I recently wrote a relatively positive Diablo 3 review, and while I still stand by it, I didn’t have access to the game’s Inferno difficulty at the time. In recent weeks, myself and others—us dirty casuals—have finally had the displeasure of experiencing Inferno.
Fuck.
It’s a mess. “Impossible” elites are common, kiting is the strategy no matter what class you play, crafting is virtually useless, and the only sane way to get gear is via the auction house, a part of the game that is broken beyond repair after an in-game exploit allowed players to get infinite amounts of gold (Blizzard PR denies this, but I can confirm via insider sources that this specific event did occur). To top it all off, the most recent patch nerfed item and gold drops, raised repair costs to ridiculous amounts, broke multiple abilities completely, made multiple bosses “impossible” for various classes, and destroyed class builds via stat nerfs. All of this comes on the heels of Diablo 3’s shaky launch, which featured laggy servers, huge amounts of downtime, the absence of PVP, an exploit that allowed strangers to access your account information via public games, and a police raid on Blizzard’s offices in South Korea!
Blizzard’s response to the Inferno debacle? “Stop doing content that’s too hard for you.” –A shocking amount of (hopefully feigned) ignorance, considering even the worst gamers among us need only buy gear off the auction house and skip that Invulnerable Minion Arcane Enchanted Waller Vortex pack in order to beat the game on its hardest difficulty.
For weeks now, the Diablo 3 forums have been flooded with angry fans. Blizzard has employed about five community managers to quell them—to no avail. To the casual observer, the Diablo 3 community looks like a raving horde of lunatics, but a closer look reveals massive, passionate essays desperate to help fix a heavily flawed game. Even I feel sorry for the Blizzard devs, who probably shield themselves from relentlessly negative online forums as much as possible.
But they deserve it. The countless returned copies of Diablo 3, its rapid decline in population, their legal troubles in South Korea, the out-of-control forums—they deserve all of it, because Diablo 3 is a beta.
This is what happens when you release an incomplete game. This is what happens when you refuse to do the math yourselves; when you allow your fanbase to make the spreadsheets instead. This is what happens when you convince random, inexperienced, naïve people to beta test your games for you instead of hiring actual quality assurance—and I’m not talking about those interns. I’m talking about real QA that is good enough at video games to be able to beat and help you test Inferno. I get it: You the developers are not as good as the Starcraft pros. Fine. Hire someone who is.
Blizzard isn’t the only company that is exploiting consumers by cleverly convincing them to design the game, test the game, pay for the game, and fix the game, though. Most recently, Square-Enix has been begging its fanbase to help it make Final Fantasy XIV fun. The developers are literally clueless; they have no idea what consumers find entertaining, and so they’ve now resorted to asking them directly. Tip: If you don’t know how to entertain someone, if you can’t look at something and decide whether it’s fun or not, get out of the damn industry.
The hilarious part? After all of our efforts to help devs improve their games, we’re called “entitled”.
Blizzard has the community support required to fix Diablo 3. It will probably be a great game three months from now, when everyone has moved on to other games and doesn’t care anymore. I just wish they could have made a good game on their own instead of having their fanbase glue together the pieces.
Excellent post. Unfortunately, D3 has sold tremendously, but I think we can still look forward to Blizztivision being fucked over by legal issues in the motherland.
Great post, but it really wasn’t the beta testers fault. No matter how much feedback Blizzard got from the beta, they rarely listened. For example, the testers enjoyed the old UI, but the devs insisted on dumbing it down further to appeal to the masses and justified this by saying it’s fun. Mr. Wilson has it in his head that playing the game his way is the only fun way to do it, which is completely wrong. In the end, the way they built the system, they pidgeonholed themselves in a way where they can’t change a large majority of it.
It’s the same with all their games. Any feedback that doesn’t kiss their ass and tell them what a fantastic job they’ve done, gets ignored. And all problems with the games are dismissed as being the players’ fault, not theirs.
It’s quite sickening, to the extent that they ban and delete forum posts that express concerns with decisions that they make. I got the game for “Free” (WoW annual pass, another promotion i will NEVER EVER take part in again, completely ripped off) and even i don’t want to play it. I really hope something comes along, some body or institution and puts these entitled developers back in their place.
This is so right on that it hurts. The trend lately seems to be to just ship it and let the public pay beta test the games and be ultimately be let down in a multitude of ways.
