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Diablo 3 Hands-On 216

Posted by Soulskill from the where-would-i-put-this dept.
At this year's Blizzcon, we got to try out a section of Diablo 3 that was pulled directly from the single-player storyline and playable with all classes. A large number of skills and abilities were playable, and the skill rune system has been implemented, a feature that was lacking for last year's demo build. We also got to spend some time trying out the newly announced PvP system — Battle Arenas. Read on for a walk-through of Diablo 3 as we've seen it so far. In short: it's shaping up to be an excellent game, and a worthy successor to Diablo 2. Read on for more.

The demo started me off at with a level 9 character and dropped me into a dungeon, offering up two objectives: fight my way through and, as a bonus, find and destroy a particular boss. From the start, it had a very familiar feel. I took a few steps down the hall and got rushed by a group of monsters, which I quickly mowed down by mashing the buttons on my mouse. It's Diablo, alright. Here I paused to actually read my abilities and see how the UI worked. If you've followed along with the game's development at all, you're probably aware of the fact that the Diablo 2 potion belt is gone. The 1-5 keys are now used to activate skills displayed on an action bar at the bottom of the screen. The right and left mouse buttons also activate skills (ostensibly the most-used ones), and pressing tab will swap back and forth between two skills bound to the right mouse button. Subtract one of those slots for health potions and you've got seven easily-accessible skills.

Skills:

Of course, I didn't get that many to start; instead, they're doled out as a character levels up, increasing the complexity of combat slowly but steadily. Blizzard has done away with the talent-trees of old, so picking skills is a lot tougher. Instead, every few levels a new skill slot unlocks, and you get to pick an actual activated ability that you'll immediately start using to kill monsters. On the levels in between the unlocks, you can power up one of your existing skills. All of the passive, math-y talents that were prevalent in Diablo 2 are dealt with through a different system, called Traits. Traits are a wide variety of passive bonuses that you get to spend points in every couple levels — things like boosting a particular stat, or increasing the amount of gold monsters drop. They're pretty straight-forward — not that exciting, but a nice, consistent way to make your character stronger in some way.

As it happens, attaining level 10 unlocks a skill slot (the fourth), so after spending a little time wading through the demonic hordes inhabiting the dungeon, I leveled up and tried to make a decision. It was pretty difficult to choose. There are a lot of fun-sounding or powerful-sounding skills, and you're just not able to get all of them. One of Blizzard's mantras of late has been about having the player make meaningful decisions, and this certainly qualified. They've stated in the past that some form of respec will be added to the game. They haven't ironed out the details, but they don't want it to be trivial. If I hadn't had a limited amount of time, I would have spent quite a while pondering which skill to take. It would have been nice to have some sort of preview, or a minute-long grace period to swap to something else. But it definitely created a feeling that there were more good options I'd be able to get in later levels.

I'll get to the individual classes and their skills in a moment, but one more feature that needs to be introduced is the Skill Rune system. This is a concept Blizzard has been playing with for a while, and last year it was in the midst of a redesign, so we didn't get to try it out. It works like this: each skill in your spellbook has one slot to which you can add a Skill Rune. The Rune then modifies how the skill works. It's somewhat similar to gem sockets in items. There are five different colors of runes, and each color will modify the skill in a different way. Runes have seven ranks, which modify how powerful the effect is. One example they talked about was the Wizard skill Magic Missile. Unaltered, it's just what it sounds like — launching an arcane projectile at a monster. With a rank 1 Indigo rune, the skill shoots an extra missile. With a rank 7 Indigo rune, it shoots seven extra missiles. I'll be blunt: Skill Runes are pretty awesome.

