendor trash. The ilvls should be more spread out, so that when someone gets an ilvl 68 (let's just say that exists) the chance of it being great is pretty high. Instead people are constantly let down by ilvl 63s.
4) There should be more ways to "build" items through reagents. Crafting isn't very well done. Basically you should be able to "hunt" things that aren't weapons or armor in order to slowly create a high level item.
5) Too much focus on champs (made better in 1.0.4).
6) There's too much focus on particular stats. Like with weapons if it doesn't have min/max and %damage it can't be good. Same for AR with armor.
7) As for the low drop rates, it is what it is. If the drop rates were higher you'd have an even bigger problem. I'm not a fan of the AH, I think it's terrible, but the drop rates have to be low because of it.
1
Troll #1: Bypassing the most they've ever had? LOL nice. WoW subscriptions flucuating? Flucuation is up and down, WoW subscriptions just go downward.
http://news.yahoo.com/world-warcraft-loses-millions-subscribers-3-months-4-122800463.html
This is Yahoo! News we're talking about.
Troll #2:
1) The reason they weren't in development for the whole area of time since LoD's release is that, like the OP said, Blizzard used to move from game to game in their development. And it's obvious that from the time WoW was conceived, it was going to be Blizzard's focus. Honestly I still think Blizzard functions like this in a sense. You get the feeling that the people developing SC2, MoP and D3 are second class to whatever they're doing with TITAN.
2) A game that lasts for a month is NOT a really good game lol... You've been conditioned to think that games are meant to be disposable. In terms of $$$ per hour of entertainment it's great, but in terms of quality, 1 month is terrible.
A non-sub game can't be dead? Dead just means that people aren't playing it... pretty simple. I guarantee there are far less people playing D3 today than a month ago. Funny how you say non-sub too, since in a few years subscriptions won't even exist in video games. So I guess no game will ever be considered dead... especially FTP ones.
3) SC2 is a far better game than D3. But it's barely played in South Korea for example. "All those esports and competitions" The same ones that Blizzard explicitly doesn't support lol? Esports = Other people making money off of Blizzard's game, that's the truth. It's difficult for Blizzard to actually make money from supporting esports apparently.
4) Yeah, this is just wrong. WoW has been losing subscribers for a long time, D3 was released 3 months ago. Ask anyone at Blizzard and they'll tell you that FTP games are the biggest problem in losing subscribers (while others outside Blizzard would also point to the reduced quality of WoW).
I really thought WoW was a great game up until WotLK. Particularly Vanilla was really enjoyable. It's gotten progressively worse though as they've put in more and more of the elements that cater too much to a casual audience. Everything has just been made way too linear. It's all about doing what Blizzard lays out for you in order to get a reward, without any uniqueness to it.
But then, for every 1 person who feels the game is too casual, there are apparently 900 who would prefer the game hand everything to them. Which is why video game audiences are getting more and more splintered today. Back in the day there were a lot fewer titles that a person would likely be playing, but today it's more about games that fill a particular niche.
So you end up with modern day Blizzard, creating games that appeal as best they can to the largest possible audience, but critically are a disaster. Unfortunately, this is why a lot of people don't think TITAN will be as great as it could be. It seems unlikely they would deviate from the current WoW model... but I really hope they do.
1
4 months of WoW = $60.
Diablo 3 released May 15, 2012.
Mists of Pandaria released September 25, 2012.
It was originally said that WoW would have 5 expansions. MoP is the 4th WoW expansion.
Blizzard sees itself as an MMO company at this point. With TITAN being their major plan for the future. Diablo, Starcraft and WoW will likely end around the time TITAN is released.
Keep in mind though, this isn't completely Blizzard's fault (though they did make a lot of bad decisions). The expansion of the console market, and the rise of micro-transaction (FTP) games has really diminshed Blizzard's ability to sell $60 games.
Their best hope for the future is to focus 100% on the MMO market and create one of, if not the only, MMO left that can convince users to pay a monthly subscription. That game would be TITAN of course.
The reason that WoW's subscription has dropped so drastically isn't just because the game has gone steadily downhill since WotLK... the FTP market has had something to do with it. But you can only keep a game going for so long. 15 million people for 6 years would be ridiculous. So many people quit even before BC came out.
It shouldn't really be a shock. Of course Blizzard is going to focus on the game that's the most popular and brings in the most money. It's pretty obvious they used D3 as a way to get people to prolong their WoW subscriptions.
Anyone who has played WoW can attest to the fact that the game gets EXTREMELY dead before an expansion comes out. Blizzard likely had to do something to stop the bleeding.
