Do me a favour.  Go to Meta Critic, type in Diablo 3 in the search.  Click Diablo 3.  Look at the user satisfaction with this game.  Just because people bought the game does not,  I repeat does not make this game a success.  No one is going to buy the expansions for this game, not even if they pull their socks up. 

Was it Quest for Glory 5 Trial by fire?

Well said

And this is how I feel about the game:

As a long-time fan and active player of the Diablo franchise going all the way back to the release of the original in 1996, it goes without saying that I was eagerly looking forward to this third iteration of the series, and I'm happy to say that I am not the least disappointed with what the master game-craftsmen at Blizzard have turned out.

At its heart, the Diablo games have always been simple (one might even argue simplistic): click monster, kill monster, collect reward. And you do this over and over again, sometimes dozens of times a minute, but it's a formula that appeals to some base portion of our brain that can lock us into the click-kill-reward loop for hours at a time. Diablo 3 doesn't even think about straying from this tried and true formula, and the result is a game that is, at a very fundamental level, simply fun to play.

Where Diablo 3 does change the formula is with a fairly radical reinvention of how characters are developed and customized. In a break from convention, statistic points, which govern your character's strength, dexterity, intelligence, and vitality, are assigned automatically each time you level up. Blizzard's reasoning behind this change is that by allowing the manual assignment of stat points, it basically forces the game designers to balance the difficulty around players who crunch the numbers and find the mathematically "correct" build, the one that is more viable than all the rest, meaning that any player who doesn't use the "correct" build will find it impossible to advance later in the game. Blizzard also changed the way stat points work in that now, all stats are useful to all character classes (for instance, dexterity modifies dodge chance, and intelligence modifies resistances), and each class has a different primary stat that modifies the amount of damage the character is able to dish out. But don't think that automatic stat point distribution leaves the theorycrafters out in the cold because individual stats can still be buffed with +stat gear which gives loot drops added value that was missing from previous games. What sounds like a dramatic change on paper actually works extremely well in practice.

Also gone are skill trees and the act of pouring all of ones points into one or two skills. Now skills are unlocked automatically with each character level gained, and since skills can be changed at any time (with a limit of six skills available at any one time), it encourages experimentation and build diversity. It's not at all unusual to have a new skill unlock that causes you to completely rethink your character build. It's worth noting that the skill progression doesn't follow the convention of each subsequent skill simply being a more powerful variation of its predecessor (i.e. fire bolt, fire ball, explosive fire ball, etc.) but rather, each new skill is sometimes radically different from the rest. For example, the Witch Doctor's "Plague of Toads" skill set is as follows: the base skill unleashes a handful of toads that deal 130% weapon damage as poison with any enemies they contact; Explosive Toads has them erupt in an explosion of fire that deals 169% weapon damage; Toad of Hugeness summons a giant toad that will gulp down one enemy, taking him out of combat for 5 seconds and dealing 20% weapon damage per second; Rain of Toads calls down a swarm of toads from the sky that cover the ground and deal 130% weapon damage to affected enemies for 2 seconds; Addling Toads deal 130% weapon damage and have a 15% chance to confuse enemies for 4 seconds; and finally, Toad Affinity removes the mana cost from Plague of Toads. A great deal of the fun in Diablo 3 comes from experimenting with such a diverse array of skills.

One of the hallmarks of the Diablo series is randomization, and once again, Diablo 3 delivers with a variety of diverse maps that are different every time you play. Even the handful of areas with fixed borders have many random elements within, such as the placement of monsters (of course; the loot they drop is also randomized), treasure chests, random cave and dungeon entrances, and events. A word on events: they are special mini-quests that have a chance of showing up every time a map is generated and can be anything from fending off a wave of enemies to exploring a special dungeon and unlocking its secrets and treasures. While some areas do have fixed borders, interior dungeons and caves are almost entirely random. In short, it is possible to play multiple iterations of the same map and have a different experience every time which lends the game its amazing replay value.

Artistically, Diablo 3 is stellar. While the graphics technology may not be state of the art, Blizzard's art department has delivered a top notch visual experience. I have found myself on many occasions halting my progress simply to take in the scenery and the absurd amount of detail on the screen, or marveling at a beautiful vista, or the way a stream flows over and around rocks. The way random elements mesh together -- the various building blocks that make up the dungeons and the like -- is so masterfully done and so successfully delivers a handcrafted appearance that I've seen a number of players accuse the game of lacking randomized environments! It's a real treat to have a game that looks this good without requiring bleeding-edge hardware to render it.

