On August 02 2011 06:03 cz wrote: AH never really bothered me, it's the stupid skill point system that they changed now. It seems like every character is now essentially the same - two level 60 barbarians are identical, as their active skills can be switched in 20 seconds. Its only gear that makes them different now.
There was something satisfying about planning a character out and building it knowing that while you and another lvl 60 barb have the same level and character type, yours is probably better build because you planned better. Now that 12 year old can just switch it around and he's just as good.
edit: I guess there are still those character points like vitality and energy, but meh.
Dont forget about the runestones.. they seem to play a big part in the characters development. I'm expecting those to be the high dollar items in the AH since they are random based and locked.
I do agree though the changes to the skill point system really sucks.. It takes away alot of the thought and planning into your characters development.
They took it out because Diablo 3 just like Diablo 2 now was going to have respecs...
As such, with Diablo 3 people just did this:
1) Put all skill points into skill 2) Level up get new skill 3) Respec 4) Repeat 1 - 3 as you level up
Meaning they basically just automated this in that you just get all skills at full, since the difference between what we have now and what we had was
1) Go to town 2) Respec
Now you just switch your skills and cut out these two little steps that really meant nothing.
Game better be hard. No respecs is what made D2 fun - saving up all my points for orb and cold mastery or strafe or whatever, trying to get through normal without being able to do much. If I can now put as many points as I want in beginning spells this game is going to be really, really easy. Unless they make the difficulty of the monsters/quests really, really hard, which it seems they won't, going by their "dumb things down, make it easier" approach so far.
I played through the game once... and then did what everyone else did in Diablo 2:
Pre 1.09 (lvl 1 - 80 in 1.5 hours) 1) Start new character 2) Get run through to Act 5 Hell 3) Sit in Hell Cows till level 99
Post 1.10 ( lvl 1 - 80 in 2 hours) 1) Start new character 2) Get run through to Act 5 Hell 3) Sit in Baal runs till level 99
Post 1.10b ( lvl 1 - 80 in ~8 hours) 1) Start new character 2) use glitches to get run through game to Act 4 in Hell 3) Sit in pandemonium fortress till level 60 4) Do Baal runs till 99
Then I just speced my character how I wanted, used Forum gold to gear them, then ran around killing things till I got bored.
Then i sold the character for forum gold and rinse and repeat.
That was d2 for me.
Yeah but I don't think that's typical. It is for the "pro" crowd, but the majority of people play through the game on their own with their characters, then restart with a new character and do it again. Especially in the first few years after the release, before everything was really figured out and codified down. The average d2 player in 2004, though, was not getting rushed around to level 90 - he was in a game called "act 2 start" and playing with a random crew.
Actually doing act 4 runs over and over was standard play by like the first 2-3 weeks. Proper magic finding theory crafting took a little longer mostly because the flow of information was different back then, optimal builds were being crafted at launch but again not quite as many people knew it right off the bat because information on the internet didn't quite work the way it does not, mostly because the community boards really hadn't fledged themselves out like they have in most games in this age.
However, everyone already knew the point was to run the last act/fight area over and over because thats how you played diablo 1, which im willing to bet 99% of this board was too young to remember when that game first launched)
Another difficulty here is that this is an scbw/sc2 board and the vast majority of people here have no actual concept on why you would play d2.
The main reason reason to play d2, ladder competition (which is actually out grinding the competition on experience ) , acquiring piles of loot to sell and trade on jsp there is very much an allure to piling up all sorts of goodies and forum gold the game is at best a giant treasure hunt game, theres also the fun in HC since you only live once. But other than that no one really played diablo1/2 because it was technically hard, its really easy just a fun point and click treasure hunt.
also pvp was more about epeen than actual competition, something really hard for this community to grasp
On August 02 2011 06:23 Hikari wrote: There are other ways to make the game hard than to force those who minmix to just stick to 1 pointers for the majority of the game.
Given today's day and age, I expect "best builds" for each class to be theorycrafted early and become extremely popularized.
Is doing baal runs over 9000 times really that fun for you?
even with 8 players with great gear
4 players is max game size
??
