Blizzard's attempt at profiting off the auction house has ruined this game.
350691
So I hit level 60 and spent time in inferno mode and now I am returning this game.

Blizzard is not happy with releasing a game and having it sell in record numbers, they want to somehow make money off their customers even after the initial purchase.

Since Diablo 3 has no subscription system like World of Warcraft, they have decided they will try to make money off of an in game auction house that uses the players real money.

Now, the problems begin with how the auction house affects the loot system, and difficulty system in Diablo 3.

In order for the items on the real money auction house to be sold for more than mere pennies, the loot needed to be extra "rare". Well, the situation this creates is that if you are playing this game by yourself and plan to beat the hardest difficulty at some point you are facing 10,000+ hours of "farming" items. This creates a game where the only way to win is to farm for gear and hope something worth money drops, so you can sell it on the auction house and buy yourself an item that is an actual upgrade. Staring at the auction house for 45 minutes is not exactly "fun" as video games are meant to be. As far as you finding upgrades in game that task is near impossible once you hit level 60. I am a level 60 barbarian and when I kill an elite mini boss mob in the hardest difficulty, I get gear that is as low as level 54.

Then the difficulty system. You would imagine it would be a fun adventure to make your way to the final boss of the act and beat him. Well, it kind of sucks the fun out of it when all the mini bosses before the main boss are much much harder than the actual boss. This includes the final boss Diablo himself. The randomly generated mini bosses are my biggest gripe with this game. The mini bosses have 3 or 4 special abilities that are randomly generated. Sometimes the boss is a joke and his special ability is extra health and something else not so deadly, so you can just take them out without a second thought. Then you come across the next randomly generated boss and he has the special abilities to have invincible minions that will attack you but cannot be attacked, magma at his feet so if you dare to stand near him you take tons of damage, and then on top of all this he has a rotating lazer beam that will kill you instantly. AND to top it all off this is BLIZZARDS INTENTION!!! Blizzard does not want players to target the end bosses like Diablo himself, they want the players to focus on finding and killing the randomly generated bosses and getting randomly generated loot. If the final boss Diablo had the best loot, everyone would target him, but thanks to Blizzards greed that is not possible.

So basically the loot is designed around Blizzard making money off the auction house, and the bosses are designed as random groups of abilities that sometimes force you to restart the game, or walk right through them.

So in the end, I waited 10 years for this game, bought a new computer for this game, and played it for about a week before I realized how flawed and boring the game is. Thankfully Amazon is accepting my return.
2229393
The graphics are laughable, the enemy AI is rediculous and the game itself is nothing like the game that has been advertised for the past six years. I am willing to bet that given six years a group of highly trained monkeys could make a better game. This honestly should not happen in 2013, by now the standards for video game quality have been set, and this just laughs in the face of all of them. I am only giving it 2 stars because it was technically a game and i was just barely able to play through the bug ridden campaign. But i must say, what a waste of 45 dollars, never again gearbox.
3333736
Completely broke, won't work on my setup.  How did such an inferior product ever reach the market?  Blizzard is really going to suffer due to this release, gamers will no longer trust this company.  Cancel your WoW account now!
2228740
Overall, the game was fun until 1.0.3 patch.

I am sure many of you do not want to be told or be instructed by the game makers on the way or style you play...

This is exact what happens after 1.0.3 patch, they probably have a team of people brainstorming for ideas on how to "force" (indirectly) gamers to use the real-money auction house.

Why ? The most obvious part is the huge repair costs on the gears. Not all players can dedicate more than 3 hours daily on this game, and simply dying is costly. To advance further and without in-game gold, you will have to use real-money to purchase better gears to "convince" yourself you can beat the game including on all difficulties.

Weekly maintenance, long downtime for patch, depends on connection for single player. Makes it even less time for you to continue...

End of the day, WoW players that stop subscribing and moved to Diablo 3, gotta keep paying.. Therefore they are out to control your game play.

Good luck.
4657053
This is your standard monopoly with a WoW theme, nothing is different past the theme.

The peices are very fragile and not well thought out as to functionality.. the Doomhammer player peice arrived with a broken handle, the Murky peice has bent legs and cant stand by itself, the flight boot peice cant be placed flat due to bad molding.

The money is referred to as the in game currency "Gold" but yet is paper money in the standard format.
The 4 board corners are not WoW themed which is a missed opportunity, instead they are the standard "Go", "Jail", "Free Parking", and "Go to Jail".
4631053
I played this game in beta and into the release for 2 months before I canceled. Mythic dropped the ball and it came down as a big thud...dud of a game. It's an absolutely terrible PvP game and it's an absolutely terrible PvE game. The game seems like it wants to be kinda like WoW but have better PvP, but there's no EPIC pvp as promised.

