Skill Runes
You can use a skill one way for a long time, but then you use a rune and suddenly the skill can change completely.  For example, the Witch Doctor’s fire bats start as a cone with limited range but with the first rune you send out one big bat that does considerable damage and flies a bit further.  Upgrading the poison dart turns it into a 3 shot burst.  We like the added, and much needed, diversity.

Global Stash
Your stash (treasure chest in town) is the same for all of your characters.  Transfer items to other characters you play easily and stay organized.  This is a simple but great change from the way Diablo 2 kept characters on the same account very separate.

Crafting (so far)
It’s nice to have an alternative to selling all the magic items you can’t use.  Salvaging magic items yields materials used to craft upgrades with random stats.  In a way, it’s like gambling.  Crafting is also a money sink.  We have no idea how well the crafted items will scale through difficulties, but if they remain very competitive with drops it’s a nice addition to the game.

Individual Loot
This has been a real joy.  There isn’t a rush to pick up items when they drop.  There isn’t this nagging fear that you might miss something.  If something drops, it’s yours and you don’t have to worry about being too greedy or thinking about others.  Sounds totally selfish, but it works for Diablo 3.  It’s also mandatory given the RMT system — can you imagine the drama if something worth $20 dropped and it was a race to see who picked it up?

Convenience and Improvements to Ease of Use

There’s a minimap so you don’t have a map open all the time in your face. Joining friends is really straight forward and quick via the friends list.  The Banner system lets you instantly join friends by teleporting right to them.  That annoying stamina bar is gone. Taking up inventory space with a book of town portals and identify is gone, and it’s harder to quickly escape via TP.  Putting points into stats has been eliminated — let’s face it, there was really only one best way to do it.  These are conveniences that don’t hurt the integrity of the game and, in our opinion, allow for more enjoyment.

We Dislike…

Worthless White Loot
The very fact that you can have an entire inventory full of items and have the entire sum of their gold value be worth less than a single stack of gold you pick up off the ground is aggravating. It becomes a chore to keep white items from clogging up valuable inventory space.

Jennifer Hale (Graev’s Personal pet peeve)
She sounds the same in everything!  I’m so tired of hearing her voice in every single game I play.  She’s on my list of over-used voice actors like Nolan North.  Maybe it’s weird, but I hear certain voice actors and they detract from the experience. Cue the Femshep defense force.

Constant Internet Connection
Downtime means you can’t play the game at all.  There isn’t a real single-player because every single minute you’re playing the game you’re connected to the Diablo 3 server as if you were playing a  MMO.  The added benefits of a chat window and “connected to the community” feel are negated by the annoyances.  Today is launch day and we should be able to play, but we’ve had four hours of downtime already.   Blizzard should have made it work like StarCraft II where you don’t get achievements if you’re offline.

Tiny Text
Text is too small and we can’t find a way to increase the size.  Playing on a TV across the room makes it hard to actually read.

A little easy so far…
So far the game has been faceroll easy.  I haven’t used a single Health Potion (Graev) and we’ve only died once from user error (standing in bad stuff).  We’re definitely looking forward to getting out of normal difficulty and into Hell.

Center Keep of Eternal Battleground is huge and fun to siege!

I managed to get some play time in Guild Wars 2 today before succumbing to the 95% load screen hang; Having to Ctrl+alt+del out of the game and then having to restart the comp to recover wore me out after the fifth time.  Definitely performance issues during this event, but that’s the whole point of today. WvW was very, very laggy with massive framerate issues — everyone on ventrilo was complaining about it and I was getting < 10 FPS.

Found a Class I Love!

During the few hours I played around I tried an Elementalist for the first time and fell completely in love with the class.  I felt like a bender from Avatar with the four different elemental schools.  I could switch to fire, water, and air with one more school locked which I assume was earth.  Switching to the different schools gave me different abilities for each element.  Switching weapons gave me additional different abilities.  I tried three different weapons, with three different school, giving me more abilities to mess around with than any other GW2 class I’ve tried.

I managed to play a little bit of WvW before I simply couldn’t handle the framerate issues anymore. The Elementalist is really fun to play because I can target my AOE’s everywhere.  Using my water staff attacks/heals was useful to my team.  The air speed buff was great utility.  I felt useful and had fun, which is all I can ask for in a class.

