Massive disappointment. In my opinion, the game is centred on the Auction system rather than actual play. If you have a wish to repeat the same actions over and over without reward or have a desire to 'bot'/pay your way to success then this game is for you.

I thought the game was pretty good in the start, but the end game content is just sooo boring!
I still had fun with my friend in the first 10~15 hours.

Diablo III is a nice game... but it falls short when compared to its predecessors. The spooky atmosphere is gone, replaced by a cartoonish WOW environment. It guess it was supposed to appeal to a broader audience, but i'm not sure it worked.

Horrible horrible horrible. This is not a diablo game, this is a ripoff to make some quick money (that succeeded) off the diablo name. I feel like I've been scammed. I am never trusting blizzard again. If I ever do buy a blizzard game again, which is very unlikely, I will definitively read the user reviews first. Notice I said user reviews and not the bought and paid for "critic" reviews.

I played Diablo 2 and much anticipated this game. I loved the single player element, the visual effects and story cinematic's were something magnificent that I will never forget. As a fan I enjoyed this game however I felt it was too short amongst other things which have ultimately left it on the shelf gathering dust whilst Diablo 2 was still being played at this point. In my opinion the fundamental downfall of Diablo 3 was that the developers didn't take enough of the right risks. If there was a focus on more features rather than the testing aspect I would probably be looking forward to logging in tonight. Final word: Fantastic artistic and entertaining game lies within this, its too short and very few will remain to play on, the real money auction house is a bad idea and the normal auction house has the same pitfalls it did in Diablo 2 but its worth the time and money for a short lived cinematic experience to the extent of buying avatar on DVD however very few will remain interested in this dust gatherer.… Expand

save your money and buy torchlight 2 on steam 15 pounds for torchlight 1 and 2..........................................................................

If there is one thing that Diablo 3 can be compared to D2, it's that there is no player versus player. For me, a large amount of time was focused on PvP in D2. As I know there will be PvP in a future update, lack of this installment right limits the replay value of Diablo 3 right now.

That said, all the character classes are different once you are able to use their max potential of skills.
There is the sadistic barbarian there tears foes apart 1on1 or in the center of crowds.
The Demon Hunter is an assassin that deals high criticals while lurking in the shadows.
The Wizard uses arcane magic to freeze, incinerate, or stun the forces of evil.
The Witch Doctor raises the dead (dogs, bears, frogs, zombies) to provide defense and offense.
And the Monk focuses on speed and dexterity, making them a very hard target to kill in close combat.

The Boss fights provide a good challenge that requires thinking where the bosses next move will be and watching what traps are on the floor. It can be difficult, but it's not impossible to beat them perfectly

With an already great co-op experience, the only thing left is to have Blizzard let us kill each other with our favorite characters and best gear!… Expand

On 1st brush, Diablo 3 is a brilliant game. The art work was great. The game engine works great and playing it was fun.

They are however 2 things that I think was the downfall for Diablo3. 1) Persistent internet connection: Server problem, maintenance, lag deviate from the experience.
2) Real money auction house: This is I think its biggest problem. Blizzard tries to hide this. But the loot system continuously get nerfed when they see a reduction in real money auction house transaction. Instead of having a game with a fun loot system with reasonable legendary drop rate, you have to really either play for a extremely long time to get decent drop or buy it from the auction house. Since loot is really 80% of the game, it has lost it's appeal. The game is no longer design for maximum fun, but maximum profit.

Diablo 2 had so much heart and soul put into it even though it's dated. You know when you are playing the game that the developer's sole purpose was for you to have fun. Diablo 3, not so much.… Expand

After playing 300 hours I would have to say that this game is a major letdown. How did I get to 300 hours? Well luckily I have friends to play with online. Don't get me wrong, I didn't play the game because I thought the content was amazing ... I played because I wanted somethign to do while hanging out with friends online. This game is not the successor of Diablo 2 (D2). I've played D2 for many years and only recently stopped to pick up D3 in hopes that it would be a worthy successor. In short, it is not. The always online DRM kills the experience if you need to take the game with you somewhere. Good items are impossible to find and botters have caused the price of gold to become near worthless, which means you'll only be farming forever to get a good drop. Legendaries don't drop as much as uniques did in D2 and you'll be hard pressed finding them at all. Content is extremely repetitive and I felt that I wasn't really playing the game because it was fun and this is especially true of the new inferno mode. Although I was able to clear all the content prenerf in early June, it still left much to be desired. The game resembles somewhat of a WoW style game and not the D2 we remember. Gone are the days of stat allocation and good builds. Now its all about having THE efficient build and farming as much as possible because you never know when you'll get a piece of acceptable gear. I should mention that in the 300 hours of playtime, I've never found a single upgrade on my barbarian or "hit the jackpot" so to say. In fact all of that gear had to be bought from the AH in order to clear inferno at all. Be wary of this game and if the user scores don't warn you already. Well, you've been warned by my review hopefully.… Expand

Combat and character progression is fun and make you don't want to stop playing, but it's only until Hell. Inferno is a really repetitive play with objection of finding gears to be sold in Real Money Auction House. The fun is stop until Hell for me. Paragon level update doesn't work well with me, still boring. Crafting is very useless, you better spend money on auction house rather in crafting. PvP is not implemented yet. If you seek for hack and slash game, I recommend you to wait for Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile, or at least until Diablo 3 release the PvP if you still want. Do not be tricked with the Diablo franchise, Diablo 2 and 3 are different.… Expand

Diablo 3. Where do I begin? When you first start the game, you're immediately greeted by a reminiscent from the World of Warcraft, the login screen. And like in WoW or other MMOs, with the login screen you also get the various login errors. Error 37, Error 3005, and the usual problems with an online game launch...

"Wait! What's that about MMOs? Wasn't this supposed to be a single player game?", you ask. Yeah, except you need an always-on internet connection at any time you play the game. "Why?", you ask. Because of the online DRM, and the Real-money Auction House, and... "Wait, what?!" Exactly, but let's not even go there just yet. The point is, Blizzard had 9 (that's nine) years to develop this game, several stress tests during the beta, and their experience with WoW launch - one would think, to hone and polish everything. Turns out nothing went as expected because even two weeks(!) after the launch, the servers were still having problems and people couldn't log in or play the game they had paid for, two weeks ago. Okay, the worst problems were fixed afterwards, but that was a good reminder of why you should not have an online DRM forced into a game, unless it's really, really necessary. But in a single player game!? That's madness!

Ok, we get it. Because Blizzard decided to implement the Real-money Auction House into Diablo 3, they needed a way to secure their asses and make sure the game or items sold in the AH would not get tampered or changed in any way. That's alright - if this was a MMO online game! But it's not! Diablo has always been a single player game (featuring a co-op mode). We don't need to be online at all times. We don't need the Real-money Auction House (What kind of idiot would pay real money for virtual game items, anyway?), and we don't need the always online DRM! Madness! That's madness, and greed!

But wait, that's not all of it. The worst part is, the game is boring! Yeah, it's hack-n-slash dungeon crawling, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the story, and the content. It's boring, predictable, and short! You can finish the game in 4 hours and it starts to repeat itself really fast. Everything after the Act 1 is just bad. There simply is not enough things to do! No character to customize, because the choices are made for you. No skills to choose, because you unlock them all with no effort. Nothing to achieve, nothing to gain, except farm better items... No, wait! You can buy them from the Real-money Auction House... Sigh!

There is also the graphics thing, and many more design flaws.. eh, choices, where Blizzard could've and should've improved the game, but they didn't. Instead, they took away all those things that made Diablo and Diablo 2 fun and challenging, and added things we didn't need in the first place. I guess that's what happens when you kick out the original developers and make a whole different people with no experience or proper vision of the previous games to design a sequel to one of the best game franchises ever. (And this is not to put down or belittle the developers skills, only to say the game you made was not the one the customers expected, or were made to expect.) Or, perhaps it could be because nowadays at Blizzard, it seems, the people who get to decide about things, are more interested in whole lot of other things (namely, money) than the enjoyment and excitement for games and entertainment, they once did. Things have been going downhill ever since the Blizzard became the ActivisionBlizzard.

I honestly in my right mind can't imagine how the majority of professional game critics gave this game a 9 or 10! Were you paid or are you just mindless ass-kissers? I'm giving it a score of 1, for the Act 1. Everything else was crap. (Nine years, Blizzard!)

TL;DR: It looks like a Diablo, it plays like a Diablo, but it is not a Diablo! This game might just be the biggest scam in modern video game history. If you love Diablo and value your time and money, avoid this game. If you are looking for a spiritual successor to Diablo, try Torchlight 2 (from the original Diablo team) or even a free game, called Path of Exile.… Expand

The first playthrough of this game is all you need. There is nothing new after you have played through normal mode except numbers are tweaked higher per difficulty to provide more of a "challenge". Normal mode for a new player might take 10-15 hours to complete. For an experienced player, this can be done in less than 4 hours, which shows you how small the game really is.

