After reading some more on the situation, particular Gevlon’s take, I am perplexed as to how Blizzard is planning to make money on the RMAH.

The fact that 4 days after launch the game was completed, speaks volumes as to the game’s difficulty level.  Evidently, there is enough gear available in 4 days of playing to complete the hardest of the hardest content.

Certainly, the players who completed this feat are good players, min-maxers as well.  That given, the toolset they had is the same as every other player.  They have the same skills and the same loot everyone else had.  They didn’t farm gear in order to progress (sort of like gear-checks in MMOs), they simply tested a few things and went forward.

The point I’m trying to make is that the game can clearly be beaten by highly skilled players with crappy gear.  This means that average players with average gear should be able to beat it and that crappy players will need powerful gear.  Blizzard is apparently hedging their bets that the latter group is a) of significant size and b) willing to spend real money to beat imaginary characters.

What an interesting experiment.

After a weekend of Diablo 3, 51 levels on my monk and a few on some others, I think I have a pretty solid view of the game as sent to the masses.  In a sentence, it’s worth the buy.

Presentation

Up: As with all Blizzard games, the game oozes style and presentation.  All character models move well, the colors are perfect and on the whole, the entire process of zone distribution from Act 1 to 4 is solid.  The cinematics are really well done too, which is expected.

Down: I’m bugged that the entire game is a complete zone rehash of Diablo 2.  Fields -> Desert -> Castle/Ruins -> Heaven (or Hell in D2).  There is one massive dead/boring spot in Act 2 as well, which is unfortunate.  The story is pretty bad but is the typically Blizzard-power-corrupts trash.  The voice acting is solid but the actual sound levels are all over the place.  Sometimes my monk is screaming only to whisper on the next line.  Bosses are incredibly disappointing in presentation after Act 1.  The Skeleton King and Butcher are just crazy awesome fights.  Belial is a avoid-the-massive-poison-puddles fight with no other mechanics.  Azmodan you can stand head to head with and avoid the death zones.  Diablo though, he’s a pile of problems on harder difficulties.  He looks like a wimp though.

Gameplay

Up: The shining grace of it all is the tool set provided for combat.  With 60 levels, you get a new skill (or 3) per level.  Either this affects an existing skill or is a passive buff but you still get something for leveling, which is great.  Being able to swap skill sets is awesome too, depending on the fight.  I hated D2 because you had to make multiple characters depending on what you wanted to do (like a MF Sorc) but D3 gives you options, lots of options.  Each character is pretty solid, stats are well distributed and each playstyle is quite different from another.

Down: The difficulty curve is ridiculous.  Normal is a joke, Nightmare is almost easier since there are no extra enemy types.  Hell changes the game a bit more with enemies taking twice as long to kill but still rather simple.  Inferno though, that’s just crazy.  As a monk, you need somewhere close to 35K hit points and massive defensive stats to have a chance.  The illusion of choice is apparent here since it’s simply impossible to play in a different style.  This part also highlights the class differences where some like the Demon Hunter and Barbarian are weak compared to the Monk and Witch Doctor.

Extras

Up: The Auction House is a nice addition, making trading a whole lot easier.  It also makes the game a whole lot easier too.  The loot/bag/crafting mechanics are interesting and positive changes – but already done in Torchlight.  Achievements are cool in that they make you try content again with an added twist, perchance to see things you didn’t know was there.  The ability to quickly jump into a friend’s game is awesome.  This is the way multiplayer games should work.

Down: The online-only aspect is annoying when the internet or Blizzard decides they don’t want you to play – which is a few times per play session.  The auction house interface is pretty slow and difficult to properly navigate.  The chat system is atrocious.  The systems while playing (friends list for example) are completely separate from the ones out of game. I wish I could access the Auction House from inside the game, repair items from there or just view the stats on my gear when I’m shopping.  There is a distinct lack of polish when it comes to game systems and their integration.

Overall

Even with all the hiccups, Diablo 3 is still worth the pickup.  I can see myself playing coop games with friends for a long while, maybe going on some loot runs on my own.  I don’t see it having the staying power of Diablo 2 though or of people making any real money on the auction house (which is still delayed).  Diablo 2 (like WoW) came in at a perfect time but in today’s market, there are literally dozens of places I can spend my time for the same cost and provide a similar or even better experience.  I put in well over 150 hours in Skyrim, time will tell if that number is the same in D3.

