A couple weeks ago I posted my initial impressions of Diablo III and I prefaced by saying that I potentially could be writing a retraction, however that will not be the case. I feel now that I have actually spent sufficient time playing Diablo III through a couple of the Acts and I am going to stick with my original assessment.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think Diablo III is a fun game. I have played a Monk into Act III now and I have played a Demon Hunter through a couple of levels. I have caught myself trying to click-to-move when switching to another game after playing Diablo III, it was quite humorous. I haven’t experienced any of the server issues others have complained about and I have had minimal lag issues. I am also coming to D3 after playing WoW for over six years and I have never played any of the previous iterations of Diablo nor any other click-to-move MMO/game. Perhaps my perceptions are skewed as a result.


I am still partially hung up on the click-to-move mechanic, which I still find a bit obnoxious. I am not embellishing when I say that the other day I actually turned away from the screen to talk to someone for about 30 seconds but I continued clicking the mouse. When I turned back, all the mobs were dead. I literally did not have to look at the screen to survive. Unless you are fighting a boss, you really only need one hand to play. Granted that was normal mode and I’m sure that couldn’t happen in nightmare (or higher) but I couldn’t have done that in WoW or TOR and still survive.

I find the story in the game interesting but not compelling, perhaps because I didn’t play the first two. When you start a new character, you must experience the exact same content all over again. The only modulation is the map changes each time you log back into the game. After completing the final act, you have three more modes, that increase in difficulty, for the same four acts, so the story and the quests are still the same. Normal mode could be completed in a day. Obviously the gear scales with the difficulty.

I’m still compelled to log into WoW and TOR everyday either to level, complete some dailies or do an instance. However, I find it very easy to put Diablo down for a couple days. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have bought the game had I not gotten it for free as part of Blizzard’s annual pass. Diablo III lacks any kind of social mechanics. Yes, your friends with your Battletag or Real ID can hop into your game, but you are capped at a group of four. There are no guilds, no public channels, no private channels (at the time of this writing). Its a first-person-shooter with a third-person point of view.

I’m not going to get rid of the game, in fact I will probably keep it to play it a couple times a month. My goal, hopefully, is to farm gear and try to sell it when the Real Money Auction House goes live. I hope to be able to pay for my WoW subscription from the selling of items to people that enjoy the game more then I do.

SWTOR still remains my favorite and WoW is a close second.

Cheers!