WhiteTigerShiro said:
Jesus Christ that was quite the novella you wrote there.
On to my points and how you're wrong anyways.
1. There's no use using Rage and Dead Island as examples due to the fact that their issues didn't continually persist to hamper their features.
I'm sorry but there's no excuse for anyone's single player experience to lag because they don't have the choice to not play online. None.
2.Not really denial. Sorry but as soon as people saw what actual gameplay of both Rage and Dead Island looked like, interest dipped significantly. Rage looked like a weird mulch of Borderlands and Fallout 3, while Dead Island was Left 4 Dead with RPG elements and Duke Nukem's mighty foot. Sales also reflect this.
3.Yes the RMAH and the DRM were announced before release. People weren't fans of either. It was widely discussed. People thought they could just ignore those features and have fun with the game. What you neglected to point out about this particular point was that hackers had already screwed people before D3 was on the market for a month. The DRM that you say people should have researched didn't work clearly, and still isn't due to the fact that botters are still exploiting the game. People usually hear DRM and think, "well at least I won't get hacked". Researching the feature would not have mattered if the feature don't work.
4. Like I said, overall enthusiasm dropped like the bass in a Skrillex song when both Dead Island and Rage were shown at E3. Neither game had stellar sales as well. Rage fared better on console due to the PC port being crap, and Dead Island was bland even after they fixed the launch issues.
And when I say I've never seen a game as botched as D3, I mean it. I'm taking into the account the fact that this is a flagship title by a critically acclaimed company. Not that many companies fuck up their mainstay series to this degree. No one expected Blizzard, a company with a near perfect track record for delivering great games, to screw up DIABLO 3. This is an embarrassment for them. When other games come out like crap, they're either patched until they work, or they're just horrible games.
D3 is a good game hampered by the decisions you'd expect EA or Activision to make. This is like if Valve finally put out HL3 only to have 4 packs of Day 1 DLC and being 3 and a half hours long.
I'm aware that other games in the past have fucked up their releases, but we gave those games and the parties responsible their hazings and jeers and moved on. This is a different kind of messing up. This one could have been prevented by common sense completely. This mess up made a great game very much less enjoyable due to Blizzard's want to jam the RMAH ingame. That's pretty much a "please hack me" if we've ever seen one.
And their counter measure to it was even worse. Even if they had different servers for "RMAH player" and "non-RMAH players" and kept the online DRM it would have been a better solution then, "don't wanna get hacked? spend more money to buy an authenticator". The fact is that players who don't want to use the RMAH still have a chance of getting hacked. Along with server lag, the fact that Error 37 still pops up, and glitches like the one mentioned in this article come along, you can see why people are a bit pissed.
And where in the 9 circles of hell did anyone in this thread say they had a problem with D3 not being just like D2? Quit putting your assumptions in people's mouths. People aren't saying anything of the sort. Are you daft? People are pissed because the can't play single player offline, they can't feel 100% secure about their character not being hacked, they can't play their game without lag due to Ubisoft quality DRM, or sometime can't play their damn game at all. D3 is great when it works. People aren't mad because they want D2 again. That's your assumption. People are mad because the features that were meant to protect the game from problems have caused a massive amount of headache. You honestly can't be mad at people for this valid reason. People are praising the new skill tree and classes. People are praising the game's story and new classes. The only complaint about the game itself that people have is that its a bit short. Otherwise the main complaints are about the phallic DRM and RMAH caused issues.
My rose tinted glasses are off, you may want to put some glasses ON in order to read what the hell people are saying.
And yes, I'm aware that Diablo has been a multiplayer focused game to an extent, but most people who have played Diablo first play alone their first run. Its' that choice that made D1 and D2 great. And you didn't NEED to play with others to beat the game. I wouldn't say Diablo is a completely MP focused game, it was just one of the first to transition single player and multiplayer equally on both sides. That's what Blizzard seems to have forgotten here.
