Deftones

Game of thrones? Doesn't the new season start on April 1st? Or are you talking about the Game of Thrones game?

Edit: I see it is the game. Ouch.

Groucho

Diablo 3 or a rushed-to-market tie-in game? Wow, it's like Sophie's Choice all over again.

starman9000

Yeah, but that GOT game comes with a pretty cool preorder bonus book!

Quake1028

I know GoT will likely suck....calm down people! And yes, D3 will get all of my attention. I just meant, damn, as in same day for two $60 games. Now I might hold off on GoT to see reviews/price drop.

timewaster

what is the best deal for diablo 3?
this is the best i've come across - $50. no tax (for nyc residents) & free shipping
but it looks like the promo code no longer works.

http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/295047

Numes

I think you will be hard pressed to find it anywhere online much below $59.99. On Amazon, release day shipping is $0.99 (supposedly that means you GET it on release day, I will believe it when it comes.) You can also sign up for a digital download and start playing right at midnight (or whenever it goes live) on blizzard.com. I can't really speak for B&Ms since I rarely purchase anything at a real store.

foxdvd

newegg has it for a short time with code EMCNFJC22 for 49.99 free ship

foxdvd

oh did not follow your link..but you are saying newegg does not work any more?

timewaster

yeah. it says it expires today (April 18).
when i tried yesterday in the afternoon, it no longer worked.
i should've jumped on it in the morning when i saw it

timewaster

looks like the promo code started working again.
this time i jumped on it and placed an order.

Decker

As did I. Thanks for the heads-up!

joeblow69

I got invited into the beta last week. Haven't played much with it yet, but surprised how muddy the graphics look. I'm on a 25 inch monitor, native rez, and high graphics settings. It isn't BAD, but it sure doesn't look fancy or anything.

spainlinx0

I played the beta on my friend's computer. It's Diablo. I wasn't blown away.

Decker

I don't mean to be the voice of negativity (oh, who am I kidding; I love to be the voice of negativity), but having never played the previous games and checking out the videos, I fail to see what's so much better about this game than, say, Torchlight or Dungeon Siege III. Don't get me wrong, I love these hack & slash dungeon crawlers, but why this one's been so highly anticipated, and why it's been in development for so long is totally beyond me. Is it just the name, and the fact it's from Blizzard? I get that Starcraft II took forever because of fine balancing issues for multiplayer, but this seems to be just your standard co-op multiplayer, right? I don't get it.

shizawn

The difference is generally polish and higher production values. There's also something about the Diablo series that makes me want to play it over and over. When I played through Titan Quest and Torchlight, while I enjoyed them both a lot, I was sort of relieved when I finish them. One time through was enough for me.

flashburn

Dungeon Siege III? Really?

kgrogers1979

Yeah, Dungeon Siege doesn't even deserve to be in the same sentence as Diablo. Comparing Diablo to Dungeon Siege is like comparing the Godfather to a Uwe Boll film. (and ironically Uwe Boll did make a Dungeon Siege film...)


Agreed. I prefer Diablo 1 over 2 because the atmosphere is just so much better. I have played and replayed Diablo 1 countless times. Other copycat games I get bored and sometimes never even bother to finish let alone want to replay them.

edstein

Diablo II may be the best game ever on PC. yep I said that.

Decker

Let's be clear : I said I never played a Diablo game. It just seemed to me one dungeon crawler, be it Torchlight, Champions of Norrath or Dungeon Siege III is essentially pretty much like another. I never found one that had a really compelling story, requried difficult, game-altering decisions to be made or had a very complex, intricate battle system. It always seemed to me the point was to turn your brain off and hack, slash, grind and loot. And I'm okay with that -- in fact I quite enjoy it.
I know Dungeon Siege III takes a lot of criticism, but I liked it well enough. It looks good on the PC. It controls well with a 360 controller. It had four different classes that played differently. It had online co-op. For what I want in a dungeon crawler, it suited me just fine.

