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Topic: Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House Shutting Down

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Manhattan
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Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House Shutting Down

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http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/17/diablo-iii-auction-house-shutting-down-next-year?abthid=5238a0148df9e0af2300000b

 

Thank God. This needed so very badly to fail. I'm glad that the fruit of these people's egos is failure. Hopefully there are lessons learned and the expansion is a return to form for the series.



-- Edited by Kamdus on Tuesday 17th of September 2013 02:58:15 PM

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Xinika the Omnispawna
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Tbh RAMH is why I quit - so good news imo

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Watcher
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Prepare for a rant. 

 

Blizzard in general has just severely disappointed me for quite some time now. The glory days are long gone. 

 

Look at the run they had: 

 

1995 - Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness (Warcraft 1 was ok, but not a crowning achievement)

1996 - Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal 

1996 - Diablo

1998 - Starcraft

1998 - Starcraft: Brood War

1999: Warcraft 2: Battle.net edition

2000: Diablo 2

2001: Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction

2002: Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos

2003: Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

2004: World of Warcraft

2007: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

 

12 years of amazing games, with almost zero breaks between. It was like they couldn't miss. I still play almost all of those games (would play classic WoW/BC if I could). It seemed like they took forever to push anything out, but it was because everything that came out was so great and polished. And when you look at it in this timeline perspective, something came out almost every year. 

 

Everything after this was pretty much garbage in comparison. WotLK was OK, but was the start of the decline. The timing coincides pretty closely with their purchase by Activision (July 2008), so it's easy to put the blame on them, but a big part was also taking people off of games that were successful (WoW dev team, Blizzard North) and either removing them or putting them on future projects (most of the original WoW/BC WoW dev team was put on Titan around the time of the WotLK release).

 

The #1 thing which is most bothersome to me is how far they've deviated from making games "for gamers". This is probably what you can blame Activision for; no longer are the games about giving gamers a great experience, they're about making as many bucks as quickly as possible with no real long-term sustainability. D3 is a perfect example. No real end-game, god-awful storyline with GAPING plot holes, and gear obviously designed to propel the idiocy that was the RMAH. Zero character development, and 99% of what was promised was just never there (PvP arenas, random dungeons/bosses, a legitimate character building system). WoW has similar problems now - they have no idea what to do for endgame now that everyone gets incredibly easy-to-acquire welfare epics and LFR gives anyone who can wipe their ass the ability to do any content in the game, so they decide to put in Farmville and a shitload of dailies. Amazingly, PvP might be a large part of what's even keeping it afloat at all (and it's sinking fast - they're below 7 million subs now, down from 12 million during the end of BC/start of WotLK). I could rant about WoW alone for 10 pages, but I won't because it really does make me legitimately mad.  I mean, WATCH the cinematics for the Siege of Orgrimmar trailer and the Siege of Orgrimmar ending. They're embarrassing. They seem like something I would expect to see on Power Rangers. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slzQOyS5TqQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4V6hk-_30k

 

Starcraft 2 wasn't a total failure and did a reasonable job of living up to its namesake, but I feel cheated for having bought HotS. So little bang for the buck, and such an "unfinished" feel at release. The wrongs are getting closer to being righted now, but I would've never believed before 2008 that Blizzard would release something so incomplete. 

 

Everything after BC: 

 

2008: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

2010: Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty

2010: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

2012: Diablo 3

2012: World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

2013: Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

 

That's a whole lot of trash for 5 years in a row, by the standards they set from 1995-2007. The trend has also generally been that they just keep getting worse as the years go on.

 

At this point I'm refusing to buy Reaper of Souls or whatever other trash Blizz releases afterwards, which is a shame because I am such a huge Diablo fan. I've done just about everything you can possibly do in D2, yet I still continue to play it because it's such an incredible game. It's deep to the point where I still learn new things about it after playing it for 13 years. D3 was such a total disappointment after reaching 60 (maybe more like after completing Inferno the first time, before they nerfed the living hell out of it), and comments like the ones in Kam's link were the icing on the cake. I don't want to give people like that another dime of my money. Jay Wilson did step down from D3 Director, but I don't trust they've put anyone better in his place (and he still is involved with D3 anyway). Overall I just have very little hope that anything Blizz releases will be any good at all. 

 

/rant off. 

 

Edit: I just realized I didn't at all respond to the topic, lol. Removal of the AH is definitely a step in the right direction, but the game is so inherently flawed from a design perspective for an ARPG that I don't think it'll really matter in the long run. 


-- Edited by Mace on Wednesday 18th of September 2013 01:37:55 AM



-- Edited by Mace on Wednesday 18th of September 2013 01:46:58 AM

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Manhattan
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Kamdus wrote:

Hopefully there are lessons learned and the expansion is a return to form for the series.


 

Or maybe not. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/18/diablo-3-to-remain-always-online-despite-planned-auction-house-closures/ Always online never bothered me in it's requirement. It bothers me because developers never tell the truth as to why they're doing it (piracy). Oh and the whole SimCity launch thing, which was the last game I pre-ordered, so I was witness to that abomination. That is probably the most crystal clear example of always-online policy biting a developer right in the ass. But I highly doubt always online requirements are going away. Piracy hurts their business and runs rampant on the PC platform.

 

EA btw, since that horrid launch debacle has gone through a change of leadership (not a coincidence). And the new guy seems to be setting the company straight. Two huge moves; stating their games will no longer feature online passes (which where to combat used game sales) and instituting a return/refund policy for their digital distribution platform Origin (you can buy a game, download it, play it, and get a refund up to 24 hours after purchase). The latter is something even Steam doesn't even offer. So it is possible for big game companies to realize they are sucking and take steps in the right direction.

 

I think it's possible for them to make D3 into something I would play again, although the story will most likely remain terrible (how many different ways can you tell the same story?). Going back to fully randomized dungeons, overhauling the loot dropping system, and FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING FUCK GETTING RID OF SCRIPTED MMO-RAID-LIKE FUCKING BOSS BATTLES would definitely be a huge leap. As David Brevik point out in the interview in the original post, different teams will get different results.

 

The wasteland of comical horrors that was the SimCity launch got me to change the way I buy games. I no longer pre-order anything and won't buy after release unless I know a good deal about what I'm getting. This means ignoring all buzz before and after the game's release. I do make exceptions. For example X-Rebirth is a game I will pre-order so I can play at release. It's my favorite game series and it has a very well established mod community (which means if the game doesn't live up to my expectations someone will tweak it until it does).

 

But I think it's a policy every gamer should adopt. Because the best way to tell a developer or publisher that their games need to change is with your wallet.



-- Edited by Kamdus on Wednesday 18th of September 2013 09:51:50 AM

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