I think it’s sad a game of such low quality is now the fastest selling game of all time. They didn’t even TEST their own game past act 1 inferno. It’s sad and I think the future of the games industry is very grim. Blizzard doesn’t even admit the problems with the game, they live in a self-congratulatory bubble.
well said. the problem with diablo 3 is that they are totally oblivious to the community, patches and nerfs are done without the community’s input. the stealth duration nerf caused many a hc demon hunters to rage, while the change on skills such as force armor, and boon of protection ruined those skills. the attack speed nerf hindered the monk as well.
compare this to their sc2 division. the team is no where nearly grandmaster player level, so they get the feedback by doing test realms and announcing the patch changes and letting people test them out. some changes (fungal growth as a projectile) are given feedback, and in that case it was overwhelming negative so that change was not implemented.
blizzard & the d3 team want you to play diablo3 the way they feel is fun, and that is why it’s not. either you build a glass cannon that dies in 1 hit, or you build a character with high armor, hp and resists and die in 5 hits, but cant kill anything.
it really seems that d3 isn’t a finished product, and this is the actual beta testing. perhaps it was rushed in ordered to get the RMAH up and running, so they can cash in on that.
“it really seems that d3 isn’t a finished product, and this is the actual beta testing. perhaps it was rushed in ordered to get the RMAH up and running, so they can cash in on that.”
nope… they run out of time
they said 1. quarter of 2012… they still released it on 15. may… mid 2. quarter
they are just unable to finish something in time
Diablo 3′s biggest problems don’t stem from an unfinished beta release as you describe (though there are numerous problems due to this). The biggest problems are caused by the game’s focus on making more money off of the RMAH. Each nerf has been to make players more dependent on the RMAH, despite why Blizzard stated things were nerfed. It’s the “pay to win” mentality, and if you don’t pay, you don’t advance in Hell and Inferno. People talk about Blizzard wanting to dictate how you play…again, this isn’t because they feel like it’ll be more enjoyable to the player base, it’s because they want more money from the RMAH. If they removed the RMAH and charged a monthly fee for online play to supplement their income, I guarantee game play would all the sudden be fun and cool after a couple of patches, and drops would be more along the lines of what old D2 players expected from this game.
This will never happen. They’re even pretty much opening the door for more bots and hackers to make money and be successful in WoW, you know, that game where they are apparently against buying your way to winning but never ban or punish those proven to be taking part in “offences”.
The current AH on the Beta for MoP has heroic T14 raid gear a “chance” to appear for sale but apparently “there wont be many people who have the gold to pay for it so it is not a viable way for people to gear up”. But you know, they could just go and buy gold and buy the gear.
They really need to get their heads out of eachother’s asses and either admit they’re going down the track of EA and its pay to win so that the good gamers who don’t want to have to pay to get everywhere can go and find new and better games, or they need to stop being wankers and abide by their own stupid rules.
Too bad the game is exactly what they promised it would be in my eyes. great game that is only getting better w/ minor tweaks done to it. While I agree that the IAS Nerf hit classes like the monk and DH hard it was needed but it just sucks it had to come at such a late date when everyone had already farmed up all the high stated IAS gear they could find! The game will only improve, I think it is great fun and almost every elite pack not only is a puzzle to figure out but a equivalent to a shared loot boss in a raid in WoW. While rng is rng the simple fact that you can basically get the best piece of gear from any mob in game is phenomenal imo, makes killing every mob worth it.
From what I’ve read recently, Blizz is entertaining the idea of going back to gear dropping from breakables again the way it was meant to be. IIRC it was in a blue post on 30 questions about the current and future state of D3. Hope they decide to go back to it! Thats they way the game is designed to be like. more loot drops=more loot going on the rmah, and better items all around. just my 0.02 copper!
The bit about Diablo 2 is true…I see everyone praise D2 as some golden standard for gaming, yet D3 is no different. Same game, but instead of farming the same boss 100 times and spamming general chat that you’re trading an item, you farm elite packs AND bosses, and post items on the AH. What exactly is the problem, here?
This whole post reeks of “QQ I can’t beat inferno with my level 55 Hell gear” butthurt-ness.
The crafting is useless and default abilities of mobs sometimes don’t mix well with elite abilities. Still the game is piss easy on inferno and you can beat it with 5 mill worth of gear while poking your nose. Some ppl refuse to admit they are just bad at playing games and writer of this article seem to be one of those in denial.
Inferno isn’t fun like some of the other difficulties. It’s a pain in the butt is what it is.
why do u cry about blizzard releasing a unfinished game, while 0921319023901 million ppl all over the world were BEGGING blizzard to release D3 so in my opinion, a game developer can never do something good, when they do X ppl go crazy, and when they say hey! lets do Y, ppl go crazy,
i nvr ask 4 d3 i nvr even buy it i get d3 4 free frm friend i like teh game as i sed in vry first sentence of edit0rial but d3 endgame is bad rite now sry if offend u for say things we go be japan & not criticize nething so industry collapse kk?? k
Seriously, you sound like a fucking prick. You have absolutely no integrity.
