Complaints, gripes, kvetches...

[Xanthippe]

I have not had lag problems (American servers).

Today the AH is completely borked, though. It appears that while people can purchase items, they never get delivered. I've seen the AH down, back up a few times but still has problems. I've hit a wall in Act 2 now, where I need upgrades to stop dying all the time, and my luck on drops has been awful. Time to farm pony staff mats, I guess.

[Hoax]

I accidentally bought 6 newbie twink helms because every time it would say that I couldn't buy it (as if it was already purchased) and my money wouldn't go down. Eventually I logged off, when I came back on they were all delivered. I should have known something was up.

That said all of you people bitching about this game should gather up today and we should do a four man hardcore run. If its still not fun? Then quit now but I bet you it will be. Even stupidass Act2. Fresh character Act3 HC is the best though, you get there and your gear is starting to fall behind curve but Act3 is fun and really cool so its just extra fun and dangerous but still doable. Sometimes someone dies to those bomber fucks though.

[01101010]

I have noticed there are a lot of socket weapons... makes me think people are buying the unsocketed stuff and reselling with rubies to try and make a profit. Aggravating as shit trying to find stuff for the cheap.

[Cheddar]

I have not had lag problems (American servers).

Today the AH is completely borked, though. It appears that while people can purchase items, they never get delivered. I've seen the AH down, back up a few times but still has problems. I've hit a wall in Act 2 now, where I need upgrades to stop dying all the time, and my luck on drops has been awful. Time to farm pony staff mats, I guess.

Maybe it is my location (South East VA)?  I just know certain time periods make it impossible to play.  9pm EST = log out.

[MuffinMan]

I wish the tooltip for AH items would show the summary of Life, Damage and Protection changes like it shows you in-game.

[Phred]

So on the drop system, as I plod through hell:

I have a feeling they adjusted the leveling curve at some point and didn't match the drops to it. In Normal and most of NM, the beginning of normal I got drops I couldn't use yet due to level. Past act 1 that turned to always getting drops 3-5 levels below me. This continued until Act 4 NM, where I started getting things a level above me, and Hell I've started getting things -1 to +5 of my level.

It's just screaming to me that they mucked with the leveling curve a bit, and forgot to change the item drop levels when they did it. I'm constantly finding useful things in Hell, which I never found before then.

Actually they did from what I saw in beta. After one patch where they oddly didnt wipe characters A lot of the rares I'd got from skelly king runs were suddenly unwearable as they required about 4 more levels than they had previously. Also, they made the exp gain slower as when I started beta a complete clear to the sk would have my char at 13 or so but by release it was down to maybe L9 or 10.

I don't think people level at the same rate, which might have something to do with it. You can blast through Acts or you can explore every dungeon or you can wear Experience % gear or any combination of these and end up at different levels than you would otherwise.

I did the test with the same characters playing the same way.  It wasnt even a test really I just noticed it between resets and I think I would know if I play the same way from session to session don't you? And it was 3-4 levels difference, not 3-4 bubbles which might be explained by different styles.

[Sjofn]

They were proven in CoH, but it's not like WOW saw COH and incorporated them into the design.  COH wasn't even on their radar when it was released much less years afterward.  (Proven by Blizzard's inability to steal their awesome LFG tool.) 

Not sure why you're assuming this, but okay.

I do not remember the CoX LFG tool at all, so how awesome could it have been? :P

[Phred]

They were proven in CoH, but it's not like WOW saw COH and incorporated them into the design.  COH wasn't even on their radar when it was released much less years afterward.  (Proven by Blizzard's inability to steal their awesome LFG tool.) 

Not sure why you're assuming this, but okay.

I do not remember the CoX LFG tool at all, so how awesome could it have been? :P

If I remember right the only unusual thing it did at the time was show you parties looking for more members. Like EQ's did at that time too iirc.

[Threash]

I have noticed there are a lot of socket weapons... makes me think people are buying the unsocketed stuff and reselling with rubies to try and make a profit. Aggravating as shit trying to find stuff for the cheap.

Or they are using them and then selling them after they get an upgrade.  Which is what i've done about 5 times now because bothering to ungem them is more effort than i am willing to put in for someone elses convenience.