I forced myself into a mindless grind upon reaching Inferno mode. The quest for "epic gear" is addictive, but it is NOT FUN. If you persevere at this level, you will find yourself constantly asking yourself "why am I doing this?". I farmed probably 200m worth of gear, yet every piece of gear that you will wear comes from the auction house - the odds of you finding something useful for your class are so incredibly low that after 500 hours of forcing myself to play this game, I have not found a single item that is useful to my Demon Hunter.

Endgame can be summed up as: -Repeat Inferno [Act you comfortable with] over and over (maybe an hour worth of content) until your eyes bleed and your brain begs you to stop.
-Every 5-10 hours you might find a semi useful item to sell on the Auction House
-Acquire enough gold through sales to upgrade 1/13 slots in your inventory. If you are expecting longevity, stay away from this game. It boggles my mind that I played as long as I did, hating nearly every minute of it.… Expand

The connection to battle.net drops constantly, forcing unwanted replay. I can't imagine how people feel who have potentially lost hundreds of USD in real money in lost rare loot because of this. This is absolutely unacceptable for an online-only game. By way of comparison, I have lost connection with Battlefield Bad Company 2 servers maybe half a dozen times over the last two YEARS. I've been dropped from battle.net at least 20 times so far, and I've been playing Diablo 3 less than a week. Note that EA and Dice haven't been profiting from BFBC2 for about a year and a half, but their servers still function.

Even at the highest settings, the graphics look like they are from circa 2004. The visual art direction does a decent job of painting over this most of the time. This is not really a point of contention for me, because the dated visuals are presumably a tradeoff for rendering 100 baddies on the screen at once. So I can accept the low res.

The voice acting is passable, but the plot and dialogue are retarded. Cretinish. How humiliating must it have been for the voice actors to even pronounce the words in the script? Did the developers write this garbage in their (nonexistent) spare time? Maybe they should have focused on the netcode. And if professionals did write this... just stop. It's 2012. The majority of gamers are grown-ups. We were children when Diablo 1 came out. Now we have discretion and taste, so make art. Let Michael Bay make explosions. I am no Diablo fanboy - Diablo 3 is my first encounter with an action RPG ("RP" used loosely here - more like "limited character progression"). I wanted this to be awesome. Instead it was $60 of lost connections and interrupted games.… Expand

what can i say...worst have already been pointed out by everyone. being a long time diablo 2 fan, this abomonation came as a huge shock. shame on you blizzard you greedy cash cows

About my last review of this game, I did not mean to score it 10. I think around 6 or 7 would be more appropriate, it's a good game, it just doesn't live up to the hype of Diablo 2. Look for Torchlight 2.

It's painfully obvious that nobody who worked on Diablo 2 was involved with Diablo 3. Diablo 3 to Diablo 2 is what Terminator 3 is to Terminator 2. It's really sad that this game is so critically acclaimed. Definitely raises questions about the possibily of critic reviews in the gaming industry actually being nothing more than paid advertising.

A lot of people seem to hate this game, and I agree with the masses. Truly, truly terrible. It is a pointless clickfest, where you run around killing stuff for no apparent reason. Some "pointless clickfest" games can be really, really fun, but Diablo 3 is not one of these games.

The game is a garbage and a disgrace to the original Diablo from Blizzard North, the WoW devs that made it strip the game from all the elements that make so enjoyable the first 2 games, my advice? avoid at all cost!

Alot of people knock this game because it's not D2 with updated graphics... Game has some flaws but every new patch addresses these issues and the game only is getting better.

The people rating this game a 0 are WoW players and console gamers who have no clue what the Diablo series is about....

I was and still am a huge Diablo fan. This game called Diablo 3 however is not what i was expecting. On my first play through through Normal difficulty it felt like what I wanted and waited for. When I realized a new difficulty was coming I started thinking about what i had achieved. A few levels and some skills. I hadnt found anything and didn't really find anything worth noting. "This is just norm so I cant expect much anyways" so on I went. through nightmare, and hell... still nothing? Ok so maybe inferno is where its at... problem is I cant find anything there either. Stuck in act 1 inferno and still nothing? Come on you cant be serious. Grind a 20 hours in inferno difficulty and still nothing? Really? Auction house? Really? So many rare drops and none are useful? Nephalem Armor for a Magic Find buff and still nothing? Magic find caps? Attack speed cut in half? Limits on how I want my Character to work? What happened to our Diablo? Surely the man who's brainchild Diablo was didn't screw me over did he? Nope he did not, some new dick and his team did. Yes I had fun just rushing through the easy norm, though I had fun because I had hoped that when it got really difficult I would be able to really customize, learn some tricks from others and/or develop my own. Get my hands on some decent gear and learn my way through it. Not auction house my way through it. This is a hack and slash game but it isn't Diablo. Its something else entirely. It can be fun, until you realise you are completely dependent on someone ELSE finding or buying what YOU need and selling it for cheap. The skills are awesome, pretty, and explosive. Satisfying to unleash though not all are even worth a second glance. If you know this type of game then you know just by reading the skill's description whether you want it or that you will never consider it. You kinda just wonder *Why would I use that?* Graphics are acceptable but not the type of graphics I would think a 12 year in-the-making game would sport. They do get the job done. After many many hours of playing and realizing over time how unlike Diablo this new *Diablo* is I have to give this a 1. I feel like I'm playing a Diablo 2 knock-off. My respect for the franchise was High. My Dislike for this game runs so much deeper than *how hard it is to find items*. I enjoyed years of Diablo 1, 2, and LoD. They made you feel like that one Item that would turn you into a god was one Baal run away and you were driven. This game drives me nowhere. I'm uninspired and unimpressed. Now that I know what I know now, I will follow David Brevik's path. Jay can suck it. Thanks for nothing dick.… Expand

The game is great to play with friends from lvl 1 to lvl 60 (about 3-4 days). It has nice effects, appealing graphics, dynamic combat. However, it becomes boring at lvl 60, as it gets repetitive and turns into a grinding game. Bots own the game economy, the difficulty level is mostly inadequate. Maybe future patches will change this: who knows?

I like hack 'n' slash games but in 2012 you cannot expect to make a game like you were used to do over 10 years ago and expect it to be a success. Players have evoluted a lot and requests more. Randomizing is silly, most of the items you get from drops are useless for any character and can't be sold in AH. Then, when you reach inferno level, the only way to complete this game is by grinding gold and buying every piece of gear you need in the AH. The game is too lineal (yes ok, it is Diablo but it is also 2012 instead of 2000... they could have added some more maps and choices) and there is a lack of customization. The only good thing is the achievement system, which is account realted instead of character related, which avoid you needing to do the same thing with everycharacter. One of the worse games I have ever seen released.… Expand

Diablo 3 could be a great game. I played the game for some time but i got annoyed fast. The real money auction house is something terrible... a "Pay to Win" option in a payed game. I spent 70 euros on the game and then i have to grind hours and hours to find a weapon that sucks? Or i have to spend more money in the aution house? Besides that... the game becames to BOOOORIN! Random maps are not so random (after 3-4 times they repeat) and the elite packs with random powers are absolutley terrible.… Expand

Diablo 3 is without a doubt the biggest disappointment I've ever experienced in any form of media. I dumped a ton of time into D2 and LoD when I was younger and I still fire it up every once in a whille to this day. So needless to say, I was salivating to play D3 on day 1. The first 10 or so hours seemed fun but very shortly thereafter I could tell that something didn't feel right. The vendors and blacksmith never felt like they were selling you level appropriate items and the stuff you find is useless junk. So finally I broke down and bought items from the gold auction house. All of a sudden, I was steamrolling through the monsters with little resistance. This sucked all of the fun out of the game. There is no sense of accomplishment or excitement when purchasing your gear online. The ah is at the core of this game and it has ruined the entire Diablo experience.… Expand

The game was a 6 until patch 1.0.4 hit, so it appears to be going in the right direction, but the content and story are both lacklusters. If you're in it for those two areas then this isn't the game for you. Basically, content is not very random at all, and it feels very stale after playing through it several times. Unlike Diablo 2, areas have preset generators, so it isn't random whatsoever, and many of the areas are simply recolors. The story the first time told was very interesting, but after I played through it a few times the story became more clear, and noticed that it wasn't that good at all. The story wasn't told very well and was hard to understand the first time through, many things they were talking about I had no clue about. The journals are very frustrating due to not being account-based (only have to get them once). This makes it annoying to close each one you pick up, and having to find them for each character you make. There should be an option to turn it off, along with the entire lore, so we don't have to spam escape to skip each scene. One last issue with the game is the grind - it feels like it is gold you are farming for when it should be items, and once you beat Inferno there's nothing else to work for. It just feels like it lacks so much, and we can only hope they fix these issues in the future. I've played around 300 hours on this game and experienced everything it has to offer plus more. I enjoy the game, but it barely deserves what I gave it. It is around a 6.5 to be honest. I believe if it had offline play, and many improvements to the other areas listed it could earn an easy 9.… Expand

A pathetic joke that spat in the face of Diablo fans worldwide. The original team that created the Diablo series and developed Diablo and Diablo II left Blizzard in 2003, leaving a different team to work on Diablo III and it shows. The design decisions are brain-dead and game completely fails to live up to the standard set by its predecessor. This game is nothing but a step backwards over Diablo II.… Expand

GARBAGE!!!