Classes:

The first class I tried out was the Witch Doctor. It's a caster class with voodoo- and necromancer-style magic. My main ranged attack was Poison Dart, which did some damage over time to monsters I hit. Adding a rune, it changed to a fire dart, which did more up-front damage at the expense of the DoT. I also had a skill that summoned pets to help me fight -- up to three Zombie Dogs at one time. They were actually powerful enough that I eventually let them die so I would have more to do. Runes affected them differently — one rune gave them a chance to drop a health orb when they died. Others modified how they did damage. The AI was pretty smart about having them attack the groups I wanted them to, and not go charging off on their own.

The skill I chose when I hit level 10 was Firebats. It functions similarly to the Inferno spell in Diablo 2, only instead of projecting a cone of flame in front of me, it projected a cone of flaming bats. The first Skill Rune I looked at extended the spell's range, trading off damage to do so. That was a bit underwhelming, since I already had ranged attacks, so I went with a different rune that turned the cone into a whirlwind of flaming bats that surrounded me. Another rune added a life-drain effect. It was tempting, but the whirlwind looked too cool to pass up. Finally, the skill that sold me on the Skill Rune system was Zombie Charger, a spell that summoned a zombie, who would shamble a few steps forward and then spray poison in the immediate vicinity. It was a solid, short-range attack. Fortunately, I lucked into a rune that modified the spell to summon a group of zombie bears that charged forward and trampled whatever was in their path. The buddy I was playing with happened to get a rune at the same time that made his Wizard's basic lightning spell change into a massive, conical spray of electricity, and we couldn't help but laugh as we used our new-found power to demolish groups of monsters.

The next class I tried was the recently revealed Demon Hunter. The class mixes ranges weapons with gadgets and dark magic for its offensive power. It bears similarities to both the Amazon and the Assassin from Diablo 2, but feels distinctly different to play. My main nuke, when I started out, was called Entangling Shot. It would do some damage and slow the monsters it hit, and then chain to other nearby monsters. Using Entangling Shot, it was quite easy to control entire groups of monsters. This was supplemented by a skill called Bola Shot, which would send a glowing bola out to wrap itself around the neck of a monster, exploding a few seconds later. It supplemented the slow effect of Entangling Shot nicely; by alternating between the two skills, I could drop big damage while keeping anything from reaching me. The Demon Hunter also had Vault, a movement skill that makes you leap forward through the shadows. It's a good way to get range — perhaps too good.

When I reached level 10, there were some interesting choices for new skills — a Fan of Knives provided area-of-effect damage in a circle around the Demon Hunter; Molten Arrow sends a blast of fire through monsters; Multi-Shot sends a conical rain of arrows that looks more like something out of 300 than the equivalent Amazon skill in Diablo 2. But I ended up choosing Grenades. The Demon Hunter tosses three grenades at the feet of her target, and they explode for huge damage. The cool thing about this skill is that you can bounce the grenades off walls, so you can blow up things around corners or in the back of a group that's rushing you. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try any runes with these skills. Overall, the Demon Hunter felt a lot more dynamic and... percussive than an Amazon.

I got a chance to tinker around with the Barbarian as well. This class uses a different resource system — fury is generated by certain attacks, and is then spent on other (generally more powerful) attacks. It certainly played differently than the range classes. Wading into groups and Cleaving away was standard operating procedure. I enjoyed this class less than the others, mainly due to the fact that fury generation seemed fairly slow, and my skills weren't that focused on damage. One ability, Revenge, was reactive, only becoming available occasionally during a pitched battle. At level 10, I picked up a skill that made him leap into a group of enemies, dealing damage when he landed. The trouble was that I didn't feel like I really had a go-to attack. I'd guess that this would be solved by different skill selection, but obviously the demo build had its limits.

Story, Lore, Art:

The story is handled in two ways: Lore tomes and quests. The tomes are actual loot objects that drop at certain places in the zone. When you pick them up, a voice-over starts that explains a bit about whatever is going on. It comes with a handy little UI box that lets you pause, play, or cancel the recording. The quests we saw were mostly linear. As mentioned earlier, the goal during the fire dungeon was to simply fight our way through, killing a particular boss on the way. Once we got out, we stepped outside into a new zone, and there was a quest available immediately to help the quest-giver track somebody down and take him out. Successfully doing so turned the quest-giver into a vendor for magical weapons.

