I am just sick and tired of everyone bitching and moaning about Diablo 3 being too influenced by WoW or not being good enough of a sequel. I was reading a post about Transmogrification for Diablo 3. With it, you can customize the look of your character independently of the stats you have. If you have gloves on you like, but find gloves with better stats you can equip the better gloves for the stats but keep the visual you like. This happens to be a feature that I really like in a game. It's an overall good idea that adds more character customization. However, someone commented that Diablo 3 was the next WoW expansion. Someone else said if they wanted to play WoW, to go play WoW and not Diablo 3. This shit has got to stop!
Diablo 3 is NOT WoW! It doesn't look like WoW. It doesn't play like WoW. It doesn't feel like WoW.
When the game was first announced, there was outrage over the game's color pallet, saying it was too bright and too cartoony. They said Diablo II was much darker and Diablo III looked too much like WoW. My question for those people; have you ever played Diablo II? I'm serious, those that complained about the brightness of D3 seem to have no conception or memory of what D2 looked like. It was a very bright game, and looked completely different then D1. In fact, D3 is more encompasses D2's look than D2's does of D1! Not to mention that comparing D3's 3d graphics engine to D2's d2 graphics engine is truly comparing apples and oranges. Of course D3 is going to look different because the engine can show more detail!
Then people complain about the gameplay systems, saying the skill system has no meaning because you don't have static choices. So what! I personally have never really liked skill trees, because no matter how big the skill tree is, you still never have a lot of choice with them. Why? Because damage was always tied to the skill instead of the weapon being used, resulting in low level skills being worthless at higher difficulty levels. Probably my favorite class in D2 was the Sorceress using lightning. Why because I like shinny things, and the only reason I put a skill into Charged Bolt was because the skill tree REQUIRED me too. Charged Bolt SUCKED! You had no control over where the charge was going so you had to spam it resulting in a major waste of resources. Not to mention, the low damage Charged Bolt could do made it worthless. NO ONE in their right mind would waste more than one point in Charged Bolt because it wasn't worth it. And honestly, I wish I didn't even have to spend that 1 point period!
As such I am very happy for the skill system in D3. First, every character in D2 had only 30 skills. With this system, the Monk has the lowest number of skills with 140! That's an improvement. Second, with this new system EVERY skill has a chance to be viable throughout the entire game because there are no more points. Instead every skill is tied to the damage their weapon choice is doing. This makes the item hunt much more important because the weapons now have an impact on the whole games instead of just your bland normal attack. Plus I now have more choice, freedom, and character customization as a result of skill swapping. And that is what everyone was worried about, choice, freedom, and character customization. In fact, those people that say skill choice is meaningless because of skill swapping are the same people that bitched and moaned about not being able to fix a mistake if they put a skill in the wrong slot, thus requiring skill respecing. Never mind the fact that respecing reduced the meaning of choice they so claimed to love! Well, the choice between a static skill system or a fluid one is an either/or proposition. You can't have both, so make up your minds and shut up about it!
I have been playing Blizzard games since Warcraft 1, so I am by no means a noob and am very familiar with Blizzard products. But I am by no means a fanboy. I loved Warcraft I and II, and hate Warcraft III and WoW. I feel they destroyed Warcraft with III's unit caps and creeping which completely changed the feel of the game. I hate WoW because its an MMO and I'm not a big fan of MMOs for reasons I wont go into here. Plus its too popular, so there is WAY too much hacking and BS going on to make it fun or worth my time. Also there is a decent amount of evidence that WoW's success has had a negative effect on Blizzard's design philosophy and customer care. Even though there is also evidence that it is not necessarily Blizzard's fault but Bobby Kotick who runs Blizzard Activision, and is Mike Morhaime's Boss. And no, I really don't care if I spelled their god damn names right. However, with this being said, I don't think it has had that much of an effect on D3's development because I have watched the process from its announcement, and most of their decisions are for good reasons which they have explained. We may not like them but it is what it is.
There are plenty of things to be worried about with D3 that are completely legitimate. I”m personally worried about stash size considering that we will effectively have 1 stash for 10 characters and then they reduced its size! I know they are worried about storage, which is a legitimate concern on their part, but I really don't like the way they implemented that. I really don't see why they couldn't have made a separate account stash that was used to swipe items between characters. This way each character would have their own stash and you could have a separate stash tied to your account to use for swapping. That would have been a lot better. There is the effect the RMAH will have on the game, specifically PVP and Hardcore characters. Though I understand why they created it, I wish real money wasn't involved with the game on any level except purchasing the game. The fact that the Monk doesn't use his weapons with his skills. Instead he is holding a sword or an axe, and puts it a way to punch a demon. This is absolutely ridiculous and I really think they dropped the ball with this one. The Barbarian uses all of his weapons appropriately, why couldn't the Monk? He is a MELEE class after all, and martial artists know how to use weapons! These are the kinds of things that are worth talking about, and can be done so without making ridiculous, non-logical statements about how Diablo 3 is WoW, or how it is not like Diablo 2.
What people need to realize is Diablo 2 was almost NOTHING like Diablo 1 and that was good thing. The game made progress. Plus I no longer had to make the long arduous hike to Adria's out of the way hut with a slow ass character just to buy a damn mana potion. God I hated that! Conversely, D3 is vastly different than D2. This is also a good thing. Diablo 2 came out ten years ago. That is a decade ago people. Games have changed A LOT since then. Get over it!
So, any comments?
P.s. I know this post is bitching about bitching. But I just couldn't take it anymore, and the idea that people are logical is inherently an illogical statement. If this was true there would be no such thing as a logical fallacy or a logic class.
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