Do not buy this game, save your $. this game is so bad i cant even start to explain why it is bad and not go over the 5000 max char for a review, not even worth the review its so damn bad.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The shadows always cast in the same direction, regardless of which way the light is coming from. To continue to advance your character expect to spend hundreds to thousands on the real money auction house. The loot that drops is all useless. One can play for hundreds of hours and never find a good item.… Expand

I will say the game wasn't great when it first came out, but since patch 1.0.4 has come out i have been playing everyday. Love the new paragon system cause you feel like your making progress regardless of if you get a new piece of gear or not as each level gives you 3% damage and 1%hp and xp doesnt take forever to gain so if you dont have alot of time say 20 minutes to play you can still gain 1 million xp in that time and you still feel like your making progress. It was something this game sorely needed and was a great choice. Its a very rewarding system imo.
I will also say this game is in its infancy, every other diablo game was pretty bad when it first came out as well and there now critically acclaimed as some of the best arpg's ever.

I wouldnt have given this game a 10 pre patch 1.0.4 but now im having a great time and it has re-taken my life so now it is worth every bit of that 10 to me.… Expand

After 12 years in the making, the best they could come up with was a dumb'ed down version of D2 with too much forgiveness and ease. I can't point out how, but somehow they sucked all the fun out of it. Back to hell unleashed.

It is generally when a game such as Diablo 3, so anticipated by thousands of fans of the series, ends up a very disappointing game. Before I went to buy the game I did some research on the first two games because I had not played either of them, and read reviews and decided that it would be a good idea to buy the new one. I start the game up after the VERY long installation, very excited to play the very anticipated game only to get an error. I checked the forum which basically said I had to reinstall the game. When I tried to reinstall the game, the process wouldn't even start until a few hours of constantly re-trying. Finally I got the game to update and pressed the big beautiful glowing "play" button only to be told the server is offline. The next day I was able to get online only to have dozens of error messages, most of them not listed on the forums. What little gameplay I was able to experience was decent but nothing special, just the typical item farming of most dungeon crawling games of the past. I months after I had bought the game I decided to see if there were any fixes only to find out that my account was hacked and all my items I had worked hours for were gone. My first thought was "HOLY ******* **** where is my stuff!!!!???!!?!?!?!" my second thought was "I can't believe I spent $60 on this piece of crap game" The reason for this is, all of your accounts information is stored online, including characters for games their games. Since all of your loot is stored online, and not on your computer (even for single player), your items can be stolen much, much more easily. In short, the game was a highly anticipated, bland, boring, error, "server is down", and account hacking fest, with very little potential to be as good as its predecessors.… Expand

Visuals - as my casual gamer sister said when she caught me playing diablo 3: the graphics are way too Ragnarok-like for a game about demons. For me it would kind of work if the graphics were oriented for a game such as Bastion but it just doesn´t fit the mood here; maybe I´m not the target market for this stuff, perhaps it was never intended for a mature audience. But even then starcraft 2 is graphically darker than this.
Leveling up - the whole chain of evolution is visually available from the very beginning and as you receive new abilities just by leveling up you test them and see their uselessness and go back to your previous killer formula. You have no paths to choose and/or costumize your character, it 's just a straight line ahead without much thinking nor branch working.
Level design - as most maps are "randomly" generated you should finished them the first time you encounter them since if you logout and login minutes later the whole configuration will be disposed in a different lego-like block struture. This is nice in a way because it gives a more "challenging" map but as you don't interact very much with the scenery, the traps in it for you to use against enemies are useless, you just pass through a painterly wallpaper most of the time having enemies mostly as a mean to reduce game progression. Besides the dungeons everthing is a straight line and even the dungeons only serve to explore and find the audiologs in diaries form, which works a lot better in bioshock than here. A world-map sandbox universe would have worked wonders here (zelda like or even metroid like), instead they made as straight lined as Final Fantasy XIII, probably even more.
History: everything is so handed down and the hand holding just never stops, pretty much this whole game history can be totally explained in 4 phrases. And don't get me wrong, they have some nice points, although I still have my doubts about what deserved a CGI cutscene and what didn't, the way which it was treated and served mostly ruined it for me, a very Disney/Pixar approach.
I just finished a demon hunter 4 Acts playthrough and I had as friendly AI to fight the demons a thief, an arcanist and a templar like guy. Where were the monks, mages and wizards? And Tyrael's uselessness is unbelievable...
I wonder how courageous or just ill-willing the producers were to pull this out and give us a collector edition with diablo 2 and its expasion along with it. Probably just lazy and greedy.
On its own it's hardly one of the worst games I've played but not in the spectrum of the bests either. Also it doesn't add anything new to the mixture, so it doesn't even have the excuse of being experimental. Sadly more disappointing than starcraft 2.… Expand

Truly a disappointing continuation of the franchise. The reasons for this games poor show have been covered in enough detail already and I feel safe in saying I would rather have seen Diablo and all his little minions safely locked away in the mists of nostalgia instead of regurgitated, stuck together with bits of bubble gum and given a cheap lick of paint. What happened to you blizzard! Any past respect I had for you is sadly dwindling away to nothing.

Another point I would like to make is the unbelievable disparity between the "official" critic reviews and the user reviews. Have any of them actually played this game? Or were they simply told to copy and paste what Activision-Blizzard told them when they collected their cheques?… Expand

To be honest I can't understand why the user ratings are so bad. What did you people expect? I bought the game knowing what I was getting into. Yes this is just a repetitive hack and slash. Yes the main point of the game is to just kill stuff and loot items. No depth really. And you know what? It is fun and addictive. It does get boring sooner or later, but what doesn't?

I've played about 100 hours and I'm quite happy that I bought this game. I've had a fair share of fun. Also I expect to come back from time to time, just to have some hack' n slash fun with my friends.

What makes me wonder the most is why does Diablo II have a much higher rating? D3 is really the same game as D2, just newer. It has new graphics and content, but all the main features, weaknesses and strengths did not change at all.… Expand

Basically Diablo 3 looks like a game, but it is not. Diablo 3 is a product for merchants, and gold farmers. It is a auction house simulator. The whole purpose is to buy and sell items, while Blizzard takes 15% cut of all the auction house earnings.

Well made, but short, repetitive and with ver very little in the way of customization. The always online idea is arse and sadly the likes of Torchlight just do this so much better these days.

David Brevik is a good and decent man. To even think of how unprofessional and unskilled Jay Wilson talked about him makes me very angry. This game was released broken and no one should waste money on it.

Once you have reached Inferno, the level at which you are promised the game will actually start, you will realize it has been a scam all along. No item drops makes the game worth your time. Take my word for it.

The game took 11 years to make, the same amount of time was needed to ruin a perfectly viable franchise. Impressive in a sense, but not to the actual customer. Blizzard are getting greedy and stuffy, thank god indie studios are on the rise to replace these worthless behemoths. Don't buy it, it is all hype, no fun.… Expand

Blizzard / Activision has fallen from heaven. Diablo 3 shows us what happens when a good franchise is paired with abysmal and downright disgraceful business practices and devlopment. Here are my observations:

1.) Always online DRM has proven to have disastrous consequences for my game because now I am playing in inferno and when bad server connection from congestion leads to me being disconnected--- after I have secured level 5 nephalem valor (from killing 5 bosses to enhance drops) at great, painful effort, I have to start all over again. The game's mechanics are just being plain disrespectful. I play Diablo 3 99% of the time in single player and this mechanic has done me far more harm than good. They should have included offline option out of respect for players like me but apparently they don't care. Disgraceful! 2.) Story is brain dead and unworthy of the franchise. Character dialog is terrible and has been barely thought of. The story is disconnected from that of Diablo 2 and clearly dumbed down in preparation for some sort of bi-yearly recycling. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Guess what!? Diablo, Mephisto and Baal are apparently alive again! Trapped in the black soulstone (how did they get there!?) and now merged together into a "Legion" demon! Which is crazy because you completely destroyed them in Diablo 2; their souls have been destroyed forever in the Hellforge. They are gone and will never return. But how do you recycle a franchise without bad guys right? SO LET'S UNKILL THEM!!!