I’d love to hear you elaborate on that comment, because I’m certain you’re not a fanboy up in a tizzy because someone said something bad about his favourite game. Right?
Come on. Tell me. Why does the author “have no integrity?”
Lack of grammar for one reason.
Repeating “session-stealing” false information for another?
All I read was tearing about how hard Inferno was and how Blizzard is out to take everyone’s money. You mentioned a bunch of other things that are completely blown out of proportion, and it shows in your article that you lack the experience in the game necessary to make these allegations, but I’ll just focus on these two.
You said that every nerf made people more reliant on the RMAH. So, what you’re telling me is, by them making the game EASIER, and effectively making people have to spend LESS money for acceptable gear, they’re doing it with the RMAH in mind to make more money? Yeah, okay, that totally makes sense. Make it so people have to spend less so we make more! =/= logic
Then you talk about how difficult Inferno is. Uhh, yeah, that’s the WHOLE POINT. It’s SUPPOSED to be difficult beyond everything else. If you want to compare to D2, then compare Normal-Hell on each, with Inferno in D3 simply being an OPTIONAL, additional challenge after already beating the game 3 times. And also, explain to me why, in a loot based game, you would even want to clear 100% of the content in one month? I cruised through Normal, NM, and Hell so quickly, that I’d be pissed if Inferno was the same thing. They said it would be very hard. They said you would die a lot. They said it would be harder than anything in a Diablo ever. What part of that doesn’t say “this is going to take a while?”
And yes, your article does make you sound like an entitled gamer. While there are a few bits of truth strewn in, it just sounds like “Blizzard didn’t make the game the way I think it should be.” Do I think the game is perfect? Hellllll no. But am I enjoying the hell out of it? Damn right.
Oh, and before someone tells me I’m some biased Demon Hunter player who’s farming A3 and A4 with some sort of ill-gotten gains, I play a Monk who’s stuck at the beginning of Act 2 Inferno. And you know what? I’m glad there’s a steep challenge ahead. Inferno isn’t for everyone, maybe you should’ve stopped after Hell.
I love your ability to type and spell coherently.
MikeC..
The things i would do to you….
I just want to comment on something. I’m not being a Squeenix fan boy or anything, but in the case of FFXIV (I beta tested it) they apologized formally for rushing the game out. They also then made the game free to play (Didn’t charge people a subscription fee for at least a year) until they were satisfied that the player’s level of satisfaction was up to par. It took them a year and the game was majorly revamped from what it was originally. I think that asking what players want and listening to feed back is a good thing, not something that should be replied harshly with “Get out of the damned industry” as you put it.
On the other hand, D3 and blizzard’s approach is simply to tell people how to play. Instead of listening to feedback and asking for help, they’re making their own decisions and pushing people away.
I completely agree on the FFXIV statement. Making the game free to play for almost a year was a smart move to keep fans around. I was there through beta testing too and while the game wasn’t great, I still enjoyed it.
I think the case can be made for D3 as well. People want it so they’ll buy it. It is just as much the consumers fault as the devs fault for keeping these games in circulation. As long as there’s someone out there willing to pay 60 bucks on release night…They’re gonna keep pushin stuff out the door.
……God we need another industry crash don’t we…
what is this nonsense about inferno being too hard? I for one finished inferno diablo before the patch that nerffed inferno and i never spent a dime on RMAH and only casually looked through RMAH to sell my items and buy cheap bargain items. Right now all acts of inferno are easily doable even with subpar gear and if you can`t do them you are a) really badly geared or b) in really horrible spec/build or c) both. Right now the game suffers from having bad drops in acts 3-4 that are being adressed hopefully soon but difficulty is not an issue in inferno right now. Inferno was supposed to be hard and yes that equals good gear but now you can do well there when you use correct build and gear for your class.
Dude, they didn’t purposely nerf drops in Acts 3 and 4. I am pretty sure the nerf was a perception thing. And then, less than a day after you publish this garbage, what did they do? They buffed the drops! Not in a patch, in a fucking HOTFIX because of you whiny fucking babies. God damn. I’ve never once, by the by, encountered any “impossible” groups of elites. Maybe you should “get out of the damn industry” as you put it, because you sure as shit need to learn to play. Also, if there were many people who got infinite gold, why aren’t items selling for billions of gold, because of its devaluation? Oh that’s right, it never fucking happened.
It doesn’t sound difficult, it just sounds tedious and boring. It also quite amazing how people are defending Blizzard when they blatantly stated that they did no testing or anything on Inferno.
