People don't like changes, that's why they whine. They forgot to think about why Blizzard changed D3.
I like the changes they made, everything makes sense.
I also see a lot of people whining on the PoE forums and that's why they prefer PoE, but the game is really boring...
I've been reading a lot on this forum the last few days, and on the official forums.
It seems to me a lot of people are angry at Blizzard, for moving away from the
well working formula that was (and still is) Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 was an amazing game when it was released 12 years ago; yet people seem to think the game mechanics, for instance, shouldn't stray from the path that D2 curved.
Well I can see why they're afraid, after all, Blizzard are doing some radical changes. And changes are scary I admit.
That said, this is Blizzard we're talking about. They're responsible for World of warcraft, Star-Craft, Warcraft and the Diablo franchise. And The Lost Vikings, of course.
I know that these games, and even D2 wasn't made by the same exact employees, but this is still the same company that gave me, and you, so many great titles, and so much fun over the years, that I just don't understand where this antagonism is coming from.
I for one, trust them, full-heartedly.
p.s
Sorry for any typos I probably had.
Diablo 3 is the best video game of all time. Mark my words.
The last game I said that about before its release was WoW. I played that for 7 years, so pretty good run.
When it comes to this series, Diablo 2 was different from Diablo, in many (good) ways. I still love Diablo for what it was, too. Now I want to play Diablo 3. If I wanted to play Diablo 2, I'd go ****ing play Diablo 2. I want something different. They're doing the right thing.
Blizzard made many of my all-time favorite games. Starcraft and diablo in particular have been amazing, and the warcraft games and wow have done what they do well. The first RTS I ever touched was actually warcraft 2 before I picked up Age of Empires (iirc), which is what really got me into pc gaming to start with. The first games I played on the pc, after only like commander keen/joust/cosmo (or w/e) and DAY OF THE TENTACLE was the lost vikings.
Blizzard and I go way back. Even though I hate wow with a passion now, I played even that game for years before I discovered it sucked out my soul, and I have nothing but fond memories of the other titles.
I expect nothing but quality out of blizzard games. Their teams play the game, and the game is developed over a lengthy period of time. Few games have withstood the test of time for me personally outside blizzard titles, though a few of those games might be HoMM(heroes of might and magic- turn based strategy games), Serious sam 1/SE/BFE(oldschool *style* FPS), AoE 1/2(rts), and a few others like some nintendo console stuff etc.
Blizz has an impressive track record for making fluid/fun to play games in the past. Given all the love I have for the previous titles and the fact that I'll have my little grubby fingers on d3 in just over a month, how can I not trust them.
I trust in Blizzard to keep releasing high quality games.
The question is, if I will be able to enjoy them as the high quality games they are, or if I'll be doing futile attempts at recapturing the amazement I had as a child.
I've been reading a lot on this forum the last few days, and on the official forums.
It seems to me a lot of people are angry at Blizzard, for moving away from the
well working formula that was (and still is) Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 was an amazing game when it was released 12 years ago; yet people seem to think the game mechanics, for instance, shouldn't stray from the path that D2 curved.
Well I can see why they're afraid, after all, Blizzard are doing some radical changes. And changes are scary I admit.
That said, this is Blizzard we're talking about. They're responsible for World of warcraft, Star-Craft, Warcraft and the Diablo franchise. And The Lost Vikings, of course.
I know that these games, and even D2 wasn't made by the same exact employees, but this is still the same company that gave me, and you, so many great titles, and so much fun over the years, that I just don't understand where this antagonism is coming from.
I for one, trust them, full-heartedly.
p.s
Sorry for any typos I probably had.
I don't really think Diablo 3 is moving away from the "working formula" that was Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 had many flaws, but people that love the game (like me) aren't objective when it comes to its flaws.
After playing the beta for many hours i can honestly say that Diablo 3 is a better and more complete game, it is moving away from Diablo 2, but only when it comes to the flaws in my opinion.
What do you mean by "trust" ?
If you think Blizzard is as bad as Bioware you are wrong, if you think it is a charity only thereto satisfy hardcore gamers needs you are also damn wrong.
as bad as Bioware... wait...what...?!
Bioware was never and will never (or at least in the nearest future) be such a Franchise- and Profit-raising moloch like the one Blizzard has mutated to in the last decade. Bioware still stands for quality, lovable and charming single-player games, a path Blizzard never fully walked on - in sense of the strong multiplayer part in their games. So to compare these two with each other is limping a lot.