3.) Skill system offers little diversity. The very limited skills you get from reaching certain levels is really for plain brainless damage doing or avoiding/absorbing attacks. No intelligence required for use! Tactics!? Who needs that! Terrible.

4.) Gameplay is anemic. I consider Diablo 3 a step back in the franchise. I played Diablo 2 for many years and that offered far more options for gameplay than this one. Now everyone can be a tank/nuker at the same time except in inferno where it is freakishly difficult so that Blizzard will force you to buy items in their auction house and if you want the best, REAL MONEY IT IS! Blizzard takes 15% of all transaction costs!

5.) Gear system. Let me make it clear that Diablo 3 is NOT about player skill. It is about having the BEST gear. Skill in this game does not help at all with the super enemies in inferno (invulnerable minions with a boss that takes ages to kill) that will require you to have the best items in the game to destroy. You cannot even kite because Blizzard threw in the 10-minute enrage timer in inferno so if you do NOT kill the boss or champion group in 10 minutes your life will automatically rapidly degenerate to zero. So the only solution is BETTER items that you can get through auction house! They did not have to do this but they did to control you and FORCE YOU to play the game their way. I find that highly disrespectful as I want to play as I see fit. Nobody should kill you for not playing a game a certain way! And I play fair.

Conclusion:
Diablo 3 is a waste of money. The brainless convoluted Call of Duty-equivalent of RPGs. It is completely dumbed-down to appeal to a "BROADER" audience--- Perhaps too dumbed down. Blizzard expects us, their customers, to not care about the gameplay, story and experience. They expect us to care only for one thing--- hype. "I am cool because I play Diablo 3! Did you see the website!?". Regardless of how bad that game is. Their mentality has led them to spend outrageous amounts of cash on marketing to over-hype the game while they super-rushed, starved, and went downright thrifty on the development team which led to a game that is only a third as good as it should be (the way I see it, they took only 2-3 years to make this) Because they think we are all carefree kids. Not me. I am a fan of the original and this is not the successor of Diablo 3. You do not have to support this hogwash of a game. Show them that you disapprove of the deliberate trashing of franchises by NOT buying this game.

I am giving it a 2. Yes this is a working game that does deserve more merit if it stands on its own. And by that I mean its own franchise. If this was a new franchise I might give it a 4 or 5. But it is not a new franchise. This is Diablo 3. The successor to what many consider to be the greatest RPG of all time. And I will grade it on that basis. If you are the successor then you should be better. If you cannot. Then save face and start your own franchise. And this game has failed miserably at that. I will not compromise.… Expand

I'm glad I got my refund for this game back in early June of this year. I played diablo and diablo II, for YEARS. This piece of crud doesn't even have pvp.

It's a "good" game, but by blizzard's standards (which are exceptionally high) this game was a failure. You can get a good amount of play out of it, perhaps 100 hours, but it isn't worth $60 and it isn't comparable to the 1,000+ hours you got out of Diablo 2. The game is shallow; the horror atmosphere is gone; the quests and writing will make you cringe. D3 might be the end of the blizzard we used to know.… Expand

- Always online is a scam. Especially when you pay full price - saving them distribution costs.
- Real Money Auction house destroyed a core aspect of this genre - that being item find and looting. Legendary item's are anything but. Boss drops nerfed so bad its not worth working toward them. Prices on the AH are ridiculous; in the 100's of million of gold range and inflating constantly.
- Despite having 5 classes; there is only really two: Sword and board "resist all" stacker; or copious dps get hit once and die nuker. No skill or stat points, and a myriad of skills that become redundant in the endgame.
- The story is garbage; as if written by committee. The persona's of Tyrael and Diablo forever sullied; the famous Deckard slain by a nobody; pitiful, cringe-worthy ending.
- Completely disintegrate any respect I had for Blizzard. Where once we could trust them to come out with polished, well thought out, engaging and deep games; too franchise exploiting money grabbers.

I want a refund. But knowing that's not on the cards - I just won't give Blizzard my money again.… Expand

One of the worst games I have ever played. Jay Wilson killed the Diablo franchise forever and insulted the original talented creators in every possible way. The game itself would be just ok as a game if it hadn't the name Diablo on it. And that's the problem. As a Diablo game it is unrecognizable, you don't feel like playing a Diablo game anymore. Puke. The new Blizzard sucks.

A piece of s*** . No really. If you played in 1996 - this is the same game only worse.
Graphics are bad, gameplay is bad, support is bad. Its terrible. DO NOT WAS YOUR MONEY ON THIS

Diablo III is ultimately a good game. The problem is, a large proportion of fans were expecting a stellar, mind-blowingly amazing game. And on that front it's a disappointment, therein lies the mixed opinion coupled with a healthy dose of "I don't like things that are different" and "I can't play because of obnoxious DRM".

There's only one major failing of the game that Diablo III is worthy of the harshest criticism for; the story. You'll be hard pressed to find a more generic, cheesy, poorly paced and bafflingly structured storyline within a game. Almost every trope of storytelling you can imagine is used inappropriately within the central narrative, from arrested character development to cringe-inducingly inept villains. There's a lot wrong with the story here, so if you're looking for something that tugs at your heart strings and makes you feel feelings, look elsewhere.

That being said however, the gameplay of Diablo III is polished to a very high standard. While earlier difficulties are a relatively standard hack-and-slash experience, more complex and challenging combat begins to add layer upon layer of depth to the gameplay as you go on. Character builds, itemisation and tactics all begin to play a critical role, and alongside standard progression you have a nicely involved sideline of loot-grinding.
Gameplay is involved and visceral, and randomly generated dungeons (though sadly randomisation is minimal in most overworld areas) keep things fresh for at least a few playthroughs.
Visually, Diablo III boasts low polygon counts, but a richness and attention to detail that makes every setting wonderful to look at.

Ultimately this third instalment in the Diablo franchise doesn't live up to hype, but that's probably the only major crime it commits. If you can handle the always-online requirement and the fact that this game isn't going to be winning any awards for originality or innovation, there's a lot to be enjoyed here. The developers at Blizzard have never been revolutionary artistes or champions of consumer good will, but what they *are* is incredibly effective at making video games that do exactly what they say on the tin.

Diablo III is everything you'll want out of a hack-and-slash, and nothing more. There's enough gameplay in there for you to get more than your money's worth even for the casual player. For the enthusiast, you're likely to sink a hundred hours into this one easily.… Expand

Unfortunately a disaster. Repetitive and nothing that we haven't seen in other hack and slash games. Good visuals but nothing more. Good story but too few classes. You get bored efter 2 weeks

