It isn't D2 for me either, I played D2 actively for over four years, and for much of that time it was many hours per week.
I'm now over and DONE with D3, a month after release. It's a sucky game, and it's let me down for the last time. After I run into another pack of lethal, unkillable random elites I deleted all my toons, saving my level 1 placeholder barb for last so that I would not be able to undelete them again should I change my mind, but right now I'm just so pissed at this game I'd as soon never play it again ever. Can't believe I waited this long for such a terrible turd of a followup.
Can't say that all that much of my faith in Blizzard remains after fucking panda-wow and now this. Clearly, the allure of shitloads of cash influx from the real-money auctionhouse dictated large sections of gameplay. I hoped before the game's release it would not affect the game, but clearly I was wrong. I also hoped that the always-on DRM wouldn't hinder people either and clearly I was wrong there as well. It's been one bungling after the other, realms down for maintenance hour after hour one day, and then the same shit again the very next day and so on.
I'm terribly disappointed.
The game itself is not bad, if you don't think of it as a Diablo game, but when you do, I only find problems with it compared to the previous iterations of the game.
Even for Battlenet users -I like SP the most but anyways-, the social aspect of the game is worse, in 2012! When Diablo 2 came out the Internet was much rare those days.
Now in 2012 people don't seem to talk in the net. There aren't games with a description anymore -Baal run, act 1 norm, act 1 start, cows nightmare-, etc etc.
For a game that is so user UNFRIENDLY and want to boast about an only-online connection every time, that says a lot about this turd.
You don't make friends because of the clumsy, slow and confusing chat, and when you try to chat with friends sometimes they don't reply because of that.
1) Resistances system is not as comprehensive as in Diablo 2.
2) There is a lot less run speed on items. (I loved a Vigor Paladin with run items in Diablo 2)
3) Twinking characters has become boring cause the ilvl requirements are taken straight from WoW, not from Diablo. Not to mention the boring uniques.
4) Characters, bosses, etc, talk too much. This is unusual for a Diablo game.
5) No stats and skills allocation is also a big problem. I still remember
Silent_Buddha complaining about this when I thought it wasn't bad, and now I understand him completely.
6) Starting over with a new build is impossible, makes no sense, there aren't builds. Just characters and then you choose while Blizzard unlock everything for you automatically.
7) I got a lot more excitement from certain drops -runes, uniques, etc- in Diablo 2 than for anything I've found in Diablo 3 so far.
8) The story, the cinematics, were incredible in Diablo 2 compared to this, an example of bad writing.
9) They destroyed The Butcher, one of the most charismatic, fearsome characters of Diablo. It's so sad seeing that now with better graphics... how pathetic the Butcher is, he is no fearsome, imposing anymore. He was both in the original Diablo with its graphics.
I am also disappointed, very much so. I wanted to play yesterday but I didn't even fell like it in the end, I left in the main screen after downloading the last patch.
I wonder how the "new" Blizzard vomited Diablo 3, such a boring barf it is. Puke!
