Having been away from blogs for oh… 3 days, I missed most of the initial reaction to the Diablo 3 announcement. I also just kind of assumed everyone would be excited for it, as the previous two Diablo games are classics and are without a doubt the pinnacle of their genre, and D3 looks like it’s more of the same, with extra sauce.
So I was shocked, shocked to see /yawn from some people about the announcement. I can only assume a /yawn means you just don’t like fun. I mean that’s exactly what Diablo represents, pure gaming fun, and when you /yawn, you /yawn fun. I guess some people have grown out of having fun with gaming. They play for a higher purpose, where fun is this silly thing the kids do, and you are far beyond that.
I would love to have someone who has played both D1 and D2 explain to me how you did NOT have fun with those games. Did you play them blind and deaf? Are you allergic to fun? Maybe you programmed your calculator watch to run Diablo, and it just did not emulate well? Sure I guess if you hate RPGs, action games, collecting loot, killing monsters, a dark fantasy setting, good character development, endless content through random generation, free online play, or countless other aspects, then yea ok, you can /yawn Diablo 3.
What is wrong with people…?
PS: I’m not saying D3 will be the best thing since sliced bread (it might, who knows), but do you really think it won’t, at worst, be a quality way to spend 30-40 hours of gaming time? Hate Blizzard all you want, but to doubt that they can deliver a quality product in a franchise/genre they know well, come on…
PPS: The overly aggressive/fanboi nature this was written in is for effect only, and not to be actually taken serious. Sometimes you just got to mix it up, relax.
Hardcore Casual 
LOL what is all this logic you speak of? This logic jibber jabber is just unnecessary for all the fanboiz and fangirlz. Keep on writing and damn the flames…full speed ahead!
I almost wrote a blog post exaclty like this one. It amazes me that some people never actually played D2 or are comparing D3 to D2 and saying “how could they improve it”
Thats like looking back now and asking “How can Warcraft 3 improve on Warcraft 2 YAWN.”
This game will be HUGE when it hits. I bet it outsells everything SINCE world of warcraft launched.
I expect it will be a cult classic and major hit among pc playing type persons. (myself included) I just wonder how many of them there are left who can pry themselves away from other pursuits :P
I’m sure I’ll have great fun with it for a couple of weeks or so until I finish it, but I have zero tolerance for repeating content, even with a random dungeon element. The game will be fun, just not long-term fun.
Ok, I just read that back, and ‘zero tolerance’ seems a little strong. ‘Very low tolerance’ is probably more appropriate.
I never played D2 (somehow missed it in the rush of starting college, I guess) but I was a huge fan of D1.
And I’m not terribly excited about D3. Sure, I’ll buy it. I’ll like it. But it’s not something I’m really looking forward to. I’ve played Mythos, which a lot of people find really enjoyable, and I just don’t. My taste in games has changed in the past 10 years. I need more depth than just clicking to attack.
I agree. People who are doing /yawn can diaf. Ever get the feeling the blogosphere is grinding to a jaded halt ?
I loved DI.
I actually didn’t enjoy DII as much because it was way too easy to create a gimptard. Spend an hour dumping points into something just to discover that it scales really poorly. Maybe things got fixed with patches, but the skills varied too wildy in effectiveness when I tried it. If you weren’t running one of the popular builds, you probably sucked.
Haha, I swear I didn’t read this before I wrote my /yawn post! I didn’t actually yawn, thought, I have too much respect for Blizzard to pretend that they’re not going to make a well-crafted game.
I happen to agree with unwise, though. It’ll be fun once or twice for me, but I get bored with the Diablo series (and any action RPG) pretty quickly. That’s just my gaming style, though, I’m not trying to tell anyone else they’re wrong for enjoying it, or suggesting that it’s going to suck or underperform. I’m just not personally excited about it.
I’m pretty sure the /yawn people were just flame baiting. When D3 is actually released, I’d like to see how many /yawns there are ;)
If I remember correctly, most of the /yawners hadn’t played Diablo 2 either, which means they will get a double injection of good times with D3.
Hey, fun is subjective. Diablo was pretty and wowed me on first glance of the original demo, but after the first game– When I purchased Diablo 2 I found myself wondering why I did so, because I was bored of it so quickly.
Meanwhile one of my best friends played it non-stop for years. It was all she ever played, obsessively so, at least until WoW came out. I found it boggling, because to me it felt like a shallow game. I thought the graphics alone sold it, but obviously there was something that kept people going with it.
