Though I'm aware of this, you'll have to take into consideration if Blizz Kotick is generous enough to release 2 hot games that might clash against each another.

This post has been edited by talexeh: Aug 31 2010, 01:40 PM

So far there are witch doctor, barbarian, wizard & monk.
http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/index.xml

EDIT: And I just realized that they've changed the wizard's avatar. She's no longer holding an orb.

And oh, they've included the opposite gender in the individual character pages. The female witch doctor looks like a digitization of Calypso from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. Male wizard doesn't look appetizing enough but I like the way Blizz presents the female monk... if only she's topless.

This post has been edited by talexeh: Sep 27 2010, 01:33 PM

You want date? Look at StarCraft 2 LOL.

Let's face it. Even if Blizzard give you a date, there's 99% chance they're not going to be able to adhere to it. A date coming out from their mouth is going to get your hopes high up before they crash it down to earth, splattering it everywhere & makes you rage more.

I still remember how many gamers bought their gaming rig in advance, only to get told that StarCraft 2 was delayed & deferred. Sure, they still can use their rigs when StarCraft got released but the $200 graphic cards they got themselves were 50% cheaper when StarCraft 2 was finally released.

Date -> expectation -> disappointment.

All classes have both genders.

You might lose the bet. Many people were talking about the downfall of StarCraft II when it was announced that it has no LAN capability but as you can see, StarCraft II sold like hotcakes.

Yup, I gotta agree that both games you mentioned there were hot cakes but in Kotick's eyes, selling well don't cut it anymore since he can (and he SHOULD) earn more from those who actually pirated the games & enjoyed the same privilege as an original copy owner. You did read about how StarCraft 2 actually placed in the very first ranking for the most downloaded torrents? Yes, Kotick was laughing his ass off when he read about it.

LOL at no life, no real friends if you insist on going online. That's only applicable to students. Once you start working / start a family, going online is a lifesaver.

Fat chance! Diablo III will definitely utilize the new Battle.net platform so Internet connectivity is a must to get your game started.

Wow... I've been reading all the negative sentiments building up in this thread in silent but this is totally new. It's all fine & dandy for me that you declare to the world how you're gonna avoid playing this game & criticize all the features that have been revealed so far. Blizzard is no longer the same post-W3? Blizzard will go kapoot in 2011? StarCraft II is major phail, plain, boring, has high skill ceiling, requires major time investment to get good at (tic tac toe, anyone?)?

Meh... this is nothing new but to actually push all the blame to the rest of us who are really looking forward to the game? What next?

I wonder if anyone has ever heard of the phrase "one man's meat is another man's poison"?

Older? I guess you're assuming that all of us who had seen the days of WCII are on the same side as you eh? Oh well, haters gonna hate anyway.

This post has been edited by talexeh: Aug 3 2011, 08:33 PM

While you have your own reasons to demand for offline singleplayer mode, I'm afraid that the same discussion had been widely debated prior to the release of StarCraft 2. Now, before I go any further, I'm gonna use a few games as reference in the later part of this post, so don't go "TF2 is a FPS noob!" on me.

I'm neither a Blizzard employee nor a diehard fan but I can kinda understand why Blizzard is doing... what they're doing. Let's take for example what happened to StarCraft 1. Korea hijacked it as their national e-sports & Battle.net was left to rot while competitive games were being held in iCCup instead. What about WarCraft III? Garen­a anyone? Notice any similarity here? Pirated games. As you can see here, Blizzard totally lost control of their intellectual properties & this of course translates to lost revenue that they would have accumulated if only all these games were actually original copies. All these factors point to the need for an online DRM to be implemented, which we've seen in StarCraft 2.

Put yourself into Blizzard's shoe & let me know what you would do.

Sure, you can say that it's like a punishment to us genuine copy owners but would you agree that the broadband penetration in this world is increasing by leaps & bounds with every passing year? Yes, I'm totally aware of how pathetic, unreliable & expensive the broadband in our country is but if you were to take the entire world into account, Malaysia is a like a tiny lil' dot among all the gamers in the world. Blizzard can't please everyone at the same time & simultaneously risk having their hard work benefiting pirates again. What they can do though is to minimize the damage by striking a balance between fulfilling the gamers' requests & at the same time, avoid history from repeating itself again. Case in point, they actually set up a server for the SEA region when StarCraft 2 was released.

Flexibility, constriction & mobility. With the advent of gaming laptops & wireless routing pints all over the places these days, I think Blizzard is wise enough to realize that gamers are no longer geeks who only stayed in their home 24/7.

Oh & I'm actually a 512Kbps Streamyx user by the way. I believe it's not what you've assumed.

Steam requires Internet connection. While you can opt for the offline mode, Steam actually forces you to go online once in a while or you'll have problem starting up your games. No matter how we see it, it's still a DRM, a mechanism that attempts to protect against piracy & abuse by irresponsible gamers.

While I don't want to go in depth on all the rantings in this thread, I can safely tell you that it's pretty much the same for StarCraft 2. When Blizzard announced that StarCraft 2 is in progress, people were jumping in joy everywhere. Then came the dreaded news that user authentication is required before you can play the game, all hell broke loose. Some declared how they were gonna boycott the game. Some claimed that Blizzard is no longer the same company. Others questioned the rationality of having no LAN for RTS where the setup for a big clash could take hours. Some said Blizzard is greedy & how StarCraft 2 would fail so hard & so on & so forth. All these mumbo-jumbos even before the game was released & no one even knew anything for sure back then. The 1 thing I learned from this episode was that people tend to pass judgement too fast too early. If you ask me, I would say that StarCraft 2 is pretty successful & it's truly a game that will replace & take over the popularity of StarCraft 1 worldwide.

