It's been 12 years since the previous game, Diablo
II, and fans finally got the chance to play Blizzard's latest game in the serious last Tuesday. Unfortunately, as has been much documented across the Internet, the launch didn't exactly run smoothly–with login errors,
server queues and even server failures all making the first 48 hours a bit of a
chore for most. Even after the issues had been sorted players still complained
of huge lag and for the first four days not one session would go by without
some sort of lag interrupting my game. To add insult to injury, as
things had started to calm down towards the end of the week and the weekend
approached, fresh disaster hit on Sunday when Blizzard had to take the servers
down again, due to problems with Battlenet. They were off for around four hours
in total and during that time Blizzard were unable to give any indication as to
when they would be coming back.
Thankfully since then there
have been no serious server issues, and lag has also reduced. However there
have been fresh issues in the form of accounts being hacked with items and gold
stolen. Blizzard's response to this has been swift, but strange claiming that
this kind of thing is normal when a new online game is launched. That might be
the case, but if it keeps happening and Blizzard know it is going to happen,
why are they not doing more about stopping it? Especially since the whole point
of making Diablo III an 'always online' game was to reduce this type of
thing. If they had kept the singleplayer offline then most of these people
probably wouldn't have had their accounts hacked and we certainly wouldn't have
had the problems we have experienced over the last week. However this post
isn't going to focus on the merits or pitfalls of the 'always online' side of
the game. I disagree with Blizzard's stance and believe that the singleplayer
portion of the game should be playable offline, but today I want to focus on my
thoughts of the game itself, putting aside the server issues.
I have always liked action
rpgs, there is something inside me that just loves finding new loot and
unlocking new skills and whilst other genres have started to incorporate these
mechanics to varying degrees of success, arpgs, and the Diablo series
in particular, have got this form of gameplay down to a fine art. With Diablo
III though, Blizzard has made some changes to the formula.
The first thing to say is that Diablo
III doesn't do anything revolutionary. At its core you still
bash/slash/stab/kick/punch/cast spells to kill monsters, who upon death
shower gold/armour/weapons/trinkets out of their corpses for you to pick up.
Bigger and tougher enemies lead to better loot drops and every time you level
you unlock new skills, but this is where things are slightly different. Diablo
III no longer provides you with skill trees to progress along. Instead you
unlock skills in various categories which can then be tweaked by
adding runes to them.
The major addition to the
series though is the auction house. This allows players to sell loot that they
have found in-game which in turn other players can buy using
gold they have collected in the game. This is a unique feature, but for me it
totally destroys one of the major reasons why I play these games. The thrill of
finding new loot completely disappears if I can just pop on to the auction
house and buy it. Yes you can just ignore the auction house, but when you play
co-op and your mates are sporting gear much better than yours because they have
been able to purchase it from the auction house, it spoils my
enjoyment of the game. If you do cave in and buy new gear then it often dwarfs
anything that drops in-game for a good long while, in fact you could
go from level 10 to the end of the game without using any loot found in-game, making the loot system completely redundant.
The auction house and skill
system, for me, are not enjoyable additions to the game and make it an inferior
game compared to previous Diablo games. However it is still enjoyable to play
as the world Blizzard has created, the polish applied and the fact that while I
would prefere a skill tree, the skill system in place still provides enjoyment
with each class having some fun abilities make it a great game to play. A
mention should also go to the excellent co-op system. The game really shines
when there are three or more of you blasting through Diablo's minions and the
systems within the game make this easy to accomplish.
The major thing that is bugging
me though is that Diablo III doesn't do anything new. The arpg genre has
been pretty stagnant with developers prefering to copy the template set out by
the original Diablo with only Torchlight adding anything new.
With 12 years to think about it I was hoping that Blizzard would add more than
they have. This game is incredibly polished, but baring the slightly different
skill system it is really just Diablo II with modern graphics. Not every game
needs to do something new, but I feel that Blizzard had the opportunity to
create something unique and for whatever reason they bottled it. It seems like
it is left up to Runic Games and Torchlight II to take the genre forward
and do something new. In the meantime I will continue to enjoy
Diablo III, but with the nagging feeling that it could, and perhaps
should, have been a lot more.
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