Now, I would be very disappointed if Diablo III wasn't considerably better. What I was asking was if it doesn't look significantly better and checking the gameplay videos, it seems to play like the rest, what makes it so important, so highly anticipated.

Your responses about replay ability are interesting. If the games lend themselves to numerous replays, that's a significant difference. Are the stories a lot more compelling?

fumanstan

I'm biased here, but here's my take.

The Diablo lore and plot is very good; it obviously means more to folks that have played both 1 and 2, but there's a pretty neat story there as far as Heaven, Hell, Prime Evils, Angels and Arch Angels, etc. If you skim over some of the stuff on the website, or even watch some of the old cinematics from the previous games on YouTube you can probably tell a lot has gone into the Diablo universe. So the content itself leads to some fun atmosphere.

Blizzard games have never pushed graphics; they're stylized for a certain look, and designed to run on more computers rather then fancy tech.

As far as gameplay, I haven't played some of the games you mention but Blizzard pretty much made the genre popular, so there's some recognition there. You mentioned the game taking a long time, and part of the reason was the project was restarted completely -more then once as well- just to get the game to a place where everyone agreed was going to be enjoyable to play, so there's definitely a lot of care taken into making the game fun for you and for multiplayer. Diablo games have been historically very replayable, so hopefully people find the same with 3.

It's funny you mention Torchlight, since that game was made by former Diablo 1/2 developers.

At the broadest level i'm sure there's not that much difference between one hack and slash game and another, but I'd like to think Blizzard games can go deeper for people that really like to dive in to stats and skills. Easy to play, difficult to master.

poncekim

Ive never played the other games you've mentioned but I'll take a stab. It's generally the polish and the work put into the game to create balance as someone said. Everything in the game is top notch.

What keeps me playing over and over is the huge online community and the vast amounts of cool rare items you can find. Think of diablo as a great game and a great treasure hunt. Some items are so rare you can sell them on eBay for big bucks. That's what kept me and my friends playing hours and hours through the night. There is something more permanent and real about the characters, stats, and items you accumulate in diablo that other games don't have.

Decker

Thanks for the responses. I guess I never knew what I was missing.
It's funny : for years I waited for the Diablo Battle Chest to drop to $20 like the Starcraft and Warcraft sets did. It never dropped and I never gave in on my price point. Eventually I just figured it was too old a game to play and just stopped looking. If it were a game that went on sale at Steam eventually, I would have bought it long before now. The way things happened, it was a game I just passed on. Plus, of course I figured I'd just get Diablo III when it came out, not fully realizing the amount of time that would elapse .

Imprint

I'm no good at critiquing good and bad games, so I'll just try to make a comparison to the FPS genre. I used to play all the pc FPS games. Some were excellent: Quake, No One Lives Forever, Half Life, etc. Some were fun but not as great: Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, Doom, etc. For the hack n slash genre, Diablo and Diablo 2 are the best of the best. Torchlight is fun and very good, but it's no Diablo 2. Just like Duke Nukem is no Half Life. Somebody else could probably explain it, but I just know that one is better than the other. That's why I'm excited for Diablo 3. If that makes no sense, then well, I am drunk after all.

Decker

One problem I have with both this game and Starcraft II is the $59.99 MSRP. It's like a $10 surcharge just because they know the game is highly anticipated. If Microsoft tried to charge $70 for Halo 4 or SCEA had tried that with Uncharted 3, they'd never hear an end to all the criticism they'd get. The same thing goes for movies -- you dont have to pay a higher ticket price to see The Hunger Games or The Avengers just because they're highly anticipated movies. Somehow Blizzard gets a pass for that. Though as long as I'm not paying that premium for either game (and I didn't), I suppose I can live with it.

gcribbs

The good news for those of us who played WoW is that we could sign up to play for a year which I was going to do anyway and get Diablo 3 for free.

I think over 1 million people signed up for that so they are probably gouging the rest of you to make up the loss in money from us.