Diablo 3 - First Year in Review Parts 1-4 @ diii.net

[magerette]

Fansite diii.net puts up a month by month summary of all the headlines and development news over the past year concerning Blizzard's long-anticipated arpg sequel, Diablo III, including numerous links to interviews and media. Part 1 covers June-August 2008.
Here's a sample from the month of July, 2008:

The “Too-Colorful” Controversy
For most fans, their main activity in July wasn’t analyzing new content… it was arguing about what they’d seen thus far. The infamous, contentious, and apparently never-ending Art Controversy got started in July, just days (hours?) after D3’s announcement. Our first post on it was July 2nd, just 3 days after the WWI event, and even at that early stage there were dozens of forum threads debating the issue, and numerous fan-altered screenshots showing how they thought D3 *should* look...
The Art Controversy took off like it had Tyrael’s wings, and in the days that followed there were numerous articles about it in the gaming media, interviews with defensive D3 team members, interviews about D3’s art design philosophy, comments on the “too colorful” player petition, and WoW design influences. And no, July 2008 wasn’t the last we saw of this issue.
The D2 Team on D3
One of the things I found most interesting in the early days of D3 was hearing what the D2 designers thought about it. Though most of them are no longer with Blizzard, they’re still working in the industry and could not be induced to say anything about D3. There was some lingering bitterness about the way Blizzard North crashed and their early work on D3 was discarded, and furthermore, most of them are still in the industry and no one wants to risk burning any bridges. Fortunately, we tracked down a few guys on the D2 Team who weren’t afraid to speak up, and while Max Schaefer (who must have been quite distracted by the ongoing collapse of Flagship Studios) had nothing but PR puffery to add, the comments by Mike Huang and Ben Boos provided some great inside info on the issue.

You can check out the rest of the series at these links: Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
More information.

 

[Thrasher]

LOL! First year of what? The Hype?

So this is the hype of the self-hype of the hype? LOL!

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

This just shows the dominance of this single game over all other games.

Only rivalled by wow and Starcraft.

Who would write such an article about other, non-Blizzard games ?

 

[JDR13]

This just shows the dominance of this single game over all other games.

And that's a shame imo, because there's going to be many better crpgs not getting as much attention.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

And that's a shame imo, because there's going to be many better crpgs not getting as much attention.

Better rpgs? Sure. Better action games with light rpg elements and highly addictive gameplay, item hunting and creature killing. I think not. That's where Diablo shines imo. It's very casual and hardcore at the same time. You can put into it as much time as you can or want to. Plus the polish it got or will get it is astounding and that makes going through the game all the more enjoyable.

 

[JDR13]

Better rpgs? Sure. Better action games with light rpg elements and highly addictive gameplay, item hunting and creature killing. I think not. That's where Diablo shines imo. It's very casual and hardcore at the same time. You can put into it as much time as you can or want to. Plus the polish it got or will get it is astounding and that makes going through the game all the more enjoyable.

That's just it though, Diablo has always been marketed as a crpg.

There's nothing "hardcore" about Diablo, it's a simple game for casual gamers. Just because it might have 1000 different pieces of loot doesn't change the fact that you only perform 2 different actions (kill - collect loot) consistently during the entire game.

 

[Dhruin]

I'm not a Diablo nut but I don't actually agree. The character development is surprisingly deep and those that do Nightmare difficulty runs over and over to build their characters are as hardcore as anyone else.

 

[Thrasher]

Me neither, but the chracter optimization based on aquiring certain equipment and runes was quite hardcore.

 

[JDR13]

and those that do Nightmare difficulty runs over and over to build their characters are as hardcore as anyone else.

From that perspective anything can be called "hardcore". Like the guy trying to break the high score in Donkey Kong.

 

[xSamhainx]

..and anything can essentially be called an rpg since you are playing a role.

Where's Roqua when we need him? LOL

 

[Thrasher]

What is the definition of "hardcore"?