And how can you say Bioware is bad... or even worse than Blizzard... I can't see it.
well... i trust them in releasing a great game with diablo 3... it'll be great, i gotta stay optimistic, i mean after all its the company that released the 3 best PC games of all time in my opinion (#1 Warcraft 3, #2 Diablo 2, #3 Starcraft Broodwar)
but its not like all those years ago when i was still a kid, playing d2 and all these great Blizzard games, back then i didnt really follow any of the progress they made when developing these games
i was just looking forward to these games and was sure they'd deliver... and they have ! With Wc3 i started looking closer and what they had in mind, and well... they released the best game of all time (Wc3 TFT)
but since WoW i started worrying and my once "this-company-delivers-the-best-games-ever"-feeling towards the company has changed...
And this is exactly how I see the whole issue!
I can't wait to get my hands on D3, but I've seen so many bad, strange and idiotic decisions during the development of WoW and the time I was playing it (since release - with some breaks) that I just hope that this Blizzard-wise decision-making won't affect the D3 Team too much.
Blizzard has lost a lot of its peculiar charm with their capitalistic focus on WoW and how to milk people to the fullest.
How can anyone of us trust such a megacorp. with an obviously higher focus on profit than on the interests of the playerbase?
I don't trust them to make a game for me.
I trust them to create a product that is beneficial for them.
The things is, EVERY company makes products that make them money, the difference is that Blizzard produces products that are worth the money you spent, they're complete games, and enjoyable ones; This is what I mean when i say I trust them.
The thing some are forgetting is this is Diablo 3, not Wow 2. They still have a wow expansion or two yet to come, they won't make two-like games in the same period of time to compete with each other, that just doesn't make sense. With that said I've played wow and despite its many flaws the game did captivate me for some time and it did a good many things very well. Anything you see diablo 3 pick up from wow will be one of those "good" things that have been tried and tested in the rpg gaming scene over the past decade or so, so don't worry your little heads.
It would seem that people have the tendency to feel agressive towards companies, or people who manage to make good money off their products. Just because something that kicks ass becomes well known does not instantly mean the quality of said product is suddenly trash. Good for blizzard. They've made games that brought people here to forums like this to discuss them even years ahead of time. You can complain all you want but either you buy the game and enjoy the hell out of it, you buy it and hate on it because you're forever alone, or you don't buy it and you miss out entirely on one of the best PC games of the time.
D3 isn't a subscription based game. You pay the money up front and that's it. You can play by yourself. You can play with a few specific friends. You can play with random people. You're not forced to play/show up every night and raid bosses and get in your games for ladder points as in wow. You take it at your own leisure.
People are complaining about small things like hitbox changes from d2->d3, when in actuality there is little to no difference at all, I know because I still play MXL to this day and that cursor will select things at a distance too. They get an idea in their heads about how a game should be, for one reason or another from something they experience or are told, and think that's the only way it can possibly work without being a horrible game when they have prior experience.
To the nay-sayers I say stop being so depressing and give the game a chance with a clean slate, or not, your call. Diablo 3 is not diablo or diablo 2, nor is it wow, starcraft etc. If you want to play things safe you might as well not even get out of bed if you're afraid of change. You have often have to risk something in order to find/experience something of value, there's no need to play it safe if you're already interested enough in the series to have found your way here. There is nothing to fear.
#1: playing a lot of diablo 2, having an account full of items that became worthless whenever patch 1.27d or whatever it was when the duping started. blizz did nothing, i stopped playing... sad
#2 i was playing wow and noticed someone hacking and botting at the same time and reported him, 2 mins later he was banned, i know this because i was banned at first then they fixed it, within another 2 mins, better
However everyone has to start somewhere, you can't release a game that is made only for "veteran" gamers. There are diffrent difficulty levels and elective mode for a reason. So stop your whining.
Also blizzard know themselfs that the mass majority trust them and will buy the game, even those who don't will buy the game and love it. The reason why this is so obvious? They can charge £45 for a digital copy of the game which when you compare it to games like Skyrim which are also big titles is on the expensive side.
Kind of an odd question., I'll give my roundabout answer.
I loved WC2. I loved Diablo I. I loved Diablo 2.
