Two weeks have passed since The Lord of Terror has re-entered our PCs, so I guess everything is now mature enough to allow me to write an unbiased, un-full-of-rage review. The reason why I need to mention this is because the first days after the launch were a fuck-fest for the honest buyer; we’ll get to why later, but the bottom line is that if you weren’t willful enough, you just couldn’t get into the game in the first few days. I actually think that this was the game tutorial, and it is quite a crafty idea: “So, dear gamers, you are going to spend lots of hours doing the same thing over and over again. So let’s see if you are ready for this – how many times can you type in your password before you either give up or be allowed into the game?” (This, as it usually happens with most Blizzard games, was nerfed later, the “error 37” and “error 73” bosses being easy to kill right now). So, yeah, two weeks have passed, technical problems are gone, and I can finally review the game and not the servers it runs on.
At least in theory, because the reason I’m writing this instead of actually playing the game is that our good friend “error 37” is back again. Why is this happening? Theoretically in order to prevent cheating and to allow the game to pay for itself even after launch. You see, at one point in Blizzard games items become a commodity and people are willing to pay real money for imaginary items. If you played WoW (or any other MMO, I guess) you know the gold spammers. So, what better way to cut a profit than to make selling items legal and then take a share of the selling price – sound good right? People have fun playing the game and they can earn a little extra; if you are a spoiled brat you can take your dad’s credit card, but the best gear and then whoop ass without much hassle; and it the middle is the developer who earns it’s 15%. Win-win for everybody. Except that you can’t allow people to generate items from thin air, and in order to prevent this, all characters are stored server side, so there’s no way you can change them in any way. Sure, it might be a bit greedy, but I can’t say I’m turned off by this. But, and this is quite the big, black, Afro-American queen but, this comes with some issues: first off, you need the servers to be up in order to play, even if you just want to play by yourself. Apparently this is a tough one for Blizzard, as the fact that every person on this planet pre-ordered the game gave them no clue as to what capacity their servers should hold – so there you go, “error 37”. Also, I can see how you might need to do server maintenance, but Sunday afternoon or evening is not a good time to do this. You can trust me on this. And the worst part is that Blizzard are not some new comers into the online thing; they have been doing this with WoW since like forever, so I guess people were expecting they kind of got the ropes on this. The second problem is more philosophical: even if Diablo 3 has server-side stuff for gameplay, there’s also a strong message that can be have dire consequences for PC gamers – this is a game that hasn’t been cracked in two weeks and it’s the bestselling game on PC. Publishers (who as businessmen who are only interested in profit) might see that means that if you have an uncrackable game you’ll sell like crazy – so more draconic DRM it is. Also, a lot of people seem to have no problem not being able to pay 60E for a game that they can’t play whenever they want. I guess Blizzard still raises a lot of wet childhood dreams in most of us, even if they are not the developer we fell in love with anymore. Just to end this, Penny Arcade said it best “Requiring that players be online is one thing – but we are! We’re online right now! They’re the ones who aren’t online.” And Jim Sterling came in close second.
Those aside, let’s get to the game – is it any good, is it still Diablo? Yes and yes and no. The game is really good, and one of my friends said it best in one phrase “I don’t know how they do it, but Blizzard sprinkled crack on their game again.” It’s addictive and fun, and becomes challenging in parties on higher difficulties where you’ll have to develop some sort of strategy in order to stop dying again and again. It is the same Diablo? Well, yes, as it’s a really fun and addictive action-RPG game. No, because the mechanics have changed – instead of attributes and putting points in skill trees, the game is more streamlined, easier to get into and understand. Sure, people will complain that it’s a worse game that the second one, but for what counts, I think that the right ingredients are there; and I have a feeling that even the QQ-ers are playing it like crazy. The story is crap, but playing Diablo for its story is like buying a dildo to study anatomy. It’s the sort of story written in a weekend afternoon and then taken way too serious. And, really now – how many times must we kill Diablo before that asshole really stays dead? It’s the third game already, people need to come up with better shit than “Diablo has risen again”; and don’t get me started on the “this has been planned since the beginning of time part”. But back to gameplay – you have six categories ( i.e. left click attack, right click attack, defensive, super offensive etc. skills) and three passives. As you level up you gain a new ability in each category and, for further customization, you can assign a rune to each skill, to modify its effects. With this you can basically change your build on the fly – reached a boss and your full DPS build sucks? Change it to something with more survivability with just a few clicks. The skills system actually works and you might even call it original if you haven’t played Dungeon Siege 3. Another thing is that this game is really console-port friendly (you can map all the keys you use to a controller) so expect a PS3 version somewhere soon (I’m saying PS3 because Sony is more likely to allow Real Money Action House than Microsoft) – it will be fun to see the PC puritans’ reaction when one of their flagships betrays them.
Kill me, don’t kill me, whatever. We’ll see eachother in Diablo 4.
Finally, let’s talk about the Action House and let us hold hands and ask ourselves “What were they thinking when they fucked up the game’s economy so bad?” Like I already said, you can sell/buy items from AH (right now just for imaginary gold, and I’m curious to see how thing will change when real money will be involved). Also, the game seems to scale to gear and not to you character’s level. So you’ll enter the game, kill beasties, sell your lame shit to in game merchants and the better ones put them in AH; then, with all your hard earned cash you’ll buy better items for yourself. Cleanse and repeat every few levels, until you have two games – the actual Diablo and the Action House meta-game. The problem is that it’s hard to identify how much an item is worth, so with 10k (which now I can make in 5-10 minutes) gold you might buy the best shit for your level. So what’s the point of the blacksmith and the jeweler? You will spend 10k for a helm with random properties when he can buy a vacation on the Riviera with the same amount? And, as I found out last night, why would I create a gem for 7.5k (not mentioning all the ingredients needed) when I can buy one for 500 gold from AH? My feeling is that AH somewhat missed QA, at least high volume testing (and its sluggish performance is a big clue to that) so the actual in game price has no correlation to what’s going on in AH.
Bottom line is that Diablo 3 is a great game, currently plagued with technical problems. But wasn’t it about time that Blizzard brought something new to the table, instead of refining to perfection whatever anyone else is doing? Because, if they continue this way, what will they do when all other developers will be gone (because no publisher picks up your game unless you do the same number as Blizzard) and they’ll have nothing else to polish. And kicking your audience in the nuts with online DRM is never nice.
Child of the 90s 