Diablo III Version 2.0

Blizzard dropped… after a fashion… the 2.0 patch for Diablo III yesterday.

That was the first of the three events planned for the next month or so for Diablo III.  There is the patch, the removal of the Auction House on March 18th, and the release of the (first?) expansion for the game, Reaper of Souls, on March 25th.

I am completely in favor of the removal of the auction house which, even by Blizzard’s own admission, hasn’t worked as planned.  I feel I know why they put the auction house in, but the way they coded loot drops for the game seemed designed specifically to drive people to it, so I remain a bit skeptical at their protestations that they were surprised by its popularity.

But it is going away, so water under the bridge.  It won’t be a problem soon.

And then there is the expansion.  More content and a new class, the crusader, that sounds interesting.  I am not willing to buy it quite yet, but I wouldn’t rule it out eventually.  It depends on the 2.0 patch.

Because the patch, the 2.0 version of Diablo III, is where the meat of the changes are coming.  This was the reason I wanted to patch Diablo III last night.  And once I was able to log in, Blizzard was keen to let me know what was new. (Patch notes here.)

Splash Screen of 2.0 Features

Splash Screen of 2.0 Features

Of all of that, I think Loot 2.0 is the most important.  If they are going to dump the Auction House, they need to make the loot you do get much more viable.  Some of it sounds like it came from the loot lessons they implemented in Mists of Pandaria and what they have planned for Warlords of Draenor.  “Smart Loot” includes more drops appropriate to your class and no class items with stats that are not important for that class any more.

Of course, they have also made higher quality items bound to your account.  No trading, because Blizzard still wants to keep the real money market down.  The whole point of the Auction House, to my view, was to eliminate that market by controlling it.  With the Auction House gone, other methods were required.

Diablo II Shop

It burns…

There are a host of other changes.  There were changes to classes, to monsters, to difficulty scaling, to bosses, to the paragon system, along with the addition of community items like guilds.  I am actually quite happy about that last bit.  While I am kind of past having to be in a guild in every game, we had to create our own ad hoc guilds back in Diablo and Diablo II.  Nice to see that Blizzard has finally acknowledged that this is a thing.

And, of course, Blizzard also had a splash screen in the game about the wonders of the new expansion as well.  Always be closing.

Reaper of Souls info

Reaper of Souls info

With all of this, I thought it might be time to return to the game and see how these changes feel.  I rolled up a new character… best to start from scratch I think, with all the changes… to try it out.  I did not actually get very far, but I want to try to find some time this weekend to at least get through the first act to see how it goes.

How about you?  Does the 2.0 version of the game have any appeal?

7 thoughts on “Diablo III Version 2.0”

  3. Matt

    I played briefly last night.

    The new difficulty system is much better. You don’t have to go through the game 4 times now. I think that whole system was pretty much a relic demanded by nostalgic players. Torment 1, on which I played, is significantly harder than Inferno was.

    The new paragon system is cool. It ties some of your strength to character advancement rather than gear, which will be nice for the perennially unlucky. It ties in with the difficulty change to remove one of the annoyances from D2, that Hell was designed around having like 75% of the best gear and was near impossible to do on found gear alone.

    The loot is the big draw, and is vastly improved. I played a bit of the easiest level of the highest difficulty, and I didn’t get a weapon with less than 800 dps. I even upgraded a couple of pieces (all of my gear prior was bought on the AH). It isn’t as though you get awesome items every 3 feet or anything, but the amount of absolutely worthless crap you get is much diminished (which is again a move away from D2).

    Overall, much improved, and it proves my longstanding feeling that what D3 needed was to be much less like D2. The AH was never the problem–trading was rampant in D2–but rather it was loot generation that made it feel so unrewarding and frankly exhausting to wade through that sea of garbage hoping for a 1% increase on something. But the AH became so much of a scapegoat that they couldn’t but throw in the towel on it.

    Now, if RoS fixes the lame story, comic book dialogue, lack of atmosphere, and other things that are beyond a simple patch, then I’m sold.

    Like

  4. coppertopper

    the playing thru 3 tines just to get to ‘the last level’ so to speak was obnoxious and just horrible design. Glad to see that gone and excited about the loot changes. Will definitely be d/ling the patch tonite. Lately the most fun I’ve had with the game is running public games – sort of reinvigorated interest for me. Such a great looking playing game though – glad they finally are getting the details sorted out.

    Like

  5. camazotz

    I downloaded and started playing again last night, it’s a very nice patch, the kind where the game feels so much better. The loot changes were the most obvious, but the restructuring of the abilities and the difficulty scaling made for an experience that felt tighter and more modern to me, a real pleasure to play. Looking forward to the xpac now, I think DIablo III is finally coming into its own.

    Like

  7. Shimrah

    It is much much better now. I went from 20-30 in one evening on normal difficulty and i got about 4 legendaries. 2 that were excellent upgrades and 2 that will be usefull for my Crusader :P

    I am very happy about the whole thing, no more AH. yeah!, loot 2.0, big win, Crusader, cant wait.

    Kudos to Blizzard for fixing D3

    Like

Comments are closed.