Not sure on the reasoning, but SC was meh for me. Never even played SC2. WC3, I never played. TBH, don't even know exactly when WC3 came out without googling. I guess sometime around D2's release that kept me busy. WoW, I played for just over a year, near the end of vanilla and some of the BC. Quit playing in december 2007. It was ok most of the time, but once I got to 40 man raiding, I quit. Seemed so fruitless to spend all that time in a 40 man raid and like 1-3 items were split between everyone.
With D3, I feel they have taken an extremely long time, even for Blizzard, to make this game. There are somethings I have been unsure about, like shared MF, but do like it to the alternative to follow bots stacking MF. Sometimes I wonder about some of the new game mechanics they introduce, and sometimes I wonder about some of the game mechanics they remove. I worry about the chat system. I remember last fall a blue post saying clan/guild chat would not be set for release but may come sometime after. That gives me hope.
Overall, I feel like they have made some great decisions and I think I will be able to enjoy D3 and its expansions for years. So do I trust them? I think on the titles I like, they are some of the best games of all time, but sometimes the make games that I find not really interesting. If they ever made another WC RTS, I would probably buy it. IF they ever make another MMO, I unless its the diablo series, I probably won't. They do say TITAN is a FPS MMO, which may intrigue me to buy it, but depends. I have right hand injury that keeps me from playing FPS games, which at one time, were my favorite type of games. Diablo is click intensive too but... I can play D2 for hours before my hand begins to swell and hurt, while FPS games it takes about 40 minutes. My hand injury was one of the reasons I started playing WoW. Its target lock and forget. For someone who played FPS games, it was easy mode and it was totally gear/time spent dependent and had very little to do with skill until you got to the big raids, but those raids time/rewards seemed so out of balance for me that I quit the game. So do I trust them? I do trust they will make D3 a great game. I also trust they make great games that I don't prefer, but many others enjoy immensely. So yes, I trust them.
some complain about "dumbing down". How? Never played beta, but from what I've read people talking about (let's talk about difficulty and time length here), it seems similar to D2 demo: short gameplay, 1 miniboss that summons undead minions.
I think people are upset because Skeleton King is too easy, but they forgot this: he's a MINIBOSS. Like a champion mob, but with a cute animation, like Blood Raven was, and not the act 1 major boss.
And if people make videos about killing him without gear, well, who couldn't do the same with Blood Raven? The difference is Blood Raven took less time to kill "naked" than SK.
So we could say D3, at least until lvl 10~13 (or less, I think you actually meet SK sooner lol) is harder than D2. (please don't throw stones at me)
It's a different world now than a decade and a half ago. Internet is quicker, more people own computers and internet, the pc (and likely nearly all) gaming scene as a whole have multiplied in customer count, and tech has improved to the point where we are now automatically streaming patches one after another.
-Saying something has "gay wow graphics" doesn't really prove a point.
-Saying something (in this day and age where little pre-teens walk around outside internet-enabled) doesn't have lan doesn't really prove a point.
-Complaining about starcraft 2 ultimately having 2 expansions (which appear *at least* as or more different from the previous game than broodwar did sc) doesn't really prove a point. When did you ever not have to pay for expansions before, unless in a crappy f2p mmo with microtransactions and $dlc?
-You missed the actual reason nerfs and buffs keep on getting added to wow. It's not because people cry. People always cry *just as you are doing now*. It's because they have to keep on providing new content to make people interested and paying for the game and new "big" content in expansions. Admittedly this mists of pandora thing looks the least interesting of anything I've yet seen, however, it's not really related. And every time they do so much as add a single skill, item, level change etc into the game rebalancing has to be done. It's not like starcraft where there are just 3 races and zero items, zero RNG to account for in terms of balancing a game for pvp. You shouldn't take itemized pvp seriously to begin with.
-Saying that a game is dumbed down for 5 year olds doesn't amount to much now either, nor has it for years if it ever did. My kid brother never had a problem beating games me and my teen (now adult) friends played as he grew up. Any game that you actually "beat" is made so that it is beatable, and not just by a few people with no life but by just about anyone who picks it up. Really beatable games are just a time investment- even if there is a tricky gimmick once you mash against it long enough a 5 year old can beat nearly any game. I never had problems beating games as a kid either. In fact d2 was probably one of the easier games to "beat".