This is a late review, but I think a late game deserves as much. In any event, I wanted to get it right. Diablo 3 is unlike any game Ive played before in that is succeeds so brilliantly in the little things, but fails so catastrophically at its core. The graphics of Diablo 3 are among the best, its a great hybrid between hand-drawn artwork and high-octane animations in great density. Kill animations are numerous and always feel satisfying, and the landscapes nail the dark fantasy feel. The cinematic are breath-taking. The audio is also great, with an insane number of audio cues between skills and monsters and events plus a good soundtrack never hurt anyone. The game is long and begs to be replayed numerous times which shows how powerful the character progression is. The story is far too terrible to be a driving force, its characters are all one-dimensional, and plot twists are few and predictable. The only thing I didnt predict was how little closure the ending would give. But everything I just mentioned is just a drop in the bucket, because Diablo 3 fails to be either a game or a work of art. The implementation of the video and audio only exist to enhance the gameplay and the story is virtually non-existent. Theres no deeper meaning hidden anywhere. The problem is that the game aspect of Diablo 3 is also built on a flawed foundation. Diablo 3s gameplay is built entirely on 2 pillars: skills and gear. Theres nothing else to it, and both pillars are undermined by their flaws. On the one hand, the skills in Diablo 3 are amazing - at first. Unlocking new runes and new skills opens worlds of possibilities, and theres nothing more fun than switching builds around trying different playstyles. The problem is that you can only do this for a limited time. As you progress through the game and unlock new skills, you will also move onto harder difficulties. In Diablo 3 you have NO CHOICE over what difficulty, not because the game doesnt allow you to choose, but because the difficulties dont scale to level. If your the kinda gamer who likes a normal difficulty, Youll enjoy nightmare the most. But the problem is that you cant start on nightmare, and you cant end on nightmare. Once you beat nightmare, playing again will never be the same because youve already leveled beyond it. Once you beat a difficulty, going back to it is simply too easy to be any fun, your forced to do the next difficulty because its only one thats remotely challenging and its the only one in which your character can progress, either in level or gear. The new difficulties are scaled to be more difficult however. Once you get to Hell difficulty (the 3rd if you dont know), Diablo 3 gets difficult, and sometimes its unecessarily difficult, and some people like that, others dont. Hell difficulty is when your favorite builds stop working, and your playstyles start to die off one by one because they simply arent good enough. If you go all the way through that, your capped out forever on inferno difficulty, in which nearly every player in the world is limited to only a select few cookie cutter builds. You know the billions of skill and rune combos you used to have so much fun with? Well they might as well be gone because experimentation outside the cookie cutter is dealt with sheer brutality by the later difficulties. Inferno is at many times difficult on an unfair level. But my level 60 cant play anything else because theres no other difficulty where I can progress or have any fun. I can choose between far too easy and far too difficult. This feeds into the next issue, because Diablo 3 is all about the gear. The people who can do inferno can do so because they have the gear that makes it possible. But theres 2 problems with the gear. For one, gear is generated on a heirarchical basis. First it generates the level, then the number of bonuses, then the scale of each bonus, and the odds continue to roll on an exponential level ranging from complete **** to godly. The gear that gets people through inferno isnt the 1 in a 1000 drop, its not even a 1 in 10,000 drop. Its a one in a million drop. But surely theres ways to increase my chances of finding magic items. 2 things, you can use items that boost magic find but at the expense of bonuses that you NEED to survive the areas that drop good items, and then you have to actually get to those areas. To get past Act I inferno, you need AcT II gear. To get past Act II, you need Act III gear. Between the odds of finding the gear you need and not being able to progress because you need gear from an area beyond you, most players are caught in a tragic end-game loop, a loop that destroys the essential criteria of fun. Diablo 3 is a game with a time limit, theres not fun endgame stuff to do like there is in WoW, its built so that your character caps out. Theres no power/difficulty plateau, it keeps getting harder until you cant progress. Farming can only delay the cap, but whats the point? Its not fun. It's bad design.… Expand

For a game that was 12 years in the making, it sure doesn't feel like it. No offline mode, numerous bugs, a heavily exploited economy and downright broken inferno mode make this a huge disappointment. And now the fiasco with the developers inability to take criticism as seen here: http://www.incgamers.com/2012/08/blizzard-react-angrily-to-incgamers-david-brevik-interview/ just solidifies the state of the game.… Expand

My son bought this game. He played it for like 3-4 days? then quit and said it was boring. So decided not to play it. But I asked him if I could try it, and for awhile I could not because I did not know the password for his online account. So, I could not play it unless I buy my own copy registered under my own email.Happy to say, I did not by another copy, I asked him nicely for his password, and it worked. So I played the game and got interesting, mainly on the Witch doctor character, and the exploding frogs skill. I also played the wizard, that got all the way to nightmare and I started getting better items. When I played solo, and I could not get pass champion bosses without dying. I became frustrated and quit playing because progress is hard to attain. Back to Black Ops.… Expand

I was a big fan of the Diablo series until this box of promises got dumped into my letter box.

This game is nothing like Diablo 1, or 2 in either feeling of game-play or intelligence needed to play the game. The skill tree is idiot proof and there is no way to make mistakes. The only thing separating characters in this game is the gear and the organization of skills. I played this game for about a month and then promptly just left the game with no feeling of satisfaction what so ever.

All characters have their own set of weapons, but no one uses them because other weapons are better, Wizzards with spears and barbarians with daggers, what was Blizzard thinking?

If i could have gone back in time, i would have never touched this game.… Expand

I am hardcore D2 fan and I have to admit that D3 is ideal sequel. D2 sucks in almost every aspect that Blizzard managed to fix in D3. Broken D2 UI - fixed. Boring endgame turning into endless Hell Baal Runs - fixed. Ridiculously **** up melee combat in D2 - fixed. 85% of the skills in D2 sucks and are waste of the points - guess what, D3 managed to fix it with awesome skill system. Gold was a mock in D2 time, you may have 50kk gold which worth literally **** nothing, and now even 100k of gold worth a lot in D3. Etc, etc, every point that D2 has, was fixed, re-thinked or made from scratch in better way.
It was definitely worth to wait 12 years for D3 release, this is superior gem in every aspect offering both excellent single and coop modes experience.… Expand

Did not like this game much at all, especially compared to D1 and D2. Really nothing new here, and lots of grinding and grinding. Pay-To-Win player store use is pretty much required for higher levels of play as the needed gear is simply not ALL going to drop in your lifetime. Repeated content is the name of the game. Development of chapters quickly tails off as you go from Ch1 -> Ch4.


Unless you are a die-hard Diablo / Blizzard fan, not recommended.… Expand

D3 shipped in a beta state of the game. From the ground up the game reeks of poorly managed development. At release there were rampant bugs and glitches, and Blizzard has been quick to nerf classes and mechanics that players have found ways of using that Blizzard "doesn't like", yet slow to even consider fixing plainly broken things. The game came out in early May, yet it wasn't even until the previous week (mid August), that there were even discussions to attempt to move the game out of its obvious beta build. With the 1.04 patch the game takes a step out of its beta state, but still not anywhere near a release build that was worth the $60, or $100 if you made the mistake of buying the CE (most horrible CE released from Blizzard to date, everything in it apart from the art book was trash).

Maybe next year the game will be in a worthwhile state, but needless to say, even if you ignore the general unplayable state the game was in for the first few weeks after its release, D3 is a bad game in its current state. If you haven't bought it yet, don't, wait till next year to see if it has been patched four or five times. If it has and if the forum community (on site and on fan sites) still isn't frothing with rage, with forum bans going out every five minutes to try and make the game look like it is in a more pleasant state, then go ahead and consider buying the game. Otherwise, do not even think of putting this game in your cart of any kind or even approach a register with it, there are far better games for less than half the price that can occupy even more hours of your time if you wish.… Expand

Diablo 3 is not a true successor to Diablo 2, unfortunately we will never get the true successor. This game was engineered by a group of people who no longer try and make fun games, it is an utter disaster and I wish that I had never bought it (launch day), not for the loss of money, but because I unfortunately helped contribute to the game being a commercial success even though it is an utter failure in every other way.

The critics that gave this game a good review, either weren't fans of Diablo of Diablo 2, or much more likely they are industry hacks, if ever there was a sign that you simply cannot trust professional reviewers it is with the difference in scores by users vs critics for this game. What a travesty.

I gave this a 1 out of 10, simply because on it's own, this game would have been mediocre, but as a sequel it is an utter betrayal of the design of the series and of the fans who wasted their money on it.

This is the equivalent of a Disney sequel and no, I'm not talking about Toy Story sequels, more like Aladdin: Return of Jafar or Lion King: Simba's Pride, totally undeserving of the name and something that was made merely to cash in on other peoples hard work by appropriating the name.… Expand

I've never been so disappointed with a sequel in my life, and I'd like to think that it's not only because Diablo 2 was a great game, but also because this one is really bad. Blizzard is slipping in all departements, the story is just lazy, the characters are mostly flat and boring and they actually built this game on the premise that you'll play it over and over again anyway.

Here's a tip: the reason people played Diablo 2 over and over again for years and years wasn't because that was the only way to get good gear, or to change the difficulty (absolutely horrible that you can't start on harder difficulty in this goddamn game): they did it because the game was great fun to play in the first place.

My respect for Blizzard is severely damaged, and I won't be buying a game from them again anytime soon.… Expand

Why give this game a 0? Because it is sooo bad that Blizz has ruined PC Gaming for me. I played 150+ hours and NEVER once did I have anywhere near as much fun as the previous Diablos.. It is uninstalled now. Sadly Blizzards now possesses a deep seated contempt for us gamers.. Every patch that has been release has further enhanced the sucky elements of the game and made it less fun. I started having more fun reading the forums and hearing other gamers complain rather than playing the game.. I CALL THIS A ZERO QUALITY GAME! If you had given the Titan's quest crew Diablo 3's budget we would be looking at a perfect 10 game. It is just criminal making a game this bad with this kind of budget. Now Blizzard is threatening people in the forums to stop complaining about the game or face account penalties. This game just feels like a conspiracy against gamers. Take something fun, and militarize into a money making job. So not fun, and terribly designed.… Expand

It's a single-player game that requires online. The writing has taken a nosedive compared to Diablo II. The gameplay is repetitive without being as satisfying as Diablo II.

OK... where do i start? I have been a fan of diablo since the very 1st original game which was in my mind one of the greatest games of all time. Where the hell did it all go wrong? This is a far cry from Diablo. The only correlation between this and Diablo is the title and the fact that you have to kill "Something" called Diablo at the end of the game. This is the biggest let down of the year for me. This game should easily have been game of the year.

