I think the graphics look great! I mean come on guys-- remember pong? Remember Kangaroo for the Atari? Q-bert? Perspective makes me appreciative.

I hate how everyone shrugs off graphics. Of course gameplay is important. Mechanics are important, but graphics are just as important. Without one of those 3, a game is shit.

In this day and age, when technology is so widespread and available, graphics are inherently important to enjoying a game. I mean, there's a reason why graphics have been refined and advanced, whereas gameplay and mechanics are essentially the same, give or take a few ideas here and there. There hasn't been a single game in the past decade that's really set the bar for gameplay or mechanics, where there has been for graphics. Yes, I am aware of Wii being mildly intuitive with it's controller, and Rock Band / Guitar Hero did interesting things w/ technologies already prevalent in other parts of the world (Asia, primarily.)

Imo, all 3 elements are important for a successful game. I mean, we're not drooling all over Gears of War because of the roadie cam or the duck and cover system are we? No not totally, it's because it's a game that's nailed all aspects, and for Gears of War 2, are building on top of it, so we're assured another great gaming experience. The sum of all it's parts created something that in whole, was a great gaming experience -- all around.

Remember folks, there's a reason we're not playing consoles w/ 8-bit or 16-bit graphics that "nailed" gameplay elements way back then. One of the things I've been wanting for the 360 or PS3 was a new platformer styled Mega Man, Contra, Castlevania, or Metroid with High-Definition next-generation graphics. Those games were so great, the game could only be boosted by graphics. Will it happen? Doubtful.

Graphics are certainly a part of the "well-rounded" gaming experience.

People will play a good game with crappy graphics (Diablo II is a prime example). People will NOT play a crappy game with good graphics of which there is innumerable examples.

End of discussion.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Yeah because good graphic and good gameplay are mutually exclusive the same way good RPG/Sandbox games and CO-OP are.

Nobody said they were, my example merely served to illustrate how important each of the elements are to a gaming experience. Like anyone, I love to have my cake and eat it too.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

With all the rush of Diablo 3 about lately, I've heard innumerable people claim "If only Diablo 2 would go past 800x600 resolution I'd play it again. Looks like shit though."

But at the time, Diablo 2 was a great looking game. Shrug. I still stand by my opinion. To some credit though, I think people WILL play shitty games and tolerate the bad gameplay if the graphics and effects are cool, that stupid John Woo game on the 360 is a good example of this. Ha. Again, not the rule, but merely an exception to it.

No, D2's resolution was sub-standard when it came out. In 2000, having a game that had a max resolution of 640x480 was WEAK. The expansion only pushed it up to 800x600, which was still inferior but at least an improvement.

I still remember the disappointment my friends and I had when we saw how poor that was. Notwithstanding, the graphics/artwork were still quality, just very low res.

Not to be contrary, but I dunno about that.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

In 2000, more than half of the users had their video settings at 800x600. To think, 640x480 would seem pretty normal for a video game, because who really runs games at their native resolution on a monitor? I know some games even today, I have troubles running in 1680x1050...

2000 is pretty far back. Ha

Fuck, EQ didn't go above the 800x600 line until Luclin(end of 2002/early 2003). The see through UI was 800x600 but all of the others were 640x480.

Diablo 2 doesn't look bad, even now it's not bad looking, it just has a small resolution. Of course it's dated, it's 8 fucking years old.

No one seriously worries about Blizzard making a bad game, they just don't. Same with Bioware, I don't worry about them making a shitty game either. So graphics do begin to take a larger role, because we want the nicest thing to look at we can since we're it's entirely probable we're going to play the shit out of it.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

The max resolution of Diablo II, in the year 2000, was 640x480.

The max resolution of the Diablo II expansion, in 2001, was 800x600.

My comment was about the original D2 game. In 2000, 640x480 was abysmal. But yes, the artwork itself was good.

I will order this game when it's available for order. Blizzard hasn't fail me and I do not see they will anytime soon. But StarCraft 2 probably comes out first.

In 2000 most people in EQ were still using 640x480. Maybe you remember those years differently, but that was still fairly common.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Since when has Blizzard does something truly innovative, anyway? I don't think there's any argument that WoW did anything especially new, besides polish it into a generally better MMORPG experience. WarCraft 2 or Diablo were probably close to being something new, but neither real-time RTS's nor Action RPGs were incredibly new concepts at the time.

They take good concepts, and polish them into incredible games, but that doesn't necessarily mean pure innovation from scratch. The same will be true about SC2 and Diablo 3, who gives a crap if they aren't screwing with a great formula for fun?