-Saying a game is bad because it has an auction house alone, did you just close your eyes to what happened in d2? Regardless of what people said the economy was filled with duped items *because* there was no online requirement and *because* there was no auction house, or near 100% safe way to trade. Even with the terribly inneficient trade system in which you sat and spammed and got spammed in trade channels for endless hours while watching a slowly updated list of game names... people tried scamming at every turn, swapping in the wrong item, forcing your box to check, trying to play "trust games" where they try and pop your corpse (also happened in pvp games) or tried to get you to drop items and kill you or drop them where they could pick the items up through a wall...
Your list of reasons why d3 and sc2 have fallen short are (some) of the same reasons why, in my opinion, they are being improved.
Well let's be honest, if people want to pay a ton of money for the best equipment they have always been able to in wow/d2. There have been various ways to do so under the table/radar. That's their business though, I really couldn't care less. I think what you meant to say is if blizzard tried selling the *non cosmetic* items themselves you'd lose faith.
Sorry, not to take anything away from your points laevus.
Do I trust that Blizzard would create the perfect game that satisfies everyone in every way possible, save tigers from extinction,fix the economy,and rid the world of hunger?
Absolutly not, I have no trust in Blizzard.
Its really scary how many people are still drinking the Blizzard koolaid, no wonder why they think they can do what they want since people will buy their stuff like trained zombies, which is not a good sign.
I bet some of the heavy Blizzard supporters didn't even know the company before WoW and this site proofes it. Just look at the all the threads about DPS and what not this is not an MMOG, its a hack n slay solo game!
Tough to believe I really have to point out, why dumbing down a successor - note successor not new game - is a bad idea. If you make a Diablo successor former players will have expectations and if the company doesn't meet them they will get criticized for it, rigthfully so. Personally I wouldn't have a problem if they made a new game and called it "Sanctuary or Canes Quest" but making a successor for a complete different audience in my mind is a bad thing you can disagree as much as you want its my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
Blizzard 2 is only in for the money if they would still be gamers, their games would have the former Blizzard quality and features one would desire.
It's funny you should talk about "drinking the koolaid" as that is just a term you've seen used before by someone else and recycled it, and in doing so are guilty of the very thing you accuse others of, just on the opposite side of the coin.
If you like blizzard north d2 graphics, why did their d3 look like a shitty lotro and if you dislike MMO's, blizz north was aiming to make d3 into one. You said you dislike the "gay wow-like graphics" (cartoony?), but look what blizz north has done with torchlight. It's nearly as cartoony as age of empires online, or orcs must die. Quite honestly, d3 is at least as gloomy as d2 was from what I've *already played* and experienced in the beta. I don't get that whole argument at all concerning the feel of the game/graphics. If you want top end graphics, you should probably stick with playing games like COD which have a new title every year with updated graphics but as the same game, not to hate on FPS or cod.
A lot of the things you are saying don't ring true with me. I don't care about the company in this discussion as much as I care about your flawed points of view concerning the games themselves.
Its really scary how many people are still drinking the Blizzard koolaid, no wonder why they think they can do what they want since people will buy their stuff like trained zombies, which is not a good sign.
According to your post you're not buying D3?
And they don't think they can do, they just do. They're saying that they (the game developers) know better then us (the gamers) what's good for us. And I think they're right. I'm sure we all consider ourselfs pro gamers, but I'm humble, I can't create games, so I put my trust in those who can, and proved them selfs.
Blizzard 2 is only in for the money if they would still be gamers, their games would have the former Blizzard quality and features one would desire.
You consider Blizzard's latest games as low quality?
And they don't think they can do, they just do. They're saying that they (the game developers) know better then us (the gamers) what's good for us. And I think they're right. I'm sure we all consider ourselfs pro gamers, but I'm humble, I can't create games, so I put my trust in those who can, and proved them selfs.
Companies that have the attitude that they know better than their customers are doomed to fail. Can you imagine ordering a sandwich with no tomatoes and the chef says he know better than you that tomatoes make the sandwich good? That is not a successful business model. I don't think Blizzard is taking this attitude, and I sure hope they don't.