Like I've said before though, Blizzard is in for a rough few years until TITAN comes out. All their titles are extremely stale and there are A LOT of people who bought Cata / SC2 / D3, who will not be buying anymore Blizzard titles until TITAN comes out... myself included.
1
A lot of the DPS is bugged out. He can have like 6 different Buffs that make his DPS huge.
1
The class definitely isn't "fine" but compared other classes it's not as bad as some people claim.
The main issue is mana right now.
In order for pets to be viable they have to be made WAYYYY stronger (defensively) because they're only meaningful when they can tank champs without stacking defensive stats. Pets will never do damage in D3 because Blizzard specifically doesn't want people playing D3 like they played necros in D2.
No one will use pets unless they can hold champs in place.
Cooldowns aren't exactly fine. Long cooldowns that is.
Here's why:
When you get to the point that you're encountering champs more than once every 2 minutes (or 90 sec for Devoted Following) they become really useless. You'll use BBV/FA on one pack, and then 1 min later fight another pack and be unable to use those cds.
You can swap between each cooldown using 1 per champ pack, but BBV is pretty awful without having a way to tank the champs.
Of course that's a tradeoff the player decides on. But the point is that the abilities are fairly useless if you don't stack MF gear (lowering your farming speed) and can kill champs faster than once every 2 min.
Also, the idea that long cds are good for VQ is wrong. Long cds are terrible for VQ really. They become placeholders.
White mobs don't matter in this game, all that matters is champs. If you spec into FA and it comes up 30 sec before you encounter a champ pack, you use it to clear a few white mobs, you've essentially just wasted a cooldown. Now you fight a champ pack without a really powerful ability. The alternative is to just run out of mana clearing the way to champ packs, depending on your damage. Or you spam 4 short cooldowns (Grasp / SW / Horrify / SH) just to fire off a few more Bats. Most people will go with at least 1 long cooldown even though it's useless a lot of the time, just to avoid having to spam 4 abilities in a row to get regen for 10 sec. The best for this is Devoted Following.
Pretty obvious that this style of gameplay is bad.
I mean I guess it's alright to have cooldowns that are good for lower gear levels (BBV / FA) and have ones that are more useful for higher gear levels (Horrify / ZW). But the problem is how it interacts with VQ. Once you get really good gear it makes sense to switch to VQ builds and drop the long cooldowns. But the long cooldowns make using VQ a lot easier, so people take something like Devoted Following, and just spam it everytime it's up just to use up a cooldown slot.
1
Max GF is like ~500,000 / hour. Not very good overall. And the gear can still be expensive because bots use it.
For MF there's really 3 choices (maybe 4).
That's A1: Get 5 stacks from Festering, then clear to Butcher. You can go to the Northern Highlands, Defiled Crypts, stuff like that too. But the later in the Act you get, the better the drops are supposed to be. It's probably easier to just keep farming to Butcher rather than porting all over the place looking for more champs.
Another choice (once you get better gear) is to farm A3. Some people do Heart of Sin > Azmodan, some do Bridge > Siegebreaker... and some do Breached Keep > Azmodan. Depends on your personal preference and what you find easier I guess. Heart of Sin > Azmodan is what I'd rather do.
You can also farm WS which is also pretty decent... gives same drops as A3/4. Though ranged classes are better at it than melee. So if you're melee you probably don't want to do WS. And if you can farm A3 efficiently, you may be better off doing that.
The other choice would be farming goblins in A2... I don't do this. I'd rather do standard runs than look for goblins. But apparently it's a decent way of farming.
But for the most part... A2 and A4 are garbage for MF farming, you want to stick to late A1 and then WS or A3 once you get better gear.
As for GF... it's Sarkoth (Dank Cellar A1) or A3 NM runs (that's the spiders during Heart of Sin). You used to be able to farm the pots in The Royal Crypts, etc but they nerfed that.
The thing to keep in mind though is that a lot of people farm A3 with no MF gear, so you can still MF pretty well in A3 even with 0 base MF. But I wouldn't try that in A1, it's really awful.
MF is a lot better than GF in my opinion. Like I said, the people who buy GF are often botting. No real person wants to farm Dank Cellar for 10 hours a day... it'll drive you insane. And there's no excitement either. The only reason to GF is to get enough gold in order to buy MF gear to farm A1.
1
If you think someone starts out disliking the game rather than coming to a conclusion after playing it that long, you are a complete retard.
1
I dunno, I played WoW for more than 7 hours a day for quite a while and wasn't bored with it. WoW is a better comparison just because D2 was released so long ago, it's difficult to compare with the age difference. I wouldn't play D2 if it were released today to be honest. But both are hard to compare with D3. The social component of WoW should automatically disqualify it from comparisons I suppose.