[Hutch]

They were proven in CoH, but it's not like WOW saw COH and incorporated them into the design.  COH wasn't even on their radar when it was released much less years afterward.  (Proven by Blizzard's inability to steal their awesome LFG tool.) 

Not sure why you're assuming this, but okay.

I took it to mean that CoH went retail a few months before WoW, so unless they had a spy, how would they know what systems CoH was going to introduce.

[Merusk]

Precisely.  Had COH released and then Blizzard said "Oh wait, we're going to delay and come out in 2 years," ok.  4 months? No.

COH's LFG tool was better than WoW's in that 1) it was in the game and 2) It let you pick a role and quests to help on.  The UI was better than EQs and it allowed you to invite via the UI vs doing a search, then closing the window and having to remember how to type that person's name.

Keep in mind I'm comparing to release WOW which had jack-shit, not even the terrible meeting stones.

[Margalis]

Questing to max level?
Viable soloing for all classes?
Random drops off all mobs?
Moddable interface?
Completely redesigned the raid paradigm? (go play PoP or GoD and then run Onyxia)
Scaling damage for casters?
Talent specs? (and Respeccing!)
Complete removal of camping?
Dungeon crawls?
Fully instanced content?

I don't even understand this list. "Random drops off all mobs." What games DON'T have this? In WoW when you kill mobs they drop items from some loot table, the same as basically every other MMO and many non-mmos.

"Dungeon crawls." What does that mean? A game where you...go into a dungeon? That was new in 2004?

What WoW "innovated" was a change in philosophy - solo play and questing. (I like how "removal of camping", "solo play" and "questing to max level" are three separate points in that list even though they are all the same thing. You can camp mobs in WoW, it's not removed, there's just no reason to)

WoW has some nice QOL improvements like moddable UI,  but in terms of bold new features I don't see a whole lot on that list that was new or bold. Certainly not talent trees (AC2) or instanced areas (FFXI).

Anarchy Online was based around questing and crawling through generated instances no? (At least in large part)

I'm not trying to discredit WoW but I don't think highly innovative is the right way to describe it. Instead I would say it represented an ideological shift. The biggest new feature in WoW was the exclamation mark. That sounds dismissive but at the time it was a huge deal and debates raged about wether the old '!' was dumbing down the game, making it awesome, making story and NPCs irrelevant, etc. And that's probably the feature that has seeped the most into non-MMO games.

[Sjofn]

CoH hit retail a few months before WoW but I dunno, I knew about a lot of the random shit they were doing (like instanced missions) long before that, and I only slightly gave a shit about the game. <shrug>

In any case, they did it "first," so I'm afraid they still win in those categories.

This is not to say I really agree with the whole "WoW didn't bring anything new to the table" thing people like to harp on, I just get a little sad when CoH gets ignored for doing shit that was good and new.

[Selby]

My one gripe I've had is today in Act II I would be walking down a hall, the game would freeze for 5-6s, then I'd be dead.  This happened 6 times in a row.  No real warning, just walking, freeze, die when it recovers.  No elite mobs or champions nearby.  And my video card seems to hate the game, it will randomly go a mix of brown, white, and black while playing and the only way to fix it (short of restarting the game) is to change my textures from Low to High or vice versa.  Quite annoying.

[Nevermore]

CoH hit retail a few months before WoW but I dunno, I knew about a lot of the random shit they were doing (like instanced missions) long before that, and I only slightly gave a shit about the game. <shrug>

In any case, they did it "first," so I'm afraid they still win in those categories.

This is not to say I really agree with the whole "WoW didn't bring anything new to the table" thing people like to harp on, I just get a little sad when CoH gets ignored for doing shit that was good and new.

CoH is an example of a game that innovated a lot (hello sidekicking) yet never really reaped the benefits of all that innovation.

[Brolan]

My one gripe I've had is today in Act II I would be walking down a hall, the game would freeze for 5-6s, then I'd be dead.  This happened 6 times in a row.  No real warning, just walking, freeze, die when it recovers.  No elite mobs or champions nearby.  And my video card seems to hate the game, it will randomly go a mix of brown, white, and black while playing and the only way to fix it (short of restarting the game) is to change my textures from Low to High or vice versa.  Quite annoying.

