Diablo set the bar in 1997

[Strawberry]

With every new release, records are broken.
Diablo 4 is shaping to become what many Chinese/Korean top down MMORPGs wanted to be, bu ultimately failed. Games like MU Online, Ark and Lineage Eternal.
Diablo will again set the bar. And it will reign on top of the ARPG list until Diablo 5 comes out.
And nothing will come close to it. I look forward to Path of Exile 2, but it being F2P game it's already fighting an uphill battle.

[Maljinwo]

thanks for the blog post

[Triceron]

Very informative

Would read again

[Icoblablubb]

Diablo is only "top" arpg when it comes to sales because of the name Diablo which lets be honest all thanks to D1+D2 if anything D3 damaged the franchise and as far as i can see from the quarterly updates its shaping up to be another 5IQ no customization slightly Darker D3 so ya will be fun for a month than its going to be stale as fuck again because they will fuck up itemazion again and make 80% locked in gear mandatory if you play xy and don't get me started on that "MASSIVE" skill tree branch thing which is a joke

[sunnycutie]

And then failed to reach it with anything after Lord of Destruction.

[enigma77]

Thanks for sharing

[Th3Scourge]

Part 2 when?

[Inukashi]

Naw.

Blizzard games get worse and worse

Legion, more bugs than ever before
BfA, many, many bugs
SL, unshippable and delayed


Diablo 2, not listening to people crying that you have to think twice before setting skillpoints. You have to plan, statpoints for items, skill tree. If it works, it's awesome. If not, it's bad
Diablo 3, you have to gear for a certain spec, but you can switch your play style. Making a plan or at least looking for what others do is part of the game.

Shadowlands, Waah waahh, if I can't switch my covenant each a day I'm not meta. Ok, here's your covenant switch. Planing isn't required. Even thinking a second how your character should play? Building a character? Pff, just switch whatever you like, whenever you like. That's the spirit of rpgs! If it works.. a borred yay, if not.. who cares.

Giving in to people that cry the loudest, even though they are a minority shows that blizzard has lost the connection to its players.
(I mean really? Only 2% of players have killed nzoth myth with many of them parsing grey/green/blue in logs, not caring about any kind of meta, < 0.5% of players have gladiator title. Nearly nobody cares about the competetive aspect of WoW and still they get what they want, because they flood youtube/reddit/forums. The other > 90% just want to enjoy the game as what it is, an rpg with many other players, but an rpg should include character building. Not realizing this error just shows how bad they've become)

I think diablo 4 will be a collection of features everyone likes to get as many players as possible, but they will suck with the implementation. Also you will be able to just swap your character spec on the fly, because Blizz doesn't learn from grinding gear games. Yeah, you can reset your talent tree there, but it's painful (except if you can run maps 8 hours a day)

Tbh I have much more hope for the development of PoE.

[SirBeef]

With every new release, records are broken.
Diablo 4 is shaping to become what many Chinese/Korean top down MMORPGs wanted to be, bu ultimately failed. Games like MU Online, Ark and Lineage Eternal.
Diablo will again set the bar. And it will reign on top of the ARPG list until Diablo 5 comes out.
And nothing will come close to it. I look forward to Path of Exile 2, but it being F2P game it's already fighting an uphill battle.

Except it's not an MMO RPG. Not even close. It has a shared world, with minimal, limited player interaction. There seems to be no MMO systems, no required grouping for dungeons, raids, or any other MMO type stuffs. It is a standard isoARPG, where you will see people in town, at public events, and very sparsely while playing. Nothing close to any of the Eastern ARPGMMOs you mentioned. It's almost as if you never played them before.

[Strawberry]

Except it's not an MMO RPG. Not even close. It has a shared world, with minimal, limited player interaction. There seems to be no MMO systems, no required grouping for dungeons, raids, or any other MMO type stuffs. It is a standard isoARPG, where you will see people in town, at public events, and very sparsely while playing. Nothing close to any of the Eastern ARPGMMOs you mentioned. It's almost as if you never played them before.

Never said Diablo 4 is an MMORPG.
You maybe misunderstood my post. I said it's going to become what those MMORPGs wanted to be. I never said that it will become an MMORPG.
The games I mentioned had no identity, but they did share a lot of similarities with Diablo, not just a top-down look but loot as well as action-oriented gameplay.
They wanted to be Diablo in MMORPG world. It's just that they failed.

Also, Diablo 3 was better than Diablo 2 in every way which was better than Diablo 1.

[SirBeef]

Never said Diablo 4 is an MMORPG.
You maybe misunderstood my post. I said it's going to become what those MMORPGs wanted to be. I never said that it will become an MMORPG.
The games I mentioned had no identity, but they did share a lot of similarities with Diablo, not just a top-down look but loot as well as action-oriented gameplay.
They wanted to be Diablo in MMORPG world. It's just that they failed.

