Deck Talk: Karlis' BotB Warrior, Popular Decks of the Week, Class Deck Poll
Happy Holidays, Hero Rotation Update, Holiday XP Boost, Tech Alpha Portrait Rewards
Warcraft III Fan Remake - WarCraft: Armies Of Azeroth, Blue Tweets, Fan Art
XP Holiday Buff
Apparently there were some issues and the holiday buff was deactivated before intended. Lylirra clarified that was a mistake on their end, and that to compensate it will be active until tonight at 11:59 PST, for PC and consoles. Read below!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
I wanted to quickly jump in and thank everyone for the reports of the holidays buff ending before intended. This was indeed our mistake and we've re-enabled the buff for PC in the Americas region (the Asian and European gameplay regions were unaffected). It will conclude tonight at 11:59 p.m. PST for both PC and console players.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused, as well for the delay, and thank you all once again for your patience and reports. Happy holidays!
Rob Pardo Interview
Rob Pardo, former Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard who worked at most of their big franchises (including D3) gave an interview to the folks at IdleThumbs. Its second part was recently uploaded, and he talks a bit about the AH, the decision to remove it and some of D3 vanilla's issues. We have put together a summary of it, or you can listen to the entire podcast (D3 part starts at around 1 hour and 39 minutes). Check it out!
About Diablo 3 and the AH
- "How confident were you in the AH when it shipped? When did you decide to give it up?"
- Very confident at first, on a conceptual level
- It took a tremendous concerted effort internally to get that feature working worldwide
- Aside the obvious technical challenges, there were legal and e-commerce issues too
- On how hard was the decision to remove it? Because the executives at Blizzard are very game focused, there weren't many people arguing in favor of it
- Josh was the most hardcore about removing it entirely
- Rob Pardo advocated some design changes to the AH
- He thinks there's probably a version that would work with well the game
- WoW's AH, nobody is talking about removing entirely, because it's better executed
- Sometimes when a feature is implemented poorly for that game, people feel it's a bad "feature" but it's just badly executed
- The big mess on D3 is that Blizzard wasn't able to beta test the game at a scale they would like to
- The way they "beta tested" D3 was mostly a "stress test", and not a real content beta test as they usually do in WoW
- The other thing people confuse ("magnet for controversy") - the thing about the AH is not the "real money" thing, he considers that the AH itself is what hurts the game
- It's biggest offense was destroying people's perception of how they get their loot
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Posted Dec 30, 2014-
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Posted Dec 30, 2014But a lot of players (young, old, with or without money) will argue that the "feeling" of having any sort of Pay-2-Win in a game is detrimental to its "community" feeling, because you can't tell if a player earned anything (since the main way to measure success in a gear-based game is through their gear, and not achievements or clearing the game for instance). And their argument is legit, to an extent. As long as we all don't conviently forget whythe AH was conceived, and stop proliferating the notion that it was purely to "make monies".
I tend to agree with Rob Pardo on almost everything. There's probably a version of the AH (or any sort of Trading) that works with Diablo 3, as long as the rest of the game backed it up. You don't have to Bind-on-account everything to have the game work, and it doesn't necessarily make the end-game grind more fun, varied or lasting, judging from RoS' state.
Anyways, what's done is done. There's no turning back. Or maybe there is, in a future expansion, once the dev team can get over the current issues and back on track with the original goals of D3V - build variety, exciting end-game item hunt and better social features.
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Posted Dec 30, 2014Lasting? Maybe not. It is, after all, a tall order to make a game that stays fresh forever in today's age of crazy high production values and saturated markets.
But fun and varied? I would definitely argue RoS's endgame qualified as such. It was fun to play, alone or with friends, because it actually offered features and customization worthy of the 'RPG' label. It tried to be more open-ended with exploration, and succeeded to an extent.
Right now, the game basically ends once your Seasonal toon has his set bonuses and 3 Lvl.25 Leg Gems. You can continue to play, but that is more or less when the credits should roll. I found it to be a pretty cool ride, leagues better than anything D3V tried to do. The truly hardcore crowd can continue to grind paragon and climb the leaderboard, but there's only so much a dev team with a set pool of resources can offer. The whole experience lasts at least 70 to 100 hours, which is nothing to sneeze at.
If anything, I believe D3V was offtrack and RoS set the record straight. I would like the current state of the game to be what is built upon, with slightly less restrictions on trading. And some actual PvP
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Posted Dec 30, 2014My comment there was towards Bind on Account specifically. How they did a full 180, without even trying a middle ground solution. It feels like a lazy, rushed decision. Made to give the impression that they cared about the playerbase first and foremost, but hiding the fact that they chose the easy way out (in my very humble opinion). It would be incredible hard making a Trading system that worked, merged with a Bound Item system, but it's expected from triple A companies to have developers that can awe us with their solutions to near impossible stalemates.
Also, my "varied" remark was aimed very very specifically at build variety, which I think is at an all time low - and yes, I am aware how I'm definitely a minority in this opinion. I still have my own reasons for believing in such.