Now after beating Diablo with a few character types,I will give my updated assessment of the game. Where people find the time to work up several characters to Inferno levels is beyond me....Although the engine and artdirection are breathtaking,I must say a number of key elements that make something a Diablo game are missing. A real lack of randomness for one. For a game destined for constant repeat playthroughs,the level set up is painfully the same and no amount of occasional Special Events will change that. Even the monsters are the same in every place without fail:the only variables are what miniboss shows up here and there. And they only bothered to make 3 types of buff altars too. The experience will get stale very quickly,unless an expansion does some heavy reworking.Characters lack skill trees. New abilities and ehancements may unlock over time,but I find myself drifting back to older skills that are far more useful than most of the newer ones. And equipping any sort of weapon doesn't change the nature of the attack skill.A witchdoctor can us a knife or a mace,but still blows darts or tosses skulls. I'm still not sure what stats increase when a level is gained. So why woul one start another character of the same archetype if there would be no difference that what toys it finds?And speaking of toys...the Loot is Boring. Why bother to name it if its just a randomization of 8 or so abilites? I am beginning to see glimmers of other things equipment can do,but I have yet to se anything like the uniques found in Diablo 2,unless they are saving those and set items for the Hell and Inferno levels alone. Unless you have to BUY them in the auction house. I suppose Blizzard has spent the last decade watching truely crazy people spend crazy Real Money in EBay auctions for their Diablo 2 stuff,so they naturally want to make that money themselves. Hence the inconveniently rigid server DRM stuff. But make the Loot attractive,not just from their stat enhancements. You know what game did Loot reaay well? Titan Quest! In that game the critters used the treasure they drop,so if you saw a goatman with a funny looking club heading your ay,you'd know it was a Rare or better,and you'd feel it slamming into you too! There's a fan made enhancement program that could up the quality of the loot,but it would make the gme that much harder since the monsters would use it on you. Someone please clarify what the stuff is like at the higher levels,and why I should bother getting them. So...I'd call Diablo 3 fun,but not something I'll be playing for the next decade like the last two...
get used to skill nerfs/changes in diablo games... they did it probably 5-6 times with diablo 2 over the years and every time it changed the gg character builds and endgame player strategy by a lot.I used to have a sorceress that did instantly fatal amounts of damage with Nova, and had a cast rate so fast you couldn't even see the shit blasting out of her as I spammed the button. There wasn't a thing in the game that could stand against it for longer than a couple seconds, and then they nerfed nova damage and added fully lightning immune enemies all over the fucking place rendering the lvl 90+ gg build into total shit.this was before the magical respec token item was added, so it was pretty much just a giant fucking loss.