What concerns me about the future of Diablo 3

[Riptide]

Diablo 2 still has millions of people playing it 12 years after release, so honestly, I don't think it will be "dead" in the next decade. There are many people who won't get bored by the repetitive nature of the game. The game isn't about experiencing new content, it's about getting loot, and getting "the best loot in the game", is extremely difficult... so that's your aim.

It is not exactly like running the same dungeon in WoW again and again, since it is not a static dungeon. The main questline is static, but every dungeon and ever pack of mobs you encounter have the chance to have different abilities and be in a different place. There can always be a chest sitting around the corner with that 1 in a million chance drop in it. There is never an end to that chance. WoW is not the same, loot tables are extremely small and you can be near-guaranteed to eventually farm the loot that you want and never have to go there again, and the environment never changes, so it does get rather more reptitive in my opinion.

But ultimately at the core yes Diablo is about farming. For many players, this does not get boring. For people like me, I stopped playing D2 more because of graphics and computer upgrades (can't even get it to run on my current win 7 setup with my drviers ), than because I got bored with the actual game.

You forget that d2 has both pvp and ladders. The main reason people still play is the competitiveness those bring. You also seem to forget the whole crafting and entire trading thing I honestly stopped doing MF runs and just worked the trades and crafted all day long. When I felt like "playing" I pvp'd or ran someone through for their forges/forum gold.

@OP Basically for me the game is all about obtaining loot ideally from a trade where I made some nice "profit" . But crafting, farming, laddering and pvp were also quite fun and all played a major part of the game for myself and the community I was apart of.

I just hope the pvp they introduce in D3 is good enough to be long-lasting.

[Rexxr]

When i played D2 i clear it 3 times on normal with 3 different charters and called it a day, (high difficulties bored me, but I did do Hardcore for like a month). I am not into gear farming / trading. The story and graphics are cool. Nothing wrong with a good hack slash for a change of pace.

[Vuagnon]

There will be several reasons to continue playing even after you have defeated all the difficulty levels with all of the classes. Since all drops and all bonus stats are random, improving magic find and running after elite, rare and boss loot will never cease as you could always find something better than what you already have. If the random bonus stats system is applied to legendary and set items too, there won't be any time that you will come forth and say, 'I have this legendary weapon, this set of armor, and these jewelry, so I'm done with gearing'.

Furthermore, by the time people begin reaching the end game, and progress through inferno with all classes, I'm pretty confident that Blizzard will have implemented some additional features like PvP and ladders to give people more options during times they don't want to run after mobs.

There is also the auction house and trading, which is an endless universe. You could always craft, find new items, gems and sell or trade them for other goods.

[Jackkernaut]

Diablo is for ppl who like to kill stuff in multiple ways aka HACK 'N' SLASH genere. Personally i like it alot its hella fun.
How you can resist slaying countless of mindless minions!

[Strah]

Hello there, dear MMO-champions!

I was loggning into my WoW acc the other day, extremely excited about Diablo coming out soon, and we spoke a lot about the beta in the guild chat. A major of us guildies thought the game looked great and we couldn't wait to get our hands on it. Although something happened that got me a bit... confused.

One of my mates simple hasn't played any of the other Diablo games and asked "what's the point of the game"? As in, he referred to, raiding, pvp ect etc. He wondered what you were going to do in the game. I explained it would be 4 "acts" with 4 major bosses, whom would contain great story and minor bosses and more fun things along the way. While, you as the player, in the end probably would be defeating Diablo himself. He replied with a simple "oh, but what do you do when he's dead then? since there are no raids or anything".

And this is what really grinds my gear. I honestly don't know. What to do when we have killed diablo? We run it on difficulty 2, get some better loot, do it on diffuculty 3, and so on... This is where it might get boring, wont it? It's the same game, all over again, but harder. It's like playing the same dungeon in WoW, but activation Heroic mode of the dungeon when u are done, just to do it again. And then again 2 additional times.

I'm not saying I'm not impressed by Diablo 3, heck, I even play D2 right now just to get back 100% into the story. But I'm curious, as I never played Diablo 2 online, where I get the feeling everyone just rushed the last bosses for great gear, and nothing else was done really. What will the majority really do in about, let's say 2 months?

Will the game be "dead" by then? I realize most casual players will only play it once on normal, perhaps a little further, but then probably move on to some other game. But for me as a high competitive WoW raider, I dont really stop games that easily (hello fellow nerds).

The core question in this might be a bit fuzzy, but what made me do this post was the simple fact I don't know what to do in the game at, let's say, July 15:th (2 months post release). Once u killed diablo once, u just do the same quests all over again to get better gear? I know about the buff encouraging players to do all minibosses before the final boss just to get a higher percentage of finding magical stuff, but the same line runs in my head all the time:

"Will it be like running the same dungeon in WoW all over again, but just at an increased difficulty?"

I really don't see how it is different to wow raids.
It takes a good guild, how long, 2 days to clear a normal raid? and what do they then? Right, they do the heroic mode, which is the same normal raid, but harder.
And then they kill the last boss on heroic, and what do they do? Right, they start clearing the raid over and over again.

[quras]

Diablo is all about farming the same over and over for loot to farm the same over and over even faster.

Pretty much this.

If yo thought any other game ever created was a grind once you ran through it once. Dioble has them beat by miles in the grind department.

It's all about very similar runs or gear. Over and over and over and over and as fast as humanly possible. How much Loot per hour can you get.

It's a huge grind for nothing but a loot pinata. Now that real cash is attached to everything, it will be even worse IMHO.

[Sprucelee]

I think I just killed DW for what, the 20th time?

Raiding is nothing more than farming for much of the time. Diablo is the same... But different .

[Biged781]

Well, I don't know... PvE in WoW feels like the same thing for me tier after tier as well. Sure, the tactics change... and then you fight the same bosses 100+ times until a new tier comes out. Rinse and repeat. I guess it just comes down to what you think it fun. Some people enjoy challenge modes, these are Diablo players.

[glowpipe]

Get rich or die trying on the RMAH. Farm sell farm sell farm sell

[ClearlyConfused]

Diablo is simply explained with two words: Dungeon crawler.

You do quest which most involve you going into several dungeons that are all linked together within these Acts and all of the story you have experienced is then finally tied together with you killing the main boss of the game. The whole point of the game after you have done everything else is to go around doing hell mode where if you die you lose all of your stuff and you start back at level one. Lan parties FTW!!!! Since blizzard realizes that once people have done everything in game they have to make it more interesting for players to continue playing. So they are adding PvP and Achievements as a cool little addition that I wish they had in D1-2.5. All in all I think that you will be more then satisfied with the game, I guarantee that they will release patches to keep players playing, there is a pretty big population of Diablo fans.