1) It would be flat out illegal for Blizzard to do so. As Bagstone mentioned, Blizzard has licensed a ton of code and tools in order to implement the game, and they are in no position to re license it. I guess you could pay the license fee, see any modders with 5 figure sums just lying around?
2) No one would be able to do much with it for oh, 6 - 12 months. Modern game engines are obscenely complex. Probably some of the most complex coding done today, given all the parts.
3) No one would be able to really play, since it is designed as a servside only game. You would need the database code and schema, as well as the network protocol. Without those, you get to rewrite large parts of the game to remove the server dependency..
This will work up to a point, but you are hard limited by Deaths Breath. Sooner or later, to keep converting, you will need to farm elites to keep up with the mass conversion.
Although I agree with your sentiment, removing RoRG and and lowering sets to 5 pieces raises a possibly worse problem, doubling down and using 2 sets, whose combined power outweigh any legendary. I could see this happening IF and ONLY IF, sets were made exclusionary, ie you run one, you can (either by arrangement of pieces or direct block) never run 2 sets of that scale. For example, giving M6 DH's the new Natalyas would be... hilarious to say the least. I don't play monk much, but I can only assume the insanity that would ensue of being able to run both Sunwuko and Innas or Rainment at the same time.
The customization can only come about by making things exclusionary, of being an either/or proposition. Making your suggested changes to sets will only allow for more customization if the slots freed up ONLY permit the usage of other one off legendaries, not simply combining known power set with other lesser sets (whos bonuses beat any single legendary usually).
The other alternative, which is far more painful and time consuming, would be to make way way more powerful single piece legs and depower sets. This is impossible probably (both for wasted time and design reasons).
Give the dev team the money they need ? WTF are you talking about ? blizz just gave 3 milions $ for a metallica concert at blizzcon, that's enough money to pay a dev team for years, they don't need money, they have plenty, they just don't care.
Just to clear one misconception up, since I see it all the time. Irvine CA is one of the most expensive places in the US to live. Also programmers are not cheap. 3 million USD will hire 10 people for 3 years. That's it. Once you factor in all other costs of simply running the game (Servers, and consequently, the network admins, and so forth), 3 million is... nothing really. Anyone of any competence working for Blizzard is getting paid 60k USD minimum, only goes up from there.
Was pretty much inevitable they were going to do this after the Bounty buff. Now that there is a decent amount of items and with legendary gems to build stuff around, they are stripping away the tedium of certain farming, giving people more equitable options. Before 2.1 you did rifts, and that's it. Now, Rifts give good legs, GRifts give guarentee legs + gem upgrades, Bounties are guarenteed legs + good exp + souls, and now farming hellfire is reasonable (only 3 layers of RNG to it instead of 4).
Yeah, these kids are fools. First the DDOS, establishing their malicious intent towards game companies. Then call in a bomb threat, after asking around if SOE president was aboard, complete with posting the flight time and I think a ticket, establishing the credibility of such a threat. Shortest trial of all time when they get arrested. At this point, probably a dozen felony counts, between hacking, computer fraud, etc. and the bomb threat takes the cake, easily 10+ years in prison alone for that.
However, it's worth noting that there are two solutions to this problem. One of them is free trade, but the other one is for Blizzard to greatly increase the number of build-changing legendaries (and, much more importantly, combinations of legendaries) in the game. BoA is only half of a two-part promise but bear in mind that Blizzard has already stated outright that they shipped RoS knowing that they'd under-delivered on the other half of that promise (See http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/54961-whats-the-reasoning-behind-empty-legendaries for instance).
I think this needs to be emphasized. Just look at what is happening on the PTR right now. A simple example is the Grand Vizer, a totally worthless 2 handed staff, becoming the basis (due to itself and to the changes to the Meteor skill itself) of a build (Star Pact Meteor ftw).
On the topic of stash space: I think we will get more. Main reason I think this is the case is there is a massive amount of stash space currently allocated to all players that is currently unusable, all the AH slots, since it still is functioning and storing everything. When it truly is shutdown, they could repurpose that to be the new or improved or whatever, stash space. Even though at this time, most of that space is probably empty, Blizzard is on the hook to maintain it until the total closure of the AH.
The most logical answer I've heard is end of June for PTR, since that is when the AH will be totally shut down. Just as RoS shipped a week after the AH selling was shutdown.
Because programming anything remotely large is complex as hell and inevitably has bugs. Many bugs are corner or edge cases interacting in unpredictable ways. And this will never change, unless you have basically infinite time and money (which are more or less the same thing).
After having a game which pigeon-holed everybody into the same items in the same slots, Blizzard gives us some ridiculously overpowered items that everybody wants to have. When it comes to higher torment levels, it's hard to find a person who doesn't use Stone of Jordan + Ring of Royal Grandeur + Aughild's 3pc bonus... Really great diversity.