I trust that Blizzard has enough talented employees to make great games. I just hope that the buisiness side doesn't negatively affect development. i.e. developing so that ANYONE can play the game, when the truth is that anyone could have played it before and they made it look dumbed down to the diehard fans. Some of the decisions like having elective mode in the gameplay options instead of default are just stupid and do not add anything to the fun factor and are obviously designed because of a theory that the game needs to be more widely accessible to be widely adopted (basically make it super easy to sell a ton of copies).
I don't think any of these decisions will break D3 and they have reversed some of them as evidenced by increasing the starting difficulty in patch 15. I'm super excited after having played the beta a ton and am very confident D3 will be awesome. I hope devolopment teams, in all games, focus on what's fun and not worry about profits. If you make a great game, it will sell a ton (at least if you have Blizzard brand and marketing abilities). Don't jepordize that brand to try to squeeze out some extra bucks. Please continue to make great games for GAMERS and let Zynga and other F2P games attract new gamers.
Also, include voice over IP in future titles. I think it's silly that you can voice chat with people in your group on xbox (for the past 7 years), but not in Diablo. Do I trust Blizzard? Currently, but I will continue to keep an eye on their development. I do feel that they could have done a MUCH better job developing an overall community feel using Battle.net and this has been a missed opportunity. We will see what the future brings. See you in Diablo 3!
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I like the changes they made, everything makes sense.
I also see a lot of people whining on the PoE forums and that's why they prefer PoE, but the game is really boring...
The last game I said that about before its release was WoW. I played that for 7 years, so pretty good run.
When it comes to this series, Diablo 2 was different from Diablo, in many (good) ways. I still love Diablo for what it was, too. Now I want to play Diablo 3. If I wanted to play Diablo 2, I'd go ****ing play Diablo 2. I want something different. They're doing the right thing.
Blizzard made many of my all-time favorite games. Starcraft and diablo in particular have been amazing, and the warcraft games and wow have done what they do well. The first RTS I ever touched was actually warcraft 2 before I picked up Age of Empires (iirc), which is what really got me into pc gaming to start with. The first games I played on the pc, after only like commander keen/joust/cosmo (or w/e) and DAY OF THE TENTACLE was the lost vikings.
Blizzard and I go way back. Even though I hate wow with a passion now, I played even that game for years before I discovered it sucked out my soul, and I have nothing but fond memories of the other titles.
I expect nothing but quality out of blizzard games. Their teams play the game, and the game is developed over a lengthy period of time. Few games have withstood the test of time for me personally outside blizzard titles, though a few of those games might be HoMM(heroes of might and magic- turn based strategy games), Serious sam 1/SE/BFE(oldschool *style* FPS), AoE 1/2(rts), and a few others like some nintendo console stuff etc.
Blizz has an impressive track record for making fluid/fun to play games in the past. Given all the love I have for the previous titles and the fact that I'll have my little grubby fingers on d3 in just over a month, how can I not trust them.
The question is, if I will be able to enjoy them as the high quality games they are, or if I'll be doing futile attempts at recapturing the amazement I had as a child.
Diablo 2 had many flaws, but people that love the game (like me) aren't objective when it comes to its flaws.
After playing the beta for many hours i can honestly say that Diablo 3 is a better and more complete game, it is moving away from Diablo 2, but only when it comes to the flaws in my opinion.
I don't trust them to make a game for me.
I trust them to create a product that is beneficial for them.
The things is, EVERY company makes products that make them money, the difference is that Blizzard produces products that are worth the money you spent, they're complete games, and enjoyable ones; This is what I mean when i say I trust them.
It would seem that people have the tendency to feel agressive towards companies, or people who manage to make good money off their products. Just because something that kicks ass becomes well known does not instantly mean the quality of said product is suddenly trash. Good for blizzard. They've made games that brought people here to forums like this to discuss them even years ahead of time. You can complain all you want but either you buy the game and enjoy the hell out of it, you buy it and hate on it because you're forever alone, or you don't buy it and you miss out entirely on one of the best PC games of the time.
D3 isn't a subscription based game. You pay the money up front and that's it. You can play by yourself. You can play with a few specific friends. You can play with random people. You're not forced to play/show up every night and raid bosses and get in your games for ladder points as in wow. You take it at your own leisure.
People are complaining about small things like hitbox changes from d2->d3, when in actuality there is little to no difference at all, I know because I still play MXL to this day and that cursor will select things at a distance too. They get an idea in their heads about how a game should be, for one reason or another from something they experience or are told, and think that's the only way it can possibly work without being a horrible game when they have prior experience.