Also, Diablo 3 was better than Diablo 2 in every way which was better than Diablo 1.

You said it's shaping up to be what those games wanted to be. Which were MMOs with ARPG mechanics. Which is exactly not what D4 is trying to be. All those games you mentioned tried to Simmons. D4 is trying to be an ARapG with a shrared world and little interactivity between players. Huge difference between what D4 is and thise games wanted to be/were.

I do not believe for a second they wanted to be single player games, with optional MP, and no grouping required, traditional ARPGs. They all wanted to be the Diablo versions of WOW.

[announced]

Diablo 1 was a very original game but imo it was too short.

Diablo 2 built on that success but the flaws of the game were based on not having much to do. You could do sanctuary runs, cows or baal runs (if you had the expansion) or pvp.

Diablo 3 focuses on just running rifts and grifts endlessly. The storyline is completely meaningless. From time to time I enjoy going back into it so I can see the new builds and test them out, but I treat it like an arcade game where its fun for a month or so then I'm off again.

For Diablo 4 I would like it to focus on making crafting meaningful again. The D3 model is lackluster. There isn't any real hunting for recipes or special gems/ingredients or whatever. Perhaps you could visit a town or outpost for specific quests and search for a rare enemy or animal and kill it for crafting materials for a new weapon or armor/rune/gemstone? Also having archaeology would be neat as well with puzzles to solve and other things.

Maybe the D4 will turn out to be great? But I'd like to see more in depth updates. Last time they talked about enemy models and the skill tree change seems nice but I'd like to see more. They can only cash in on the Diablo name for so long before people distrust it.

[Eazy]

Diablo 4 is shaping to become what many Chinese/Korean top down MMORPGs wanted to be, bu ultimately failed. Games like MU Online, Ark and Lineage Eternal.

Care to elaborate? Any proofs/evidences/sources of that statement?
I'd like to see them.

[kukkamies]

Diablo 1 really captured the dark and dangerous world feel with simple gameplay. It has the parts I like most in games. Short difficult segments with fast retries while you can take your time to plan and prepare. Piranha Byte games like Gothic and Risen have that too. Celeste is in similar vein as well. Too bad there not many others which are very well done.

Diablo 2 feels way too long and has a lot of complicated progression paths around it. D3 is simpler but doesn't feel as dark and dangerous.

[Beastiel]

I look forward to Path of Exile 2, but it being F2P game it's already fighting an uphill battle.

What makes you say that? Do you prefer limited content?

I really doubt blizzard has the insight or talent to build anything close to what Poe is now.

But ofcourse it depends on the type of game you prefer. I just don't have a lot of faith in a company that didn't know how to handle in game trading or devote resources to banning bots and removed it entirely as a result.

[Lord Pebbleton]

My Diablo preference would be

Diablo I > Diablo III > Diablo II

The first one is absolutely incredible. The music alone gave me nightmare when I was younger, especially the caves one when there is a sound of a man agonizing in pain. The random encounters were exciting and I was always happy to find unique loot. Granted it feels way easier now that I can juggle my economy better and I know my way around it, but every once in a while I boot it up, finish it and then wait until I want to go again. There is a mod called The Hell that gives it a lot of replayability but sadly it has some absurd rules and feels broken. I'd still recommend it just to have an extreme Diablo experience.


Diablo III is ok. The story is pretty cliché, the atmosphere of danger is gone because of multiple friendly hubs/multiple characters/abundant side quests. But it's still a fun game and I had a blast plowing through everything on my paladin. I lost any desire to play after reaching endgame, because I get bored super quick of farming the same exact things with slightly different stats. I have been playing WoW long enough to know that I cannot force myself to do that in yet another game.


Diablo II, as controversial as it may sound, is where the game declined for me. I kept hearing all these positive reviews about it, basically a better Diablo I, and I loved Diablo I to bits so I was looking forward to playing it. Possibly I got into it with too many expectations, but it fell flat on every single one.
1. It gave too much context to everything. Part of the foreboding aura in Diablo I was due to the fact that you knew only bits of this ancient war, and your everyday reality was that of a frightened, dying village. Here you are thrown into a rebel encampment of some sort and you are told right off the bat that there are tons of people on your side, even sidekicks you can hire.
2. Loot is overabundant. After clearing my first 2-caves dungeon I had 4 unique items. I lost any sense of excitement for loot I had leftover from Diablo I.
3. The environment is BORING. Hot damn. I made it to act II which takes place in a desert and your first dungeon is sewers. At that point I realized that I went from scouring defiled churches, catacombs and hell itself, to walking knee-deep in shit smack in the butthole of the galaxy. I noped so hard out of it because everything was getting worse and worse.

I am bummed about Diablo II because I really wanted to like it, and maybe if I carried on a bit more I would have liked it. But I gave it several hours and it failed to impress me, so that chance is burned. At least I still have Diablo I.