Are you done? Why?

[Tannhauser]

I'm getting really tired of Blizzard putting palm to cheek and exclaiming "My goodness, we didn't expect THIS much success!"  They knew D3 was highly anticipated.  They knew it broke pre-order records. 

The Blizzard magic is gone.  They are still awesome at grunt level, but Activision is their master now.  Cataclysm was the worst xpac, SC II was a re-skin of the original and D3's sins have been noted here and elsewhere.

[Llyse]

I'm getting really tired of Blizzard putting palm to cheek and exclaiming "My goodness, we didn't expect THIS much success!"  They knew D3 was highly anticipated.  They knew it broke pre-order records. 

The Blizzard magic is gone.  They are still awesome at grunt level, but Activision is their master now.  Cataclysm was the worst xpac, SC II was a re-skin of the original and D3's sins have been noted here and elsewhere.

Pretty much, everything I wanted to say.

[Shatter]

I'm getting really tired of Blizzard putting palm to cheek and exclaiming "My goodness, we didn't expect THIS much success!"  They knew D3 was highly anticipated.  They knew it broke pre-order records. 

The Blizzard magic is gone.  They are still awesome at grunt level, but Activision is their master now.  Cataclysm was the worst xpac, SC II was a re-skin of the original and D3's sins have been noted here and elsewhere.

And yet people will still play Pandas :P

[Lakov_Sanite]

To be fair, MoP seems to be addressing a lot of issues fans had, regardless of how dumb pandas might be.

[Secundo]

Boring game. I had to force myself to finish it once.
I liked D2.
I'm disappointed about both the game and Blizzard.

[Murgos]

Boring game. I had to force myself to finish it once.
I liked D2.
I'm disappointed about both the game and Blizzard.

Oh, no!  Someone got dozens of hours of enjoyment out of a video game, how horrible for you.

[Xanthippe]

I'm getting really tired of Blizzard putting palm to cheek and exclaiming "My goodness, we didn't expect THIS much success!"  They knew D3 was highly anticipated.  They knew it broke pre-order records. 

The Blizzard magic is gone.  They are still awesome at grunt level, but Activision is their master now.  Cataclysm was the worst xpac, SC II was a re-skin of the original and D3's sins have been noted here and elsewhere.

Well put.

Blizzard's games are no longer on my "must buy" list but on my "wait and see" list (most of which never gets bought).

[waffel]

Greetings,

* * * NOTICE OF ACCOUNT CLOSURE * * *

A user of this account has recently been involved in actions deemed inappropriate for Diablo III by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This decision was made after a thorough investigation of the situation as a whole. Though we are unable to discuss the outcomes of our investigations due to privacy concerns, rest assured that this incident has been looked into very thoroughly, and the appropriate actions have been taken on all involved accounts.

Well, guess I'm done now 

Just in time for the steam sale! Perfect!

[Trippy]

Good job testing their bot detector!

[waffel]

I tested it for almost 2 months  

To be honest, the money I made from the bot went to a good source:
The adoption, vaccines, shots, food, litter, etc... for these two lovely ladies:

[Malakili]

I tested it for almost 2 months  

To be honest, the money I made from the bot went to a good source:
The adoption, vaccines, shots, food, litter, etc... for these two lovely ladies:

If you post on reddit saying you are a botter, but that it was used to help kittens, the resulting contradiction might blow up the entire internet.

[apocrypha]

I tested it for almost 2 months  

To be honest, the money I made from the bot went to a good source:
The adoption, vaccines, shots, food, litter, etc... for these two lovely ladies:

You should name them Baal and Mephisto 

[waffel]

I tested it for almost 2 months  

To be honest, the money I made from the bot went to a good source:
The adoption, vaccines, shots, food, litter, etc... for these two lovely ladies:

You should name them Baal and Mephisto  

Charsi and Fara woulda been better   But alas, I settled for Lucy and Stella

[Cheddar]

Was fine until book 2 inferno.  Good grief- even after I pumped my resists up and ran book 1 two or three times I am still getting face melted.

Probably not done but taking a break.

[Malakili]

Was fine until book 2 inferno.  Good grief- even after I pumped my resists up and ran book 1 two or three times I am still getting face melted.

Probably not done but taking a break.

Yeah, Act 2 Inferno is a huge step up in difficulty.  It is a pretty brutal gear check.   What class are you playing and what are your resists at?

[Cheddar]

Was fine until book 2 inferno.  Good grief- even after I pumped my resists up and ran book 1 two or three times I am still getting face melted.

Probably not done but taking a break.

Yeah, Act 2 Inferno is a huge step up in difficulty.  It is a pretty brutal gear check.   What class are you playing and what are your resists at?

Barbarian.  Running between 500-600 resists at the moment.

[Secundo]

Boring game. I had to force myself to finish it once.
I liked D2.
I'm disappointed about both the game and Blizzard.

Oh, no!  Someone got dozens of hours of enjoyment out of a video game, how horrible for you.

Dozens? Do you know me? Also it's just like, you know, my opinion man. (which was asked for, you .....)

[Malakili]

Was fine until book 2 inferno.  Good grief- even after I pumped my resists up and ran book 1 two or three times I am still getting face melted.

Probably not done but taking a break.

Yeah, Act 2 Inferno is a huge step up in difficulty.  It is a pretty brutal gear check.   What class are you playing and what are your resists at?

Barbarian.  Running between 500-600 resists at the moment.

Yeah, that is probably just on the cusp.  My friend with whom I play is playing Barbarian, and I know one of the big things that helped us break into Act 2 was when he got a nice weapon with +500hp (or so) on hit.  I can't remember what his allresist was at exactly, but I think 600+. 

