Did the D3 team cater too strongly to the WoW player base?der=0>

[Murtaugh]

I've played both for many years, and I have to say... No. Not even close.

Most people seem to be interpreting a change in mechanics that are similar to WoW's, to be "catering" to a "different class of gamers." That is just ignorance. The developers saw a system that they liked, and believed would work as a whole, much better for the general community, and provide a simpler learning curve. There's a lot to be learned when it comes to the actual game-play in Diablo 3; it was, and is, in their best interests to simplify some of these mechanics in order to let the player focus on developing his/her skills and combat proficiency, which is what 99% of the game is. Combat. Even when you're searching for those items/farming gold.

[spearv]

No. I've been subscribed to WOW since 2005 and D3 really doesn't feel like WOW at all. There are a few similar systems, but plenty of good games borrow from other good games.

[TheReadMenace]

I, too, wonder what topics/areas Snicker thinks may point to such a trend. Knowing that might change my opinion.

That said, my answer would be no. And it's not because I do/don't see certain D3 mechanics not resembling a WoW mechanics, or vice versa.

I say no because I don't think the D3 devs had WoW in mind as they created their game. Instead, I see them looking at the gaming audience as a whole. They wanted their game to have as much draw from the generic populace as could be possible. They want their game to be addictive. They want their game to last through the ages. And as a result, they didn't try and rehash a game that's already been done. Instead they tried to come up with systems and mechanics that are easy to understand, allow for ease of use, and tried to make their game as friendly for casual browser-based gamers as they do for gamers that call themselves "hardcore" and look down on noobs.

I think, however, that by trying to accomidate such a wide, varied group... well, in a way, their best reference in culling in random people is WoW. WoW brought people to gaming who probably never considered themselves gamers. Their systems, that easy to play but difficult to master structure, it brings the people, gets a death grip on them, and never lets them go.

So really, to say that they've catered to WoW players isn't accurate. Really, they've catered to the people that might not play many games in general... which has that cross-over effect of making it look like they're going for WoW players when really they're just trying to get EVERYONE involved. It just so happens that those same people make up a significant portion of the WoW players.

[spearv]

In that both are Blizzard games and fantasy RPGs, not to mention the 1.2m players who got D3 for free, there is quite a lot of cross-over in the player base.

[ertyba]

Yes.

Blizzard did some great PR amongst Wow enthusiast who are fed up with being ripped off. The word was already out amongst wow people and there is a sunder in the wow community, one side wants the wow people leaving to D3 to come back, and the other side just hates wows guts. There has been a hughe downside on revenue in wow the last years as people start to leave wow, so the thing to make them come back to wow is to make a game that is so crappy that all who ever plpayed wow will automaticaly go back playing wow. This you will start seeing in some months, how many people wil go back to wow after being fed up upon D3.
D3 is just a mirage for three things.
1 . to stop people form bying into Torchlight 2 and the future torchligt mmo. ( that is threathening blissards enterprise )
2. To lure back wow players that has quit wow.
3. To if people dont come back to wow, make them pay a lot of money on a **** game, and to force them to item hunt on auction house and buying a lot of gold for real money.

The things that are obviuosly rubbing WOW players the right way and true d2 players the wrong way is the followning.

DPS hysteria.
Floating Dmg text on screen.
Safe loot.
Exactly the same item generation (color no need to identyfy etc).
Auction house.
Rage instead of mana etc.
Same type of skillsystem (learning on level and administring hotkey on bar).
Exactly the same level tier. (60)
Heads up help on quests.
Instant travel between end dungeons and the enterance.
Respawn at dungeon (death spot) withoute loss of items.
Lore is very similar. Isnt the big bloated guys you meet that are blowing up identical to the abomination of warcratft?
Crafting weapons, nearly identical to wow.

And i have just been playing diablo for 1 hour, thats 1 hour too much.
There is one thing that i hated the most in WOW that has skipped D3, its the binds on equipped and binds on pickup.
In WOW this mindblowing implementation was introduced to keep people playing the game day in and day out, because they had to earn the item themself, and share the loot of 1 item amongst 20 persons.
So item bind on pickup helps blissard to gain revenue, by making everyone hunting for years after the items.
On the contrary will item bind on pickup in D3 make money loss and revenue loss for blissard, since the plot is to make people buy items in auction house for a whopping 10% tax revenue. And to keep that in mind, people will need to feed the system with real money endlessly.
Imagine how many times a item traded hands in D2, diminishing turnover yes, but on the other hand a hughe inflation will result in D3 as in any other open market system with increased pruduction. That will say that items that cost 1 million gold, will cost 10 million gold the next month. 10% tax revenue wont keep the prices down, contrary it will get people to put more and more real money into the system, thus creating a inflation.

Well , the answer is, yes on the poll.

[ertyba]

Murthaugh

Woot.

1.Since whne did Gold farming even become a word in Diablo games?

