D3 is live

[Cold Heritage]

I feel a sense of cosmic injustice that, having only downloaded approximately thirty megabytes, I've uploaded twice that in the three hours I've been attempting to download the game.

[Callie Del Noire]

I feel a sense of cosmic injustice that, having only downloaded approximately thirty megabytes, I've uploaded twice that in the three hours I've been attempting to download the game.

I'm still curious as to why they justify p2p for updates. Laziness? You don't need to put up as much server load on your own network.

[Chris Brady]

Man, the sheer incompetence by Blizzard, it's amazing.

[Callie Del Noire]

Man, the sheer incompetence by Blizzard, it's amazing.

Hey they were up 14 out of 24 hours first day!

[Chris Brady]

About an hour after they said it would be live for everyone.

[Sabby]

EA killed Westwood, and what is more important,

Farewell, my loved Ultima.

Don't forget Pandemic, one of the most promising small developers. I wanted to firebomb EA when they shut them down for their own fuck up.

[Chris Brady]

I would like to point something out.  Activision and Blizzard are not one company.  They are both owned by a French company, Vivendi SA (formerly Vivendi Universal),  as such Blizzard and Activision have no say in each others businesses.  So hating on Activision or Blizzard is fine, but don't assume that one's idiocy affects the other.

[Callie Del Noire]

Don't forget Pandemic, one of the most promising small developers. I wanted to firebomb EA when they shut them down for their own fuck up.

Not to mention Westwood, Bullfrog and a few other companies that EA ate then killed after making them commit to games not ready for market. I still laugh anytime EA says anything about 'high standards/quality'. How many old school game franchises do they have that they have forgotten about?

[Inkidu]

Not to mention Westwood, Bullfrog and a few other companies that EA ate then killed after making them commit to games not ready for market. I still laugh anytime EA says anything about 'high standards/quality'. How many old school game franchises do they have that they have forgotten about?

Pffft. There's been rumors of a new Wing Commander game in the works, with the original creator on board. So if EA produces that and it turns out good all is forgiven. I mean they have Bioware. Bioware plus Wing Commander would equal awesome. Though I'd bring in another studio to do the flying parts.

Also, as far as I can tell EA's buyouts have never been particularly hostile, so either the little studios wanted the money and couldn't deliver their contractual obligations, or they were hurting for the money in the first place and signed the deal with the devil. Not saying it's right, not saying it's all that wrong. It just happens in business everyday, and even if they don't need the studio they'll more than likely keep the core talent. Shuffle them around.

How many good games has EA helped put on the market? I mean no companies perfect. I just think Activision/Blizzard is the worse of two evils, so to speak.

(I don't care if it's Vivendi. Blizzard was bought under the Activision subsidiary and yes they do have contact with one another.)

[Callie Del Noire]

Pffft. There's been rumors of a new Wing Commander game in the works, with the original creator on board. So if EA produces that and it turns out good all is forgiven. I mean they have Bioware. Bioware plus Wing Commander would equal awesome. Though I'd bring in another studio to do the flying parts.

Also, as far as I can tell EA's buyouts have never been particularly hostile, so either the little studios wanted the money and couldn't deliver their contractual obligations, or they were hurting for the money in the first place and signed the deal with the devil. Not saying it's right, not saying it's all that wrong. It just happens in business everyday, and even if they don't need the studio they'll more than likely keep the core talent. Shuffle them around.

How many good games has EA helped put on the market? I mean no companies perfect. I just think Activision/Blizzard is the worse of two evils, so to speak.

(I don't care if it's Vivendi. Blizzard was bought under the Activision subsidiary and yes they do have contact with one another.)

I don't think Blizzard/Activision (or Vivendi even) have gutted as many studios as EA. Bullfrog had some good stuff, Westwood was strong with CC till EA over staturated the license and burned it out for a few years. Origin has SEVERAL awesome properties that EA just let lie fallow. Ultima, Privateers, Wing Commander.. hell the Janes Flight games/Strike Commander were all awesome fun for the time.

[Ixia]

I'm installing a starter edition that someone gave to me right now soooo... if I like the game I might buy it, who knows!

[Oniya]

I bet they could have stress-tested their system by offering those 10 million WoW users a special item or something to log in to a test server.  Hardware load doesn't much care what program it's running, as long as it's of a similar complexity.

