1. #1

    Speedrunning! Why is Diablo 2 so popular and WoW (and D3, TL2, etc) not?

    Why do you think speedrunning is so popular in Diablo 2 but never caught on in World of Warcraft. There are streamers that talk about different games and when it comes to Blizzard titles, Diablo 2 is far and away the game that gets the most speedrun love. There are 45 players streaming Diablo 2 (vs 25 for Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft). When streamers talk about which games they pick, they say that, overwhelmingly, streaming D2 speedruns nets them big crowds and subscribers. I admit I follow one guy (mrllamasc). He's pretty entertaining and streams most nights.

    People who are a fan of LEVELING in the RPG gravitate towards Diablo 2 over D3 or WoW. Its pretty clear. Some people just love leveling chars as THE endgame and D2 stands the test of time.

    Is it the RNG factor? There are several KEY points in leveling in D2 that can boost your time, from acquiring fast run/walk boots, to the stealth runeword, to picking the correct path in Arcane Sanctuary, to finding a great unique or rare that changes your build. WoW is more streamlined. The rewards you get are generally more on rails with little to no randomness. The map is always the same in WoW as well.

    Torchlight 2 is another interesting question tho. Torchlight 2 has random maps and even random custom maps as endgame with random bonuses, but hardly ever gets speedrunners.

    Getting back to WoW, I would think WoW speedrun would be popular because there are so many classes and you can take different builds. Enhance shaman vs Ele shaman for example. What could they do to increase interest in speedrunning WoW? Allow players to pick which starting zone to begin in? A Draenei Shaman in the human starting zone?

  2. #2
    My automatic kneejerk would be that D2 hasn't seen a single change in forever, whereas d3 and wow are undergoing constant overhauls.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    simple:

    d2 is a rather simple game, centred around 2 or 3 skills and the correct gear for it.

    the only thing you can compete is speed. not expertise, skill or anything. you just can do things faster than before/someone else, with the same 2skills and gear.


    wow is a complex game, about groupplay, positioning, random chances, reaction times, creative use (or abuse) of gamemechanics etc.

    d3 in this case is in between: since you dont hard-skill your char with skillpoints you may indeed vary your build and equip constantly, so competion isnt about speed, but sometimes about a major buildchange and such. you can actually do things wrong or right, thus demonstrating not only speed, but also skill.
    d3 is kind of skill per speed.

  4. #4
    The main problems with speedrunning WoW are:

    A. Unclear end goal.

    B. Even going as fast as you can, it would take quite a while to get anywhere. People like to be able to watch a speedrun in one sitting.

    C. The game must be played online, with other players. This is a pretty big deal, because even if you're only questing on a PvE server, a high level player could camp an important questgiver and ruin your run.

  5. #5
    The Insane Glorious Leader's Avatar
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    Cause it was easy as fuck to get the best loot in the game
    The hammer comes down:
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
    And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

  6. #6
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    Uhm... Maybe because WoW did speed running a long time ago and just isn't fun?
    FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..

  7. #7
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    Because people have had... what, 15 years, to learn all of diablo 2's ins and outs that have not, and will not, ever change?

    It's pretty easy to do something when you've done it hundreds of times prior.

    How anyone could derive pleasure out of that is beyond me, but... whatever. They can do as they please.
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Kaleredar is right...
    Words to live by.

  8. #8
    Diablo 2 vs Torchlight 2. One is an iconic game and generally considered to be a classic. The other is a relatively unknown game. WoW just isn't a game suitable for speedrunning. After establishing a rule set (RAF? heirlooms? LFG? elixir? buffs? speed potions?) there really isn't much randomness involved. Other players slowing down your questing speed and how lucky you are with rare elites (killing them gives roughly the same XP as a quest).

    Reasons I'd prefer seeing someone speedrun through the acts in Diablo 2 vs Diablo 3:
    - Diablo 2 has less scripted sequences, making it more fluent.
    - Diablo 2 isn't as fast paced.
    - Nostalgia.
    - the "ultimate" speed run in Diablo 3 is just awful to watch.

    Every act in Diablo 3 is divided up into different chapters, with a cutscene between each one. The end of act cutscenes at least are nice to watch, the ones in between chapters aren't at all. Every boss in Diablo 3 takes away control from the player when you first approach it, accompanied by the screen fading out. Some bosses do it during phase changes as well. Diablo itself even has a loading screen during the actual fight. There's also a lot of chat from NPCs. Worst offender again is Diablo with all his remarks throughout Act IV. Sort of like all of the appearances of the Lich King during quests, except they'd all happen within 30 minutes of eachother.
    It feels like by default characters just move a lot faster in Diablo 3. Movement speed is also easy to come by if you use crafting, making it even faster. All classes have additional talents and/or abilities to further increase mobility. Watching the penultimate speed run of Diablo 3 is just almost non-stop dashing/teleporting/leaping from checkpoint to checkpoint.
    But the biggest reason why I'd rather watch a Diablo 2 speedrun is nostalgia. It's been years since I've played it.