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As far as the graphics are concerned, I dunno if you would call them completely WoW, but I'm sure we can agree that Diablo 3 looks a hell of a lot more colorful than D2. That's not good or bad, but as you can see from the comparison screenshots unless you're blind, there's a difference conceptually that is similar to WoW. Why should it be any surprise? Some of the same artists were probably there.

It's not a big deal to me either, the game looks great already.

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5 classes... still turns me off a bit. Yes, theoretically 500 bazillion different specs adding to supposed "uniqueness", but there's a certain difference when you have unique classes with different concepts about how they are played and leveling them up from 1. I'm not saying 20 classes, but 7-8 to start with and 2 in an expansion wouldn't be a bad thing IMO. I honestly think you could avoid the potentially class skill overlapping issue if you were careful about it and put in a lot of thought to each class' various roles(multiple roles, mind you), and you could still have 3-4 diff talent specs per class no problem. Blizzard is far too cautious in this regard, and like in WoW they just tend to slap the key abilities on a small number of classes when they could easily spread the wealth among different classes and add to unique possibilities.

Summary: Small amounts of overlapping doesn't hurt. Moderation is the key. Think about how many abilities they tweaked since Beta in WoW. Some of them in beta were INCREDIBLY obvious, like warrior chain-charge and uber MS. They put some thought into various class's talents and abilities, but just plain not enough. They leave a lot to be desired in that respect, so I'm not sure Blizzard is who we should be looking to when making the request for more classes. Even Sony was almost better at class/ability balance.

Ultra Summary: Remove Kalgan from any design teams.

As for Diablo 2, I tried going back to it the other day and I couldn't bear it. I'm not one to be picky about graphics, but it's absolutely horrible looking on any monitor bigger than 10 inches. I have a much bigger monitor than I did when I was playing EQ, so that's probably part of it. Completely pixelized.

Diablo 2 did one thing that is STILL far superior to *any* other Action RPG out there right now, and that is loot. It's amazing how much flavor that added to the game.

I ran straight back to Titan Quest after 45 minutes of unbearable pain. The gameplay... it's close between the two, but the ability to play 500 different class makeups in Titan Quest simply keeps me coming back for more. Yay for games with replayability.

History Lesson: Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty was released in 1992. Pretty much the next RTS (of note) to be released afterwards was Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. After that, Command & Conquer in the Summer of 1995 followed by Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness in Winter of the same year. Fast forward another 2 years and Total Annihilation (Sept 1997) comes out with 3D Units...only for Blizzard to be right there in March of 98 with Starcraft. 1998 would also see the 2 first RTS games in full 3D, Populous and Homeworld. We won't see any real leaps in this arena until 4 years later when Blizzard releases Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which has been labeled as the landmark game that saved the RTS genre from obscurity. WC3 introduced some of our favorite elements from other genres (Level based characters, inventories and usable items, epic storyline) while taking what existing titles had already done and enhancing them. Only thing I hated was Upkeep...not my favorite system.

You could even argue a similar timeline for WoW.

The point I've been trying to make is that Blizzard are never the ones to step up to the plate and actually start something new in any genre. They are the masters of coming into an existing genre, taking the good aspects of existing games (and typically leaving out the shitty parts), manipulating them and making them their own. They don't need to be innovative or original to make a great game.

And since we're all talking about it, compare the graphics engine of Diablo 2 to almost any other game released that same year...and you'll see Diablo 2 is kind of shitty in comparison. But that didn't matter, because the gameplay was great.

I know I'm starting to come off like a Blizzard fanboi but thats not my intent...but for fucks sake the game isn't even a week old as far as the public is concerned. We've seen 1 gameplay video and a handful of official information. Wait until either more videos or a playable demo comes out before chastising the damned thing.

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Blizzard is the proof that games focusing more on gameplay then cutting edge graphics will always be received better then games that are the other way around. Graphics age quickly, gameplay is immortal.

Now this is going way back for me, but what 'Action RPGs' predated Diablo? I can't recall there being very many.

People are quick to suggest that Blizzard has never been very innovative and that they simply refine concepts and genres but I don't think that's fair or very realistic. Does Valve get lumped in the same boat for following Wolfenstein and Doom?

Warcraft II put RTS games on the map and was leaps and bounds better than its competition, a hugely significant game.

World of Warcraft is just EQ gussied up right? Few tweaks to the UI, a bit better balance, easy right? If WoW is just simple refinement to the genre, why has so many other MMOs fallen flat on their face? I'm sorry but a little turtle wax does not make for a game which utterly dominates both those that came before it and those that came after it.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Zelda?

Zelda could be loosely thrown into this catagory, as well as any game that followed the Zelda formula. Diablo "could" stand out as an exception to the norm for Blizzard as no one had done an Action RPG in that style before.