Day 2 for D3 was a bit better.  This time I could log on but there was still some rubber banding issues.  Servers went down for a 15 minute restart near 9 and came back up after 10.  So, 3 cheers for Blizzard’s inability to launch a service that they’ve been running for years?  Still, there are no monthly fees here so I can’t complain too much.

My biggest gripe with D3 is that you have no idea how your class plays from 1-5 or so.  All classes are pretty much identical here but are either ranged or melee.  This is sort of how WoW was for the first 20 or so levels – and every other MMO for that matter.  D2 had you in your class from the start, so it’s kind of weird to have to play 2 hours to get an idea of the  synergy within a given class’ skill set.

I killed the Skeleton King last night, an old boss from the first Diablo.  This one was a bit more hectic but a lot less difficult with a ranged attacker.  Fun battle, lots of enemies, decent challenge.  Good combination.  Pretty sure this is where the beta ended too.

We’ll see how it goes tonight.

Activision (aka the Devil)

So when Infinity Ward sent out Call of Duty MW2 and then Activision fired the 2 leads, I was perplexed.  The 2 devs that left (among others) sued for a pile of money and Activision played dumb.  Recently, Activision payed them $42 million (up from the 36 asked) and then settled after the fact for even more money.

The kicker of it all was that Bobby Kotick (CEO of Activision) led a campaign to find incriminating evidence on the group to get them fired and not have to pay them.  Project Icebreaker.  Amazing.

So now the thing is settled, the gents got way more money than they were asking for, their reputation has been restored, Activision looks like an even bigger pile of douchebags and the bar of disreputable behavior has been lowered once again.  Victory!

Surprising no one, the D3 servers took a beating last night.  As a veteran MMO player, I guess I’m used to it during launches but for single player games – like D2 – it must have been infuriating.  They’ve been in beta for a year, stress tested the crap out of it and still they had fairly obvious game-breaking bugs and lack of stability.  Hmm…

It took me about 4 hours to download the optimal (7gig or so) client in order to play.  I started with 1m/s, then continually dropped to 200-300k.  Not quite sure what happened there but it did take me 4x as long as it should have.  Oh, for those who have yet to install it, make sure you’re installing it as an admin, otherwise it just stays at 0%.

The neat thing is the easy connection to friends.  I logged on, picked a class and there were a couple games my friends were playing.  One click and I’m in their game.  Downside is that they were farther along than I was and nothing respawned so I had to leave and start my own.  They were level 9 in their game, came into mine and were level 1.  Which I found odd but we’ll see how that plays out in the long term.

The actual gameplay is pretty much just Torchlight in terms of controls and environment.  You run and pick up cash automatically, the world is destructible and there are nooks and crannies to find.  Enemies are varied, though not as bunched in the first few levels.  I’d guess that changes as you get stronger.  There’s a distinct lack of a boss in the first hour but there are mini-bosses – just normal enemies with more HP from what I’ve seen.

I selected the Wizard for the first run.  Always liked the ranged DPS mode but I think I’ll be swapping to the Monk for the next try.  I really liked the Assassin in D2 (which was turned into the Rogue in WoW) and the gameplay seems familiar.   Still, shooting beams and missiles from a distance is fun.  There’s some variety to attacks early on, which is good, and the rune system seems like it will add the “talent slots” that I’m used to seeing.  I wish I could save a loadout though.  Like going from single target to AE attacks without having to enter the screen (which doesn’t pause) select the appropriate items, then wait for them to charge.  It breaks the flow.

Quest for Glory

I finished QfG2 last night while D3 was downloading.  I consider it one of the stronger ones in the series, with a good story, challenging combat – especially the VGA version – yet still has a semi-linear adventure path.  Plus you can become a Paladin at the end!

The thing I don’t like about it is that you can get sections with nothing to do but sleep until the next day.  I had maxed out my combat skills by day 9 and I needed to wait until day 16 for the next sequence to unlock.  The last part, from the cavern on out, is pretty cool.  If it had been a little longer and the last boss not as timing intense, I think it would have been the best in the series.

Next up, Wages of War!  Lions, Leopards, gigantic trees and demons.  It’s a filler game, the weakest of the bunch as there’s nothing for Thieves to do but still provides some new game mechanics and a semi-interesting story.

For those jumping into the series, the Fighter is the easiest to play (and getting to be a Paladin is cake), then the Mage (with some rough spots in #2) then the Thief (with an amazing story in 1, 2, 4 and 5).  The Thief naturally can’t become a Paladin due to the, ya know, Honor issue.

