Diablo III hits early 2012

[Jhaelen]

I'll buy it as soon as it's available. I've never spent remotely as much time playing a game as I played Diablo2. In fact I still have five accounts full with characters. I didn't waste a lot of time playing single-player, either. Almost all of my playing has been via BattleNet.

The Auction House and the requirement to be always online bother me little. It probably won't affect how I'm playing the game. It might even mean I'm able to make some money selling items

Far more important for me is if the game's still fun. I'm a bit dubious about the cartoony graphic style and the (even more) simplified game controls. With the ability to respec whenenver and as often as you like I also won't have to create 40 different characters which _might_ mean I won't spent as much time playing it as I did with Diablo2.

But I trust Blizzard will manage to make it as addictive as Diablo2 was/is.

 

[jonesy]

The thing I liked about online Diablo 2 was how the market grew from the players demands, like a real economy. A really crazy screwed up nuts monkeys everywhere economy, but still.

What they seem to be doing for Diablo 3 is trying to predict what people will want and at what comparative prices. Maybe they've learned something from WoW, or maybe it'll be broken from the get go again.

 

[GSHamster]

What they seem to be doing for Diablo 3 is trying to predict what people will want and at what comparative prices. Maybe they've learned something from WoW, or maybe it'll be broken from the get go again.

What do you mean? As far as I know, the prices are set by the players in the Auction House. They will float following the standard laws of supply and demand.

At least that's how the WoW auction house works, and I don't see why the D3 AH would be different.

 

[jonesy]

I've never played WoW. I mean the talk about special badges and other drops. There's no guarantee that those will become the kind of currency that SoJ and Mara did.

 

[Wayside]

I'm not certain about that as of right now. I think with a LOT of info server side, short of hacking the actual Diablo 3 server, they'll have a hard time putting out an accurate pirated version.

Update: Turns out the beta has been playable offline in pirated form since going live. I wasn't expecting it to happen that fast, though it also isn't fully functional just yet.