Yes. Any FPS developed after Wolfenstein and Doom used both games as inspiration and worked off the existing model. Later, the creators of the previous games made new leaps with new games like Quake...then the cycle repeated itself.



That doesn't change the fact that Blizzard weren't the first to do it.



Give me a fucking break with this shit. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Blizzard all of a sudden said "Hey, we've got a new idea. How about a game where you have hundreds of thousands of people playing online together all at once in a persistent world? No ones done that before!". Wrong. Blizzard saw others like Origin (with Ultima Online), Sony (with Everquest), Turbine (with Asheron's Call), and Mythic (with Dark Age of Camelot) and decided to play their hand at the MMO game. Blizzard had an advantage by having an existing IP that they already owned and used it. They took their immensely successful Warcraft Franchise and followed the MMO model.

And they succeeded where others have failed numerous times because of the reasons I just mentioned. And they will continue to see success with WoW because they have done what no other company before them had done, they brought the MMO into your average home.

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They succeeded because World of Warcraft is simply a better game than any other MMO past or present. They've done it right. They have the right formula.

A portion of it may be because of brand recognition, but WoW didn't have 10 million players off the bat, dude.

World of Warcraft is as successful as it is because it is most accessible. Not exactly because it is a "better" game.

Absolutely.



I never said that it was an easy nor simple refinement, merely that it was a refinement on old concepts. What Blizzard did with WoW was pretty awesome, there's no question about that. But truly innovative? I'm just not seeing it. And like others said, something being successful does not make it better. How many comparisons to McDonald's do we have to make? A game being successful does not support your argument for any true innovation.

Of course, you're talking about a company there that is going to put Starbucks out of business. If you had said that 3 years ago you would have been laughed at. You should watch your metaphors.

Because McDonald's putting someone out of business means they're making a far superior and innovative product? Not sure what you're aiming at there, unless you're joking =p They can charge into a market and take it over without blinking an eye just as easily as Microsoft can.

If you're suggesting I should be afraid that Blizzard is going to drive some quality companies out, believe me I am =p

If you guys limit innovation solely to the generation of entirely new genres so be it, that doesn't change the fact that it's wrong.

Khameir commented that a good part of WoW's success is to be attributed to its already existing and popular IP; what about Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons, do you really think that the Warcraft universe can hold a candle to those? Why weren't they successful, even moderately so?

And the ever recurring rebuttle of, it's tuned for Captain Casual and that's why it continues to see success. Why then do we see droves of hardcore gamers continue to play WoW in a market utterly saturated with alternatives? It seems people are incapable of believing that Blizzard can deliver a game that appeals on all fronts, hardcore, casual, pve and pvp. Seems to me that's new to the genre and thus by definition, innovative.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

No one has said that, not even once. What has been said is that Company A does something new, then along comes Blizzard. Blizzard takes the ideas presented by Company A, refines them/expands upon them/deepens them, thus creating a shiny new addition to the genre (whatever it may be). Yes, that is innovation...but there is a still a difference between innovation and originality.



The difference? Blizzard "owns" the Warcraft IP. Sony doesn't own the Star Wars IP nor does Turbine own Dungeons and Dragons. They weren't even moderately successful because of licensing/creative issues and in SWG's case George Lucas's personal squad of continuity people who literally wouldn't allow Sony to make the game the way they wanted...and it suffered.



People aren't incapable of believing that Blizzard can deliver on a game that appeals on all levels. In fact, its the opposite. They did what Sony wasn't able to do with EQ...they managed to make a game playable on both a casual AND a hardcore level. But to get where they are today, they took an existing formula (a Fantasy based MMO), added their own flavor to it (The WC IP), stirred in the concepts of Large Group Content Raiding (primarily EQ) and PvP (UO, DAoC)....end result, another winning formula.

This is yet another one of those arguments that isn't going to go anywhere. No matter how many times I repeat it, someone is going to play the role of stubborn jackass and try to refute the already proven logical formula Blizzard uses and will use again and again. It brings them great success, so why change? Again, there is a still a difference between innovation and originality. And while Blizzard are innovative, they aren't original (then again nether is anyone else)

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I would go as far to say that Blizzard was reasonably original with Diablo but not with WC/SC and definitely not WoW.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

What fan sites do you guys browse for Diablo III? The only one that I've started regularly checking is Diablofans.com, it's a good site for sure (news and what not) but their forums suck, too popular I suppose.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I read FoH and F13. If it pops up on a fansite and is relatively interesting, it will make it to one of those boards, if not both.

I can agree with that

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