StarCraft & WarCraft III didn't gain fame due to their singleplayer mode. It's the competitive aspect of their multiplayer games that helped spread the fever all over the world & got them where they are today. Therefore, I can see why Blizzard is gearing up Diablo III as an online game instead of the ol' singleplayer hack-n-slash type of games.

If you actually follow the trend in this thread, you can see that whenever Blizzard announced something new, people tend to take it negatively instead of the other way around. For example, the recent revelation of items trading / selling. MMORPG? What about Team Fortress 2 where people were trading left & right everywhere? It's still a FPS game at its core & the trading aspect is still secondary to the gameplay & I don't see the game failing anytime soon.

EDIT: I just read an article in Kotaku where they interviewed a game developer (Bastion, a game that I personally look forward to & it's pretty similar to Diable, albeit cuter). The full article can be access here but I would like to quote a few things since they also mentioned about Diablo III.

EDIT2: Oops... here's the link: http://kotaku.com/5827051/an-argument-for-...-waste-our-time

This post has been edited by talexeh: Aug 4 2011, 11:48 AM

You want the same old Blizzard yet you expect something truly refreshing from their new games. I don't really see how you can judge how a corporation is doing since all you ever mentioned was that they're greedy, money-sucking corporation these days, especially after Kotick stepped in. Same old excuse you mentioned during the StarCraft 2 days but the last thing I remembered, Blizzard is not a corporation that's famous for their charity.

That StarCraft 2 is not innovated up to your standard is your expectation. You're just expecting a complete overhaul or some major changes but you failed to take into consideration that while it's something that you want, it's not something that _EVERYONE_ wants. What you're hoping for is akin to Portal 2 with no portals. Changes are good but there must be a limit or else you're gonna draw flaks from left & right. You want example? Welcome to Command & Conquer 4.

Refer to bolded sentences. Nothing new _EXCEPT_ minor tweaks. You're contradicting yourself. Perhaps you should let us know what you're actually hoping to see in StarCraft 2. IIRC, you complained that the lore in StarCraft 2 sucked as well, so I don't see how Blizzard is gonna connect the dots if there are too many changes in the game. Another contradiction.

Yes, let's blame everyone who don't share your view as Blizzard fanboys.

And yeah, like I mentioned earlier, Portal 2 shouldn't have portals, Half-Life 2 should be a RTS & Command & Conquer 4 is the best game EVAR!

1. The game has yet to be released & already you're making conclusion that the game time is too short & doesn't worth the moolah you're gonna pay. Hmm... sounds pretty similar to what I mentioned in my previous post, something about people passing judgements too fast, too early?
2. Refer to my previous post again, the one at the end with a link to Kotaku. At the same time, unlike WoW, gold farmers will have no impact to your gameplay... unless you're jelly that some rich kids get to buy pimped avatars without breaking a sweat. If that's the case, get your ego checked.
3. The release of StarCraft 2 also marked the new Battle.net. I'm not sure if you're actually aware of this but these days, social websites & apps are mushrooming everywhere. Facebook, Google+, Steam & many more. It's a sign that people are now much more connected in cyberspace & this is what Battle.net is trying to capitalize on. Heck, even EA is coming up with Origin & GamersGate just did a complete overhaul of their system as well.

If people can get on Facebook all the time & chat non-stop in MSN, then it's a good sign that broadband penetration has gone up to the level where disconnection / service outage is something abnormal these days.

Again, referring to my previous post, these days most games are being developed with the big focus on the multiplayer capability since it's this aspect that contributed most to replayability points. Singleplayer mode can only bring you up to a certain point, perhaps with multiple endings but at the end of the day, it's having friends fighting along / against you that bring out the fun & LOL'ness. Borderlands, anyone?

While it's pretty debatable on the possibility of preventing piracy, I don't think it's a wise move to ignore it. There are ways you can control it & we've seen how the whole DRM thingy has evolved over the years. Even Ubisoft has soften down on their "MUST ONLINE ALL THE TIME" DRM but again, _MOST_ of Ubisoft games are more on singleplayers. Before you counter me with "See, even Ubisoft DRM no longer require you to be connected all the time", Ubisoft doesn't have a dedicated portal to bring their gamers together like Battle.net.

Like I said in my previous post again (phew~), broadband penetration is considered high these days. If you bring the argument of Blizzard punishing genuine copy owners like 10 years ago, I would totally agree with you but c'mon, these days we have UNIFI & high-speed broadband. Yeah, they're expensive in Malaysia but if you look at the other part of the world, 1Mbps is pretty much history now.

I'm a 512Kbps user though but have no problem whatsoever in StarCraft 2, albeit some hiccups at the early stage due to the buggy new Battle.net server in Singapore.

Err... who doesn't want to after all the ruckus & lawsuits with Korea's television network operators? About the Auction House, you're just being adamant that it's something to bring more profits to Blizzard even though you've been presented with points on why it's a logical move by Blizzard. Again, I don't see how that will affect your gameplay and oh wait! You're also against trading in Team Fortress 2 & also its shop selling overpriced in-game items which consists of nothing but pixels & polygon counts. Again, it's not like you're being forced to buy them so it's just you being a hater of this new feature.

PR talk? Yeah, I guess you're the caped crusader or some consumer association rights rep who's supposed to guide us to the right path.

This post is not a reply to mine, so I'll leave it alone.

This post has been edited by talexeh: Aug 4 2011, 11:41 PM