And I just read that they took away shared drops - you now get your own drops. Sure that made the game unfair to an extent, but that's where the adrenaline came in - trying to get the big drop away from the other guys in your pub game.
What other steps backwards are blizzard taking? 4 players, are you serious? 8 players in 2001, 4 in 2012?
You're the first person I've seen complain about private drops. lol. I don't know about you, but at release you were screwed on drops without a good computer. When the boss died the death animation would often freeze for half a second to a second, and then all the items were already gone =/
Getting rid of the loot stealing is definitely a step forward.
especially since a lot of people used programs with auto pick up on any rare, unique, set items, runes, and jewels. So you had to compete with cheaters.
This way you get what is dropped for you... which is definitely the best way given the RMAH. I would be pissed if someone stole my items when I can sell them for real money.
The only time it doesn't matter is if you are playing with friends. Then giving people the best gear possible is a good idea so you can do MF runs faster together.
The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
On August 02 2011 06:23 Hikari wrote: There are other ways to make the game hard than to force those who minmix to just stick to 1 pointers for the majority of the game.
Given today's day and age, I expect "best builds" for each class to be theorycrafted early and become extremely popularized.
Is doing baal runs over 9000 times really that fun for you?
even with 8 players with great gear
4 players is max game size
??
And I just read that they took away shared drops - you now get your own drops. Sure that made the game unfair to an extent, but that's where the adrenaline came in - trying to get the big drop away from the other guys in your pub game.
What other steps backwards are blizzard taking? 4 players, are you serious? 8 players in 2001, 4 in 2012?
Seriously, shared drops is the worst loot system in existance and the most annoying thing in D2. Especially when people start to use grabbing bots. I want to slay monsters, and get a fair reward for it, not spamclick the position the boss is at for the last 2-5% of his live, hope that someone else kills it, and that i get something useful. When looting is the most rewarded skill in the game when compared to killing stuff, there is something wrong with it.
On August 02 2011 06:36 Logo wrote: The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
This is false because there was typically only 2-3 builds per class that were worth anything and all the points were stacking in the 3-4 skills that made the build worthwhile and and only a single point towards all the requisites.
It wasnt about trade offs it was about spreadsheets, it was really one of the first pc games to really capitalize on the min maxing aspects from traditional PnP (not pvp) games, pnp being the grand daddy where minmax/theorycrafting your wow character came from.
Building a character is the hardest part about the game? Shit, that's news to me. I thought all it required was following a pre-determined plan that someone else had taken the time to theorycraft the nuts out of.
Oh wait, it isn't. You still need to learn how to deal with certain enemies, make do with the gear you find, as you get it (such as putting some super-mega damage item on lay-away because wearing it would reduce your resistances past the point of dangerous), be quick in your reaction and hand-eye coordination when you're taking on dangerous enemies and all the other skills and experiences you learn as you play the game.
Blizzard haven't strayed from their 'easy to learn, difficult to master' credo, yet, so I don't know where all the paranoia is coming from. Lot of people sipping some Blizzard haterade.
On August 02 2011 06:36 Logo wrote: The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
This is false because there was typically only 2-3 builds per class that were worth anything and all the points were stacking in the 3-4 skills that made the build worthwhile and and only a single point towards all the requisites.
It wasnt about trade offs it was about spreadsheets, it was really one of the first pc games to really capitalize on the min maxing aspects from traditional PnP (not pvp) games, pnp being the grand daddy where minmax/theorycrafting your wow character came from.
Uhh, diablo 2 only became the mess you describe after patch 1.07 with immunes and 1.10 with the synergies. those two things messed up the variety in gameplay, along with the craptastic balance of post-1.06 patch diablo 2. The expansion in general was a terrible addition from gameplay and balance perspective, aside from the 2 classes and extra areas.
On August 02 2011 06:36 Logo wrote: The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
This is false because there was typically only 2-3 builds per class that were worth anything and all the points were stacking in the 3-4 skills that made the build worthwhile and and only a single point towards all the requisites.
It wasnt about trade offs it was about spreadsheets, it was really one of the first pc games to really capitalize on the min maxing aspects from traditional PnP (not pvp) games, pnp being the grand daddy where minmax/theorycrafting your wow character came from.