    But I have to say that I don't see the appeal in fully watching a speed run in any game. The only time I'll watch gameplay footage is if it's a review of the game, a mod for the game or tutorial/guide about some game aspect. You won't see me watching someone speed clearing rifts in Diablo 3, but I do watch the occasional build or game mechanics guide. When I watch WoW footage it's always a video explaining something.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    WoW is not a single player game. Even though it has single player component and in WoD it is more single player than ever before, it is more MMO than Diablo by miles.

    Single player games with speed running and other single player stuff that way --->

  10. #10
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    Speed running a game like Diablo II isn't very appealing for me.

    Most of those speedruns at SDA abuse something called "luck manipulation". What's that? It's re-running a certain segment XXX times to get exactly the result you want. People are re-running certain RNG segments hundreds of times to manipulate the results to exactly what they need.

    Single-segment speedruns with no rerunning are ruined by RNG because it is large in D II.

    Many speedruns involve doing things that could be classified as flat out cheating. Current world record Half-Life run abused a glitched door that did negative damage and gave the player health far above normal 100 HP (iirc they charged it up to about 4600 HP, allowing them to freely spam explosive boosts). Half Life II speed run uses "flying" glitch for majority of its chapters. Deus Ex speedrun involved using numerous glitches of pausing-unpausing the game to overcome resource costs, throwing grenades under your feet to escape from falling damage etc. Morrowind speed run involves glitching out in-game economy to obtain ridiculous amount of gold to purchase powerful spells from vendors, and then fly around the world at ludicrous speed.

    Just because it's not a cheat CODE, doesnt mean its not cheating.

    The only truly skillful speed runs I ever saw were Quake speedruns. No extreme glitching, just proper bunnyhoop and grenade/rocket jumping.

  11. #11
    WoW is not linear game. What exactly would you speed run in WoW? Completing a questing zone? Then again your speed would be affected by other players if someone killed quest mob X and you have to wait 1-2minute for it to spawn which affects the end game result. You basically can't plan anything in speed running WoW because there are other players around.
    Last edited by Einsz; 2016-02-12 at 10:08 AM.

  12. #12
    The Lightbringer
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dhany View Post
    simple:

    d2 is a rather simple game, centred around 2 or 3 skills and the correct gear for it.

    the only thing you can compete is speed. not expertise, skill or anything. you just can do things faster than before/someone else, with the same 2skills and gear.


    wow is a complex game, about groupplay, positioning, random chances, reaction times, creative use (or abuse) of gamemechanics etc.

    d3 in this case is in between: since you dont hard-skill your char with skillpoints you may indeed vary your build and equip constantly, so competion isnt about speed, but sometimes about a major buildchange and such. you can actually do things wrong or right, thus demonstrating not only speed, but also skill.
    d3 is kind of skill per speed.
    Since when did wow turn into a complex game? Is perhaps LFR complex? Or are you talking about mythic that only 0,01% does? In that case they're not enough to call the game complex.

  13. #13
    MMOs are just not good speed running material. Takes long, is slow to watch, not much skill needed to level, no glitches/ sneaky jumps to get ahead, mostly would be just grinding quests and not not actually doing something interesting.

    That, + finding efficient speedrunning routs would just take way too much time - leveling is quick and easy, but not THAT quick that someone is going to want to sit there for it.

  14. #14
    Speedrun leveling was somewhat interesting back in Classic, TBC, and maybe WotLK. But Heirlooms, RAF, and things like that sort of trivialize the act of seeing someone level up SUPER FUCKING FAST. It's something any normal joe does now so it's not as interesting.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Icuren View Post
    MMOs are just not good speed running material. Takes long, is slow to watch, not much skill needed to level, no glitches/ sneaky jumps to get ahead, mostly would be just grinding quests and not not actually doing something interesting.
    Hit the nail on the head. People like being amazed by stuff they thought was impossible in these games to skip areas or kill hard npcs easily. In wow there is no real advantage that other players have not done that are jaw dropping. The only recent hype with levelling in WoW was when people figured out the xp potion levelling route with the bonus objectives, in which case was covered with guides easy enough. Whereas as in say a 3rd person game like Dark Souls, you may need to see how a certain jump or roll works from people actually doing it.

    All the speed running in WoW is done in challenge modes for the same reasons, tricks to skip trash or cheese bosses.
    Last edited by Xenions; 2016-02-12 at 10:55 AM.

  16. #16
    I can play D2 offline anytime anywhere, no lag, latency, maintenance, downtimes, login problems, password issues, no gold sellers.....D2 is heaven.

    D3 sucks bigtime, and even though they gave it to me with Cata..I aint touching it. Cant use D3 without the all pervasive all invasive BNET client that broadcasts to all and sundry where you are and what you are doing with no appear offline function.

    D3 can get stuffed. When I can play it OFFLINE I will be interested.

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