Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

Atomicvideohead wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

What is the recommended difficulty level? From what I played of the beta it seemed too easy.

Gotta go through normal first. It'll get tougher, don't worry.

Ok, thanks.

Fire bad.

New change makes downtime until 1:30 PDT

I'll stop trying to post now.

Cobble wrote:

New change makes downtime until 1:30 PDT

oh super sads.

First an hour down and now another two more hours. D3 fails on launch.....

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

It would be so easy for them to make an offline mode with encrypted character data that can't be moved online. There are ways to allow people to play offline while still ensuring that those that to are kept secure, just make them aware of the needed sacrifices and let them decide for themselves. Beyond either trying to stop piracy or forcing people to be exposed to their RMT auction house, I can't see a reason for forcing this game online, especially when they seem incapable of scaling to demand, even after numerous betas (one of which was a stress test).

In D2 the realm character data was stored on their servers (I think a cached version was kept locally?) so you don't even need to encrypt that much. I assume for the game to operate single-player you'd need to run some of the server code locally. My guess is they don't want to do that so that people can't do any sort of analysis that might be used to create hacks for the online game.... Which will probably happen anyways so they're just delaying the inevitable, but that's probably the best they can do to achieve what they want.

As far as scaling to demand.... They have 2 million pre-orders which puts the user base somewhere between The Old Republic and WoW right now.

Shalalm Baskur everyone. Shalalm Baskur.

Atomicvideohead wrote:

Starcraft can be played online-- but it's parallel. Can't do the same campaign save.

I thought that wasn't the case at launch. But I admittedly haven't followed SC2's patching all that closely since I started to lose interest in the campaign about halfway through.

Mentat wrote:

First an hour down and now another two more hours. D3 fails on launch.....

They wanted the world to remember the launch of WoW.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Giantbomb is streaming their error messages if anybody is interested.

When I started watching, they were showing that they couldn't even play SC2 online. sh*t is broken.

Now they're streaming Brad playing Diablo 2.

lawl

Gamers are insane.

Go outside and enjoy the sunshine people.

I'm surprised that people are so surprised by launch day server issues, even for Blizzard.

Any chance someone can add Fedaykin98#1575 to the list? I can't access it from work. Thanks!

El-Producto wrote:

Gamers are insane.

Go outside and enjoy the sunshine people.

OH GOD IT BURNSSSSSS

PS: Blizzard didn't have a fail launch, they just sold more pre-orders than any game in history! The consumers...well....that may be a little fail.

PPS: So servers are due to come up when I get home from work? Thank goodness I took tomorrow off work instead of today! It's going to be a loooong night.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Any chance someone can add Fedaykin98#1575 to the list? I can't access it from work. Thanks! :)

Added you. What's your steam ID?

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Any chance someone can add Fedaykin98#1575 to the list? I can't access it from work. Thanks! :)

Got ya

oh nevermind, too slow.

El-Producto wrote:

Gamers are insane.

Go outside and enjoy the sunshine people.

Been pouring here all day in PA

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

It would be so easy for them to make an offline mode with encrypted character data that can't be moved online.

I doubt that. Or at least I doubt that Blizzard didn't consider both that and the ability of the Wild Coder Douchebag With Time On His Hands to break that encryption.

My guess is that is was both a significant amount of work to bullet-proof and (obviously) deemed an inappropriate use of resources to do.

/rehash

Brief Impressions (about 85% through Act 1... I think):

Caveats: I was in the Beta since it began, so I'm comfortable with the systems. Plus, I'm kind of a fanboy.

Game difficulty definitely ramps up nicely. Even pre-Skeleton king, I felt it was tougher -- after, definitely. I'm playing a Witchdoctor and have come close to dying several times if that is any indication. I'm not crafting at all, so I am theoretically a little under-geared, so that might color my perceptions.

I haven't made it past 13th yet, so I can't really say anything about skill/runes that hasn't already been mentioned a thousand times, except that the added difficulty makes skill decisions much more interesting. You will need defensive/CC skills by the end of Act 1.

