Official Blizzard Quote:
The Spike TV Video Game Awards are coming up, and Spike has just announced that they’ll bestow their second-ever Gamer God award upon Blizzard Entertainment’s three founders, Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce.
In addition, Diablo III’s full opening cinematic will make its world premiere during the show. Check out Spike TV’s official announcement for full details, and tune into the VGAs on December 10 at 8:00 p.m. / 7:00 p.m. Central.
Penny Arcade's Point of View of the RMAH
Penny Arcade's Extra Credits latest episode is an analysis of the Diablo 3 RMAH system, it's an interesting and entertaining watch if you have 7 minutes of free time!
I was thinking the same thing. In WoW you don't need to kill Illidan to fight Arthas, same goes for killing Deathwing. But you need to kill Diablo to get to Baal, so old content in D3 will never get skipped once the D3 expansions start coming out.
Otherwise it was a really good video, and for once people aren't freaking out over how the RMAH is destroying the world, just because. They actual portrayed it in a positive light, while still voicing its possible dangers. It's very professionally stated.
You're looking at it from the wrong end of the tunnel. It's end-game that suffers. Diablo doesn't have a traditional end-game, so I don't see power creep having any kind of impact at the level of games like WoW but still at max level, like most non-SP, non-console RPGs, you'll be spending a very long time going after perfect gear. Something you won't do at any level except the max level. Once that cap is increased all the work you did at level 60 is mostly invalidated (minus a short headstart with your current "then perfect" or near-perfect gear).
Also the point PA made about outrageous things needing to come out during each expansion will likely apply here because if new content was all that was needed to sell expansions for MMOs, then that's all they would do. But it's not so they have to introduce new playable characters, new abilities, new mechanics. All of these things progressively start to push the boundaries originally designed for the game and ultimately end up making it a bit different than what it was originally, rather than what it is was originally with just more of it.
Umm, I doubt they'll be releasing gear on a weekly basis, not even every patch. The gear will only become less valuable when the expansions come out and that will be every year and a half.
Besides, this isn't WoW where each new raid makes the old items obsolete. In D3 a level 60 unique will still be valuable to level 60 players, just like a level 40 item will be valuable to level 40 players. It will be less valuable, but the items being worth $500 and then dropping 16 times the value is exaggerating a bit much.
I reckon decent unique items should be worth $30 to $50, at most, and after an expansion it might drop to $15 to $25. It's just an estimate, but it's more reasonable than assuming items will be worth what you estimated.
And you can't compare Diablo 3 to an MMO, you need to compare it to D2. In D2 each boss and each act is only one step above what came before. You take small steps to improve, so just like LoD, Act 5 isn't miles away from Act 4 and Baal isn't ten times harder than Diablo.
In WoW, you can use Lich King gear to solo Illidan (or just ask a healer friend to tag along). This is not a fair comparison. Moreover, in WoW you could skip expansions, but in D2 you'll still need to clear each act and kill each boss to progress, and you WILL NEED the gear from a previous difficulty to progress to the next one.
I saw the same thing in my head.
Instead of being at the wrong end of the tunnel like the other person...you're just in the middle of it.
END GAME. End-game is AFTER Inferno where you've beat the full game (all difficulties) once but grind in some fashion to get better and better gear. When the next expansion comes out, everything from AFTER Inferno has been beaten the first time becomes invalidated because then level 60 just becomes any other level that isn't max level...something you aren't in very long, and something you don't spend a ton of time working on perfect gear for because...well there's better gear when you level.
You're also looking at WoW completely wrong. They are basically taking AWAY content (while not actually removing most of it from the game...just most of the compelling reasons to complete them after newer content is released) and replacing it with other content. Until end-game, WoW's content is simply levelling. Sans the odd concept of DKs starting at 55 (a great example of a new, absurd concept poking around at fundemental design). You can't buy Cataclysm and skip leveling from 1-80. So just like Diablo...you have to go through old content to get to the latest stuff. Raids and dungeons when they were max level (60, 70, 80) are not levelling content.