The graphics are good yeah but the plot is basically laughable. The difficulty settings of Inferno basically make it impossible to farm anything unless you are in a group. There are too many stat's too have to worry about when it comes to gearing up, i mean good luck finding gear for a monk that has 1 misc res, 1 All resistance, Dex, Vit, AS, CHC, CHD, socketted, GF/MF etc... The servers are a joke, if you can beat the log in screen you find that the AH crashes on an almost weekly basis, and that you pull your hair out the roots because you get server lag that gets you killed during boss confrontations after which you get a 5K repair bill for something that wasn't your fault.

The builds are ok while you are still learning what to do but once the novelty wears off, you quickly realize that there are only 5 or 6 skills per class worth bothering with anyway. Now that people are leaving the game in massive quantities, it has become harder and harder to gear up. Every item is randomly generated so you could end up with chest gear for a barbarian with INT and DEX on it rather than STR/Vit. Because people are leaving gear on the ah is going up astronomically because there are not as many farmers now as there used to be which has a knock on effect on everything from leveling to AH prices.

There is no suitable upper limit cap on the ah and because of that gear worth 10K is allowed to be sold for 30 Billion... Because of this, arguments in chat are common because people who find an equivocal item automatically think that their item is worth at least 40 Million or some crap like that and some arguments between players almost verge on bullying and harassment.

Blizzard now let people sell gold on the ah at a base value of 0.25p per 100K which is great until you realize that gold sellers are selling gold for 6 euro for 50 Million. Way to go blizzard, what sort of school of economics did you go to when you decided to make it profitable to buy gold from gold sellers rather than price them out? I mean Christ, buy 50 Mill gold off them for 6 euro and sell it on the rmah for ££££'s, yay great plan!.

I guess the last problem is Jay Wilson... turd... Thanks for ruining what should have been an instant classic.

And blizzard really think PVP will save this game? Considering the dps difference with some classes, the resistance of others, no pvp build and no pvp gear... PVP i think will be a total fail.

I honestly don't know where to stop, i feel so dissapointed with this EPIC FAILURE that i feel like i want my money back. The only reason i have not tried to get my money back is because i made the money back off the RMAH.

Honestly.... Wait for torchlight 2, dont buy this utter ****… Expand

The game as of august 2012 is a disappointment. You start out feeling powerful, gradually facing enemies stronger and stronger, making you feel weak and puny in the end. The opposite of how a game in this genre should feel. Items are lackluster and boring. Character customization is non existent. Re-playability is present, but not enjoyable.

I give it 1 point for being called Diablo. The game just doesn't have any other merrits justifying more points. It's called Diablo, but for the rest, it simply isn't a Diablo game. This is Duke Nukem Forever Goes Diabolical. It's just a release to milk money from the masses. Sorry, Activision, these are not the cashcows you're looking for.

I will not complain about the connectivity issues and Blizzard's recent trend of fetishism for DRM. Multiplayer SC2 has some of the same faults, and it is a great game. The problems with D3 are numerous and too large to overlook. The most glaring deficiency is the story. Foreshadowing should be subtle. Every villain in D3 tells you exactly what they are going to do and when. The side dialogue all but explicitly says what is coming up next. The new characters that enter the realm are poorly developed. I do not care at all about them or know their motivations. It is the difference between The Godfather and Avatar. The Godfather has a great story. The characters are developed. There is emotion. The scenes are visually pleasing, but the director does not bash you with action at all times. Avatar sacrifices story on the altar of cool visual effects. It is so predictable and its characters are so vapid that you want to keep watching because you paid the $12 for the ticket, and damn it, you are going to get your full 3 hours because you paid for it.

The game is incredibly item dependent. I suppose that this is by design. Feel like you are getting killed too often? Head over to the auction house and buy some of our items. That is fine. It does not kill the game by itself. WoW did the same thing and it did not break the game. What really peeves me is bringing cash into it. Want to really smash the bad guys? Grab your mother's credit card and use some real life currency. Blizzard gets a cut of the action, of course. On that same point, there are very few times during a playthrough that you feel like you are in the right location for your level. I am usually smashing the baddies or getting manhandled like a boxing match between Mr. T and Michael Cera. The happy medium is difficult to find and fleeting.

Blizzard has been a reliable company over their whole history. I have never been disappointed in any of their previous titles. Players of any skill level could have a blast playing over and over again. They were visually pleasing. At the same time, the gameplay was smooth, and the story was engaging. Yes, D3 is visually pleasing considering that they needed to make a game that would run on a wide range of hardware. Yet, it lacks the essential elements of a good game. It has been dumbed down and destroyed in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Blizzard used to be a team of artists that were the greatest at their craft. They have lost that slowly since WoW. No amount of bug fixes and balancing can fix that.

As a longtime fan of Blizzard games, I am incredibly disappointed in D3. I wasted $60 and 60 hours of my life. In the future, I will no longer blindly trust in Blizzard's ability to produce a good game. Their reputation has been tarnished so severely for me. It is time to put that silly dream out of its misery like a black powder rifle to old yeller's head.… Expand

Oh Blizzard, you really screwed this one up. It is to be expected though, now that you have merged with those developer-killers, Activision. Your games have been going downhill since WoW: The Burning Crusade and this is just another nail in your coffin as far as a huge chunk of your fan base is concerned.

I found Diablo 3 painfully boring, repetitive, dated, uninspired and predictable. The boredom factor kicks in right at the beginning of the first act and unfortunately does not subside throughout the entire game. I found my brain completely switching off as I roamed aimlessly through boring dungeons, not caring about my quest or the overall plot. I was merely looking for something to excite me, but the excitement never came. The game is incredibly repetitive, however, Diablo 2 was also repetitive, yet killing countless beasts in the Arcane Sanctuary was somehow so much more fun than killing anyone in the badly designed sets of Diablo 3. The game looks like it should have been released in 2004, and lets face it, the game was finished and ready to go in 2004, however for obvious marketing reasons, Blizzard held it off until they milked WoW. There's a term for this and it's called product cannibalism. Blizzard were cautious about Diablo 3 as it no doubt would have caused the WoW players to shift games. DIablo 3 looks dated, because it is. This whole Blizzard 'It will be done when it's done' crap is merely hype building. Diablo 3 is uninspired. There is no creative flair throughout the whole game. Anyone could have written the plot, devised the monsters and vomited out that dialogue. It is total tripe. Blizzard has destroyed their own franchise. Do not purchase this game. You have been warned.… Expand

the ridiculously overpowered monster packs and elites, mean you are forced to play with others, which are most the time clueless under geared noobs that make playing a nightmare. The lucky few who have dedicated friends and play in organised groups probably enjoy the game enormously. Unfortunately none of my friends decided to play which meant that I never managed to enjoy the game, a part of which contributes to me being envious and ultimately the expression of this review. However that could have been avoided should blizzard have decided to make the whole game doable for solo players, which is probably not very difficult from a designers point of view. They just have to scale the monster abilities accordingly.
From the start the game put me on the USA servers without any confirmation of questions. This was due to the fact that I had played the beta, which was on USA servers and I hadn't switched the account back after buying the game, so after my char was lvl 47, I found out I was on the wrong server, and refused to remake my char. I am therefore unable to use the real money auction house, which is one of the biggest selling points of D3. Blizzard still hasn't done anything about this problem which has been in shock, and I refused to play another 100 odd hours to get to where I am now.
The always on connection requirement adds to this problem. My connection constantly lags and disconnects. I have had to kill countless monsters twice or even three times. Sure I understand that you want to provide a safe and secure and uncrackable system, but to stretch this to an extent where the regular players must update every move they make onto an extremely laggy server is beyond all explanation. Even if it is stable nowadays, there are still problems like when your computer crashes, and you find yourself in the middle of a massive monster pack at the front of the entrance immediately after you log back in. That's right you have been successfully farming with your friends, you dc'ed and they all died and kept dying and now noone can get away because there's a ridiculous waller / fast / arcane minion pack that one shots everyone. now you have to remake and go without any of your nephalem valors from scratch.
This game is crap in ways that boil my very bones. I played wow for such a long time, and every patch all my efforts were completely pointless, it was as though I was a noob once again. I vow to never buy a blizzard game again.… Expand

An empty soulless version of a fantastic game. The way Activision/Blizzard has handled there business is unacceptable and consumers need to stop putting up with it. The in-game cash shop and always online single player is not okay. Since big publishers judge success by only two things, sales and metacritic rating, tanking the metacritic rating is the only way to get their attention.

Long story short ; How can you ruin an epic game series? Diablo III..