I played Dark Age of Camelot a game Mythic put out years ago and Warhammer is no where near the game DAOC was for RvR. Warhammer was promised to be an EPIC ongoing battle of RvR, instead it's more like crappier WoW battlegrounds ongoing. It seems like Mythic was trying to grab WoW playerbase and they failed miserably trying. Just save your money, time, and frustration and buy World of Warcraft in my opinon.

Warhammer is in such bad shape with low populated servers, it feels like a ghost town anywhere you go ingame. 60 something US servers all low/low except maybe 4 or 5 that are at med/med. The game is bleeding to death very quickly.
3618763
I knew it from the beginning about the DRM, had some doubts, but bought it since I had spent pleasant time on the previous versions.

However, now I'm very disapointed...

The game looks good, graphics were improved (it is not high-end but they are nice), sound is also good. Character build is not as advertised, at least for the barbarian, maybe the fun is behind other classes such as wizards.

The problem is DRM. I knew it that internet was required, but this is a complete disaster; battle.net track your entire game, every action. If your network connection is slow or even if battle.net is flooded you'll have that sensation of playing in slow motion.

I travel a lot and normally uses hotel internet connections for play on my laptop. The connection is good enough to play MW3 but it can't handle this game.

Shame on you Blizzard... Real money auction house??? Come on... The last time you receive a cent from me was when I bought this game.
3194676
You know, it's not the game that's terrible, in fact it's alright tbh, it's nothing special but it was fun for a little while. Then I log in one day and all of my stuff is gone, now keep in mind I've been playing online games for over 15 years and have never had my account touched in any game I've played, yet here we are diablo iii. Leave it to blizzard to come up with 3rd world free to play security.

The funny part was I was dumb enough to give it a second chance because my friends were nice and gave me some items to help me. So I have the authenticator thinking I am safe. Ha! Nope, it was just as worthless as their fanbase.

So in closing, if you are a brainless sheep, you might like this game I guess. enjoy.
1288191
lag, boring, unbalanced. shame on you blizzard. 10 years of anticipation gone to waste. gone are you glory days. enough said.
1548839
As an avid Diablo/Diablo 2 fan for many years I have to say this game disappointed me at many levels.

I could go on and on about how this game is an epic fail but that just sucks more of my time for a pointless endeavor.

Suffice it to say that I would NOT recommend buying this game even if they throw this in the $19.99 bin at Walmart on sale.  Just stay away, save your money and hope a real RPG comes out again soon for the PC/Mac.
2507928
Everything has already been said.  This game is garbage and the last $ that I ever spend on a Blizzard product.  For the people spending $100 on the RMAH, are you mental?  Do you not realize the game is boring and pointless?  Do you not realize you've been tricked?  Tic-Tac-Toe has more fun and replayability than this joke of a game.
647791
I am a BIG fan of Diablo II.  In fact I credit Diablo II in getting me through the post 9-11 weeks.  When the world got to be too much, I could fall into Diablo II and lose myself.  And ten+ years of playing the game taught me a great deal about the possibilities of the characters and what they could accomplish. I even delved into Diablo, the original game and became familiar with it.  Diablo II was a huge leap forward from the original Diablo.

So when they finally made Diablo III a reality, I was there, and I had high hopes.

So imagine my disappointment when I loaded this game only to find that its not so great. In fact, its really a bit of of a pig.

One of the charms of Diablo and Diablo II over World of Warcraft is that you could play it either alone, or on Battle Net, and that you were responsible for your chosen character.  But with this new version, you can only play it on-line, which means you have to have a super Internet connection that is very reliable.  Without that, this game is nothing.

Storyline wise, we find the character you select at the beginning of the end of the world. And the cinematics are better, but they seem to go on and on.  We lose that old gasbag Deckard Caine, only to have to go and save him, again.

On level one, everything relies on killing the undead.  And there are lots of them.  And they are all the same, over and over and over.

On the plus side, your character now gets to interact with more NPC's in the game, and better yet, your character gets to interact with the environment around them.

And you chose your character by type, and then you get to pick the sex.

A BIG negative in level one is that they have done away with Scrolls of Town Portal, this really crimps your style if you are big on scavenging what you find and then selling it back in town to build up your cash reserves.  Also, town merchants have less to sell, while characters have more outfitting needs.

A BIGGER negative is that your character is unable to potion themselves out of a corner because life potions have a one minute "cool down" period.

A HUGE negative is the design of the  character controls on the bottom of the screen.  They are too small to be practical, so you have to rely on keyboard commands.

Blizzard really dropped the ball with this game by making it overly complicated where it should have been simple to use.  They also dropped the ball in making this a game that almost requires multi-player play.