[Cheddar]

Yeah, that is probably just on the cusp.  My friend with whom I play is playing Barbarian, and I know one of the big things that helped us break into Act 2 was when he got a nice weapon with +500hp (or so) on hit.  I can't remember what his allresist was at exactly, but I think 600+. 

You may be onto something.  I let my life on hit drop in an attempt to boost resist.

Maybe I will run act I a couple more times and haunt the AH/pray for good upgrades and see what happens.  Other thing I was pondering is getting my Witch Doctor to 60 and trying out a pet build; I got some wacky ideas around damage on hit w/ the life per second thingy.

[Salamok]

The hyperinflation going on right now almost has me tossing in the towel.  I can't for the life of me imagine what it would be like for someone just picking up the game now.

[Lantyssa]

Inflation won't ever happen.  New items are coming onto the AH all the time!

 

[Xanthippe]

Botting is driving inflation more, I suspect, than anything else.

[waffel]

Botting is driving inflation more, I suspect, than anything else.

Bots too a heavy hit last week. A huge majority of Sarkoth ones got wiped out, with the rest of the botters that survived the cull trying to wait it out/find a new bot spot.

I'd wager at least half the bots either got banned or have quit for now, especially the 'casuals'.

[Lantyssa]

Botting is driving inflation more, I suspect, than anything else.

What's causing it doesn't really matter.  People thinking inflation wouldn't happen were as optimistic as Curt Schilling.

[Salamok]

the invulnerable wizards exploit wasn't doing the economy any favors either.  I think inferno might need some rape counselling after the last few weeks,

[Rokal]

Botting is driving inflation more, I suspect, than anything else.

There was an exploit for wizards that allowed them to become invulnerable until they left the game. Someone was streaming with the method over the weekend and it sounds like a lot of wizards took advantage of it to easily farm inferno. Apparently Blizzard brought the servers down yesterday and fixed it, but who knows how long a portion of the community had been using the exploit before the streamer announced it.

edit: beaten

[Trippy]

Well there's still the Barbarian exploit to take advantage of

[Ghambit]

Yes. The Secret World.

[murdoc]

I won't be "done" for a long time, I'll just move to other games for awhile because, you know, no subscription.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, that's kind of my approach. I'll play it on and off.

[Xanthippe]

Botting is driving inflation more, I suspect, than anything else.

What's causing it doesn't really matter.  People thinking inflation wouldn't happen were as optimistic as Curt Schilling.

You're right. I was extremely overly optimistic about a lot of things for Diablo 3.

I really did not think that there would be so many exploits and bugs, nor did I think that it would take Blizzard so long to even start to get a handle on bots.

[Salamok]

I really did not think that there would be so many exploits and bugs, nor did I think that it would take Blizzard so long to even start to get a handle on bots.

Given the amount of gold seller spam in the trade channel that would be trivial to block it is pretty clear that blizz doesn't give a crap.  As far as I can tell they don't even try to stop it, it would be pretty easy to make level 10 a req for chatting in certain channels or regex the chat for certain keywords/domain names, or even better when you get 20 complaints for spam in a 5 minute window you ban the friggen account from chat channels as opposed to just banning the bot created level 1 character.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that might save them from hyperinflation is the rmah, once you remove gold from the picture item prices are actually deflating as less players play and more items are accumulated. 

At this point the only way they can fix the economy w/o pissing people off is to add another 5 levels, introduce plat. peices and new items making all existing shit obsolete, of course all that work is pointless unless they fix the game itself first.  This way instead of doing a wipe and taking stuff from already pissed players they would be giving them more content.

[Lightstalker]

Item inflation (5 more levels and obsolete lvl 63 gear) would basically kill the RMAH as no one would trust Blizzard with real money for items that won't have value for at least a predictable period of time.  It would be a colossal self-inflicted wound from a PR standpoint, and while folks may be complaining today those complaints aren't exactly a problem for them.

They already have the box sales.
They only want to keep around those players they can entice onto the RMAH.
Everyone else is just extra bandwidth and support cost cutting into their profits.

If you aren't on the RMAH they actually don't want you around using up their bandwidth and support staff.  After the box purchase this is free to play and even with the box cost a tremendous value for the cost.  Clearing out the casual and monetizing the hardcore is the way to profitability here, even if no one would actually say that in public.  If you bought the box and have no intention to use the RMAH they are done with you until it is time to make promises so you'll buy the expansion.  There is no money for them in a well behaved economy for the gold AH.

[Paelos]

Clearing out the casual and monetizing the hardcore is the way to profitability here, even if no one would actually say that in public.  If you bought the box and have no intention to use the RMAH they are done with you until it is time to make promises so you'll buy the expansion.  There is no money for them in a well behaved economy for the gold AH.

Seriously, WTF are you basing this on? Magical ways to fail at business? Do you believe that players are like a light switch where you can turn them on and off at will when you release expansions? You get more revenue by maintaining a quality product in the interim (at a much reduced variable cost compared to launch and marketing), because you can transition people into the next evolution of content.

The customers now are getting more impatient and less forgiving of mistakes by a gaming company. How many people do you think will actually buy the D3 xpac that gave up on it after a month? How more likely is it that they take a "wait and see" approach or even a "fuck you" approach because the game is so out of whack?

[Lightstalker]

They already have your money.

And when they bring out the next release/expansion/game you'll give it to them again.  Just go back and read over the last few years of hope and teeth-gnashing that comprises theses forum and you'll be hard pressed to come up with a different view.  Blizzard gave customers exactly what they've been giving customers for years.  For all the talk of voting with wallets, well, folks have and will probably continue to.  They'll get largely the same sell-through on the D3 xpac that they got for D2, this game has hardly been a flop despite any local teeth-gnashing and twice-bitten regrets.