Uhh, diablo 2 only became the mess you describe after patch 1.07 with immunes and 1.10 with the synergies. those two things messed up the variety in gameplay, along with the craptastic balance of post-1.06 patch diablo 2. The expansion in general was a terrible addition from gameplay and balance perspective, aside from the 2 classes and extra areas.
The game was always horribly balanced, what d2 were you playing? You can still google d2 community sites and find stickies in the character build sections that list theorycrafted builds from pre 1.07 patch.
amusingly synergies allowed classes that were typically seen as useless to be more legitimate, however it still shoe horned you into a couple optimal builds + a couple novelty builds. Good players still always just just maxed the important skills and the rest of the skills got one if any points.
Concerning stats it had been since d1 standard play to put all your points outside of gear reqs into vit or in some case split vit/damage dealing stat.
Nothing changed except for a bunch of people who were terrible and tried to play the field with spells and stats.
On August 01 2011 22:58 Zeroes wrote: RMT will stop the retards who visit shady sites to buy gold/items and get viruses to get their gold stolen again.
I think its a good Idea to have RMT so that they aren't being called by people who have had their accounts hacked every other month.
I interpret that more as natural selection Kind of like getting nubs in the 8-player party to press Alt-F4.
It can't be natural selection if the people who get their stuff stolen get it all replaced by blizzard for free....
On August 02 2011 06:03 cz wrote: AH never really bothered me, it's the stupid skill point system that they changed now. It seems like every character is now essentially the same - two level 60 barbarians are identical, as their active skills can be switched in 20 seconds. Its only gear that makes them different now.
There was something satisfying about planning a character out and building it knowing that while you and another lvl 60 barb have the same level and character type, yours is probably better build because you planned better. Now that 12 year old can just switch it around and he's just as good.
edit: I guess there are still those character points like vitality and energy, but meh.
Dont forget about the runestones.. they seem to play a big part in the characters development. I'm expecting those to be the high dollar items in the AH since they are random based and locked.
I do agree though the changes to the skill point system really sucks.. It takes away alot of the thought and planning into your characters development.
They took it out because Diablo 3 just like Diablo 2 now was going to have respecs...
As such, with Diablo 3 people just did this:
1) Put all skill points into skill 2) Level up get new skill 3) Respec 4) Repeat 1 - 3 as you level up
Meaning they basically just automated this in that you just get all skills at full, since the difference between what we have now and what we had was
1) Go to town 2) Respec
Now you just switch your skills and cut out these two little steps that really meant nothing.
Game better be hard. No respecs is what made D2 fun - saving up all my points for orb and cold mastery or strafe or whatever, trying to get through normal without being able to do much. If I can now put as many points as I want in beginning spells this game is going to be really, really easy. Unless they make the difficulty of the monsters/quests really, really hard, which it seems they won't, going by their "dumb things down, make it easier" approach so far.
That only made the game artificially hard for levels 1-30 (or 24, depending on which skills you were aiming for) for the people who planned for endgame purposes. I don't think a design that essentially asks people to trade in early game fun for endgame fun is a good design.
I did the same thing and before synergy, levels 1-30 were really only like that for builds without many passives. Barbs essentially skipped a huge amount of point hoarding because they had a lot of good passives early on.
On August 02 2011 06:36 Logo wrote: The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
This is false because there was typically only 2-3 builds per class that were worth anything and all the points were stacking in the 3-4 skills that made the build worthwhile and and only a single point towards all the requisites.
It wasnt about trade offs it was about spreadsheets, it was really one of the first pc games to really capitalize on the min maxing aspects from traditional PnP (not pvp) games, pnp being the grand daddy where minmax/theorycrafting your wow character came from.
Uhh, diablo 2 only became the mess you describe after patch 1.07 with immunes and 1.10 with the synergies. those two things messed up the variety in gameplay, along with the craptastic balance of post-1.06 patch diablo 2. The expansion in general was a terrible addition from gameplay and balance perspective, aside from the 2 classes and extra areas.