The sad thing, I can't say it's great for the price, or great considering how much time they devoted to its development.  In some ways, this game is a step backward, instead of a leap forward.

One other BIG negative is that it took OVER a week to get this from Amazon.
3696932
The executives at Blizzard should be fired. Plain and simple. Look, I'm a business man... been in business for over 30 years now, and I don't have anything against a company making a profit. This is the USA, and we're capitalist, ok, I get that, but Blizzard has sunk to a new-low. What they are doing with their Auction House should be illegal.

For those parents out there that were as clueless as I was to all of this, let me explain.

Blizzard (the developers of Diablo III), have what's called an "Auction House" included in there game. This is where kids can sell the stuff (or gadgets) they get while playing their game. They then use their new funds to look for stuff they really want to use in their game. But, there are two different ways for players to use the Auction House (also called "AH"). They can use either "coin" (explained in the next paragraph) or real money. Regardless of how your kids use the AH, they are charged 15% of the final bid when they sell something as Blizzard's handling fee. Personally, I like that charge because it's kind of like a tax, so it prepares kids for the real world where we have to pay real taxes.

Coin: One way is for your kids to use the AH is to use toy coins that they get while playing their game. No problem there - in fact, it's educational in that it teaches kids how to manage their assets, or in other words, this part of the game could actually teach children how to prepare for a real world. They have to earn coin and then learn how to spend it wisely. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Real Money (yes, that would be US dollars - or other world currencies): The other way for your kids to use the AH is to spend real money. Now, let me tell you right now, I don't mind this - to a point... The part that upsets me so much is twofold. First, Blizzard has a minimum listing price of $1.25 per item, and Second, they have a $1.00 "handling fee" for each item they sell.

Yes, this means Blizzard is forcing children to list their gadgets at a real minimum of $1.25 per item, and when the item sells, they take the first $1.00 - before their additional 15%.

Let me add this up for you. The character your child is playing with has 13 different gadgets on it, and these gadgets become useless after a couple of hours of game play. They become useless because their character is leveling up. This means they need new gadgets very often.

So, your child goes to sell what they bought just a few hours ago for $1.25, and they only get back $0.21. Yes, only 21 cents!! ($1.25 minus Blizzard's exuberant $1.00 "listing fee" = $0.25. Then take away Blizzard's extra 15% ($.04). This leaves your child with 21 cents left in their pocket!)

Now, let me spell this out for you. 13 items changed out even only once a day, every day for a week of game play, means your child (at the LOWEST bids available - Yes, this means they can get MUCH, MUCH higher - like $10-$20 per item!!!) will loose $94.64 -- and that's a MINIMUM!!! (13 items x 7 days = 91 items. 91 items x $1.25 = $113.75. Out of that $113.75, your child gets back 91 items x 21 cents = $19.11, while Blizzard gets $94.64!

That's real money folks! And Blizzard is getting that money FROM OUR CHILDREN!

Look, I have no problem with Blizzard making 15% off of their AH, and I have NO problem with kids learning how to handle their finances. In fact, I have no real problems with the idea of children using some real money, as long as that real money is reasonable - like 5-10 cents per "average" gadget, and $1-$5 for something extremely hard to find, but what Blizzard is doing to our children is extortion - plain and simple.

The executives at Blizzard are obviously VERY greedy, and they obviously don't care about your child, or your family's financial well being! The way I see it, Blizzard is financially raping our children with these two decisions of theirs (with decision #1 - the $1.00 fee per item, and decision #2 - forcing kids to have a minimum bid of $1.25 per item).

Shame on you Blizzard.
1894585
Blizzard makes great games.

Blizzard knows how online games work, because they have had the number 1 MMO for almost a decade.  (World of Warcraft)

Blizzard's new Diablo 3 requires: (1) connection to their server; and (2) that IN ADDITION to your Blizzard Battlenet account, you also create an additional "Battletag"

I bought this directly from the Blizzard site and it downloaded fine.

In addition to the server issues others are experiencing (if your computer cannot connect to the server, then you cannot play your $60 game), here is what I am experiencing:

I bought, downloaded and launched the game.  It REQUIRES me to make a battletag.  The Blizzrd website where I do that is DOWN.

The Support website is DOWN.

Their telephone support phone number tells you that it's call queue is full, and then HANGS UP on you.

I spend $64 bucks and I can't play the game because THEY decided to require connection to their servers, and their servers are down.

Sorry Blizzard - I am going to request a refund as soon as your stupid Support website is back up.

I am NOT going to keep a game that easily could have been playable without constant connection.

I am a very busy guy and had a 3 hour window to play today, and that window is now SHUT.