I’m afraid of Elementalist being overplayed… but I was reminded that GW2 has no raids, individual loot, and little need of balancing classes within a guild.  I can play whatever I want as long as I can get past the psychological effect of seeing my class everywhere.

Keep at night (Thanks to Eternity for the screenshot!)

Game Breaking Overflow

Overflow is still terrible.  Randomly being separated from my friends with no control over how I get back to them is unacceptable and game breaking.  ArenaNet must fix it so that group members can transfer to the same instance their group leader is in, or some other solution of bringing people together.

WvW Fun

Despite the lag, my friends and I went to the Eternal Battleground (center zone of the WvW) and contested the big keep in the center.  We took down the outer door, inner door, then had a massive battle against the red server on the ground floor.  We ended up being wiped, all 50 of our server there, because half our server went up the stairs to fight the boss and the other stayed on the floor.  It didn’t take long before we were overwhelmed and wiped.  Tons of fun!

Here is the fix that finally worked for Graev:

Fix #1

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services

Scroll down and find “Secondary Logon”

Right Click > Properties

Change it from ‘Disabled’ to ‘Automatic’

Run your Diablo 3 setup as administrator and it should quickly go through Updating Setup Files and bring you to an install screen.  Congratulations, your game now (hopefully) works!   If this solved your issue, spread it around.

Fix #2

Right click on the Diablo 3 setup file you downloaded via the Blizzard Downloader

Select Properties > Compatibility > Check Run this in Compatibility Mode for… > Choose Windows XP (Service Pack 3)  (Note: Does not work on Vista.)

Right Click the Icon, Run as Administrator.

Fix #3

Delete your C:\ProgramData\Battle.net folder.

Delete your C:\ProgramData\Blizzard Entertainment\Battle.net Cache folder.

Run the Downloader again, as administrator, and see if it gets past the “Updating Setup Files” window. If not, see Fix #1.

Fix #4 (Thanks Ron!)

This one worked for me: try and find the agent application in the battle.net folder (for example C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\battle.net\Agent). Start the agent application manually and after that start Diablo III setup file in your Diablo-III-8370-enGB-Installer folder. Good luck!

Fix #4a – Clarification for Fix 4 by GarytheOak

1. Run the diablo insall thing… let it get stuck.
2. Close it, and ctrl+alt+delete and end the “Agent” process.
3. Go to C/programdata/battle.net/agent and run the “Agent” executable
4. Run the diablo install thing
5. WAIT! it will get stuck for a min or so and then work

Fix #5 (Thanks SCH)

NOTE: This Fix is experimental. Many are reporting success.  Proceed with Fix #5 at your own risk,

“I followed all of the posted fixes and none of them were working for me. An user on the battle.net forums posted his version of the C:\ProgramData\Battle.Net folder and uploaded it. All you have to do is replace his version with your old version, and hopefully everything should work (as it did for me).” -SCH from comments

http://www.gamefront.com/files/21699449/D3+-+Battle.net+Files.zip

 Fix #5 Additional Notes: If you get a decryption error it means you probably didn’t finish the download.  Check the folder you downloaded your files into for any that say .PART as the presence of a .PART file means you haven’t finished downloading.  decryption error might also indicate a corrupt download.  Run the downloader in the same directly you chose originally and it should fix the files automatically and/or finish downloading.

I will add more fixes as I find them.  Feel free to share one that works for you.

Overall, I like the idea.  I play MMORPG’s to play with other people.  I want to see others around me experiencing the same thing.  I’m one of those weird people that has more fun when I know I’m sharing an experience with someone else.  When I come across a quest I can’t complete alone, the whole point of playing a MMO is to find someone else to help.  If no one else is available, my enjoyment plummets.

The key to Cross-Realm Zones is they’re coming at a time when the game is older.  If this system was introduced earlier in WoW’s life, or didn’t work only on the realms suffering from population deficiency, then I would be worried about server identity issues and the community being disjointed.  The reality facing a game like WoW is that there isn’t much of a community for the lowbies to participate in while playing in empty zones.

Graev and I were talking about this and the only real downside we could think of was a ganking issue, or if I actually don’t want anyone else around me while leveling up.    If a level 85 wants to roam around zones for low-level prey, now it will be easier to find zones populated with poor defenseless lowbies.  Exploiting this system is something Blizzard will have to watch.

In my opinion, this system would actually help breathe new life into WoW for many players.  In fact, I hope SWTOR, Rift, and other games struggling with population issues in lower level (and higher level) zones adopt Cross-Realm Zones.