The game was always horribly balanced, what d2 were you playing? You can still google d2 community sites and find stickies in the character build sections that list theorycrafted builds from pre 1.07 patch.
amusingly synergies allowed classes that were typically seen as useless to be more legitimate, however it still shoe horned you into a couple optimal builds + a couple novelty builds. Good players still always just just maxed the important skills and the rest of the skills got one if any points.
Concerning stats it had been since d1 standard play to put all your points outside of gear reqs into vit or in some case split vit/damage dealing stat.
Nothing changed except for a bunch of people who were terrible and tried to play the field with spells and stats.
Curious to hear what class you think is useless in 1.06 and before, they all have extremely powerful builds from what i have played(100+ hours). Unlike 1.10+ where everything other than light sorcs, light zons and hdins is slow at endgame and there exists a massive performance gap between dupeword & botter minmaxers and the regular players compared to the rare-based system of 1.06 and older.
Also funny you say synergies make skills useful. When it and other expansion changes (no cool downs) decreased options of skills due to forced skill tree maxing, not increased them.
The funny "theorycrafted" builds are only funny because they dont make sense within the gear and skill concept of 1.10+. You see, in the old patches the ED, +skills and cooldowns are very low compared to now, so the skill appliance mechanics are what matter
Youre dead wrong on stats though. In pre-expansin skills take a TON of mana (untimered orb taking 70 mana per cast at lvl 20ish, meteortaking 60 mana per cast, etc) so energy investment is an important part of non leeching characters
On August 02 2011 06:36 Logo wrote: The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
This is false because there was typically only 2-3 builds per class that were worth anything and all the points were stacking in the 3-4 skills that made the build worthwhile and and only a single point towards all the requisites.
It wasnt about trade offs it was about spreadsheets, it was really one of the first pc games to really capitalize on the min maxing aspects from traditional PnP (not pvp) games, pnp being the grand daddy where minmax/theorycrafting your wow character came from.
Uhh, diablo 2 only became the mess you describe after patch 1.07 with immunes and 1.10 with the synergies. those two things messed up the variety in gameplay, along with the craptastic balance of post-1.06 patch diablo 2. The expansion in general was a terrible addition from gameplay and balance perspective, aside from the 2 classes and extra areas.
The game was always horribly balanced, what d2 were you playing? You can still google d2 community sites and find stickies in the character build sections that list theorycrafted builds from pre 1.07 patch.
amusingly synergies allowed classes that were typically seen as useless to be more legitimate, however it still shoe horned you into a couple optimal builds + a couple novelty builds. Good players still always just just maxed the important skills and the rest of the skills got one if any points.
Concerning stats it had been since d1 standard play to put all your points outside of gear reqs into vit or in some case split vit/damage dealing stat.
Nothing changed except for a bunch of people who were terrible and tried to play the field with spells and stats.
Curious to hear what class you think is useless in 1.06 and before, they all have extremely powerful builds from what i have played(100+ hours). Unlike 1.10+ where everything other than light sorcs, light zons and hdins is slow at endgame and there exists a massive performance gap between dupeword & botter minmaxers and the regular players compared to the rare-based system of 1.06 and older.
Also funny you say synergies make skills useful. When it and other expansion changes (no cool downs) decreased options of skills due to forced skill tree maxing, not increased them.
The funny "theorycrafted" builds are only funny because they dont make sense within the gear and skill concept of 1.10+. You see, in the old patches the ED, +skills and cooldowns are very low compared to now, so the skill appliance mechanics are what matter
Paladins sucked throught out the entire D2 history, and yes, my first class was a charge-hammerdin, way back in 1.01.
The hammerdin back then was the only halfass viable build for a paladin to even try soloing act4, and even in that you had to have a handfull of rejs, because he sucked, HARD.
On August 02 2011 06:36 Logo wrote: The disappointing thing about the skill system change is there are less trade-offs. It was cool in D2 that you had the option to have 1-point skills and that different skills had different costs in getting the requirements for the skill. So if you went for something further down the tree you had less points for other things giving you a more powerful ability with (in theory at least) a cost of having less other things.
