I just popped onto the forums out of curiosity; this is the latest blue post:
“We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they’re going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven’t already). Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks. But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren’t going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it’s not there right now.
We’re working toward 1.0.4, which we’re really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out (and we’ll have a bunch of articles posted with all the details as we get closer), and we’re of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas. I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they’re not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it’s a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out.” -Bashiok
Admitting the game design was flawed, uninteresting and doomed to fail. That suggests to me that every game design decision that Blizzard made regarding AH and items was to keep the game alive until they could figure out other systems to incorporate to give the game some much needed life. I’m surprised you’ve managed to sink 300 hours into the game and not run out of things to do. I was bored after 60. I botted for another 50 and then said to hell with it when Blizzard took down D3 Advanced. (forcing people to either pay for bots or to farm legitimately). Diablo III was released as a gimmicky cash grab; but Blizzard has the money to slowly fix it. Maybe D3 will be a good game some day. Unless Blizzard is destroyed in the process of being sold by Vivendi.
Blizzard intentionally has their games open for improvement. There are two Diablo 3 expansions coming up. I’m curious why different standards exist for Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Diablo 2 didn’t launch with its expansion pack. Warcraft 3 and Starcraft felt broken until their expansions came out. This is pretty common with Blizzard.
Look at Starcraft 2. I am very frustrated with the many parts of that game. Why is it so hard to look up custom maps? Why can’t I play unranked matches without going to custom games? Blizzard uses their expansions to fix their products. This is not a new thing.
