To hell and back: The day-after Diablo 3 review
If you’ve been waiting for Diablo 3 for over a decade, you’re not alone.
Millions of gamers worldwide have held back their giddy squeals in anticipation of the return of Blizzard’s demon-centric franchise. And while some players have complained about the beta and “not having choices” the overall mood among gamers has been excitement and perhaps some anxiety.
Now, Diablo 3 has finally arrived. But is it worth the wait?
The answer, in short is a resoundinggggsf243h342h
Error 37: Could not connect to Battle.net server.
But in all seriousness, I’ll have a real review later.
I’m just glad I didn’t get so hyped about it :)
I put down some cash for GW2, I’m moving soon so I just told all my friends that I won’t be joining them in D3, and man am I glad.
It’s of course Blizzards fault for putting a DRM like this in place, but if they continue doing that from now on I think the blame can only be put on the consumers.
The DRM and no-LAN issue was part of the reason I didn’t let my friends hype me up. I have enough trouble with the goddamn UPlay already. Really, any DRM other than Steamworks doesn’t seem to be compatible with my system ( I still cannot get into AC:R MP without setting my router to DMZ).
And what’s gotten into them, not allowing LAN? I played D2 with my brother over LAN 90% of the time, the other 10% a friend of mine would bring his PC and hook up LAN that way. Later, when we were older and knew how, we played over Hamachi.
I’d love to read a for-real review though. I don’t think I’m gonna buy it, once GW2 and PoE are out I really don’t see me playing it anyways, but I’d like to know if the game is, from a gameplay standpoint, worth the while, despite all the BS they created around it (DRM, RMAuction House, no-LAN…),
Sorry to hijack but the beta world I’m using for GW2 is EU-Desolation so go on there and give me a yell when the next beta is up. Of course, keep an eye on the site for the realm to play on when stuff goes live.
Me and my Guild Mates play on Gandara currently, but since you can guest pretty much anywhere except in WvW that won’t be a problem.
Why Desolation?
RPS and PC Gamer server. We ruled at WvW.
If I turned away from every game that had some issues following launch, I would have missed out on some of the most amazing titles in the history of the industry. So, you do what you will. I’m going to wait patiently for them to correct the issues, and then I’m going to play D3 with friends and probably have a really good time.
But please don’t let me get in the way of the train.
Diablo 2 had huge launch issues.
The difference is it also had offline singleplayer and LAN support, so even though BNet was down you could enjoy the thing you paid real money for.
This is what looking at a 30 car pile-up must feel like.
In something that shouldn’t be surprising D3 is also getting blasted on Metacritic, with the current user score sitting at 3.8. The consensus seems to be “Yeah, good game, if we could actually play it.”
I wonder if this backlash might make Blizzard consider letting the single player mode be played offline, which would have been the sensible thing to do in the first place.
That’s one of the things I dislike about Metacritic; it seems to be a place where people voice dissent as a review. Don’t get me wrong, if the game is legitimately bad then go there and give it the score you think it deserves but when the game is having issues, Metacritic isn’t the place for it.
Everything which has purely online play is going to have a bit of a shaky start and this goes double for MMOs but the time for a review of the bad connection isn’t at that point. It would be like me giving WoW a bad review because I wanted to log in when they were doing maintenance. “All the servers are down all the time and I can’t even play. If I could give this a zero then I would etc etc etc”.
My problem, Bin, is that it has online-only play for no reason. Just to make more money off the real money auction house. As a game writer I feel obliged to play this giant title, but I feel bad for consumers who essentially got bilked.
My understanding is that the online-only functionality is an anti-consumer… er, anti-piracy measure.
@Landon, too bad the Pirates are the only people in the world who don’t care, since they got it cracked to work offline ;) and if they haven’t yet, they’ll enjoy cracking it just as much as they will playing it.
When it comes time for the serious review, I think perhaps one of the most important questions I can ask will be thus:
Would you recommend Path of Exile over this?
Error 37 only lasted for 4 hours. People lose their minds when things don’t go according to plan. No reason to make a complaint article about it for something no one will even remember by next month. In fact, I’m not sure why this whole ‘error 37’ and one day of sever issue was such a surprise to people, seeing how this was almost inevitable. Cataclysm and Starcraft 2 went through the same difficulties on the day of release due to the overwhelming fanbase and purchased games.
Now I look forward to your real review (hopefully soon) which will consist of complaining and nitpicking that you call ‘critiquing’, consisting of belligerent, made up facts about how Blizzard is an evil corporation. You’re articles actually make me appreciate Blizzard and their titles rather than oppose them.
Really? Because I got it a few times after May 15. Then they shut down the servers four times for extended periods.
I hope one day game reviewers would start to include the various BS DRM in their reviews and score the game with it in mind. I mean it’s got to the point where some of this DRM has become so in your face and nasty, that it is almost a part of the game itself.
@Stebo
It’s people like you who turn a blind eye to these serious issues, that makes the publishers and devs think it’s alright to use DRM and other consumer hurting methods of control. I guess even willful ignorance can be bliss, too.
You are addressing this article as a ‘serious issue’? It was clearly a joke article…
I’m really enjoying how these Diablo fanboys puff up whenever someone mentions the flaws of their beloved game. I mean, it didn’t even take WiNG insulting the game–just mentioning Error 37–and they’re ready to do battle.
It’s a game. Like any game, it has flaws. Error 37 is a flaw, and it’s resultant from what many believe to be an invasion of private ownership rights. This article is not about Diablo III being a bad game–from what I hear, it’s not at all–nor is it even about Error 37 being a critical issue with the game. It is about video game companies putting their own interests over those of their players. If you don’t believe this is an issue, state why or butt out; don’t insult others for vocalizing the issue. As noctis stated, it’s ignorant.
Well i’m not a diablo fanboy, but i guess is the way it is now, companies are turning into that “online on always” mode, to somehow “stop piracy”, i can understand why they do that, they don’t want all his hard work and effort put into the game be stolen by some hack and slash pirate that released a flawless offline crack of the game. Sure everything could be hacked and i’m sure giving time hackers would find a way to hack diablo3 (emulating servers and stuff), but at least it’ll take more time for them to do it, if the game had an offline option, by now there would be countless of hacks on the web. I’m not gonna lie here i didn’t pay for diablo 1 or diablo 2 cuz i didn’t had the money, but i did pay for diablo3? why? Well i wanted to show my apreciation for the franchise, since i loved so much the previous games. And maybe the fact that was online only helped me a little making that desition.