With the way it is now all abilities need to be roughly the same power level since they all have the same opportunity cost.
This is false because there was typically only 2-3 builds per class that were worth anything and all the points were stacking in the 3-4 skills that made the build worthwhile and and only a single point towards all the requisites.
It wasnt about trade offs it was about spreadsheets, it was really one of the first pc games to really capitalize on the min maxing aspects from traditional PnP (not pvp) games, pnp being the grand daddy where minmax/theorycrafting your wow character came from.
Uhh, diablo 2 only became the mess you describe after patch 1.07 with immunes and 1.10 with the synergies. those two things messed up the variety in gameplay, along with the craptastic balance of post-1.06 patch diablo 2. The expansion in general was a terrible addition from gameplay and balance perspective, aside from the 2 classes and extra areas.
The game was always horribly balanced, what d2 were you playing? You can still google d2 community sites and find stickies in the character build sections that list theorycrafted builds from pre 1.07 patch.
amusingly synergies allowed classes that were typically seen as useless to be more legitimate, however it still shoe horned you into a couple optimal builds + a couple novelty builds. Good players still always just just maxed the important skills and the rest of the skills got one if any points.
Concerning stats it had been since d1 standard play to put all your points outside of gear reqs into vit or in some case split vit/damage dealing stat.
Nothing changed except for a bunch of people who were terrible and tried to play the field with spells and stats.
Curious to hear what class you think is useless in 1.06 and before, they all have extremely powerful builds from what i have played(100+ hours). Unlike 1.10+ where everything other than light sorcs, light zons and hdins is slow at endgame and there exists a massive performance gap between dupeword & botter minmaxers and the regular players compared to the rare-based system of 1.06 and older.
Also funny you say synergies make skills useful. When it and other expansion changes (no cool downs) decreased options of skills due to forced skill tree maxing, not increased them.
The funny "theorycrafted" builds are only funny because they dont make sense within the gear and skill concept of 1.10+. You see, in the old patches the ED, +skills and cooldowns are very low compared to now, so the skill appliance mechanics are what matter
Paladins sucked throught out the entire D2 history, and yes, my first class was a charge-hammerdin, way back in 1.01.
The hammerdin back then was the only halfass viable build for a paladin to even try soloing act4, and even in that you had to have a handfull of rejs, because he sucked, HARD.
I remember there was a cute (japanese?) comic strip showing how the characters destroy hordes of cows with their ultimate abilities -- the amazon with multiple shot, barbarian with whirlwind, sorceress with firewall and nova, necromancer by reviving the fallen cows, and the paladin was just sitting there in a corner with his head down.
Some people claim that completely removing the Off-line experience from Diablo 3 is an attempt of Blizzard to make lives hard for hackers to crack the game, the reasoning is that if the problem really is just cheating while being offline then Blizzard could just create a system similar to the GUEST system we have in StarCraft 2, that way your online characters and offline characters will be absolutely different and the cheating won't interrupt anyone, well...
Let me tell you a story, about long time ago, a new game was just released, the name of that game, was Assassin's Creed 2. Everyone across the country, men and women, babies and children, all came to buy the game, but there was one condition! In order to play the game, the people who bought it will have to log in to UBISOFT's servers - that game was ONLINE-ONLY!!! And like every decent game, there are buyers, and there are hackers, the hackers tried for more then a month to make a crack for the game, but to no avail, eventually, they hacked into UBISOFT's servers, and shut it down, moments later they released a crack that would make the game connect to port 80 instead of UBISOFT's servers [which is also skype's port btw] and make it think it was actually connected to the UBISOFT servers. The results was terrifying, the people - men, women and children - who bought the game could not log into the shut down UBISOFT server, while the evil, genius hackers and their minions could freely play it as if it was their own.
Six months later, more or less, a newer game was released, Assassin's Creed 2: Brotherhood. That game, was not ONLINE ONLY, for the people and UBISOFT learned their lesson, because eventually... we all get cracked!
Blizzard should make a system similar to the StarCraft 2 Guest system in Diablo 3, that's all.