But not me. I see the appeal, I just don’t share it. I have fun with a lot of games, but sequels of one I’ve grown tired of? Meh.
It’s also just so much brandname worship to me, because the silliest part I see is that this sequel is not being made by the designers of the originals. If I was a fan of the series that would be a significant drawback, but for these guys as long as it has the Blizzard stamp on it… *sigh* to the fanbois.
I’m not trolling or flame baiting, I simply don’t agree. Your fun shouldn’t need unanimous approval. =P
I’m pro fun. I weep for the amount of lost fun from the effects Diablo has had in watering down the RPG genre.
Goes right up there with movie sequels and remakes of old tv shows. This is entertainment-lite. Nothing wrong with enjoying that, but it does tend to flood everything else out. It’s too easy for sales, Blizzard will make a mint because you guys will buy this game 100% on the name and brand. ~That~ is not defending fun IMHO.
LMAO teh Diablo iz teh suxx0rz!!!
U can just put a r0ck on both mouze buttonz & it will play itself ROFL!!!
Seriously, Diablo 2 badly suffers from extreme repetitiveness and lack of actual gameplay. Perhaps D3 wiil try to address it, but for now I’ with the yawners.
I played the first Diablo and it was okay but I didn’t get caught up in it like I have with other Blizzard titles. While I see Diablo 3 has some improved features I just don’t see the basic game experience differing too much from the original. If a person never got too much into the older Diablo games then they aren’t going to be wild for the new one. I don’t think it’s /yawn worthy though and I think there is some people who are just mad that Blizzard didn’t announce their new MMO.
You know, that was pretty much how I felt about some of the reactions I saw to the announcement: “How can you not think this is a good thing?”
I saw several statements about the announcement that literally ripped the game apart and spat on it, saying it wasn’t anything “ground-breaking” and just “more of the same” from the previous two releases. Well, to the assertion that the game will not be “ground-breaking”, I have this to say: it doesn’t need to revolutionize the industry to be entertaining. (Which doesn’t even touch on the fact that the game is still in early development.) To the assertion that it’s just “more of the same”, well, duh. The same could be said of pretty much any series of games. (Metal Gear springs immediately to mind. As does Grand Theft Auto. And Final Fantasy…)
Personally, I “Squee”d aloud and clapped for joy upon seeing the announcement. The Diablo games are precisely what you said: “classic”. They’re amazing games. The environments were always rich (for their time period) and engaging, and the Diablo games have been the only games to-date that I’ve played that I never played while listening to other music; instead, I preferred the game’s soundtrack to anything I might choose. I’m definitely looking forward to the newest addition to the franchise.
There’s something very Pavlovian about the click mob, get loot action and indeed I drool at the thought of it.
It’s a theraputic (sp?) type of game. It’s simple, sure. But that’s why it can be so fun I think. It throws out nearly all of the complexity of modern games, and just lets you kill bad guys and get “t3h lewtz”.
It’s like playing with a ball as a kid. It has no real point, it is repetitive as can be, but there’s a viable joy as a child in tossing and catching that ball.
I liken Diablo and all A-RPGs to this.
I played Diablo2 way back when. When I saw Diablo 3 coming out, I wasn’t going to get that worked up about it.
Then I saw the gameplay trailer on Blizzard’s site.
*Shakes fist at Blizzard HQ*
DAMN YOU AND YOUR ADDICTIVE SHININESS!!
Yeah, I’m totally getting D3. It doesn’t have to make sense – there’s something viserally satisfying about leaping barbarian-style into a mob of … um … mobs and smashing them all to pieces with a giant hammer.
Parts of D2 were dull – like the beginning parts where you were essentially naked and had to look under rocks and in rat nests to see if you could find weapons and clothing. Once I started the dungeon crawl stuff though, I was hooked.
Here’s the story of how I played D1, didn’t have fun, and thus, never even bothered with D2:
1) I installed it
2) I played for about four hours
3) The fourth hour was just about as boring as the first
4) I uninstalled it.
That said, D3 appears to have some great potential, but if it’s just another dungeon-running PvE-grind, no thanks. Those just aren’t my kind of games anymore. I outgrew epic RPGs around the time of FF9 and now I’m drawn more to PvP. If a game doesn’t have it, I don’t play it.