You are correct they did not have all the time in the world or all the money to make this game, but they did have knowledge from Sc2, WoW and other games they have created. They have experience in this type of game more so than others, right? Blizzard is a very experienced company, the design flaws we see are really like history repeating itself, blizzard should learn from it's own mistakes.
Diablo 3 is a different piece of software with different design considerations. Even concepts used in their previous games have different design intentions, different implementations, different effects on the game experience. Both Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft have economies based on trading items, but the end effect of those item trades and the way the economy works through the designed mechanics is something completely different. Think about why World of Warcraft has Soulbind and Diablo doesn't. Two similar concepts from two different games are not necessarily analagous because of their similarity. Furthermore, "Blizzard Entertainment" is not one homogenous entity, nor is it a machine. The vanilla WoW team is not the Starcraft 2 team is not the Diablo 3 team. Therefore, they do not just simply "learn from their mistakes". They make design decisions based on observations and results from other projects and other development teams, and there are likely many of those in Diablo 3 that go unnoticed. It is unfair to draw parallels between problems in this game and in previous games because for one, their similarity does not necessarily make them analagous, but additionally, this development team is at least a partially new entity with a different collective of ideas, passions, and methodology. Therefore, similar design flaws are not history pointlessly repeating itself, but rather a result of both the number of moving parts in large-scale development and simple human error.
You seem to be comparing D3 in week 1 with D2 after several years of patches and expansions. I'm not sure that's a useful reference point.
You seem to be defending a game that has an infrastructure of a 11 year old game. I'm not sure if that's a useful use of time.
You're talking about a company that had 11 years to make a flawless sequel. They took 5-6 of those years to release a game like this to us. Sure, it's a good game. But it should be slightly better. Also, all of the economy problems, UI problems, and server problems SHOULD NOT have happened in a game that's developed by Blizzard Entertainment. With the years of experience with developing servers and economies in a game like WoW, along with having all of the resources now availible to them that they just didn't have 7 years ago, you would THINK that they could ship a game that's not inferior to their past releases.
Sure, it's the fastest selling game of all time, only because of the hard work that was put into Diablo 2 and WoW.
It's also worth mentioning that Diablo 2 and its expansion were developed in a fraction of the time and a meager fraction of the resources. Maybe This is why we'll be able to appreciate a game like Torchlight 2 when it comes out?
I'm really tired of hearing this line of reasoning. More time does not magically make everything better. They didn't "have 11 years" to make Diablo 3, their development concerns were completely elsewhere. The years they did put into the game are completely evident, but Blizzard's development culture isn't one that lends itself to technical expertise, their games always have design flaws and bugs that they continually work to fix. Their resources are not unlimited, they do not have infinite money, and even if they did it would not likely make the game much better. Saying that Blizzard squandered their development time because the game is not what you consider "flawless" is ridiculous and is the main part of what's so awful about the overall reaction to this game. The game will never measure up to your dear nostalgic half-remembered days in Diablo II that have been embellished over time, and it's absurd to expect it to.
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Diablo 3 is a different piece of software with different design considerations. Even concepts used in their previous games have different design intentions, different implementations, different effects on the game experience. Both Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft have economies based on trading items, but the end effect of those item trades and the way the economy works through the designed mechanics is something completely different. Think about why World of Warcraft has Soulbind and Diablo doesn't. Two similar concepts from two different games are not necessarily analagous because of their similarity. Furthermore, "Blizzard Entertainment" is not one homogenous entity, nor is it a machine. The vanilla WoW team is not the Starcraft 2 team is not the Diablo 3 team. Therefore, they do not just simply "learn from their mistakes". They make design decisions based on observations and results from other projects and other development teams, and there are likely many of those in Diablo 3 that go unnoticed. It is unfair to draw parallels between problems in this game and in previous games because for one, their similarity does not necessarily make them analagous, but additionally, this development team is at least a partially new entity with a different collective of ideas, passions, and methodology. Therefore, similar design flaws are not history pointlessly repeating itself, but rather a result of both the number of moving parts in large-scale development and simple human error.
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I'm really tired of hearing this line of reasoning. More time does not magically make everything better. They didn't "have 11 years" to make Diablo 3, their development concerns were completely elsewhere. The years they did put into the game are completely evident, but Blizzard's development culture isn't one that lends itself to technical expertise, their games always have design flaws and bugs that they continually work to fix. Their resources are not unlimited, they do not have infinite money, and even if they did it would not likely make the game much better. Saying that Blizzard squandered their development time because the game is not what you consider "flawless" is ridiculous and is the main part of what's so awful about the overall reaction to this game. The game will never measure up to your dear nostalgic half-remembered days in Diablo II that have been embellished over time, and it's absurd to expect it to.