Well Diablo was always known for the entertainment of making characters rather than balance. It's the main reason why they made it clear that D3 is not an e-sport.
In all honesty, the real money shop doesn't really bother me. I'm only worried that there might be less reason to re-roll a character since Blizzard is removing so many of the incentives that led people to reroll. On one hand I agree that it's crap to have to remake a character because you didn't spend time researching the "right" build, but at the same time I certainly don't want the ability to recustomize my character at the press of a button. There should at least be some incentive to reroll in order to make a better build.
On August 02 2011 08:22 ObserverSix2One wrote: Some people claim that completely removing the Off-line experience from Diablo 3 is an attempt of Blizzard to make lives hard for hackers to crack the game, the reasoning is that if the problem really is just cheating while being offline then Blizzard could just create a system similar to the GUEST system we have in StarCraft 2, that way your online characters and offline characters will be absolutely different and the cheating won't interrupt anyone, well...
Let me tell you a story, about long time ago, a new game was just released, the name of that game, was Assassin's Creed 2. Everyone across the country, men and women, babies and children, all came to buy the game, but there was one condition! In order to play the game, the people who bought it will have to log in to UBISOFT's servers - that game was ONLINE-ONLY!!! And like every decent game, there are buyers, and there are hackers, the hackers tried for more then a month to make a crack for the game, but to no avail, eventually, they hacked into UBISOFT's servers, and shut it down, moments later they released a crack that would make the game connect to port 80 instead of UBISOFT's servers [which is also skype's port btw] and make it think it was actually connected to the UBISOFT servers. The results was terrifying, the people - men, women and children - who bought the game could not log into the shut down UBISOFT server, while the evil, genius hackers and their minions could freely play it as if it was their own.
Six months later, more or less, a newer game was released, Assassin's Creed 2: Brotherhood. That game, was not ONLINE ONLY, for the people and UBISOFT learned their lesson, because eventually... we all get cracked!
Blizzard should make a system similar to the StarCraft 2 Guest system in Diablo 3, that's all.
have a nice day.
Blizzard adressed that by saying:
Tons of people that start playing the game do it on single player, that's reasonable. If you don't know anything about the game, it's common to start like that, it's the same even in SC2. After playing for some time, they would try the multiplayer, but would find out their character was gone and they would have to start over. That's not nice, specially for someone that doesn't have a lot of time to play.
They idea of starting on Bnet and creating a game just for yourself is not intuitive at all, by storing every character you create on Battle Net, Blizzard avoids this problem.
You can say this is catering to casuals, that people should think more before doing something, that being able to play without a Bnet account is more important, but it very easy to see how that was a problem. A lot of people didn't even try playing through Battle.net, now, if they want, they can try it without losing all the time already spent.
The reason they gave wasn't even piracy, even if it may have influenced it, like SC2 it's very easy to crack the single player part of the game, which, unlike SC, is the biggest reason to play a cracked version. And honestly, I believe a lot less people will be affected by the D3 system than people have been by the D2 system.
On August 02 2011 08:37 SKC wrote:And honestly, I believe a lot less people will be affected by the D3 system than people have been by the D2 system.
I agree with this. SC2 at the very least suffers from no-LAN because of the occasional "Bnet goes down during a tournament". Since D3 is non-competitive and probably won't have official tournaments, it won't have to worry about those embarrassing situations.
And let's not forget that SC2 still managed to be very successful despite the massive gamer outrage, threats of boycott, and lack of Bnet 2.0 features. If SC2 didn't go under due to that, then D3 won't either.
Ultimately, it’s going to take the game's harder difficulty modes -- Hell and Inferno -- to challenge the limits of the best Diablo III players.
I'm still a little skeptical about that. First because the name is basically a translation, I can't imagine what they would do in the spanish/portuguese version.
But mostly because they had been very emphatic about the level 60 cap before, and the three dificulty levels. It may just have been a mistake.
It's Blizzard though, you never know. If someone asked me about a real money auction house I would think it was an even bigger joke than a 4th difficulty level.
Maybe the names change in Hardcore? Anyway, I would hardly call it an announcement. It may be true, but it's definatellly too early to call it certain.
EPT