For me it's obsessive play to maximize your score or anything else.

 

[Dhruin]

From that perspective anything can be called "hardcore". Like the guy trying to break the high score in Donkey Kong.

You're refusing to see the forest for the trees. Have a wander around http://strategy.diii.net/searchcat.php?cid=29 - there are around 20 build guides for the Assassin class alone - plus the other classes, plus mercenary guides, plus horadric cube guides, plus socketing guides, plus weapon guides.

It isn't as simple as you want to make it sound. I'm not saying it's brain surgery or that casual players don't play it - but for those who want to really delve into it, it doesn't have to be a "simple" game for casual players.

 

[JDR13]

You're refusing to see the forest for the trees. Have a wander around http://strategy.diii.net/searchcat.php?cid=29 - there are around 20 build guides for the Assassin class alone - plus the other classes, plus mercenary guides, plus horadric cube guides, plus socketing guides, plus weapon guides.

I wasn't trying to say that the game couldn't be played like that, but that makes the *players* hardcore, not the game. You can view it however you like though.

 

[DArtagnan]

I wasn't trying to say that the game couldn't be played like that, but that makes the *players* hardcore, not the game. You can view it however you like though.

Diablo 2, like most Blizzard games, caters to casual and hardcore gamers alike.

While I wouldn't necessarily call it hardcore overall, it certainly isn't just casual either.

Donkey Kong, as you mentioned, is clearly a hardcore game - because you don't get to be good at it without SERIOUS dedication, and getting through it takes just about the most hardcore kind of player you can possibly find. So you bet Donkey Kong is a hardcore game. It's from a time when hardcore was just about the only kind of game in existence.

 

[txa1265]

I wasn't trying to say that the game couldn't be played like that, but that makes the *players* hardcore, not the game. You can view it however you like though.

Which is exactly how I would classify what has happened to Plants vs. Zombies with some on these forums ...

 

[JDR13]

Which is exactly how I would classify what has happened to Plants vs. Zombies with some on these forums ...

Lol, I made the mistake of downloading it last night. I just wanted to try it out for little bit, and before I realized it, more than 4 hours of my life had disappeared.

I have to take my hat off to whoever designed that little gem, it might be the fastest addicting game I've ever played.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Better rpgs? Sure. Better action games with light rpg elements and highly addictive gameplay, item hunting and creature killing. I think not.

That is not the point.

The point is that this game is dominating the whole industry despite being a niche game type , in principle.

And what's even worse : This niche game type has become mainstream.

Which means that that once a niche game has become so much mainstream that it isn't an niche game type anymore - but one that dominates everything else.

And this is the twist : An originally niche game type has become so much dominant, that it bends all other game types into their direction. It's like kind of an black hole : Every game in thw whole industry is affected by this black hole in one way or another, just because of the immense gravitation of it !

One sign of this immense gravitation can be seen by the fact that almost no RPG (at least none from major companies) is marketed without the term "action RPG".

And some games are completely sucked into it, like Sacred 1, that was originally scheduled to become an "normal" RPG, but was later turned into an Action RPG.

 

[DArtagnan]

If we're going to blame Blizzard for dominating, I think there are more obvious candidates than Diablo 2 and the upcoming sequel.

 

[Dhruin]

I wasn't trying to say that the game couldn't be played like that, but that makes the *players* hardcore, not the game. You can view it however you like though.

If it were that simple, the hardcore players would just be spending their time playing "hardcore" hours but there'd be little need for complex guides if the game really were that simple. Have a look at the mercenary guide and some of the maths - it's not as simple as you think.

The core of the issue is that you think Diablo is about the simple minute-to-minute combat ("two actions"). It's not. It's about character building. The combat simply serves to distract players between upgrade choices.

 

[Dhruin]

And some games are completely sucked into it, like Sacred 1, that was originally scheduled to become an "normal" RPG, but was later turned into an Action RPG.

Do you have a link or something about that? I've never heard that.