To the nay-sayers I say stop being so depressing and give the game a chance with a clean slate, or not, your call. Diablo 3 is not diablo or diablo 2, nor is it wow, starcraft etc. If you want to play things safe you might as well not even get out of bed if you're afraid of change. You have often have to risk something in order to find/experience something of value, there's no need to play it safe if you're already interested enough in the series to have found your way here. There is nothing to fear.
#1: playing a lot of diablo 2, having an account full of items that became worthless whenever patch 1.27d or whatever it was when the duping started. blizz did nothing, i stopped playing... sad
#2 i was playing wow and noticed someone hacking and botting at the same time and reported him, 2 mins later he was banned, i know this because i was banned at first then they fixed it, within another 2 mins, better
i want to trust blizzard, but i just dont know
Let's wait with being disappointed about Diablo 3's outcome untill after its outcome ^^
Also blizzard know themselfs that the mass majority trust them and will buy the game, even those who don't will buy the game and love it. The reason why this is so obvious? They can charge £45 for a digital copy of the game which when you compare it to games like Skyrim which are also big titles is on the expensive side.
I loved WC2. I loved Diablo I. I loved Diablo 2.
Not sure on the reasoning, but SC was meh for me. Never even played SC2. WC3, I never played. TBH, don't even know exactly when WC3 came out without googling. I guess sometime around D2's release that kept me busy. WoW, I played for just over a year, near the end of vanilla and some of the BC. Quit playing in december 2007. It was ok most of the time, but once I got to 40 man raiding, I quit. Seemed so fruitless to spend all that time in a 40 man raid and like 1-3 items were split between everyone.
With D3, I feel they have taken an extremely long time, even for Blizzard, to make this game. There are somethings I have been unsure about, like shared MF, but do like it to the alternative to follow bots stacking MF. Sometimes I wonder about some of the new game mechanics they introduce, and sometimes I wonder about some of the game mechanics they remove. I worry about the chat system. I remember last fall a blue post saying clan/guild chat would not be set for release but may come sometime after. That gives me hope.
Overall, I feel like they have made some great decisions and I think I will be able to enjoy D3 and its expansions for years. So do I trust them? I think on the titles I like, they are some of the best games of all time, but sometimes the make games that I find not really interesting. If they ever made another WC RTS, I would probably buy it. IF they ever make another MMO, I unless its the diablo series, I probably won't. They do say TITAN is a FPS MMO, which may intrigue me to buy it, but depends. I have right hand injury that keeps me from playing FPS games, which at one time, were my favorite type of games. Diablo is click intensive too but... I can play D2 for hours before my hand begins to swell and hurt, while FPS games it takes about 40 minutes. My hand injury was one of the reasons I started playing WoW. Its target lock and forget. For someone who played FPS games, it was easy mode and it was totally gear/time spent dependent and had very little to do with skill until you got to the big raids, but those raids time/rewards seemed so out of balance for me that I quit the game. So do I trust them? I do trust they will make D3 a great game. I also trust they make great games that I don't prefer, but many others enjoy immensely. So yes, I trust them.
I think people are upset because Skeleton King is too easy, but they forgot this: he's a MINIBOSS. Like a champion mob, but with a cute animation, like Blood Raven was, and not the act 1 major boss.
And if people make videos about killing him without gear, well, who couldn't do the same with Blood Raven? The difference is Blood Raven took less time to kill "naked" than SK.
So we could say D3, at least until lvl 10~13 (or less, I think you actually meet SK sooner lol) is harder than D2. (please don't throw stones at me)
-Saying something has "gay wow graphics" doesn't really prove a point.
-Saying something (in this day and age where little pre-teens walk around outside internet-enabled) doesn't have lan doesn't really prove a point.
-Complaining about starcraft 2 ultimately having 2 expansions (which appear *at least* as or more different from the previous game than broodwar did sc) doesn't really prove a point. When did you ever not have to pay for expansions before, unless in a crappy f2p mmo with microtransactions and $dlc?