[Sel Nar]

And that's why I can state that Blizzard dropped the ball, hard. It looks like they completely and utterly failed at even basic stresstesting for D3.

As a comparison, Arenanet, the day before the D3 release, did a stresstest for GW2, to see what the minimum number of servers would be needed to ensure full functionality so they can pull servers 'off the line' and upgrade while the game's running, without forcing a restart or long DL times.

[SinXAzgard21]

Okay, as the original poster and since the topic of this thread is D3 I'd like to get back to the topic... So for the people playing, anymore glitches and such?  I've not seen any but I just started my DH and am going to make a Witch Doctor soon.

[Ryven]

I've made a Witch Doctor.  He is fun! :D  You should friend me so we can fight evil together, Sin.  ^-^

[Chris Brady]

ArenaNet still has a lot of work ahead of them, Sel.

I'm playing a Barbarian, and it's fun.  Other than the log in issues they were plagued with, and some random disconnects, I haven't encounter any bugs.

[Callie Del Noire]

I'm mostly miffed about the acheivements I didn't get credit for.. there are a few 'hiccups' in game play but I'm also running act III with all the graphics perks at full power.

[Cold Heritage]

So, I got to play after downloading this new launcher thing and pointing it to English US instead of the default it saddled me with and after that thing got done downloading about two and a half more gigs. It seemed . . . strange to me that I couldn't connect because of what was ostensibly a language selection that I was prompted by default to have.

Apart from that and my friend getting disconnected I haven't had any problems yet.

I'm kind of dismayed at a cap of four player co-op in this day and age. If we got saddled with needing this constant internet connection, it seems like they ought to have thrown us a bone on having more people able to play together at once.

[Ixia]

Things that bother me so far... always online DRM, they should have allowed an offline option while at the same time not allowing to transfer character from singleplayer to multi. Although they could allow it the other way around, from multi to single, that would be a good fix for the future, but it's totally not going to happen.

Action house looks like a pay to win service, not good... and who assures me that Blizzard is not going to place the best items for sale? huh?

The lack of character customization, not even hair color!

The lack of shiny loot, there are very few decent items which sucks considering that it's the main point of the game, no?

[Cold Heritage]

It also seems dumbed down compared to previous Diablos. Maybe I just accidentally stumbled on Babby's First Lootgrind mode, but I'm not assigning stats or skill points and I'm stuck with 1 to 4 for skills. Why do I have to choose between stomp or leap instead of just assigning them to the keys I please?

[Aiden]

game balance.

[Sabby]

Cracked weighs in on Deeabwo Fwee

If given a choice between going back and living in the year 1982 and sitting in a chair made of living dicks, most of us would choose the dicks. After all, back then you had almost zero control over your entertainment -- you watched shows and movies when they wanted you to. (This was even before everybody had VCRs -- if you missed it live, you missed it forever.) All technological progress since then has been devoted to letting us watch shows or movies when we want. Video games, however, are going the opposite direction.
For a prime example, let's take the just-released Diablo III.
I haven't been excited about a video game in a long, long time. It's not because I've hit some magical stage of adulthood that makes me hate fun things, or that I'm so busy that I can't find time for simple entertainment. Give me a good enough game, and I'll make time for it. Give me something spectacular, and I'll call in sick for it. Give me something I've waited 12 years for, and I'll burn down my grandma's house for a copy.
The smoldering charcoal on my grandma's scorched lawn means that Diablo III came out two days ago. Unfortunately for her, I didn't realize until later that arson in no way affects the game's availability. Especially since you can just download it directly from their website instead of camping out in front of the store on opening day. So I did...

[Inkidu]

I love it, but the sad part is that Blizzard will still make money, and then that's it, game over, man, game over. They can tell people what they'll play, how they'll play it, and when; and people will say, "Okay!" Happily... It makes me sick.

[RubySlippers]

My psychic sight says some players once this gets known more will stay with D2, at least until the price on this drops to a good price but $60 for me is to much right now. And the playing of it at the local game shop didn't impress me the choices are few and the game is well - not Diablo to me.

Come on the D2 classes took planning but were flexible you could have a pure summoner necromancer or use curses or a barbarian with several long term options as to tactics even a hurling weapon barbarian and so forth.

I was hoping for a simpler skill system but still with variety, character customization and blend it Diablo meets WoW.

[Cold Heritage]

Okay so there is an "elective mode" hidden away in the options that'll somewhat free up how I can bind skills.