Easily solved, but I doubt many would like the easy solution. The pigeon holing only comes from the NEED to have those bonuses to do anything above T2/T3. So the best solution would be to take the time to design a bunch of legendary that by design are instant T6 faceroll material in those slots. Easy solution: Remove Torment 3 through 6 and make shift rewards downward accordingly. Now everything is viable, because everything is easy. Makes stat sticks less necessary since you can just faceroll with rares only.
As for new legendaries, I would assume some are coming with either 2.0.5 (unlikely) or with 2.1 (Both season and non season specific ones). And yes, coding them in takes time. More importantly, creating a model/animations for proc/2d artwork takes time, not something where you can pump one out every day, and even if they did, we would only be getting 40-50 new ones, maybe 70 tops (assuming they can do 3-4 in parallel).
I find this all hilarious because of people not knowing the drop chances for the truly powerful stuff in D2. Only because of duping was ANY of it available to any normal human being.
Case in point: Ber rune, necessary to form Enigma. Original drop table for it was that it ONLY came from Pindleskin (not even Baal had it in his rune drop table), and it had such a low drop rate that you could bot 24/7 (remaking a game every 3 minutes to avoid realm down) and it would take you over a month to be guaranteed 1. That means, given the original drop rate of Ber rune, the most a D3 player could have seen is maybe 5 of them, ever, over 3 years (assuming someone out there has played 3500 hours +).
That's just not true. You can easily break into T5-6 with gear that you have crafted (Cains, Aughilds, Borns, Asheara's), along with some quite easily aquired items as a wizard.
I think this REALLY needs to be emphasized. On one hand there is a legitimate complaint about too much RNG. But on the other, you can directly farm the Ring of Royal Grandeur, and the above sets and be facerolling T3/T4 because of the set bonuses. Although there is RNG to the rolls of the items and drops of the materials, there is no RNG in terms of direction. We know precisely where the mats for those things drop, and where RoRG drops, its as targeted as D2 was, where you KNEW certain thing could only drop from Baal. So you can farm the above sets with relative ease, and have a fairly good geared character ready to go, regardless of any other legendary drops.
1
What would happen?
1) It would be flat out illegal for Blizzard to do so. As Bagstone mentioned, Blizzard has licensed a ton of code and tools in order to implement the game, and they are in no position to re license it. I guess you could pay the license fee, see any modders with 5 figure sums just lying around?
2) No one would be able to do much with it for oh, 6 - 12 months. Modern game engines are obscenely complex. Probably some of the most complex coding done today, given all the parts.
3) No one would be able to really play, since it is designed as a servside only game. You would need the database code and schema, as well as the network protocol. Without those, you get to rewrite large parts of the game to remove the server dependency..
0
This will work up to a point, but you are hard limited by Deaths Breath. Sooner or later, to keep converting, you will need to farm elites to keep up with the mass conversion.
0
Although I agree with your sentiment, removing RoRG and and lowering sets to 5 pieces raises a possibly worse problem, doubling down and using 2 sets, whose combined power outweigh any legendary. I could see this happening IF and ONLY IF, sets were made exclusionary, ie you run one, you can (either by arrangement of pieces or direct block) never run 2 sets of that scale. For example, giving M6 DH's the new Natalyas would be... hilarious to say the least. I don't play monk much, but I can only assume the insanity that would ensue of being able to run both Sunwuko and Innas or Rainment at the same time.
The customization can only come about by making things exclusionary, of being an either/or proposition. Making your suggested changes to sets will only allow for more customization if the slots freed up ONLY permit the usage of other one off legendaries, not simply combining known power set with other lesser sets (whos bonuses beat any single legendary usually).
The other alternative, which is far more painful and time consuming, would be to make way way more powerful single piece legs and depower sets. This is impossible probably (both for wasted time and design reasons).
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As for new legendaries, I would assume some are coming with either 2.0.5 (unlikely) or with 2.1 (Both season and non season specific ones). And yes, coding them in takes time. More importantly, creating a model/animations for proc/2d artwork takes time, not something where you can pump one out every day, and even if they did, we would only be getting 40-50 new ones, maybe 70 tops (assuming they can do 3-4 in parallel).
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Case in point: Ber rune, necessary to form Enigma. Original drop table for it was that it ONLY came from Pindleskin (not even Baal had it in his rune drop table), and it had such a low drop rate that you could bot 24/7 (remaking a game every 3 minutes to avoid realm down) and it would take you over a month to be guaranteed 1. That means, given the original drop rate of Ber rune, the most a D3 player could have seen is maybe 5 of them, ever, over 3 years (assuming someone out there has played 3500 hours +).
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