Good gaming!

Today’s a pretty big day in gaming for a couple reasons.  Naturally, Diablo 3 is launching today though I’m not sure if that market is actually much larger than those WoW players who pre-ordered.  I think it was something like 1.2 million pre-orders from that alone.  Aamzon says it broke the pre-order records but didn’t give any numbers.  Fingers crossed that it’s a good game and not the first Blizzard release post-Activision merger (Starcraft 2 started before).

Next up is Max Payne 3.  A little secret but I consider Max Payne one of the foundation pillars of modern shooters.  Bullet Time was an amazingly well executed tool to help give the illusion of power to players and has been replicated ad-nausea since.  Think of every slow-mo boss kill, that started because of Max Payne.  You want a story in your shooter?  Max Payne brought great writing to the table (and CoD and BF killed it).  Reviews are good so far from people who like games.  People who want another brain dead shooter won’t enjoy it though.

Finally and most importantly, Good Old Games launched the Quest for Glory anthology.  I remember the Christmas I got the original EGA game – I was ecstatic.  10 years old, we had a computer (which was amazing at the time in itself) and I had an RPG from Sierra.  You know, the makers of King’s Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest.  The Coles did an amazing job here and I spent a stupid amount of time playing what is a simple game.  I never found the second game but I did play the 3rd – without a mouse.  All in the days before the internet and the chance for a game guide!  I missed the 4th (which is notoriously buggy) but bought the 5th, which was the first in 3-D.  Good game.

I broke my gaming RPG teeth on this series – a pleasant mix of puzzles and humor with some RPG stats.  It didn’t take itself seriously (as none of the Quest games did) so it was a much more enjoyable experience than say Ultima or Wasteland.  For 10$, you can’t go wrong on one of the best gaming experiences you will ever play.  Of special note, you can find QfG2 – VGA version on the net for free.  It works just like the EGA version but if you don’t want to type commands, it’s mouse-featured.

Today is a great day in gaming!

Thinking more about how TES Online can work or tank over the weekend leaves me with a few ideas.  First is that this is Zenimax’ call for an online game and that Bethesda’s strengths are practically polar opposites to BioWares.

I played some Fallout 3 and New Vegas on the weekend since Skyrim was still fresh in my mind, just to have another kick at what makes these games work.  If you were hyper-critical, you would say they are buggy, poorly written, trope-filled, sky-reaching games.  Yet they are games that gamers love to play.  Compare with the BioWare staple that have cohesive games, with solid gameplay and story.  BioWare sells you an interactive movie and Bethesda gives you a box of crayons and some paper.

It’s the idea that you as a company, can provide tools to gamers to do what they want.  There are very few sandbox games (Grand Theft being a hybrid) that garner any wide-spread attention and when someone takes a solid kick at the can, people stand up to notice.  Sure, melee might be poorly implemented in Skyrim and Fallout but the tools that surround that mechanic are interesting and diverse.  An optimal player has just as much chance of finishing the game as a randomly selected one but the path to the end is full of different detours.

I guess it’s sort of like walking down a short hallway full of doors with various locks.  Each lock requires a different key (be it time, sex, morality or skills) and they are completely optional.  You can see the goal from the start too – or at least you think you can.  These little side adventures may or may not have an impact on the final goal, up to you to find out.  You can even go back to a previously visited door to see what, if anything, has changed.  Maybe this time, since you’re wearing a magical hat, the people inside will be zombies.  Who knows?

All this comes to mean that Bethesda’s strength is in the hero journey motif.  Not in prescribing what the actual journey is but giving you the tools and the goal and pushing you out the door.  New Vegas is a great game because Bethesda built a solid toolkit for Obsidian.  Obsidian simply changed the locked doors and the final goal but the tools it had to make it all were already there.

In MMO terms, the hero journey is the boilerplate for fantasy games.  You are a little guy, gain power and kill the big baddy.  The game never ends though, just like Bethesda’s games.  The kicker here is the tools.  The tools in a single player game are meant to balance single player power versus the world.  You can set the difficulty of a lock to a single person but when 10 show up at the door at the same time, how do you make it different for everyone yet allow them to play together?  How do you use your thieving ability to open a house, steal some items, poison the owner and get back out when there are 50 other people in the house too?

The tools are meant for a single person on a single journey.  How Bethesda can reproduce an open-world sandbox, with a balanced set of tools is the real question.  Time will tell if they can capture the spirit of their games while throwing thousands of people together.