There's even a still sizeable community playing WarCraft 2 even after all these years.

Not sizeable enough imo

I recently went through Diablo II again (a few weeks ago) so I'm pretty excited about this.  Yeah,  in retrospect, its a very boring game to watch but really it's fun to play if you can get into it (but I can see why some people would get bored with it very quickly)

yeah I mean that's there too for sure, but any way you slice it you're a barbarian//sorcerer//who even fucking cares running through a dank undead-infested dungeon using the same moves on like hundreds of enemies at the time.  I GUESS it's polished but is POLISH really enough to make a game good?  a boring, repetitive game is what it is, polish or not.  there's a decent amount of customization in diablo and that's good but yeah, I guess I just don't agree that polish/stat management somehow takes a mediocre, one-note dungeon crawler from uninteresting to OHGOD AMAZING!

The success of dungeon hack games hearkens back to the days of Rogue.  There's a certain appeal to plowing through randomized dungeons collecting progressively better loot.  It's a personal thing because I don't understand it myself but even though you're pulling off the same moves the games are perfectly balanced and, as you say, polished.

But I hate Diablo because other Rogue-likes have left it in the dust.  Games like NetHack, Dwarf Fortress, and ADOM have expanded on the simple "random dungeon fuckton of monsters" design with new forms of customization and emergent gameplay (or whatever that buzzword is) but instead of trying to do anything new Blizzard takes the "if it ain't broke" direction of design and applies it in spades.

EDIT: I know people will disagree with me for calling Diablo a roguelike but as far as I'm concerned any game where you create a character/has extensive character customization and forces you through randomized dungeons with random EVERYTHING is a roguelike to me.  I'm not of the state of thinking that Roguelikes have to be turn based.  A dungeon-hack is similar but the levels are set in stone (like Dark Alliance or the Gauntlet series).

i agree with diablo being like a roguelike, or at least having a lot of elements, but it does what it does well. diablo is obviously very dated now, but if they can just make a few improvements and generally polish things up i think it will be good. the problem with traditional roguelikes is that they are an interface nightmare and too hard to get into. diablo has always been very easy to get into but has an extra layer of DEPTH that may not compare to roguelikes, but is pretty good.

perhaps it's the latest game 'fashion' lately for games to go back to the old school. Diablo III hasn't progressed and is still the old school hack/slash, Megaman 9 is back in 8-bit graphics, Starcraft II hasn't evolved much and neither has Street Fighter IV. They all seem to be sticking with the old.

what about NO BRIGHT ENVIRONMENTS? i remember lut gholein being in bright daylight.

what about NO BRIGHT ENVIRONMENTS? i remember lut gholein being in bright daylight.

yes but there was the quest where everything was dark that was kind of cool???

I tried to play Diablo 2 a year ago but I couldn't get into it at all. It was just too dated................... I don't know why but I've had the same feeling with Fallout 2. Now that the formula is getting updated I guess that could help me enjoy the diablo franchise more.

Seriously? I played Diablo 2 start to finish with a druid a few months ago and I think it was more fun than ever. It was just such a solid, well made game.

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7807/itshouldrh5.jpg
(not mine but I agree)

i think it might have more to do with the fact that each of these games have rabidly old-fashioned fanbases who would probably CRY BLOODY MURDER at change than it actually being a fashion.

this and video games cost as much as movies to develop now.

How much cooler would this all be if they announced Lost Vikings III

someday...

yeah, i'm a fan. this is pretty cool.

it looks pretty fun, the bosses and stuff look pretty cool... its clearly super early in development, so can't say much about it, but the environments look nice and maybe could be darkened a bit to go for that diablo 1 vibe... i'm curious to see how much they WOW-ify it with the questing/multiplayer aspects.

the game appeals to people for a few reasons. especially compared to MMORPGS...

- ridiculously simple to pick up: straight forward plot that is as deep as you want to make it through backstory in NPCs and environments, but fundamentally: you need to kill diablo. controls are incredibly basic with basically just two mouse clicks and the occasional holding shift.

- randomized exploration/replayability - lots of classes, diverse classes that play the game differently. Tons of randomization and modifiers.

