The Diablo 3 forums are almost as entertaining as the actual game. I don’t think I’ve seen so much amount of butt hurt from people. I suspect most of it is because people are trying to play Diablo 3 like a MMORPG and get frustrated when it isn’t the case. In a post below, I quoted Jay Wilson and Blizzard North about their two different philosophies about Diablo 3. Blizzard North wanted to make Diablo 3 into a MMORPG and compete with WoW. They got fired. Jay Wilson’s attitude was that Diablo was a game to complement WoW and not a replacement. Diablo 3 is not to do the job that WoW performs.
Bashiok gives off a recent tweet saying:
We said we wanted to keep people playing longer? No, being rewarded for short play sessions is a goal.
I suspect Diablo 3 was stuck in development hell due to how to make the game not conflict with WoW. You know it is a concern when Blizzard even had the annual pass that gave the game free to a twelve month subscription of WoW.
Remember when Diablo 3 was complained that it didn’t look dark or gritty enough? Blizzard responded with adding unicorns and rainbows with the secret level. The complainers didn’t realize how ridiculous and absurd they looked. And… they were wrong. All that fuss over nothing.
And people are emailing me absurd things. Such as emailing me a link that Blizzard banned Diablo 3 players running on Wine with Linux. Nevermind the fact that Blizzard is under no legal or commercial obligation to support Linux or Wine, Blizard already announced those users got banned not because they were on Wine but because they were cheating. “But they didn’t prove it!” You expect Blizzard to prove it everytime they ban someone? It is not in Blizzard’s commercial interest to ban players unless they are disrupting to normal flow of the game which is what cheaters do. The ban hammer doesn’t fall easily. I suspect these cheaters thought Linux would be a great shield for them to hide behind. But Blizzard is, wisely, not falling for it.
It fascinates me that the Diablo 3 whiner’s hatred is animating them to such a degree. It is like they are foaming at the mouth with eyes bugging out. I could understand the hatred when the servers kept falling down during release, but this is different. My guess on the hatred is that so many players came in with the expectation that Diablo 3 would be like a MMORPG lite (even Kripparian fell for this). But Diablo 3 is designed specifically to complement WoW as a unique experience as an action game with RPG elements and not do WoW’s job as a MMORPG. The other thing I suspect is that players, who thought they were ‘experts at Diablo and video games’ because they played Diablo 2 are stuck at a wall in Inferno and don’t know how to progress (or alternatively, beaten Inferno and don’t know how to play the game from that point). In other words, instead of realizing that they don’t understand the game, they have to declare the game sucks and make as many people believe it as possible. It’s too funny.
Lately, there has been the issue of players complaining that they have to swap out to Magic Find gear right before a boss dies (so better loot drops). Blizzard says, “We think we can find a solution for this. We will have a blog post on some options, and you guys can tell us what you think.”
Fair enough.
Allow me to quote the very beginning of the blog post since so many Diablo 3 whiners are telling us they are unable to read.
Since release it has become an increasingly common practice to keep a Magic Find (MF) set in your inventory, and swap it in shortly before a kill.
Blizzard is stating the problem.
Philosophically we don’t have a problem with the practice.
Blizzard is stating they don’t have a problem with people doing it.
While players getting more Magic Find for their kills isn’t a game breaker for us, many players have said they don’t enjoy doing it but feel the benefit is too large to ignore.
Blizzard is declaring the problem is that players dislike feeling the need they have to swap gear since the benefits are too large to ignore.
Since the call for a solution really comes from all of you, we’d like to invite you to chime in with your opinion on what the solution could be.
Here, Blizzard is asking for feedback from a list of options. It’s incredible that anyone could say Blizzard doesn’t listen or ask for feedback when they do these things.
It’s worth keeping in mind that if we do implement a method to alleviate gear-swapping in combat, we’ll simultaneously be looking at ways for players to get an added MF bonus to compensate.
And that is the money quote. It is the quote every Diablo 3 whiner apparently cannot see. I have placed it in bold it for the Diablo 3 whiner. Missing this line tells us these Diablo 3 whiners either…
1) Cannot read.
2) Are so consumed with hatred that they missed it or didn’t want to see it.
So all I hear from the Diablo 3 whiners are “Nerf! Nerf! Blizzard is going to nerf Magic Find! Boooo!” But what is going on is the opposite. Magic find is getting buffed. The only thing getting nerfed is the need to swap gear, not magic find in itself.
I am becoming more and more fascinated by the negative campaigning against this little computer game. The WoW negativity I can more understand since people can lose years of their life inside this game. And Diablo 3 isn’t that old.
I have a crackpot theory which I am listing here only for entertainment and thought provocation purposes. Diablo 3 is actually more than just a computer game. It is a political threat. To whom? If a political interest group is against the concept of market based activity, Diablo 3 would be seen as a serious threat to their interests. Diablo 3 is very much about using the Auction House and even selling and buying items with real life money. And all this market activity is 100% unregulated (outside of Blizzard banning cheaters). Young people are interacting and learning market forces, i.e. laissez-faire capitalism.
Remember, we are in an election year. And the theme of a current political campaign is that market forces are bad. I’m sitting here thinking, “You know? Computer games that say ‘market forces are wonderful’ would likely be attacked by such political groups.” They see entertainment in a very serious way as a way to create a certain mindset in voters. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a political interest group launched a negative campaign since market forces as ‘good’ would be politically undermining. I don’t think this is happening now. But I am mentioning it because I think the reader might find the concept thought provoking that the chessboard of video games is more than just company and consumers but inhabits a larger universe. Already, most young men play video games more than they watch television. What goes on in Video Game Land now is a concern to other interests outside of entertainment.
