Diablo III: The best F2P game never made.

[nu1mlock]

People seem to have missed the point that PvP matchmaking will match you up with someone with EQUAL gear! You do NOT have to worry about someone having better stuff than you.

The PvP will be balanced so you will not go up against someone with top gear if you don't have it yourself.

 

[Do4600]

I dont understand how they can charge a monthly subscription AND charge consumers for using the auction house. Credit where credit is due its a brilliant way to make an extra dollar (or two), but it seems like Blizzard are asking too much of their community. One thing is for sure, they are going to make a quick return on their investment with this game.

It would be better as a F2P model with auction house charges OR with a monthly subscription but no profiteering from the auction house.

They are not charging a monthly subscription. I don't know where you heard this, but it's not true.

 

[Do4600]

You know, I bought Torchlight a few days ago to see what all the fuss was about with people propping up Torchlight 2 over D3, and I gotta say, it's boring as all get out I was so disappointed. It's weird, cause it's such a straight Diablo clone, you'd think it would be good, but that magic just isn't there.

Do keep in mind, the first Torchlight is broken beyond repair.

The monsters drop almost more potions than gold, the game itself is incredibly easy, you will become way overleveled if you even just follow the story missions. The fact that pets can be minion masters, and bosses can be mind controlled make it slightly easier as well.

And yes, while the first one is a straight up diablo clone, I personally believe the second one will be quite different.

Even if Torchlight 2 won't be much different from Diablo 3 (it will, I prefer Torchlight's art style), it's still a lot cheaper. I just hope it won't be as broken as the first game.

Edit: Oh yeah, the thread was actually about something else. Well, I wouldn't hesitate to play Diablo free, of course. It's free, after all. I believe many more people would play it, and a lot more people would invest in the real money AH, which in turn makes Blizzard more money. Whether it would be enough to cover up the fact that they released the game for free, I wouldn't know. They have been giving it for free to people who subscribed for a year to wow, I believe.

Also, Torchlight (and according to the devs Torchlight 2 as well) runs on pretty much everything (even your toaster), while Diablo 3 might not.

WAIT a second. You admit Torchlight 1 is a broken game and you only have hope that Torchlight 2 won't be broken? Doesn't that sound like a bad way to buy games? The first one was broken but I can't wait for the second one and hope they can rise above their standard from the first game? Also, my brother is running a single core 3ghz processor with 2 GBs ram with windows XP from 2003, pretty much a toaster, and he played the beta for Diablo 3 and it was smooth as glass.

 

[Arina Love]

Played D3 beta and was very disappointed. i like to choose my own hotkeys and Stats. At this state D3 more resembles casual 15-20$ game than hardcore 60$ action-RPG. Will play it after it will hit discount bin in 1-2 years or F2P if things will get bad for franchise.

 

[Do4600]

Wait...WHAT?????
D3 has subscription? WTF? But it's not an MMO!
How did I not know this!

Definitely not buying it now.

Nevermind, I was right there is no subscription, so what the hell is everyone talking about, it is F2P?

They are talking about games like League of Legends, Battlefield Free2play, Global Agenda, Perfect World, Spiral Knight and World of tanks. Games that you download for free and have no subscription and can play but you will almost always be severely disadvantaged until you start spending real money to buy things in game. I think it's a terrible idea, in almost all of these games with micro-transactions you end up paying MORE money to play than you would have if the game had a flat price at the beginning and you start with the same advantage as everybody else.

 

[LostDreams]

Played D3 beta and was very disappointed. i like to choose my own hotkeys and Stats. At this state D3 more resembles casual 15-20$ game than hardcore 60$ action-RPG. Will play it after it will hit discount bin in 1-2 years or F2P if things will get bad for franchise.

Well...you can't change stats (that were pointless in D2 since there were optimal builds for that anyway...) and you can rebind hotkeys in D3 beta...

 

[Signa]

There seems to be an increasing amount of gamers that think more and more games should be free to play, or free in any other sense.

I think there's a word for that...

Oh yeah, leech.

Of course you'd be alright with everything if it was free to play, because it was free and you can legally make money while playing it. Welcome to reality, where you have to pay for shit.

That's not what we are (supposed to be) talking about here at all. Blizzard set up an indefinite cash-flow system built directly into the game. They will make money on this after everyone in the world owns a copy. Instead of gouging everyone in the world for $60, only to make more money afterwords, they could set up the system to allow everyone in the galaxy to play and still make an assload of money. Suggesting such a plan be viable isn't being a leech. Pirating the game because you want it for free would be a leech.

 

[samsonguy920]

Considering Blizzard is going to be making money hand over fist with their percentage of the Auction sales, they could easily make it F2P with zero worries. The fact that it isn't means they are skeptical on if the Auctionhouse will make them money, in which case they are morons and should quit making big games. Or the most likely choice, they want to bleed more money from gamers because they have fallen under the spell of Bobby Kotick who had said he was keeping his mitts off of Blizzard. Maybe he has, but in either case, I don't care for Blizzard's direction with what their declarations on both Diablo III and the next chapter of Starcraft 2.
If they want to pander only to the South Korean and Chinese marketplace from now on, then they may as well just move their operations there. They are doing a fine job at alienating everyone else with these policies.

 

[babinro]

So I got to thinking, I'm absolutely opposed to playing Diablo 3 as it is. Nothing about it screams "play me!" loud enough to overcome many of my misgivings on some of it's "features" (RMAH, always online DRM). Then I realized that every issue I have with the game would be negligible if the game was free-to-play. I'd consider using the RMAH to support my fellow players and the developers for the game. I wouldn't care about the online DRM because I didn't pay for the game and I'd be happy to let Blizzard set those rules. I could even ignore most of the design decisions that they made that I disagree with, because none of my money is invested in it.

All Blizz would have to do to get me to play D3 is make the full game downloadable for free, take a little more off the top of my transactions, and make my rare drops a little more rare. Not a lot, because players are going to need those carrots to keep playing, but enough to make the RMAH just a little more enticing.

What is everyone's thoughts on this idea? I sure as hell know it's never going to happen, but discussing the possibility sounds like a good topic.

So for you to earn free money for playing a video game....the company has to give you said video game for free?
If you don't like the RMAH, don't use it. It's an optional feature in a non-competitive game.

As for your question. I actually agree that this could be the future of some games. Odds seem pretty high that Blizzard will net far more money from the RMAH than it ever will actual game sales. If this is true, than charging $60.00 to have access to the RMAH is a barrier to entry.

Diablo 4 and other such AAA games may well end up free to play thanks to RMAH along with your typical micro-transactions/DLC.

That is a future of gaming I could totally get behind. Earning money (even if it's just $10.00 a year) to play my favorite hobby is win/win.

 

[nu1mlock]

All I hear is "buhu, Blizzard will make money on their game". Doesn't it suck that developers make money on their games?

Don't want Blizzard to earn a small bit of what you get from selling items on the RMAH? Solution: Don't use the RMAH. Think it's unfair that Blizzard earn a cut from sales? Go complain about Ebay or PayPal first, they make a lot more off simple transactions.

Blizzard is exactly like Ebay seeing they both offer an action house both with guarantees that you won't get scammed (not read up that much on Ebay, but they have that option somehow, perhaps through PayPal).

I wouldn't bet a dime on Diablo 3 going F2P, at least not until Diablo 4 gets released (if ever). Diablo 2 still isn't F2P and it's been 12 years.

The Diablo 2 servers are still up and playable on though. Focus on that instead, most publishers shut down their servers after a few years, while Blizzard still has it up for anyone to play on.