This outdoor area was short, but led to another dungeon, this time an eerie-looking jail-tomb combination. Another new quest sent us searching through many small cells in an effort to free the souls of the innocently imprisoned. It was a fairly big dungeon, but the quest objectives were easy to find — when you got close to them, there was a glowing circle on the ground that made them easy to see. Once done with that, to escape the prison you needed a key that dropped from the zone's boss. A helpful marker on the map pointed out where he was — the convergence of four high walkways, with deep pits below. As we reached the center, undead began swarming up the sides of the walkways out of the darkness below, surrounding and trapping us in place for when the boss popped out and started attacking. After defeating him and reaching the end of the zone, we got to see the end of the quest — a brief, brutal coda to the story we'd seen so far.

A brief word about the art. Diablo 3 is a visually dense game. There are a lot of things competing for your attention. Player skills get a bit of a priority, since that's what provides a feeling of interaction with the world, but there's always something cool to look at — monsters' spells, death animations, destructible objects that break apart violently, traps in the dungeon, and even just the scenery around you. The outdoor level we saw reminded me briefly of the art controversy that happened when Blizzard first showed off some of its level design. It's a cloudy, rainy environment, not terribly dark, but the colors are muted. When you first see it, it's less visually stimulating than the fiery dungeon you came out of, but soon you'll notice the rain, the billowing mist, the occasional lightning flash that makes colors suddenly pop out at you, and it just works.

PvP Battle Arenas:

I also got a chance to try out the new PvP arenas. I started off with doing some 2v2 as a Witch Doctor. The arena was roughly square-shaped, and small — perhaps a bit over two screen-widths wide. There are pillars placed around the map in ways that World of Warcraft PvPers will be familiar with. You can use them to break line-of-sight and gain a brief respite from a Wizard's Death-Star-inspired laser, or other attacks. Health orbs are sprinkled around the map, spawning periodically to let you regain some of your HP. As a Witch Doctor, I could send my Zombie Dogs off to harass my opponents, detonating them remotely to cause more substantial damage, supplementing them with firebombs and a damage-over-time spell.

The teamwork aspect of the fight made itself obvious immediately; at first I didn't pay attention to what my partner was doing, not recognizing when he was running away, and our two opponents turned and destroyed me. Once we started attacking and retreating in unison, letting my Zombie Dogs and his Hydras occupy key spots on the battlefield, we were able to keep the opposing Barbarian off of us long enough to deal with the other team individually.

Later, I did some 1v1 — a Wizard mirror match, which was a ton of fun. In addition to the aforementioned laser and Hydra spell, Wizards had Teleport (which is on a cooldown), Meteor, a damage absorption shield, and Slow Time, which drops a giant bubble around the Wizard, slowing any projectiles or enemies that are inside. With just these tools, we had some pretty complex, strategic fights for a couple of beginners. Dropping Hydras at strategic positions could cover a retreat or apply some damage on an opponent who ducked behind a pillar. Getting up close and using Slow Time gave an opportunity to drop a Meteor, which took several seconds to land but did massive damage. Even better, I'd pretend to retreat, and when he teleported to keep up with me, a Slow Time field or a Meteor would be there waiting for him. Out in the open, we traded laser barrages, but those never lasted long. The damage shield was on a cooldown, but combined with the health orbs it led to some surprisingly long matches that swung back and forth as we each grabbed temporary advantage. It was a lot of fun.