-You missed the actual reason nerfs and buffs keep on getting added to wow. It's not because people cry. People always cry *just as you are doing now*. It's because they have to keep on providing new content to make people interested and paying for the game and new "big" content in expansions. Admittedly this mists of pandora thing looks the least interesting of anything I've yet seen, however, it's not really related. And every time they do so much as add a single skill, item, level change etc into the game rebalancing has to be done. It's not like starcraft where there are just 3 races and zero items, zero RNG to account for in terms of balancing a game for pvp. You shouldn't take itemized pvp seriously to begin with.
-Saying that a game is dumbed down for 5 year olds doesn't amount to much now either, nor has it for years if it ever did. My kid brother never had a problem beating games me and my teen (now adult) friends played as he grew up. Any game that you actually "beat" is made so that it is beatable, and not just by a few people with no life but by just about anyone who picks it up. Really beatable games are just a time investment- even if there is a tricky gimmick once you mash against it long enough a 5 year old can beat nearly any game. I never had problems beating games as a kid either. In fact d2 was probably one of the easier games to "beat".
-Saying a game is bad because it has an auction house alone, did you just close your eyes to what happened in d2? Regardless of what people said the economy was filled with duped items *because* there was no online requirement and *because* there was no auction house, or near 100% safe way to trade. Even with the terribly inneficient trade system in which you sat and spammed and got spammed in trade channels for endless hours while watching a slowly updated list of game names... people tried scamming at every turn, swapping in the wrong item, forcing your box to check, trying to play "trust games" where they try and pop your corpse (also happened in pvp games) or tried to get you to drop items and kill you or drop them where they could pick the items up through a wall...
Your list of reasons why d3 and sc2 have fallen short are (some) of the same reasons why, in my opinion, they are being improved.
Sorry, not to take anything away from your points laevus.
Absolutly not, I have no trust in Blizzard.
If you like blizzard north d2 graphics, why did their d3 look like a shitty lotro and if you dislike MMO's, blizz north was aiming to make d3 into one. You said you dislike the "gay wow-like graphics" (cartoony?), but look what blizz north has done with torchlight. It's nearly as cartoony as age of empires online, or orcs must die. Quite honestly, d3 is at least as gloomy as d2 was from what I've *already played* and experienced in the beta. I don't get that whole argument at all concerning the feel of the game/graphics. If you want top end graphics, you should probably stick with playing games like COD which have a new title every year with updated graphics but as the same game, not to hate on FPS or cod.
A lot of the things you are saying don't ring true with me. I don't care about the company in this discussion as much as I care about your flawed points of view concerning the games themselves.
And they don't think they can do, they just do. They're saying that they (the game developers) know better then us (the gamers) what's good for us. And I think they're right. I'm sure we all consider ourselfs pro gamers, but I'm humble, I can't create games, so I put my trust in those who can, and proved them selfs.
You consider Blizzard's latest games as low quality?
A game rated 17+.
Companies that have the attitude that they know better than their customers are doomed to fail. Can you imagine ordering a sandwich with no tomatoes and the chef says he know better than you that tomatoes make the sandwich good? That is not a successful business model. I don't think Blizzard is taking this attitude, and I sure hope they don't.
I trust that Blizzard has enough talented employees to make great games. I just hope that the buisiness side doesn't negatively affect development. i.e. developing so that ANYONE can play the game, when the truth is that anyone could have played it before and they made it look dumbed down to the diehard fans. Some of the decisions like having elective mode in the gameplay options instead of default are just stupid and do not add anything to the fun factor and are obviously designed because of a theory that the game needs to be more widely accessible to be widely adopted (basically make it super easy to sell a ton of copies).
I don't think any of these decisions will break D3 and they have reversed some of them as evidenced by increasing the starting difficulty in patch 15. I'm super excited after having played the beta a ton and am very confident D3 will be awesome. I hope devolopment teams, in all games, focus on what's fun and not worry about profits. If you make a great game, it will sell a ton (at least if you have Blizzard brand and marketing abilities). Don't jepordize that brand to try to squeeze out some extra bucks. Please continue to make great games for GAMERS and let Zynga and other F2P games attract new gamers.
Also, include voice over IP in future titles. I think it's silly that you can voice chat with people in your group on xbox (for the past 7 years), but not in Diablo. Do I trust Blizzard? Currently, but I will continue to keep an eye on their development. I do feel that they could have done a MUCH better job developing an overall community feel using Battle.net and this has been a missed opportunity. We will see what the future brings. See you in Diablo 3!