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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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.