Misc. Tidbits:

A few neat but minor things caught my attention as I was playing through the game. We didn't get to see the crafting system, but we did have the ability to essentially disenchant items on the fly, which provide crafting materials. You do this by taking up to six items at a time from your inventory and dropping them in your cube, which breaks them apart. The UI is polished — there's not a lot of clicking involved — so it's a nice way to keep free space without ducking back to town every few minutes. The Talisman system is also convenient in that regard; it takes stat runes out of the inventory and puts them in their own storage space. Being able to see monster health bars is another quality-of-life change, as is the ability to resurrect your fallen teammates if you can get to them quickly enough (only works in PvE). The demo wasn't very difficult, but we didn't get to choose the difficulty setting, and I presume Blizzard didn't want people to spend their brief window of time making corpse runs.

Despite the new features and the major changes from a year ago, Diablo 3 really feels like a game, now. It seems like Blizzard has settled on most of the major decisions and is just ironing out the wrinkles while building the actual game content. Some systems, like Traits, still need some work, and it was hard to care about the items that dropped for a character we only got to play briefly. But I saw a lot of Blizzcon attendees finish their 15-minute play period and immediately get back in the 30-minute line. The PvP was entertaining, and hopefully Battle.net can provide good match-making while allowing small groups of friends to log on and battle each other whenever they feel like it. I usually try not to waste energy looking forward to a game that's still a ways off, but Blizzard's making it difficult.
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Diablo 3 Hands-On More

Diablo 3 Hands-On

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  • I'm just saying... diablo 3 I've been waiting for 10 years for.. But GLEEablo i've only been waiting for a week or so.

  • This game will suck. (Score:5, Funny)

    by A. B3ttik ( 1344591 ) on Thursday October 28, 2010 @12:56PM (#34052186)
    Like Diablo 1 and 2, it will be nothing but a clickfest where the player clicks on random enemies until they die, occasionally picking a new spell to cast. And like Diablo 1 and 2, I will play the fuck out of it and be a hermit for 6 months after its release.
  • How's it compare to Dungeon Crawl? Or good 'ol vanilla Nethack?

  • Why the emphasis on PvP??

    I was interested in this game for the single player campaigns. I'll probably still play it, but I get the feeling that the single player campaign will suffer at the hands of PvP development resources being used instead.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by JorDan Clock ( 664877 )
      Because a company the size of Blizzard couldn't possibly have enough resources to fully develop Multiplayer/PvP and Singleplayer at the same time.

      • Re:PvP emphasis (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Machtyn ( 759119 ) on Thursday October 28, 2010 @02:36PM (#34053810) Homepage Journal
        That's not his point, though. It seems that a lot of the moves that Blizzard is making with all of their games is the social, multiplayer aspect. They're probably trying to read the signs of the times - a combination of controlling the multiplayer gaming experience, adding a social experience similar to facebook, and attempting to keep a the feel of a LAN party without the LAN aspect.

        In my case, I may be in the minority. I have 4 friends I play WoW with, but mostly I just play WoW as a single player, rarely interacting with all the other dolts out there. I want to play Diablo 3 the same way - single player, occasionally in co-op mode with a friend or two. On the occasion I run into a group that is cool, I hang with them for the rest of the game time that night... never to interact with them again after that point, unless we get lucky and are randomly placed in a dungeon together.

        I used to be an excellent, competitive gamer. But that takes a lot of time to hone the skill. I still have the skill, I just lack the practice and don't care to compete or move up the ranks of some random board against thousands of people I don't really care about. Anti-social? Sure, why not ;^)

      • I didn't say they didn't have "enough" resources. I said that single player will suffer at the hands of PvP development....software engineering tradeoff.

        To put it another way, if they used the slice of resources they are putting on PvP ALL on single player, the single player experience would be that much better. Companies don't replace people they put on side projects with new people. They just lose those resources, make due with what they have, and end up with two watered down projects instead of one sol

  • Not sure I'll buy it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MindlessAutomata ( 1282944 ) on Thursday October 28, 2010 @01:03PM (#34052298)

    It does seem to be shaping up well, but Blizzard's attitude towards gamers and their heavy-handed use (and, I'd say, abuse) of the legal system makes me really not want to support them. The DRM is absolutely horrible. I know some Blizz fanboys will come in here to burn me at the stake just for criticizing the DRM alone, but I am a brave, if not stupid, man.