Way to screw up, Blizzard.
766762
This game has some great original ideas, I was really looking forward to making it a new gaming 'home' for a while.  It ended up being a surprisingly huge disappointment though.  The bugs are bad and the lack of basic MMO features is mind boggling.

- This game has no functioning auction house.  It launched without one because Funcom couldn't get it working properly.  One month after launch, there was a patch to put an auction house in...only problem was that it STILL DIDN'T WORK.  Items that got sold were still showing up for sale on the AH.  I have never seen anything quite this horrible and I've played EQ2/wow/Rift/Aion/Lotr.  The botched implementation of this very basic MMO feature should give you an idea of the lack of 'polish' that is put into this game.

- Surprisingly buggy:  quests that you can't finish, chat windows that don't work right, loot that disappears if you try to grab it before a cut-scene kicks in.  Oh and you can get killed during cut scenes too which are plentiful.  These are very basic aspects to an MMO that should work right on launch.  If Funcom can't get this right, imagine how they are doing with the tougher challenges of an MMO like class balance and game economics.

- You have tons of skills to choose from.  Sounds fantastic doesn't it?  Only problem is you can only use SEVEN active skills at a time.  You can swap your skills at any time but you can't respec the points you have put skills into.  Don't worry, in 2 weeks you will have more points than you know what to do with.

- The content is EXTREMELY limited.  I have a full-time job which only allows me about an hour a night to play.  I don't rush through zones.  I like to do every single quest, explore and take my time.  Yet after 1 month, I am on the final zone in the game and am about halfway through completing all the quests in the zone.  I have maxed out my defense/offense in my primary weapon, maxed level on all gear and the only place I can put points now is in weapons I don't use.

Save your money, this game would probably not be worth the frustration if it was free let alone $50 with a $15 subscription.

Final word - Funcom ruthlessly censors their forums and frankly I have to wonder where all these 5 star reviews are coming from too.  Pull up TSW forums after the auction house fiasco and you'll see 10 posts in a row about WHY I LOVE TSW SO MUCH yet not one about how they managed to screw up one of the most BASIC features of an MMO.  Puzzling no?  Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in The Secret World.
2619109
Okay when the game came out me and 3 other friends set aside a weekend. 4 large monitors, snacks, drinks, and comfy chairs all in my large room with four bought copies of d3. Wives given even more money to leave the house and us alone.
Install went fine enough and then - nothing. For weeks - i mean literally for weeks we could not get all of us up and running just so us four could play the game- story-line mode together. I have good broadband - i guess (does this require google 1 gig optical or something). Ruined the game for us - we eventually all finished the game separately.  Fine graphics, great polish, simple, complex and fun. etc.  But for us - we could not get it to work.

then summer of 2013 we tried it all again. 3 of us - (1 has quit all things diablo) Much easier to get online and all of us to get together. Beyond stupid community chatter, constant offers to run us through, and ability to make and abuse AH - we still loved the game first night with improved difficulty.  AND second night -  drops, lag, drops, lag to death. Seriously how hard is it to allow 3 people in the same room to play an offline story mode game.

All we wanted was an old fashioned diablo weekend of d&d nerd dom.

Look I am all for anti piracy, but they are soo many ways to fight piracy then these crazy all ways online requirements or no system link options. The fact is - it is less about DRM then about opening more venues of making money. Just selling the meta data collected of users - when they are on, how long they play, other games they like, advertisements, and so on - is a cash cow blizzard has decided to worship over its gaming customers. Please make a off line component - or allow smaller checks like every 6 -12 hrs so that people can at least get this game to work.

While this may be more of a rant then a review - I hope this help inform buyers before they make their decision. I wish I could have read this post before the game launched.
4542586
1 star is for the name of the game.
This is not diablo. It removed too much features form diablo2. And I don't understand why the diablo3 CE could be sell with a diablo2
The company ruins this series. There are no runes, no cube, you can only equip very few skills on your hot key.
You don't even have to worry about how to assign your points after level up.
Statements above decrease the durability of the game.
To extend the game's life, BZ nerf anything players found(by the name of balancing and bug)
And finally each character had been nerfed into the same shit, and certain elite enemy could be even stronger then the Diablo.
The only way to play in inferno is to buy gears in the Auction House(the AH, which is the biggest mistake in the game), and for sure, BZ takes % from tradings.
By the way there's a period that in 4 successive updates of the game, BZ didn't fix the obvious bug reported by lots of player, instead, all they have done is to complete the AH system. Which made me doubt what are BZ really concern about, player's feeling or their AH?

In my opinion the company want players play the game in the way they want, so they can be the god and you know--to gain more benefits from their ppl.