This is not “honest journalism”. Not even close. 1.03 has made players less dependant on the AH than before and 1.03b which just dropped today has buffed the drop rates on items even further allowing players to avoid the AH if they so choose. In 1.02, Act I inferno could only drop lvl 61 items. As of 1.03, you can actually get the best items (lvl 63) in the game to drop in Act I inferno.
The complaints on this front are comming from guys who have massive e-peen problems who think since progamers cleared inferno within the first week, they should be able to do it too with no effort.
The game plan for Blizzard for this game has always been for you to farm each act in succession until your gear is up to snuff. This ridiculous idea that you need the AH to progress is ludicrous. How did Kripparian and the other world first teams do it when they were the first into Inferno? There was no AH flooded with ilvl 63 items for them. They did good old fashion loot grinding to progress, even if it was boring gobo farming.
Thats what they have been consistently telling you in that post if you actually cared to read it. But no, you choose to take a single post from a CM and ignore the rest of the posts on this topic including a detailed AMAA on redit.
Diablo is, and always has been a slot machine disguised as an ARPG. Why do you think 3rd party trading sites existed in D2? Because finding top tier items was just as hard in D2. The only difference is in D3, they give you a sanitized auction house showing you what the best loot looks like and now everyone’s perception is that if it ain’t the best loot, everything else is shit and I deserve the best loot now, no grinding.
Bash D3, for its ridiculous DRM, bash it for its shitty servers and extended downtimes, bash it for its saturday cartoon storyline. But christssakes, if you want to call yourself a game journalism site, at least do the research and report the facts on AH, drop rates and what it means for players. This article is a joke and its standards for journalism, even if you want to call it an opinion piece, is so low that it might as well be fox news in quality.
This article has a few good points, but mostly comes off as an entitled gamer. The entire point of Inferno is for it to be ENDGAME. Why would anyone waste their time playing diablo when the endgame is a cakewalk? I farm act 1 with my friends doing Elite runs and having a great time, getting tons of rares, and generally having a fun time playing the game at the level of challenge that we can take on together. How about people learn to gear, learn to spec their build, and learn proper strategy to taking out some of the more difficult enemies. Go do some research on how other people are taking on the more difficult challenges in the game.
PS. All resist is the god stat, if you have not figured this out by now, you will need this stat to not get oneshot post act 1. This goes for any class.
Just to drop a little information, Germany and France are investigating too.
I’m no longer sure the place you are getting your information, however great topic. I needs to spend some time studying more or working out more. Thanks for magnificent info I was on the lookout for this info for my mission.
Prepare your tinfoil hats, people. Here’s something for you to think about:
On Yahtzee review (yeah, I know) He mentions how he keeps finding pants after pants. That would be nothing but a fun joke, but I kept hearing the same thing happening with other players. Someone that finds moslty gloves, or helmets as he grinds for a whole day. Maybe… It’s because you are supposed to pick one for you and sell the rest in the RMAH? Like Blizzard wants?
Also, I kept hearing a funny detail about that attack speed nerf. I heard it was because people were farming too damn fast. Maybe I heard wrong, but that’s a thing that could flood the RMAH thus reducing the price on loot.
And I heard from someone else how prices are in the AH. How gold is ridiculous, because everything costs a bazillion gold to get. Maybe… Maybe that infinite gold exploit was on purpose to devalue gold and force people to use the RMAH? Maybe the repair costs are also high so you have no gold left for the AH?
And there’s also that fine detail I heard from someone trying to play on Inferno act2. He didn’t had gear to clear it, he was farming to get said gear, since the one from act1 isn’t enough, but it was pretty impossible due to no gear. So he had to spend ludicrous amount of gold in repairs everytime he died. And farm in Hell or in act strictly for gold just so he could then farm on act2. All the while he knew he could just go to the RMAH and get the gear he needed to clear act 2.
See, I’m probably crazy and all this is nothing but nonsense. But if you look at it carefully, it looks like a well-elaborated plan to force you to use the RMAH. From which ActiBlizzard wins 15% IIRC. Let’s all remenber that we are talking about a company, and that companies are made to rake up money. So, given the choice of implenting all this crap to drain your wallet, why wouldn’t they do it? Sounds like an interesting question? I have a better one for YOU. Why are you playing D3 at all? It’s a flawed game that was released as a beta after YEARS of making. You were the beta tester for the game and you even had to pay for it. And we ain’t talking about no Minecraft here. And we ain’t even talking about the only dungeon crawler here. Why aren’t you playing something better? Or demanding a better game, at least? Because you ARE an entitled gamer. You are entitled to a good game when you pay for it.