    Compare Blizzard and Valve. Oh, sure, Steam is DRM in a sense too, but the system also adds value by Steam's nature. Blizzard treats players with contempt by removing true LAN play and bans people for using trainers on single player--and no, fanboys, trainers can do more than the game's own cheat system, and the whole achievement argument is bunk when you realize that Blizz's DRM is the reason online achievements is even tied to single player play in the fashion in it.

    Even compare how the two companies communicate to gamers. Companies like Valve understand the player base; companies like Blizzard/Activision do not, and they are not made up of gamers. Remember the RealID fiasco on the WoW forums?

    Buying Diablo III is just going to set a horrible precedent and tell the company that we'll still pay for all this bullshit.

    • and not try to make societal statements. I mean, how hard is it to stamp our feet, display our angst on message boards, and not buy a game we weren't going to buy in the first place.

      Sometimes this generation depresses me, too many put more effort protesting makers of games than those running their lives.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by contra_mundi ( 1362297 )
        You don't care that game publishers are gradually trying to take our rights away (first-sale doctorine for example)?

        I guess you'll have fun for a while and then it'll dawn on you that you can no longer play until you submit to a cavity search by the anti-cheat robot and pay for the priviledge.

        Everything you do is a social statement, whether you like it or not.

        • You don't care that game publishers are gradually trying to take our rights away (first-sale doctorine for example)?

          Whether or not he does, 99% of people who buy the games don't.

          As long as that's true, and I'm not saying it always will be but I'm not seeing how it would change at this point, the publishers would be stupid to care.

      • "Glad I play games just to have fun"

        I wonder how much fun you'll have if you find out your game isn't working because of the DRM, either immediately or eventually.

        "display our angst on message boards"

        I believe that they are trying to educate people about the risks of DRM and the problems that arise. Nothing will likely change if the majority remains uneducated.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by halivar ( 535827 )

      Blizzard changed RealID in response to player concerns. That example does not support your argument, at all. In fact, it shows a company that cares about having happy players. And it's working.

      As for their DRM, I rather like it. I can download my games to any computer I might be at, as opposed to EA and Sony's ridiculous one-computer, one-install DRM that kills the game's replayability.

      • "As for their DRM, I rather like it. I can download my games to any computer I might be at, as opposed to EA and Sony's ridiculous one-computer, one-install DRM that kills the game's replayability."

        So in other words, it's good because it's better than some of the other worthless, harmful DRM schemes out there? It could be worse, so you should just accept your fate? No, sorry. Any DRM is bad DRM.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by halivar ( 535827 )

          Harmful? Your only limitation is running two copies at the same time (for WOW and SC only, no such limitation on legacy games), so calling it "harmful" is patently ridiculous, histrionic nonsense.

          • "Your only limitation is running two copies at the same time "

            Yes, that is a limitation. Any DRM is bad DRM. Besides that, I heard that it has to verify itself online once every thirty days, leaving people without an internet connection helpless. I also heard that you can only have a single Battle.net account. Are either of those true?

            "so calling it "harmful" is patently ridiculous, histrionic nonsense."

            It's harmful because it's pointless.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by halivar ( 535827 )

              "Any DRM is bad DRM."

              I disagree.

              "Besides that, I heard that..."

              No, you verify yourself online every time you load up the game (unless you sign in as a guest, which I always do because Comcast sucks in my area).

              "I also heard that you can only have a single Battle.net account."

              No, I have two Battle.net accounts. Blizzard has specifically said that you can have multiple accounts, and at BlizzCon, Metzen even mentioned that having multiple accounts was an option around the 10-character limit on WOW realms.