Diablo 3 is an bizarre experiment. I feel like I should learn financial maths and use a spreadsheet to manage it. But then you have the unpredicted drop or deal that changes everything. What do you remember from the two first opus? Addiction? Well it's still there. But the "buzz" is more volatile. The main fun thing for me is still the rune system which allows a lot of cool combinations. Some aren't just useful in inferno because you'll get your ass kicked, but in hell, yes, you can evolve your character in very distinct ways. A very very good value for me, and I don't have to divide 60$ by x hours played for that.… Expand

Dont let the fanboys fool you this is a great game although it does have its issues when it comes to endgame players, but you will have plenty of fun until then

Diablo III is a fairly satisfactory dungeon romp, in the manner of its predecessors. If making enemies explode and effortlessly plowing through a horde of the undead satisfies you, this may be just the thing. Its environments are attractive, even if its story, voice acting and writing are generally of very poor quality (as this is not the game

The main reason why I hate this game is because it is not the social game I thought it would be. In D2, me and my friends played for years and had fun with the game. In D3, I played with the same exact group of friends, but we have all quit within a couple of months. Every aspect of the game encourages the players to play BY THEMSELVES, and not with their friends. The auction house encourages people to sell their items instead of sharing with their friends, the four player max splits up groups of friends (unlike the 8 player max in previous games), there is no pvp (yet)...in general the game just simply is not fun. For the player who likes to play by himself, this could be a great game. For the person who wants to play a game with his friends...this is not.… Expand

Well, I got the Starter Edition, and I'm 100% positive I won't buy the game. By the time I reached the first boss in the game, I was getting really bored, mainly because of the same environment and the difficulty. You wander in dungeons a lot, at least in the first act. About the difficulty; This game is too easy on normal, and since I'm unable to change the difficulty, I have to rate that. Despite being totally new to the game, not once did I have to use potions. The exploration: If you're someone who tries to explore everything in a game, like me, then prepared to be punished. The dungeons have optional and main pathways, where the objective is. Thing is, if you went the wrong way (for example, you see your objective) you have to go all the way back to explore that one optional wing/room, and then again go all the way back to the main path. You get XP for mindless things like destroying barrels or benches as fast as possible. One positive thing however, is that you can interact with the environment to some degrees, like you can use a chandelier to kill some demons with it by dropping it on the ground.
So long story short, it has way too few pros and you burn out quickly from it (3 hours for me), so I wouldn't recommend getting this game, especially for the price they are asking for it.… Expand

Most games you play until you get bored. Diablo 3 I played until I hated it and then some. I played 120 hours, which seems great for $60...but the game is terribly disappointing. I only kept playing because of how much I enjoyed Diablo 2. My single biggest complaint is that every level 60 character is exactly the same. There is absolutely no customization. All that distinguishes the best barbarian from the worst barbarian is gear, which you can buy on the AH for real dollars of which Blizzard takes a portion. The quests are boring, the dialogue is atrocious, the plot is inane, and the always online requirement is aggravating. And worst of all the items suck. I found 2 legendaries (uniques) over 100 hours. Why is that? Diablo 3 is shallow, boring, and does disgrace to the Blizzard name.… Expand

One sentences should sum it up: This game is HUGE disappointment. You have to basically pay to win as NOTHING decent drops in hundred of hours of "farming", or its better to call it "grinding". No upgrades to your gear, no legendaries, no rares, NOTHING. The loot system is broken or extremely mean to players.

MF doesn't work the way it should work. Gives you basically no item-finding boost at all.
(Been farming act 3 inferno with 300% MF with mediocre results).

To be able to clear latest act of hardest difficulty you have to buy gold or equipment for real money. The best gear in game is like 250 euro or more.

My advice: Don't buy this game and spare your time and money...… Expand

The novelty of this game wears off extremely quickly and becomes a repetitive grind. This holds true when you have to complete the campaign 3 times just to reach the max level.

Never played diablo 1+2, but decided to try out this game after hearing all the hype. The game is OK. However, it has no entertainment value after first playthrough. Sure, you unlock a new difficulty and can earn better loot in your next playthrough - but so what. Why bother... This game is based around grind. And if you like pure grind then this is the game for you. I have not even in mmorpgs seen this kind of grind. If playing the same story over and over satisfies you then this is the game for you. Other than that i want to mention that blizzard has terrible customer service - they completely disregard their customers (because they can).… Expand

A lot of the reported issues with this game really don't matter much until you hit Inferno mode. For those that don't own the game and don't know, Inferno mode is the fourth time playing through the campaign with the same character, and it is harder because you cap at level 60 and can't out-level the mobs to beat them if the game has been giving you crappy loot. To some, the game isn't "beaten" until you finish Inferno, and I can understand the frustration they are facing.

That said, any game that I enjoyed for 100+ hours is definitely worth the money, and I can say that about Diablo 3. Maybe $60 is a tad high, but IMHO the quality and polish of this game is worth at least $50.… Expand

Straight from Wiki "Development on Diablo III began in 2001". That is 12 years of development for that game?? Just looking at what has been taken away from the series is ridiculous. No PVP so far (NO open world PVP period) , No Modes, Maxium 4 player games from the previous 8 players, No Valueable Quest (No Socket or Resistance or Skill or Attribute Quests) No Skill tree or Attribute System, No Channels, Cann't make or Join games like before,No Ladder System. What I've been reading on positive reviews is its a Looting game / Hack&Slash at its finest. OK so why does this game have way less Loot then D2? No Runes (No runewords obviously, So whats the point of white items can anyone tell me that?) No Jewels, Less Gems then before (more upgrades for them thats all), No Charms (Small charms / Large charms / Grand Charms / Annihilus / Torch / Gheeds Fortune), No Ethereal Items, No Orange Item crafting, (No Aura / Spells on hit weapons or armour). How is this a "Looting Game" ,when its missing 50-60% of the items the previous game had? Even after playing the game most of the Legendaries and Sets are useless (Compared to Rares and even Magic Items). So if its not a Looting Game and its not a Customizable Item and Skill / Attribute Game. What is it Straight up Hack and Slash beat on monsters until your bored? That won't be hard, then you'll get 1-2 hit killed until your broke in money and armour (How about that for boring) . I remember how 1 review described this game as a Prettier Dumbed Down Simpler D2. Not even going to touch on the technical issues or Patchs.… Expand

Diablo 3 is a good game if it wasn't developed by Blizzard. It

A broken game built around a real-money auction house... a sad attempt to raise revenue through micro-transactions, destroying a great franchise in the process... pathetic.

At first, i was like most of the people writing these reviews "OMG diablo is so boring"
"OMG it requires no skill"
"OMG its just click at the baddies AND its boring AND it requires no skill"
yeah, ill say thats true until around hell, without a proper strategy for your class and with a lack of skill, you're going to get 2 shotted by the zombies in act 1 and dont even get me started on the rare mobs. My experience with user reviews is that they base it off impressions OR they have a friend carry them through the game so they don't actually experience it.
SO.. my point here is, it's a GREAT game but really only if you want to drop some effort into it.
For the future players, don't buy it if you don't want to sink time into it, if you want a quick game with no effort/time required, go play CoD.
For the future reviewers, PLEASE don't write your review until you have leveled more than 3 characters (different classes please) to 60 and beat the game on all of those on all the difficulties, otherwise you're just going to get the "blizzard trap" where they make the game ridiculously easy until late-game.
Have fun, and go try to beat hell azmodan, peace.… Expand

It seems to me that Blizzard has so much money to pay critics. It's extremely evident and this is what is wrong with the world we live in. This game is the biggest garbage I've ever played. DRM nuff said...

1 Out of 10 star due to I waited so many years for the game! Got so happy it was coming out.. Just to see that the leveing up to 60 in the game was better then being lb. 60.. This game had noting to do with diablo 2. No PVP, No Trading games hosted, Trash AH where people buy and resell to scam each other and make money out of paypal AH on the news other day there was a kid that make 20,000$ from real money AH. and is still making more! The game is so bad over all. Patchs wont fix my thoughts on the game now its too. The game cheated on me I will never look back… Expand

This game is boring, dumb, has zero innovation and it's a shameless attempt for Blizzard to earn some "tax" money from people who already payed them for their game. Worst $60 ever spent IMO.

Let's keep it nice and short. Diablo 3 is just a Diablo 2 with lesser features and prettier graphics. If you're looking for some solid demon bashing fun with your friends, you'll like the game, other than that, the game is hollow.

What. Is. This.
Issues according to me:
1. Internet connection to play offline
2. Lag in offline (seriously?)
3. Very plane, you play an hour you have seen it all, I know its H&S but, the monster just get tougher, that's it.
4. Gets boring after 3/4 hours.

