Originally Posted by
Eroginous
Well, you have to understand something about Blizzard game development. They rely on internal testing (mostly between devs and not actual play testers) to get their games into a good enough place for beta release. Once they have a beta release, then they can start collecting data on a larger scale and make changes based on that.
However, they didn't want to ruin the D3 story (since it's such a story driven ARPG) and thus weren't able to do a proper beta test. This is what led to problems with the loot distribution and the RMAH, basically you needed a large number of active players in order to perceive the issues that D3 has, and they couldn't get that until the game went live, without spoiling the story.
In terms of how good the game is at launch? It all depends on what you are looking for in an ARPG. Playing up until level 60 was smooth and really fun. The real problems didn't start until you were trying to progress through Inferno, and the design of the game at that point really shifted in comparison between normal-hell, and inferno.
The procession from normal to hell was really not very gear intensive or overly difficult, so it was a very pleasant experience, leveling, acquiring loot, and just experiencing the story in a more difficult setting. Once you get to inferno, the level of gear needed to progress and the difficulty of the content just hit this steep incline and it really became obvious that gear was super important, yet largely unavailable to most people except through the AH.
The silver lining of D3 and Blizzard, however, is that they really do listen to feedback and do their best to approach game design with a 'we can make it better' attitude. I don't want to get into a huge argument, but there really aren't too many other developers out there who will continuously revisit a game to make tweaks and adjustments that players are asking for. Most of the time with other developers, you get a release and a couple small patches to fix bugs that went live or add content that wasn't finished in time, and it's gtg. It's rare these days for anyone to release a 'perfect' game that is amazing on release and doesn't need any additional work, so it's necessary for most studios to keep working on a title even after launch.
Blizzard is just a company that actually does the work.
Overall, I've gotten two character to 60, completed act 1 inferno, and then taken a break from the game. I tried out act 2 inferno on this latest patch, and it seems like post 60 progression will be easier, but I'm really just looking forward to the pvp from now on. Pve only holds my attention for so long, and pvp is where the replay value lies with this game imo. I don't think the game was over hyped, and despite my lack of interest in the game right now, I do think that it's a great game which stands on it's own merit for design and quality. I think the level of success is justified ESPECIALLY when you compare it to other similar titles within the genre and other games at the same price point.
I don't think it's success has anything to do with D2, since it is a completely different game by a completely different development team, and I think that given enough time, D3 will shine it's own spot on the shelf of gaming history.