I'm fairly certain that anybody reading this is well aware of Blizzard's controversial decision to make Diablo 3 an online-only game, so anybody contemplating a purchase will have to consider the quality of their internet service and their tolerance for a game that requires constant connection to its servers. For my part, my experience has been excellent with minimal lag and downtime. There has only been one night since launch that I have been unable to play due to the server being down; however, your mileage may vary. The other complaint is that the end game is essentially impossible without spending virtual or real gold in Blizzard's auction house. On that point I will say that the auction house only really governs how quickly you acquire top-level gear and not whether or not you acquire it. It is, in my opinion, the impatient gamer who insists on using the auction house when simply playing the game is a perfectly viable if slower alternative (and the Diablo series has always been about slow progression through playing anyway, rather than rushing through to the end). I, personally, have never bought anything from the auction house, nor do I plan to, so I can't really comment on the experience.

But let's assume, for a moment, that the Diablo 3 endgame really is hopelessly broken (it's not) and that Blizzard is not diligently working to smooth out the endgame balance (they are); what does that leave you with? It will take you roughly 20-hours to beat the game once on normal, so right there, you've already gotten your money's worth when compared to a typical game (for that matter, many popular FPS titles don't even have half that much single player content). But why would you stop after one play through? Without changing characters, you can proceed through the next two difficulty levels -- there are four total, the final being the endgame -- which will give you another 40-hours of play (conservatively speaking), so that's 60-hours. If you decide to play multiple characters then multiply that 60-hours times the number of characters. Play all five characters up through the third difficulty level and you're talking over 300-hours of gameplay content, assuming you never even touch the endgame. If that's not value for the money then I don't know what is.

Whatever problems it may have at the moment, Diablo 3 is a game that I can recommend without reservation.

dzimm

Buy torch light 2, where you will lose only $20 if you don't like it.

You're welcome, although I'm not sure why a factual statement makes you laugh.

dzimm

I have been hesitant to write this review for a long while, but after playing 3 out of 5 classes to 60 and 2 above 40 - I don't know how many times I have walked through the storyline and gone through enough classes to figure out the game at this point to make a fair judgement.

I did not want to believe it. I thought the online community was too quick to judge when D3 (short for Diablo III hereafter) was released as an online only game. I understand from Blizzard's perspective they needed to move on from all the hacking in D2 which ultimately ruined it for many. Even after all these years Diablo 1 and 2 both share extremely high praise for the originality, game design, and the meticulous attention to detail throughout the game design. They are what I would label as "gamer's game" because they're designed, tweaked, and balanced for the gamers' perspective. Simply put, they have been fun, and extremely memorable, which leads to such high anticipation and expectations in Diablo III with so many years in the making, by the gaming industry's gold standard - Blizzard.

But the sad reality is, something changed along the way of the design phase over all these years.

If you played through all acts many times, you would probably notice the same thing - Act1 is WAY more polished than 2, and then 3, and ultimately Act 4 simply is a piece of garbage. A very quick example would be how Act 1 has all these destroyable objects that you could interact and damage the enemies - the environmental factors are a part of the original game design. But by the time you get to Act 4 it's completely gone; Another example would be the storyline and non-linear quest style gameplay which was present in Act 1 turns into Act 4 where you basically go forward, hack and slash til you get to Diablo and suddenly you can't help but ask yourself, is this it? really? Something seems to be missing in the whole Act like a horrible movie where they spend the majority of the time crafting the plot, and by the time the plot is supposed to unravel, it comes to a quick and distasteful ending. Yes, that's Diablo III. The final boss fight came anticlimactic, boring, and childish - even comparing to Diablo *1* that came out some... 16 years ago. Yes I still remember building up fire resist, running around the map dodging Diablo's array of attacks and doing multiple portals with the other online gamers trying to take him down.

Both it's predecessors share the following traits - they're FUN, ADDICTIVE, and CHALLENGING.

Something changed along the way in the D3 design, where they dropped 2 of the 3 traits of the newest Diablo game - it's not fun, not challenging, and they simply made the attempt to make it addictive.

But why you ask?

The fun and challenging part goes hand in hand, because the real cream of the crop in this game is to get to level 60, the highest level in this game in Inferno mode where you cannot continue to advance in levels but you're greeted with supposedly extreme challenges to earn the best gears in the game and continue to tweak your character's gears. That's the design the Diablo franchise has always employed.