- straight forward controls get more complex with online play and pvp... especially in d2, pvp was a huge draw for me until it went to hell (lol!!) with hacks and exploits. The series has always been a solid mix between strategy, gear and reflex. The hack'n'slash appeal is quite different from the MMO feel.

I could go on, but yeah, these games basically get addicting because of the online factor. PVP and item-hoarding, trading, etc, has always been the best part of diablos (even the first one). Some people want deep immersion in the plot and universe. Other people want cool gear, a fun combat system, and thousands of things trying to kill you.

How is this not anything but a fully 3d Diablo 2?

Have they said if it will be pay to play or not?

They said they where using battlenet, right? Yeah... it's free.

yeah okay i just watched the GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE or w/e and it actually looks pretty uninteresting.  maybe i will still play it because if you watch someone playing the first two, they both look pretty goddamn uninteresting too, but yeah.  i have no idea why you guys are like OHGOD!!! *CUMS IN PANTS* over what appears to be another completely generic pc dungeon crawler!  even the visuals aren't wildly interesting.

seriously i am always astounded by the shit that ends up getting RABID COVERAGE from gaming sites/magazines.

yeah but diablo made the generic pc dungeon crawler genre popular. It isn't even about the generic dungeon crawling. (more on this later)

Have they said if it will be pay to play or not?

Yes.

It's b.net.

b.net = free.

ok so i don't have to quote everyone

A lot of people are getting caught up on the fact its a GENERIC DUNGEON CRAWLER. Or it looks more of the same as Diablo. Well yeah, it does, because Diablo is something different from all these other dungeon crawlers. At its heart, it is fairly generic, yes, and Marcus mentioned things like Nethack, Dwarf Fortress, and such, and yet this isn't a good comparison. While Diablo has rougelike elements, it isn't a roguelike. The thing you have to realize is, is Diablo is a dungeon crawler yes, but there is so much more to it then that. Diablo basically invented the idea of quests in random dungeons (BESIDES GO FIND CHALICE AT BOTTOM OF DUNGEOn...AND CAME BACK TO TOP...) that still integrated to a world lore (Diablo actually has a pretty expansive lore, even from just the games. This is something tons of dungeon crawlers and rougelikes lack.), with deep customization (no, it isn't the same level of customization as DF so don't even go comparing them) by adding the idea of SOCKETABLE ITEMS and RUNE KEY WORDS and ITEM SETS that provide bonuses as amounts of that set are matched. It seems really hard to notice this, but Diablo invented those things and brought them to the genre. No game had those things before it, and it brought a new level of depth to the genre. The next thing it brought was a deep multiplayer experience, cooperative and competitive, with trading, runs, multiple ways to play, and to add to this, D2 added classes that meshed with each other. They all flow nicely together and while they can be good in single player, a lot of them are better in multiplayer and with certain other classes as well. Before, Dungeon Crawlers and Rougelikes were largely single player experiences. On top of this, the character classes actually had archetypes within the archetype. Before Diablo, all character classes were just WHAT THEY WERE in these genres. D2 has FIRE sorc, ELECTRIC SORC, etc. Divergent skill trees were a crazy addition of customization to the genre. There's all these things that I think in retrospect we take for granted and go OH BOY JUST ANOTHER GENERIC DUNGEON CRAWLER, and yet Diablo did most of the stuff you are basically calling generic (ie: item sets, etc) first, and/or popularized it. And none of the Diablo clones have really touched on these points, or came even close to realizing them in near the same way. Diablo 3 even adds more to this, with enchantments, respecs (the designer mentioned it being likely if they do skill trees again), adventures (random scripted events in random areas), more touched on classes (the Witch Doctor and Barb both seem to be enhanced and more complete classes compared to its D2 counterparts or close based counterparts), speeding up the gameplay by removing the potion necessity so much making the game more based on skills, and just simply engaging the player more. A few of these things (enchantments, respecs) are things WoW and other games have done first, yes, but they will be implemented in a way that continues to benefit the Diablo community, which is very much so a community of trading, set collection, and min/maxing. And its that community that still persists through this "generic dungeon crawler" because of these things, and remains to be fairly sizeable (has more people on it than on WC3 atm) all over the world (though yes, mainly France).

I've never played it, but it sounds like a mixture of Titan Quest and NWN. So, should I buy Diablo 3 it because the first in the series was the first generic dungeon crawler?