Quest for Glory collection is now available on GoG.com!  I like to believe that I single-handedly made this happen.  Forty-three days ago I launched my “twitter campaign” (@Graevyard) and today victory AND Quest for Glory 1-5 are MINE!

You must buy these games now. Right now!

Many of you are familiar with Demon’s Souls.  If you’re connected to the internet while playing you can occasionally see ghost-like images of other players in the same area, a bloodstain showing where someone died and the ability to see how it happened.  You can also leave messages for others to find in their single-player games.  There’s even a competitive play mode where you can actually enter someone’s single-player game and become a black phantom to try and kill them.

Dragon’s Dogma, a game releasing May 22, is doing something really cool with asynchronous events.  There’s an extremely difficult dragon boss called the “Ur-Dragon”.  Via Xbox Live or the Playstation Network, players combine their attacks, in their single-player game, on the Ur-Dragon until it is finally killed globally.  The player who deals the killing blow gets some extra rewards, but everyone who participates in their own single-player game gets rare items and all who participate get their name in some kind of hall of fame.

It won’t be long before players form guilds in their single-player experiences yet somehow work with other players.  Imagine a game like Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning where players might be able to come together at a guild hall in a city but when they leave the doors they’re back in their single-player World, or a global auction house available in the city of your single-player game.   There are lots of neat ideas, and asynchronous events are just the beginning of entirely new types of games.  It gets my imagination going to think about how other games or features from games can combine together.

You can watch the Ur-Dragon video after the jump.

In Open-PvP when players come across one another it is common to instantly try and kill each other. I start thinking about game theory; Will that person attack me? What if I don’t attack them first and they get the drop on me?  In almost every game I don’t think about anything beyond the act of engaging in PvP.  What if the consequences for being bad really did alter the way the game played out?  What if I had to think even further about what my actions would mean for how I would be allowed to continue participating in the society or community of that virtual world? Suddenly we’re talking about more than the choice of being bad — we see a choice to be good.

In a virtual world you could have people that attack anyone and steal their stuff, but there would be a real consequence for those players to avoid.  Then the criminal players have to either be really competent and savvy, or pay the price.  A bounty might be set on their head.  Guards might get called.  There might even be a player jail or penal colony island the players are sent to if they are caught.   A simpler system might banish that player from territories owned by the faction the good player belonged to, and the criminal player would become shunned.  I see a faction system like EQ working well with that system.

The hardest part is getting players to understand the system, recognize the consequences and risks are in place to create a purpose for the opposite side to exist.  This isn’t about making something less fun, but making something real.  Being a “Rogue” can have more meaning than “I use daggers.”

I get really excited when I think about virtual worlds and how there’s more to them than high scores, what items you have, or winning at something.  When I create scenarios for people to actually participate in the lifeblood of a game my imagination takes me places I wish modern games could go.

Unlike its predecessor Warhawk, Starhawk has a single-player campaign.  We’ll update this with our impressions once we’ve finished the campaign, but for now we’ll say that the single-player feels very similar to multiplayer in that the player is given multiple ways to tackle a problem.

Multiplayer is the heart and soul of Starhawk.  Players can compete in 16v16 matches of CTF, zone control, and other common multiplayer modes.  These maps are ginormous to accommodate Hawks, the mechwarrior/transformer/Warhawk machines that define the gameplay in Starhawk.  The gameplay hasn’t changed much from the Warhawk days; Players fly around in highly maneuverable Hawks, on the ground in tanks and vehicles, or on foot with a very familiar multiplayer shooter feel.

Build & Battle is what makes Starhawk unique.   As you play you earn rift energy that you can spend like currency to call in drops from the radial Build & Battle menu.  You can call in walls, turrets, supply depots, vehicle bays, and change the course of battle through strategically utilizing rift energy to give you and your team the advantage.

Gameplay is chaotic, unpredictable, and crazy polished.  Flight feels amazing, gunplay is solid, and the Build & Battle system makes each map feel different because players may defend their flag differently or build up their base differently every match.  There’s so much being done in Starhawk that we wish would be brought to the rest of the shooters on all platforms.  (Part of me dies thinking about how awesome this would be on PC. -Keen)

Read on for more of our review!

In an awesome launch day announcement, the Starhawk team declared that all map packs will be FREE!