Both of these can be caused by out-dated video drivers.  Have you updated them lately?

[Phred]

Precisely.  Had COH released and then Blizzard said "Oh wait, we're going to delay and come out in 2 years," ok.  4 months? No.

COH's LFG tool was better than WoW's in that 1) it was in the game and 2) It let you pick a role and quests to help on.  The UI was better than EQs and it allowed you to invite via the UI vs doing a search, then closing the window and having to remember how to type that person's name.

Keep in mind I'm comparing to release WOW which had jack-shit, not even the terrible meeting stones.

In actual fact WoW had lfg flagging at release but it was taken out due to database loading issues.

[Phred]

I'm not trying to discredit WoW but I don't think highly innovative is the right way to describe it.

The point was that he claimed that that list was already common in every MMO at the time.

A quote of the original post as it is several pages back.

Let just agree to disagree on WoW, Maledict. One mans innovation is another mans iteration. Nothing you mentioned is anything put polishing proven concepts.

[Merusk]

In actual fact WoW had lfg flagging at release but it was taken out due to database loading issues.

I don't think it made it to release. From what I remember they took it out in one of the last beta patches, around the time they did the open beta week.

[Phred]

In actual fact WoW had lfg flagging at release but it was taken out due to database loading issues.

I don't think it made it to release. From what I remember they took it out in one of the last beta patches, around the time they did the open beta week.

Nope I used it the first 3 weeks. The took it out when they announced the retard rocks iirc. Was maybe 3-4 weeks into release.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm now in Act 3 NM and the way everything is set up for multiplayer "balance" and with the AH in mind is getting more annoying by the minute.

Loot drops always 5 to 10 levels below your character level so that you have to sell it on the AH and buy stuff on the AH. I hit a brick wall at Belial, ended up spending gold on the AH to upgrade my outlevelled equip then one-shotted him or I could have farmed normal and nightmare until I'm level 50 and level 40+ starts to consistently drop or show up at vendors.

AH is broken beyond redemption, search is broken, AH is down all the time. Hate that you have to leave the game (which resets all maps) to buy or sell. Crafting is useless since you can't level them enough to give you level appropriate stuff without the AH. (pages of x first show up in NM, Tomes of x First in hell)

Bosses (except Belial and Diablo) are rdiculously easy especially compared to some of the random elite mobs with inane ability affixes.

Vitality, +dex  and +dam gear > all other stats. 2-hand always beats dual wield for damage 1-hand + board is always best for mitigation. Difficulty is controlled by damage output of mobs, no tactics or special gear needed just kite them across half the map or press the "oh shit I'm about to die" button when shit hits the fan until shinies fall out of the stupid mob pinatas.

I start to hate that you can feel all of the different ways they broke a perfectly good single player experience in order to better "monetize" it and to "balance" it for multiplayer and its obsessive playerbase.

I just wanted a single player game that I could play when I'm fed up with people and their bullshit. A single player game that is not emasculated by a multiplayer design philosophy that caters for and manages the min-maxer and theorycrafting crowd whose only joy it is to bend the rule framework of a game and then whine about it as soon as everybody does it.

Sometimes I don't want to play with other people (you know because most of us have to deal with people all day). I don't want a game where everything is broken just because a fraction of players are dicks in multiplayer and I might play online some day.

Keep local multiplayer and single player chars separate from the online ones and let me have my explosions and shinies even if it's sometimes broken or unbalanced or I'm not spending enough on the AH.

[Merusk]

If you want single player, play old games or ones without a multiplayer mode (Good luck finding those in a few years.)  I can't think of a decent Sp game from the last 5 years that wasn't ruined by multiplayer facet somehow.

[Tebonas]

There still will be Single-Player games in a few years, they will just come from smaller studios and indy developers. The fact that maintaining servers is expensive will help us here. So don't worry all to much for us antisocial loners, Merusk.

[Jeff Kelly]

Multiplayer games are like being "on-call" in virtual life. I can have lots of social interactions in real life, if I want to, hell even lots I don't really want to but have to due to work or other engagements. So it's great to sometimes say "screw those fuckers", lock the doors, turn off the phone and be by myself.