              "It's

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by somaTh ( 1154199 )
      If you're looking for an amusing Steam alternative, I'd recommend Torchlight [wikipedia.org], although multiplayer won't be available until the next game (which is due out in early 2011 [wikipedia.org]). I'm really interested to see how they implement it.

      Personally, I'll probably still buy Diablo III. I'd like to know where the story goes.

      • That's a major thing for me with Torchlight. I bought it and put time into building up my character, but it just feels like a waste without being able to play with a friend. The story isn't all that compelling and sharing screen shots of items we found is useless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by timster ( 32400 )

      BTW, I don't really understand the argument about single-player cheats. Ok, hacking the game lets you do more, but what's the interest or reason for that? Do players really find the single-player on Easy mode so hard that even the built-in cheats aren't enough?

      Because what it sounds like, is someone hacked the game and developed a cheating tool that works in both multi-player and single-player, and Blizzard banned some people who used the tool but only used it in single player. But why did they pay for t

      • PR from the company? Are you serious? I've never even played Starcraft 1!

        Why do you assume everyone paid for the tool?

        Some people use trainers just to mess around after completing the campaign. What, you seriously never used a GameShark during the console days...? Are you kids really that young?

      • "Ok, hacking the game lets you do more, but what's the interest or reason for that?"

        Perhaps they have fun hacking the game? This is in single player, so there's no reason to ban them. Why do you like the game? Is it just fun to you? It's the same for people who like to cheat in games. It can, at times, be fun.

    • Blizzard treats players with contempt by removing true LAN play and bans people for using trainers on single player--and no, fanboys, trainers can do more than the game's own cheat system, and the whole achievement argument is bunk when you realize that Blizz's DRM is the reason online achievements is even tied to single player play in the fashion in it.

      The argument's not bunk, because it's pretty clear that a lot more of the people who bought Starcraft 2 care about people cheating to get achievements than care about not being able to run extra cheats in single player.

      It's not an argument that persuades you, and personally I couldn't care less if someone's cheating the achievements, but it's what their customers want.

      In other words, you think Blizzard is a shitty company for giving their customers what they actually want, instead of what you think they sho

      • "In other words, you think Blizzard is a shitty company for giving their customers what they actually want"

        They had a majority vote that included all of their paying customers, or something? If not, then I don't see what you're basing this information off of. Did you survey every single one of their customers and use a lie detector or something?

        • Lurk any set of Starcraft 2 forums for a week (Blizzard's or otherwise) and I don't think you could dispute that's the prevailing opinion. Or really, the community for just about any game ever made in which cheating is possible.

          I'll readily concede that my claim is not scientifically backed by rigorous double-blind research, but it's nonetheless true.

          • "Lurk any set of Starcraft 2 forums for a week (Blizzard's or otherwise) and I don't think you could dispute that's the prevailing opinion."

            All of their customers post on the forums? Or are they just the loudest?

            "I'll readily concede that my claim is not scientifically backed by rigorous double-blind research"

            You can't conclude that it is true for sure, then.

            • I can't conclude for sure that I'm not really just a brain in a jar hooked up to machines that make me perceive what I think to be the world, either, but in much the same vein it's good enough to make sense to act as though it were true.

              It's possible that most gamers (here defined as people who actually buy the games) are secretly zealous about software freedom rather than the ideal that players who cheat to gain an edge on them should be punished, but since market data consistently indicates the latter and

        • Did you survey every single one of their customers and use a lie detector or something?

          Yes every one of their paying customers who continue to pay are finding likable value out of the games Blizzard produces.

    • If you want to use trainers put the game in offline mode (Play as Guest from the login screen). If you want to cheat by unlocking achievements on your Battle.net account in singleplayer-but-still-online mode you can rot in hell.

      • It was their choice to implement those useless offline achievements. In reality, they are nothing, and anyone who cares about them is a lost cause.