2.99% of diablo 3 isnt combat, its items, thats the only thing that redefines your charathcer from the rest.
In diablo 2 there was builds , that even with the same items made your charather totaly diffrent!
The playability in the game was manly made by getting you to play the charatcher and making a new one when wanting a new style, this making you relive the diablo 2 saga!
Diablo 3 is all aboute items, nothing else, and all aboute you buying gold for real life money to get those items in the Auction house.

3. Diablo 3 is catering the wow players, there is no resembelance between D3 and D2 as a sequel more than name and the barbarian class (who aint no barbarian but a wow warrior on dope). There is a hughe resembelance between D3 and wow and Wc3. To claim that 99% of diablo 3 is aboute combat is to claim its fun to see every other player doing the same thing as you, clicking in the same rune and having exactly the same stat skills as you are, exactly the same level (wich was not a common sight in d2). So that the only thing that differs the charathers are the items, not even skill comes into place in D3. Its a cooldown based game !!! Diablo was not a cooldown game.

Diablo 2 is a hack and slash rpg adventure, focusing on diversety and uniq charathers.
Diablo 3 is a sit back and point game, focusing on items making the nearly exactly same charathers (items being some % on the suffix away from each other ).

Remember that in D2 you could beat Hell and The ubers with "common" gear and unoptimized skillset, if u where a good team or had a good skill base.
Remember that in D3 you will never be able to complete any task in infernal or any "ubers" with less than top notch gear, they wil make it IMPOSSIBLE to beat if u lack the top notch items.

[spearv]

I feel I'm suffering a troll here, but for those that don't know better,

WOW still makes huge amounts of cash. For the vast majority D3s development WOW was gaining players, not losing (and as of the last quarter, didn't lose any players) and making windfalls from microtransactions on sparkle ponies.

W.r.t. other MMOs, WOW has seen off LOTRO, DDO, Warhammer, Conan, SWTOR, Aion and a few others, I doubt a TL2 MMO registers on their radar.

The level cap in WOW hasn't been 60 since Jan 2006. Most WOW players didn't experience that as end-game (most = the vast majority).

Gold farming was important in D1. Eng-game items were purchasable from Griswald and Wirt, not to mention stat elixirs and spellbooks.

I'll trundle off now, I'm on a hiding to nothing judging by the results of the poll!

[thefranklin]

I believe they made the game much closer to wow than D2. Why change up the resistance mechanic? The resistance mechanic in D2 (for players) worked just fine and was simple. In wowd3, now you get some phantom number which changes based on the level of who you are fighting. The defense mechanic also copied wows idea, when d2s was just fine. The mechanic was fine, the implementation needed a little fine tuning. Same for getting rid of the stats, and Blizz's justification is that no one did anything different in d2. Great, crappy design of a good system relieves the users of said good system. All their own doing.

And on top of that, they took wows level and monster levels and implemented those. I didn't want to see d3 have a level cap of 60 with item levels topping out at 63. When d3 increases the cap the first blue you find will be 100x better than all of the legendary / elite rare gear you have.

The number one reason they catered to wow is: easily attainable level cap. D2 was built around higher level equals better, but not mandatory. You didn't have to reach 99 to wear decent items. It was also close to impossible to attain (I know it was easier in 1.09) In wow, level cap is mandatory. All gear is magically 100x better the second you tick the last level. And then you have nothing really to do. No reason to do 20 more runs to get another level. No stat or skill points to be rewarded, what is the difference? wowd3.

I am glad they did not add in a global cooldown. I hope endgame isn't about managing your cooldowns the whole time, not that it is overly complex, but that it is boring. I want using different skills to be what you have to manage, which if you played a lot of d2 outisde of the blizz sorc and hammerdin you got a chance to do that. But wowd3 threatens us with the 6 skill limit. Oh well, we can wait for the expansion to increase that.

[spearv]

I don't think using similar systems is the same as catering to the crowd, there's a crucial difference.

If Blizzard had implemented a requirement for tanks and healers or that the best loot dropped from bosses which required a 10 man group, if we had to pick herbs in order to craft and the like, perhaps I'd say those are things catering to the WOW audience, by giving them something immediately, obviously familiar. (and, fwiw, if they implement something like a 10v10 capture the flag style of PvP, I think that would be awesome. And no doubt people would cry "WSG" without considering the 934875 capture the flag games that existed long before WSG or WOW).

The mechanics of item drops or resistances aren't catering to anyone, does anyone play WOW because it has a hit table? Do people love D3 because it has dimishing returns on resists but linear scaling on effective health? I don't think so. Was D2 a great game because of its block mechanic, is that what made the game fun?

The cynic in me says that if D3 was so similar to D2, we'd be having a conversation in a thread with the title "is D3 just reskinned D2?".

[SnickerSnack]

Thanks for the responses.

I've never played WoW, but I got the impression from reading on this forum (and others) that D3 bears a lot of resemblance to WoW. The idea that Blizz made D3 to cast as a wide a net as possible makes sense to me and makes more sense than catering specifically to WoW players, although it would seem that the two might look the same anyway. But, then again, I haven't played WoW at all and I haven't played any MMO in years.

As for what I originally meant: is D3 so similar to WoW that it detracts from its status as a sequel to D2 in some way?