Back in the Warhawk days, we saw a lot of division amongst our players whenever we’d release a new set of maps.  Some people would have them, some wouldn’t, and it ended up fracturing our community.  But during the Starhawk development cycle, the teams at Sony and LightBox sat down with the intention of addressing this problem in the most simple and elegant way possible. And that led to our decision that any future map pack releases would be offered for free, to keep players together and keep our community happy.

Paid maps are one of the main reasons we stop playing games like Call of Duty.  If we don’t buy the map pack, we have this psychological impairment telling us that we’re not playing the game to its fullest.

We have a couple complaints about the game so far.  First, the load times are absolutely atrocious.  It takes forever to load a map, and our PS3 even locked up once while loading.  Second, we experienced a lot of slowdown when playing split-screen online multiplayer which is likely being caused by the game being rendered twice.  It wasn’t unplayable, but it was bad at times.

Overall

Starhawk is one of the better PS3 exclusives we’ve played.  They’ve improved a lot from Warhawk and given us several reasons to wish this was available on other platforms.  The Build & Battle system makes matches even more dynamic by putting base construction in the players’ hands, the ‘feel’ of the game makes playing effortless, gameplay is constant action, and nothing else out there feels as good as flying a Hawk. We give Starhawk a solid 4.5/5.

Developers are terrified of upsetting or frustrating the player.

Somehow this idea got out there that if something takes effort or thought, and can’t be done with brute force, it must be broken or unintentional.  Developers are spoon-feeding us solutions and giving us powers to take shortcuts everywhere.  Quests are almost at the point of completing themselves.

Fast travel is everywhere; Guild Wars 2 lets players teleport to towns that are literally less than two minutes walking distance away. I prefer a large world that conveys a sense of size.  I remember playing EQ, or even Vanguard and thinking how the sheer distance alone ruled out a choice to go somewhere.

Somehow the “holy trinity” concept of healers, tanks, crowd-control/dps (depending on what generation you started MMOs) is being shunned as inconvenient or a frustration to players.  Everyone heals, everyone can do damage, no one is better than anyone else at any role, warriors can be archers and archers can be rogues because, supposedly, players are frustrated by class roles.

Developers are scared of punishing players with mechanics. 

MMOs continue to move away from death penalties.  I think it’s safe to say that death penalties have found their stride as nothing more than re-spawn mechanics.  You die, you have to respawn — and sometimes no more than 30 seconds away at a conveniently placed in areas as not to, once again, frustrate the player with a walk.  Players are too cavalier with death now.  This is death!  Death should be the absolute and ultimate negative end result.

I remember EQ’s death penalty; If you weren’t careful, you could actually lose your corpse.  You avoided areas you shouldn’t be in, and you acquired skill to avoid death.  If you died, you lost experience.  You would even be sent back to your bind point which may be over an hour away.  Say what you will about the severity of the penalty, but it deterred death.

Group dynamics are almost gone entirely.  Developers are scared that players will perceive the need to player with others as a punishment.  We went from heavy group-based gameplay to solo friendly play where grouping could still be considered more rewarding, to a system where if the solo player does not earn experience faster than the groups they’re being oppressed.

The least common denominator is dictating the direction MMOs are going. 

Games from these trends breed worse players. MMOs are turning into metaphorical Wii games aimed directly at the ‘waggle’ casual market.  As players become worse at MMOs, and they do from these tends, developers become ever more fearful of striking out and trying something new.  You wonder why there isn’t innovation, or when someone tries something new it fails?  We’re just over two years shy of a decade in this mentality.  Millions — MILLIONS — of players have been brought into this mess and they don’t know any better.  The ignorant see a single step towards the past as some horrific or uncouth act.

In every other genre, mass market appeal games are looked down upon by the players, but somehow MMO success has been attached to a mass-appeal mentality and it’s being directly supported by the players.  I’m not going to suggest any sort of call to action like  ‘vote with your wallet’  because bad game design sorts itself out in the end (see: The 3 Monther).  I strongly believe we can create positive buzz around what we do want to see, and as a result make developers more aware and more inclined to create those games to obtain a greater share of wallet.

The point I’m trying to make here is one of simple recognition and information.  Recognize what’s happening and determine if that’s what you want.  I believe  a richer and more enjoyable experience can be had by playing a MMO that instills in the player a sense of accomplishment, social interaction, and connection to the world.  That’s the direction I want to go.