The difference is that nobody dictates (I know some of you will reply "what about wifes or girlfriends?" just to be snarky) how I layout and furnish my home or how I have to act or conduct myself in my own home just because people might visit some time in the future maybe.

Broken metaphor, I know, but the multiplayer "disease" has become really invasive. Like overbearing parents that still tell you how to live long after you moved out.

[kildorn]

I have the opposite reaction. If your game has no multiplayer component at all, I'm probably going to play it a little bit then never touch it again. I like D3 because I've been able to sit there and chat with friends via the game while playing all on my lonesome. And easily switch to playing with them.

I can understand a complaint about it not being able to go offline if traveling/laggy/internet's down. But I don't get the impression that D3 is begging to throw random pickup players at me and forcing me to do things it's way. I've done almost the entire game into Hell solo on my wizard with no drama.

That said, I've been on call in real life for a decade, and multi is only similar to that if you play EVE or some other persistent PVP game where you may need to be woken up to deal with douchebags at 4am every morning for a week. THAT is overbearing and invasive. "Oh hey, we have a mode to play with friends" is just a facet of the world being pretty much net connected most of the time. Now for hotels to figure this out and stop giving me what appears to be a 56k modem shared between 100 guests.

[jakonovski]

If you want single player, play old games or ones without a multiplayer mode (Good luck finding those in a few years.)  I can't think of a decent Sp game from the last 5 years that wasn't ruined by multiplayer facet somehow.

There's this one little know game series from Japan. I can't quite remember it's name...Diablo's Spirits or something?

[Rasix]

If you want single player, play old games or ones without a multiplayer mode (Good luck finding those in a few years.)  I can't think of a decent Sp game from the last 5 years that wasn't ruined by multiplayer facet somehow.

You don't get around much, do you?  I know this is hyperbole, but it's absolutely absurd.  Most single player games with multiplayer have had it simply tacked on.  Completely ignorable.  I find it hard to bitch about multiplayer I don't ever play.  

On the flip side, I'm somewhat glad ME3 cajoled me into their multiplayer, so I could get a different shitty ending.  Lots of fun and decently done for a hacked on horde mode.

[K9]

Anarchy Online was based around questing and crawling through generated instances no? (At least in large part)

Yes and no; there were quests but they were pretty basic and procedurally generated for the overwhelming part. While they did break down into the typical kill/fetch/gather paradigms, they weren't really anything like the quests in WoW, which had narrative structures, and a progression. The quests in AO were closer to daily quests that you could run without limit. Also, a lot of levelling was done grinding mobs, especially once you got into Shadowlands *cough* Hecklers *cough*.

[Ingmar]

Loot drops always 5 to 10 levels below your character level so that you have to sell it on the AH and buy stuff on the AH.

Funny, this stopped for me right around Act 3 Nightmare. I get all kinds of stuff I can use now (just starting Act 1 of Hell.)

[Sjofn]

Yeah, same for me, acts 3 and 4 started dropping shit my level (a lot of it was crappy, but ... that's how D2 was if I remember right? Tons of crappy drops with some good drops mixed in?).

The only thing that bugs me is I when bust my ass (relatively speaking) killing a boss and it drops no rares because derpderpderp. It felt particularly annoying when I beat Belial (which is a shitty fight) and Diablo.

[Azuredream]

Am I the only one who likes the Belial fight?

[Malakili]

Am I the only one who likes the Belial fight?

Yes.  It is just you.

[caladein]

I think it's pretty fun.  The platform could stand to be a bit wider as it gets really crowded in a full game, but that's about it.  Reminds me a lot of Heroic Ragnaros, but without most of the crap that makes me dislike that fight.

[Paelos]

I like it better than the Magda fight. That's just, really really bland for a character that is supposed to have offed somebody important.

[Rasix]

I like it better than the Magda fight. That's just, really really bland for a character that is supposed to have offed somebody important.

She's kind of sad.  It's not really the least bit challenging. They could have least done some sort of massive cultist attack or something. 

Belial is OK.  I think I've died once and beat it on my first Nightmare attempt.  Having 10k (12k effectively) hp helps.

Act 3 dropped an item that I couldn't even use yet.  That's a first.