Diablo 3.1 (or whatever you want to call the expansion) is not going to require gear that you farmed post-beating Inferno in the first version. Everything you've done post-beating Inferno then becomes invalidated thanks to power creeping. Like I said before, I don't think it's going to have quite the impact power creeping has on traditional MMOs, I certainly agree with PA that this just simply happens everywhere, and no one (including Blizzard) has figured out how to avoid it (and again, like PA said, I agree money is the main motivator).
No source, just a gut feeling.
ABOUT THE SPOILERS, DONT LIKE? DONT WATCH!
And about the cinematic, to you guys that dont like spoilers - Do not watch it.
They said they cut out some parts because of it would spoil.
Good point. Those who buy maybe isnt hardcore Diablo fans that sit around here.
The only reason they added Inferno was because people farmed bosses in D2, and they want to downplay that. So, they added an entire difficulty that's equally hard across the board.
I've played my fair share of WoW, but the reasons I stopped was because of the huge leaps in power, i.e. old raids become obsolete when new content gets released. Also old content becomes useless and very easy because of the huge power leaps, for instance: everyone loves Ulduar, but no one does it anymore, it has become obsolete.
No Diablo 3 content can ever become obsolete.
We might be wrong how it's going to work, since the game hasn't been released, but I'm not going to use WoW as an example, for obvious reasons. I'll use their D2 model and what has already been said to do so.
Here's how I understand it. They've stated that Normal is the tutorial and Nightmare is where the true game starts. Hell is where the real difficult content begins, but even if you finish Hell, you can't just go to Inferno. You need Hell items to just function in Inferno.
Now, I'm using that logic when it comes to the expansion.
If you have acquired a full level 60 class set by the time the expansion comes out, then you will just go on to the expansion content. First you'll need to do it in Hell before doing Inferno. Since Inferno as a whole is the end-game, and requires you've reached level cap, then I take it you will need to be the expansion level cap to be able to go onto Inferno.
The level 60 set will definitely help you get there. The level 60 items won't become obsolete, rather it would be valuable items that will make the journey through the expansion content better. You see, you need Nightmare items to be any good in Hell and you need Hell items just to do Inferno, so having D3 vanilla items will help you function better in the expansion, it wont instant become obsolete when you pick up your first few blue items. The level 60 sets will most probably be either upgraded, or will become the expansion's Hell items that's needed to play the expansion's Inferno.
Extra Credits is a seperate show done by other people. Penny Arcade just distributes it on their PATV site, they do not produce it, and the content should not be considered theirs.
This is utter nonsense. In fact, it will sell MORE copies!
--> Wait what?
By making an internet connection mandatory it will be near to impossible to crack the game properly --> resulting in near to no pirating --> more sales.
So yeah, they will crack the game and simulate the servers some day. But thats going to take at least another year. By that time many of the piraters will have bought the game. Because the game is friggin' awesome, and we've waited long enough already
I think the RMAH is a good idea. It legitimizes the buying/selling of gold, that would otherwise be INEVITABLE, except Blizzard gets a cut and their players get security.
And it'd also help draw in players that would otherwise not even consider D3. I've been trying to convince my cousin to play D3 when it comes out, but he's not interested. (Yeah, doesn't make sense to me either.... <_<) And I know that if he even tries it, he will love it. Once he found out about the RMAH he decided to get D3 xD, just for the off chance of maybe making a couple cents/dollars playing a game.
When the expansion time comes I hope Blizz won't be tempted to increase that level.
And also get tempted to introduce some over-powered gear to make the inferno vanilla one obsolete.
I make a decent living and I can't see myself ever spending more than a dollar or two to aquire and item - and even then it would only be in a situation where I need "X" to finish a craft and it will probably take me a significant number of hours to get the item myself - and I mean a real significant number of hours because I can certainly wait a day or two for the item to drop for me - but if I knew I could play 3 hours a day for a month and still not see the item.... then maybe.