I think it IS a design flaw though (depending on whether you believe Blizzard really did want to make this game last a long time).
D3 isn't like MMOs where there are multiple things to do, which is the point I was trying to make. There's a singular goal to D3 right now... that's get the best gear possible, and farm for more gear. There is nothing to this game beyond that.
That's why I said that time doesn't really matter. Because once you hit a certain threshold (different for each person) the game becomes very boring. 450 hours is a lot of time to have played the game by now, no doubt. But if that 450 hours was spread over like 4 months the result would be the same (ignoring PvP release / endgame enhancement). Because once you reach a certain point in this game, you're done with it. Hardcore players just reach that point much faster.
Really it's questionable whether you can even get "burned out" from this game and want to come back. There's literally nothing to do but farm items. Once you have gear capable of farming A3 comfortably (most people probably quit before this) why would you come back to just farm more gear to increase your gold supply? To sell on the RMAH so you can average like $3 / hour?
Like I said, show me someone who can make it to 1000 hours in SC on one character before the release of PvP or Blizzard's endgame enhancements and I'll be very very surprised. I think most people have a hard time making it past 500 hours.
2
The same idea could be said about something like botting in D3. There are bots out there (not suggesting you use them) you could use to get gold faster, but do most people use bots? No. What if you could buy a bot off the RMAH? The game would be a total joke.
The ease of which you can access something is really important, and whether Blizzard does anything to stop it is important as well.
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1) Direct Damage
2) Channeled
3) Dots
4) Pets
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The way it appears to work at this point is like this...
[For Weapon A (20 damage/3.0 attack speed) and Weapon B (60 damage/1.0 attack speed)]
1) For Direct Damage spells, let's say a skill that does 150% damage and costs 100 mana. For A your damage will be 90/sec. For B your damage will be 90/sec. So it's the same damage. However, for A your mana cost will be 300 mana/sec. For B it'll be 100 mana/sec. So it's 3x the mana cost for the same damage.
For Direct Damage spells with a cooldown, attack speed isn't taken into account really. So the mana cost remains the same, but your damage is reduced using a Weapon A. So for direct damage spells with a cooldown, Weapon B will yield more damage.
2) For Channeled spells, it'll work much the same way. You'll do the same amount of damage in a given interval, but the mana cost will be your attack speed x the mana cost of the spell. So under the same circumstances, you'll have 3x the mana cost for the same damage.
3) Dots are different, because they have fixed mana costs. So no matter what your attack speed is, the mana cost will always be the same. However, with Weapon A you'll be able to spread Dots 3x faster than with B. This increase should basically equalize dots no matter what your attack speed is. But it discourages you from using Dots as your primary form of damage.
Another point is that Dots with cooldowns will work differently than dots w/o cooldowns. Dots with cooldowns should work based on your DPS because having a faster weapon doesn't mean you can cast them more often. So keep this in mind for skills like GotD, etc.
4) As for pet damage, I'm really not sure how it works. I think it makes the most sense if they work off your DPS though. So no matter what your attack speed is, the damage should be the same. Like with Weapon A and B, your pet damage should be the same. It doesn't seem to make sense otherwise because it's not something you should be constantly spending mana on.
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So it would seem that slower weapons are guaranteed to be better after reading all this because there's a mana penalty for using a faster weapon with single target and channeled spells. And even though you can get Dots out faster with a faster weapon, if you're only fighting like 3 monsters, you may prefer the higher damage. Meaning that IAS for Dots will feel better against large groups.
The equalizer in all this... is that apparently only class specific items have resources on them. So if you're a WD who uses a 2H for a slow attack speed with higher damage, you're going to lose out on the + Mana that is attached to the MH + OH. So basically (for single target/channeled spells) if you have a Ceremonial Knife + Wanga Doll and your damage is like Weapon A, you should have enough + Mana on both those items to compensate for the increased mana cost. And Weapon B will do the same damage, cost less mana, but you won't have any + Resources on your weapons.
Now if you're comparing a slow ceremonial knife to a faster one, perhaps the game has been constructed so that the faster knives are more likely to have + mana on them. But that's going to have to be a choice you make based on the individual items.
As for Dots... you have to decide how easy it is to spread them. If you're talking about something like Haunt, a faster attack speed may be superior because you'll get those dots out much much faster with Weapon A than with B. And if you're using something like Consuming Spirit (health regen rune) for Haunt, getting the Haunts out asap will be much better for your regen. Also, a faster attack speed will allow you to cast a single target spell more.