As the online community once again gets swept up into the hellscape of Diablo, there are no shortages of opinions about the quality of Blizzard’s latest ARPG offering. Does it iterate well from past installments? What are its strengths and weaknesses? And is it — above all — fun?
In today’s special edition of Global Chat, I’ve rounded up a few posts from the online gaming community to give you a better idea of what Diablo IV delivers. And best of all, you only need to click one time to loot these opinions!
The Friendly Necromancer: “My problem is that I’m taking on dungeon bosses I have no business taking on when I don’t know the strats very well yet because I either didn’t look it up or I just forgot how the mechanics worked from beta. With a hardcore character that’s feeling a bit under-geared, I probably should just be doing safe stuff for a while.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: “Whereas before combat felt sluggish and plodding… it now feels snappy and fluid. I gotta say… I don’t hate this game. It still isn’t really an ARPG in my book… at least not one in the traditional sense but for an isometric MMORPG it feels pretty solid.”
Chasing Dings: “Diablo IV evolves the series a little bit more into a dungeon maller. Like, the world is a mall where you hang out and meet friends and then go shopping, or something. This occurred to me as I sat with a group of players I did not know at the Ashara spawn point, unaware that the demon was no longer going to spawn at the appointed time. Diablo IV… is an MMO now.”
We also had a few reactions to the surprising news that Star Wars: The Old Republic is changing hands from BioWare to Broadsword.
Going Commando: “Ultimately we’ve got a lot of questions and no real answers. I doubt that even the SWTOR team can really tell what’s going to happen right now, because the ones making the decisions at the top always think that they’re doing the right thing, without necessarily having any clue about the realities on the ground.”
MMO Bits: “This could be a move to save an IP that’s doing decently well and separate it from BioWare who is rumoured to be having issues. Regardless, it’s a positive sign that EA chose to move SWTOR to another studio rather than shut it down.”
This Week in Aurebesh: “SWTOR makes money. It doesn’t make the kind of money that makes EA jump up and take notice, but it has been a solid performer for Bioware for a very long time. And as long as Star Wars remains in the pop culture, there is no reason that can’t continue. Broadsword has every motivation to keep SWTOR a successful MMO.”
Galactic Antics: “It’s the nitty-gritty details which are the unknown quantity. Things like voice-acting deals, exactly where the story team are in developing the rest of 7.0, philosophy regarding difficulty and types of group-content, and how future crafting updates may be handled.”
Every day there are tons of terrific, insightful, and unusual articles posted across the MMO gaming blogosphere — and every day, Justin reads as many as he can. Global Chat is a sampling of noteworthy essays, rants, and guides from the past few weeks of MMO discourse.