But...

As of today, after 3 tweaks since early June 2012, the game is actually more broken than what it originally was.

First off the bet, the difficulty of Inferno is simply stupid. I chose my word here very carefully here, because I've been playing games all my live since the pocket games to Mario on NES to everything til now as a grown adult - yes Inferno is plain stupid. As an advanced casual gamer you will be stuck in Act 2 of Inferno because whatever gears that you can legitimately earn would stop you from advancing. The game isn't just hard - it's plain impossible. It's not only simply impossibly challenging, because if it's remotely challenging that would help separate the skilled and dedicated players from the rest, but nope - it is simply stupid impossible to a point it's just dumb.

How fun would it be if the elite mobs literally move at blinding teleporting kind of speed through your entire screen casting DOT damage all over the screen and putting up walls to avoid you from running (which you can't out run them anyway even if you tried) and there's not one but all 3 of them along with the other screen full of mobs. Sure, you can go back and try to work your way to improve your x-resist and defense and health and think okay you make some advancement and try again, but nope, you still die in an instant. You can teleport back with your group and try again, and nope you all die in an instant.

To solve your gaming frustration?
Easy!

Auction House is there to the rescue

To level the playing field with the most advanced gamers who have farmed the game for the past month filling the online auction house with gears with amazing stats, there's the REAL CURRENCY auction house.

If you haven't earned enough gold to buy what you need? You pay real money to buy the top tear 1% of the gears to help you beat it all the way, and unfortunately for the 99% of the gamers that's the only way to actually meet the challenge set by the game.

Which essentially explains everything that seemed off with all that we have looked at in the above.

Diablo III started off being designed as a gamer's game, but along the way the game design dragged on for way too long and eventually the end product became something that's out there to do what every other product is made to do - to generate profit.

Since D3 cannot adapt the same monthly subscription model like World of Warcraft (also made by Blizzard in case you didn't know), the only way to continue to make a profit from the gamers who have already paid the initial payment for the game is to lure them into spending additional money for in-game items. Although Blizzard claims that they do not post items in the game to sell, they still make a fixed transaction fee on every item sold. With 3.5 million copies sold within the first 24 hours, mathematically it is a sound business model to make money out of a successful game.

The plot is set - we now have a game that's not fun, not challenging, and stupid difficult game that can only be beat that you either spend an unacceptable amount of time which you do not enjoy to farm to earn gold to buy, or hope for a very lucky that would never come because thats how they designed the drop/loot table; OR you take out your wallet and conveniently pay real money for the game that you already paid for to continue to advance.

With the newest patch as of today, Blizzard nerfed one of the most significant stat of the game - IAS (increase attack speed by a whole 50%), drops were decreased, and repair cost is now sky high

It is a tactical move - they needed to first populate the game with godly items, then re-balance the items to make other items also desirable, and finally increase the significance of in game gold and eventually make it more even so you have to pay real money for auction items.

This is when I decided to stop playing this game and to participate in Blizzard's money generating scheme. It is very unfortunate that a game highly anticipated like the D3 made by the gold standard of gaming industry would crash so hard that it is absolutely unbelievable. Maybe it's about time that we all realize that the gaming industry, like all other industries out there, are out there to make money but not to serve gamers like you and I.

Diablo 3 has grown up from Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 - selling it's soul to Diablo (the devil) and becoming Blizzard's attempt to create a cash cow, rather than what we all hoped for. Try it at your own cost, but be prepared for a very soul taste in your mouth, and a very distasteful after taste that you would love to forget about.

So now that the dust has settled and the hype has receeded a bit, what is your take on the conversion of the great single player experience (KOTOR) to an MMO (TOR). Was it worth it? Did they do a good job? What was lost in the process? What was gained?

Who is deadlist, or should I say, was it worth the conversion from KOTOR or TOR?

I have a pretty old computer, but not to bad seeing as how quickly technology moves on

My Mother Board is those 939 sockets, I recently was forced to upgrade to vista, but I only have 1 GB of Dual Channel Ram

Would it be worth it for me to get another 1 GB or just save my money for a new system because I see the newer RAM is alot cheaper?

My computer isnt really to bad is it? I have

X1900 Pro Video card

AMD 3700+?

Would like to hear the gamespots communities thoughts

Please dont laugh at my system hehe