I guess it's not too surprising that Roper wouldn't have the most complimentary things to say about the upcoming game, and I definitely disagree with his thoughts on it not really "ringing with Diablo". Having played the game at BlizzCon, I can say that it doesn't just ring Diablo... it screams it. It's the Diablo I was hoping for all these years, and the whole idea of starting in a somewhat lighter area and descending into darkness rather than just having the game begin in the depths of hell (ie: where do you go from there?) seems perfect to me. We've only seen a tiny bit of Diablo 3 so far, and sometimes it's easy for people to lose sight of that."Roper, ex-vice president of Blizzard North, the now defunct Blizzard satellite studio that was responsible for the Diablo games, told VideoGamer.com in an interview to be published later this week, that while he "didn't look at it (the released Diablo III gameplay footage) and go, oh my God that's horrible", "as a player it just didn't really ring with Diablo".
He said: "One of the things I always enjoyed about that separation between Blizzard and Blizzard North was that the Diablo games had a very distinct art style. They had different art directors, they had different people working on it, they had a different sensibility about them. Diablo was I think grittier and darker and a little more leaning towards the photo realistic. Whereas the Craft games that were being built down in Irvine were bigger and broader in scope, brighter colours, just different pallets and different presentation. Both of those were very strong from that visual standpoint, for example.
"But it makes complete sense to me where they went because they basically took the Diablo universe and then approached it from the Blizzard Ivine stance for the visuals. That's the way they approach things. It wasn't that I looked at it and went, oh my God that looks terrible. I was like, that looks like Blizzard. The guys in Irvine. That's what it looks like to me. Their interpretation of it."
When asked if he was disappointed or pleased with Diablo's new art style, Roper, who is now design director and executive producer of Atari-owned Cryptic Studios, and in charge of Champions Online, a superhero MMO due out on PC this spring, said: "You know, I liked the darker grittier. I liked the differences in art style, to be honest. So, I think I would personally from a player standpoint prefer that."
"I think that one of the things that we always tried to get across was that Diablo was Gothic fantasy and I think there was just a need that was put in there from the visuals that I didn't necessarily get. I got it from the architecture and to a degree from the character design but not the feeling of the world. I can't say that I dislike it. I didn't look at it and go, oh my God that's horrible. But I looked at it and went, it's not really... to me as a player it just didn't really ring with Diablo.""
So what are your thoughts on the interview with Roper?
Feud? It isn't a feud. I didn't go apeshit on him or anything, he just felt compelled to switch fanboi mode on and lash out on me in a sarcastic condescending tone. I won't even bother replying, since it turned pathetic a century ago. When I argue a point, I expect to be argued back with intelligence and good points answering correctly to what I previosuly said in a thread. That isn't happening, so I won't even bother.
Back on-topic. Unless they show something different than what they've been showing since day 1 (which is the reason why a lot of people are complaining), maybe then can we start changing a part of our attitude. I'm not really crying or anything, I'm still buying the game, I just want my purchase to have more meaning, and to get something that I waited for for so long, and nothing less than what I expect it to be (and what most others do as well).
Yeah i agree. I don't think it's fair to say that any class is overpowered at this point. All we have seen are demonstrations and some Blizzcon demo footage.
I remember it being said they were meant to be that way during the gameplay trailers.
I hope to god that this was just a troll attempt.
I mean seriously, I'd LITERALLY just explained in the first paragraph of my post that Blizzard are my favourite gaming company and have been for over a decade. That's three paragraphs before the last point I made. Did the additional three paragraphs confuse you? Did they make you forget what I'd JUST said?
I've just proven that that you are wrong in thinking "Except that it is true". Categorically wrong. And I've been a member of this site since well before Diablo 3 was announced and have lauded Blizzard in previous posts so you can't even accuse me of lying.
Fail.
By that, I mean the WoW-hating Diablo 2 fanboys to whom everything that is not D2 looks WoW-ish, including their family members.
That's kinda sad, I personally agree with him. You guys can say that Diablo needs to be light then go to dark as it goes on, but how was Diablo 1? Dark from the very beginning, and dark till the end and it is the best of the series thus far. You can go alot of places with dark, this world is just turning so PG that doing dark anymore is to risky for developers thats why Diablo is turning into carebear land 3.
You guys can continue to hate on Roper, but the fact is he made the darker, grittier, brutal Diablo that people fell in love with, and really ive yet to see Diablo 3 achieve that level yet.
If you don't know anything just get lost and do not try to be funny kid, my son.
Brian Morrisroe was the original if you didn't know. Someone from within took over, but they have not stated WHO the new Art Director was, and if they have, it's in some arbitrary article because it doesn't appear to be very pronounced.
EDIT: But you probably can't, since it seems to be deleted for some unthinkable reason. But I assure you, I wasn't replying to anything you said.
I think my posts have been getting deleted left and right.
My post count should be around 1,017 but oh, well.
I don't really care. lol
Ahahahaa. I didn't like it. lol
I mean, it wasn't "horrible" but it wasn't complete when launched and didn't make it too far before it nose-dived.