        • Based on the way most console games and some PC games made in the last 5 years have gone, an awful lot of people care about and want achievements.

          At this point in the evolution of games, not having achievements in a game would probably be received about as well as not having Internet play in a multiplayer game.

          You may not care about them, but it's what the market appears to want.

          • "an awful lot of people care about and want achievements."

            However, do an awful lot of people care about another persons offline achievements so much so that they would want them banned if they cheated to get them?

    • I'll probably buy a whole new gaming computer just to play this game. And I will probably only play the game once some nice cracker cracks it. Because I don't support gaming companies that support DRM.

  • clickclickclickclick (Score:4, Funny)

    by mark72005 ( 1233572 ) on Thursday October 28, 2010 @01:08PM (#34052372)
    And millions of left mouse buttons screamed in terror

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      You know you can just hold down the mouse button, right?

    • Having played both the PSone and PC versions of the original Diablo, They should just throw in support for a dual analog controller. For a Diablo style game, the console style controller is far less stressful on the hands.

  • Blizzard Announces New Merger (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rivalz ( 1431453 ) on Thursday October 28, 2010 @01:39PM (#34052864)

    Blizzard has recently announced Diablo 4 will feature MINECRAFT and Monsters

  • Looks pretty cool. Too bad it's made by a company who has shown far less consideration for its customers than many others and will likely have some sort of DRM that comes with it. It's a shame that they have to ruin what would be an otherwise great game with things that don't even really affect the gameplay itself. Oh, well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Omestes ( 471991 )

      As a long time Blizzard customer, I don't see this. I have bought every single game by Blizzard (except Broodwar, since Starcraft wasn't really my thing), and have yet to leave disappointed. Sure Starcraft isn't as awesome as I made it in my mind, but mainly because I remembered that I wasn't a huge fun of Starcraft to begin with (I was more in the Total Annihilation camp, and still am, give me the first Supreme Commander over SCII any day). Bnet2.0 was annoying at launch, but after a week they weeded ou

      • "The convenience is worth the trade off."

        No, it's not.

        "DRM in itself isn't inherently wrong if implemented right"

        Yes, it is. It's pointless and only hurts paying customers.

        "But then again I owned tons of games with REALLY annoying DRM"

        Any DRM is bad DRM.

        "Who actually buys used PC games anyways?"

        People who want to buy used PC games. Although, I've never really heard of a store allowing this.

        "If your that value conscious why not just hit up The Pirate Bay?"

        I already do.

        "I do this, and feel no moral qualms."

        Th

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Omestes ( 471991 )

          The eloquence and grasp at the depth of the situation astounds me.

          Why isn't DRM worth the trade off for added features, if it doesn't hamper gameplay?

          Why is any DRM unacceptable?

          How is pirating something, flat out, okay? I endorse using piracy to try before you buy, or to replace something you purchased (the downside of DRM) but lost control of. If you have some perceived moral high ground I can see boycotting as a viable solution, but not flat out theft (I generally hate that mapping, but in this case it

  • Every company always hypes their games as the best, and worse here is Blizzard, who has an actual good record for games they did, um, like what, 10 years ago now?

    Since then though, what do they have to show? ya, WoW, and being bought by one of the crappiest publishing companies out there.

    Starcraft 2 came out, but i'm not impressed. More of the same crap from the past. Which isn't as popular as it once was.

    Now we will have Diablo 3. A game based on a gaming genre that has sort of passed us by. Sure,

  • Main item on my wishlist (Score:4, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Thursday October 28, 2010 @04:08PM (#34055510)

    a secret cow level

  • I know my personal game playing preferences, and after completing Diablo 3 in X I'll want to go in to Single Player mode with a memory editor and mess about for another 10X hours in assembler creating novel cheats and hacks for personal amusement.

    Blizzard's behavior with Starcraft II means this will cause my account to be locked, despite never cheating on any multiplayer content.

    This means no Diablo III purchase for me.

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