Very good game.Nice graphics,true hack and slash game,great soundtrack.
The always online thing didnt bothered me,except just one disconnect.
Real money auction house is a great iea to deal with gold selling sites.

While fun getting through the game the first time the fact is at max level the game is dull dull dull. Recycled content and ideas only go so far. Blizzard got my money so I guess the last laugh is on me :)

I'm updating my score from a 1 to a 5 in anticipation of patch 1.0.4. I truly hope this patch will bring out the game that we all paid $60-$100 for. Below are the preview details of patch 1.0.4 - release date is still unknown. System Changes, by Wyatt Cheng Senior Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng is preparing a high-level summary of some of the system changes planned for 1.0.4.
Legendary Item Improvements, by Andrew Chambers
Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers is working on a blog detailing all the ways we… Expand

This game is so utterly bad, that even writing this is more than it deserves. There is nothing fun about it except the first few-dozen hours of initial gameplay, it has no depth, it has no quality script, it has nothing original, it's in fact regression in every aspect. This game would never have sold if it wasn't signed Blizzard and it pains me so many of us buy something like this, expecting something good from a supposedly good company only to be served STUPIDLY expensive (80+ dollars at some time!!!!) CRAP. I am not going to buy Blizzard game ever again, I'm done with this company. They used to make good games, now it seems they just cash-in on their established brand. Like every **** business these days.… Expand

What a disappointment. After over a decade of waiting this is what we get? A game where the character models and overall graphics are a blurry and ugly mess that wouldn't have been acceptable 6 years ago. Where the game-play has been reduced to left click to win and skills and attributes have been removed or simplified to increase the dependency on gear so that you'll be more likely to use the Auction House, increasing Blizzard's revenue. The voice acting is horrid, on par with a bad B grade movie at the best of times while the story is such a joke Stephanie Meyer could have written a better piece of fiction in 3 months and this took then 6 years. The always online DRM is the icing on the cake. I don't think I've ever been more disappointed by something I was looking forward to in my entire life.… Expand

It has DRM always online. No offline mode. There is not really anything else to be said about this game. It

Diablo 3 does more things wrong then right, but you will not really notice them until you reach max level (which is reached very fast, relatively speaking.) For a brand new game coming out the issues that were present on release would not be such an issue if they were addressed, which they were not. Instead, Blizzard decide to patch up multiple play styles that players have in an attempt to get the player to focus on AH and RMAH. These types of actions by blizzard shows that they would rather make as much money as possible instead of fixing the integrity of the game, aka itemization and playing progression.

Blizzard made a lot of bad choices right after launch in favor to get players to use the AH/RMAH instead of playing the game. Players now have to grind for hours at a time to have any hope of finding gear, while being stuck using the same skills none stop. At the release of the game, this was not true. You could play the game for 30 minutes and feel rewarded. At soon as RMAH was released, the game was destroyed as well as any hope of focusing players on the game inself rather the the RMAH.

If you are looking to play a game for 100 hours for 60 bucks, then Diablo 3 is for you. If your looking for a game that will last a long time, look some where else. Diablo 3's dev team only focus is to take your money and spend it on RMAH.

One final note: This is why this game gets the lowest score possible in my mind. Blizzard will not restore any items lost for any reason at all. Even if you put money on RMAH and a bug occurs and it takes your money, and even if they realize this to be true, they will not restore ANYTHING. FOR ANY REASON.
If Blizzard wants to do RMAH, they have to go head over heels for the player, not screw them over.
This game is the biggest disappoint for me then Spore and Black and White 2 combined. Blizzard's team should be ashamed of themselves for ruining something that could of last the ages.… Expand

I find a few good things about D3, like the combat, the skill calculator, the spells, the runes and of course the detail of the cinematics. The story, maps/dungeons, bosses, npc's and basic mobs are all boring and bland but ok none the less. The biggest problems w/ this game start to show in inferno and really rear their ugly heads in Act 2+ inferno. The elite packs RNG affix, the crap RNG gear stats, the amount of ridiculously low ilvl gear dropping in inferno, the insane lack of gear drops that could be an upgrade which in turn these things all herd players to the GAH/RMAH in order to get gear to progress to a non-existent end game. The lack of drops for a lot of players that don't want to play the AH means a lack of incentive to continue to play the game. For those that play the AH and farm for hundreds and hundreds of hours to make $100 a month, more power to you, but for some of us this isn't the game we bought into. It turns out that Blizzard created D3 as a way to continue to feed their greed using the Diablo series name. Such a shame.… Expand

What a let down. Game had so much potential but once you hit inferno the blacksmith has it right when he says "too much work, not enough profit." Can put in weeks worth of gameplay and not get anywhere gear-wise which pretty much puts progression at an either stop or extremely difficult pace. Add the real money AH and this game turns into one of those iphone/android games where the game is pretty much impossible without purchasing perks and addons from the developer's ingame store. I'm a retired WoW player who played from vanilla to farming LK in WoTLK and for the longest time loved Blizz. But, now that they ruined the Diablo franchise (my opinion), I don't think I can forgive them. Diablo II saved me while I was in Iraq during down time. I played it on a super old Micron laptop that could barely run it. Loved the crap out of that game. I seriously think this game would of been better off as an iPad game for $9.99. Then the expectations wouldn't of been as high after what, 8 years of planning and development? (could be off on that number) In D2 there was a variety of skill builds that were feasable end game. So far in D3 there's 1 for my inferno act2 barb that works decent and 1 for my inferno act2/3ish wizard. Both are slow kill tanks. Fun times. The one part that gets me the most though is that I found my self playing the damn AH waaaay longer than I was playing the actual game! I'd spend hours browsing page after page for affordable upgrades since you're only allowed to have 3 search attributes and limited sorting. Then if you have a bid on something with less than an hour you don't want to start a game since by the time you get your 5 stacks in Act III you don't want to quit and lose them. That's a broken system in my book. I bought the game for the killing, not to play wannabe Ebay master.

Totally unacceptable from a company as big as Blizz and shame on ActiBlizz. Haven't logged in to D3 in almost a month now and probably won't be going back unless there are HUGE changes including being able to progress in a feasable amount of time without the RMAH and making other skills and builds enjoyable and playable. I give it a 2 instead of a 1 for at the very least giving me the first 30-50 hours of enjoyable gameplay where gear that dropped actually helped me progress. Oh wait, I almost forgot. Nevermind on the 2. I'm giving a 1 instead for forcing me to log in to play a solo game. There is tons of cheating and exploits going on in your game as is so, much good that all worked out huh? Took a 8 hour road trip not that long ago, couldn't play cause mobile hot spot was way too laggy. Guess what I did for those 8 hours. Friggin AH ebay master. Horrible.… Expand

I enjoy Diablo 3. i know it did not blow us away, but it sure is a hell of alot better than Diablo 2. This is a game i play it to have fun, unlike torchlight 1 which i play when i'm bored out of my mind. Diablo 3 had a great story to, We all know they had little to work with. So they used The lesser evils Belial, and, Azmodan.They made to be always online so that people couldn't install it on other computers Like you can with Diablo 2… Expand

I would love to give this a zero, but in all honesty the art guys did their job, and the game looks great. But as a sequel to D2, it is a major disappointment. After spending 4+ years of promising the community that this was the best Diablo ever, Blizzard finally released this dumbed down, incomplete, buggy, boring, un-fun abomination. I really don't need to repeat what's wrong with this game: just go to the BattleNet forums. There are many, many well reasoned posts like this [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6246475567] outlining the flaws in this game, and some pretty decent fixes proposed by the community. Sadly, Blizzard isn't listening. Equally, the so-called "critics" have failed the community. Only Armchair Empire [http://www.ae-infinite.com/2012/06/review-diablo-iii-pc.html] got it right.

Sorry, I'm not thankful, and I have no plans to buy the expansion unless this is fixed.… Expand

So.. I just returner from vacation, hadn't much to do so I launched diablo iii to play my lvl 60 monk. I haven' t played diablo for at least 20 days.... and what a surprise: after 10 minutes of playing i was so bored that i quit the game and went to watch some TV. That says all. The game has the most boring and repetitive gameplay ever. You start playing at normal.. way to easy and boring.. then nightmare .. same here.. hell is a little bit more challenging but you have already defeated diablo 2 times already so is still boring.. Inferno is a complete gear check ( that means you don't need skill to advance but good gear which you can only BUY from auction house unless you want to spend more than 1000 hours playing the same and the same act until you finally get a decent item) BTW i haven 't still found ANY set item until now... Don't buy this game unless you have 60e to throw away (and also plenty of time)… Expand

Too linear, too repetitive, too limited, one of the worst leveling systems ever. Single player doesn't work offline.
Problem with servers.
Total disappointment.

Although it has gone over 10 years since Diablo 2 was released Diablo 3 is worse.