Server lag was non-existent-- at least solo.

The only downside for me is that I'm finding some of the story beats (particularly some of the in-game cut scenes) a little hamfisted.

I'm planning on rushing one character through normal solo, then befriending everyone on the Goodjer list for a co-opalypse. First time though, I want to take it slow and concentrate on every detail. Gotta treat this game like a lady.

The fact that someone completed the game after 12 hours makes me wonder...if the "legs" of this game will be replayability on harder difficulty levels, would that change the experience enough to make it continue to feel fresh and engaging? What will people be doing playing this game after a few months?

Hollowheel wrote:

I'm planning on rushing one character through normal solo, then befriending everyone on the Goodjer list for a co-opalypse. First time though, I want to take it slow and concentrate on every detail. Gotta treat this game like a lady.

Treat it gently one-on-one until through the end-game, then go at it frantic with your friends?

too bad we cant manage our friends lists offline. Good time to get all that done.

crunchy wrote:

The fact that someone completed the game after 12 hours makes me wonder...if the "legs" of this game will be replayability on harder difficulty levels, would that change the experience enough to make it continue to feel fresh and engaging? What will people be doing playing this game after a few months?

Looking for gear. And Looking for gear. There's also gear searching.

Hollowheel wrote:

The only downside for me is that I'm finding some of the story beats (particularly some of the in-game cut scenes) a little hamfisted.

I think that's par for the course with Blizzard. SC2 was a bit ham-fisted and people assured me that I have rose-tinted glasses in regards to how SC1's story was handled.

EDIT:

crunchy wrote:

The fact that someone completed the game after 12 hours makes me wonder...if the "legs" of this game will be replayability on harder difficulty levels, would that change the experience enough to make it continue to feel fresh and engaging? What will people be doing playing this game after a few months?

Chasing loot, as was the case with D2. Gotta catch 'em all!

Oh, and waiting for the expansion.

crunchy wrote:

The fact that someone completed the game after 12 hours makes me wonder...if the "legs" of this game will be replayability on harder difficulty levels, would that change the experience enough to make it continue to feel fresh and engaging? What will people be doing playing this game after a few months?

I do not think that this is a normal person.

Stay off the Blizzard forums. There are some serious epic breakdowns going on.

Wouldn't mind a guest pass, still on the fence after playing a bit in the open beta. If the starter edition is the same content, same restrictions, then don't, but looking at the webpage, it looks like its more.

crunchy wrote:

The fact that someone completed the game after 12 hours makes me wonder...if the "legs" of this game will be replayability on harder difficulty levels, would that change the experience enough to make it continue to feel fresh and engaging? What will people be doing playing this game after a few months?

That's how Diablo 2 worked. There were whole layers of gameplay and types of monsters/modifiers that didn't even show up until later difficulty levels. I never replay games, and I beat D2 on all three difficulty levels, because it's really a game with three levels, where the acts repeat on each level.

El-Producto wrote:

Gamers are insane.

Go outside and enjoy the sunshine people.

It's raining here.

However, I think I will finally go to work.

El-Producto wrote:

Gamers are insane.

Go outside and enjoy the sunshine people.

Wrong website!

Although I suppose the people who said always-online was a bad idea, are feeling pretty smug right now

http://error37.com/

That didn't take long.

Ulairi wrote:

Stay off the Blizzard forums. There are some serious epic breakdowns going on.

Got any links?

(Seriously, I thought most people stayed far far far away from the Bnet forums these days)

RoughneckGeek wrote:

By "completed the game" do you mean finished Act IV on normal? It'd surprise me that it took 12 hours to do that. Diablo 2 didn't get interesting until post normal when enemies started popping up with various resistances. Diablo 3 is a much faster start than Diablo 2 and normal didn't take me very long in that game.

Also, 12 hours is a long time to clear Normal. In D2 People were running alts to Level 99 in about 24 hours before Blizzard started to clamp down on that behavior.