Why I won’t be buying Diablo III: a rant…

I kinda suspected this was coming, and have had this creeping worry ever since Starcraft II and its single episode of ret-con bullshit. But even knowing that Blizzard stopped giving a fuck about everyone besides their World of Warcraft players, I still held out hope that they’d remember what was great about the Diablo series and not fuck it up. I also hoped that instead of rehashing the rescue Deckard Cain sub-plot, we might see a new lore guide.

But no, Deckard Cain is about the only thing that came back for Diablo III. Yet this is not why I’m pissed off. No, I’m pissed because the skill trees are gone. The attributes menus are gone. The game only gives you a predefined skill set for each character class, and you adjust NOTHING about their stats. The game does it all for you.

Remember how in Diablo’s dungeons, some were all twisty and turny, like mini-labyrinths where you weren’t quite sure if you’d just doubled back or not? Or remember walking outside of Tristram and being presented with an open field? Yeah, forget that kind of freedom. Here, the game has straight corridors that lead you where you need to be. You can’t get lost because your goals on the map will blink at you, to make sure you can’t make a mistake and wander off somewhere else. So much for the fun of exploration.

Most of the time that I was playing with the wizard last night, I kept getting popups for every little item, like the game assumes I’m a moron. Okay, the first time I get an inventory item I can wear, sure, tell me how to open the inventory. But why do I need a reminder for every single item? After I’ve already found gloves, a “tunic,” and some boots, the game is still popping off with shit like, “YOU FOUND PANTS! MAYBE YOU SHOULD PUT ON PANTS NOW!” I close that annoying box and go back to killing the monsters hidden under the fucking pop-up, and yet two minutes later, “YOU STILL HAVEN’T PUT ON PANTS. MAYBE YOU SHOULD PUT ON PANTS NOW!” FUCK YOU, STOP BOTHERING ME!

AND, when I finally put on the stupid pants, it doesn’t show on my character’s bare legs, nor does it remove her stupid fucking skirt. Every “armor” item for my wizard is a bra. Sure, it says “tunic,” but it’s a bra. Tunics don’t leave that much skin exposed to the elements. And for fuck’s sake, the tiny avatar can’t be zoomed in on, so why do I fucking care if she’s trying to dress as a middle ages hood rat?

The inventory also blinks at me every time I do anything. Walk over gold? Blink. Pick up a club of random loot dropping? Blink. It’s distracting as fuck, and there’s no option to turn it off. And, once I get into the inventory, everything new that I’ve taken since the last time I checked my inventory is highlighted. If I hover my mouse over the items for even half a second, it pops up a huge ass window describing the item, and then it pops up ANOTHER huge ass window comparing that item to whatever armor or weapon I’m carrying. Then if I don’t see how that dual-handed battle ax is superior to my magic wand, the game will pop up another reminder, “YOU HAVE BETTER WEAPONS NOW. YOU SHOULD EQUIP THOSE AND STOP USING THE WAND.” WILL YOU FUCKING FUCK THE FUCK OFF ALFUCKINGREADY? I want to play the game, not have Blizzard fucking play it for me!

There’s a cool down period on heal potions, and it’s ungodly long. For the wizard, that meant every other fight involved me running in circles around a horde, watching the menu bar instead of where I was going while I wait the fucking agonizing length of time it takes to get back a fucking MINOR POTION. It’s a potion for fuck’s sake! I could drink a fucking six pack of them without needing a cool down. Cool down is what you put on spells because they’re really powerful and might be abused in PVP matches. You do not put that shit on a vital fucking heal potion.

There’s no mana potions, or even a storage space on my belt. So instead of fighting my enemies, I have to keep running away to let my “arcane energy” regenerate. (Blizzard decided everyone having mana was lame, so everyone’s mana gets called something different. But it’s still all used for the same spells for every class, so why they needed to rename every class’s mana ball, I have no idea.)

Then there’s “achievements.” The killing monsters streak award, I understand. But I’m breaking open barrels, and here’s another fucking pop-up saying, “NEW RECORD! YOU SMASHED 8 BARRELS!” So fucking what? I’m not so desperate for constant validation that I need a fucking award for destroying inanimate objects. But these worthless fucking achievements are here so that when the game is ported to X-box and PS3, they can give players trophies for every inane little thing. Again, I get the point when I make extra HP for slaying 20 monsters in a row. But I’m not so clear on why there’s a bonus for exceptional barrel-killing streaks.

And my god, the voice actress for the wizard takes just the right tone of voice with everyone that I fucking hate her guts. People in Tristram are rightfully scared after losing their entire army in one night, and this bitch strolls into town and acts like a royal fucking cunt with all the empathy of a drunk man looking for a quickie with a grieving widow. She calls the mayor a coward, and then tells him later that maybe he should just drop dead. FUCK YOU, YOU SELF-RIGHTEOUS CUNT. I might not have felt this way if the character’s tone of voice didn’t always come across as condescending in every voice sample. But it’s like Blizzard set out to get the worst possible reaction from me with their voice acting. It’s not bad acting, but it’s also not compelling either. Instead of drawing me into my character, the grating voice shoves me away.

Then there’s the blacksmith telling the character, “If you see my apprentice, tell him to come home.” There’s no physical description given, and outside of Tristram, the bodies of villagers and soldiers are scattered like debris from a bomb blast. AND YET, my know-it-all cunt walks up to a body labeled HAEDRIM’S APPRENTICE, and she recognizes this one corpse out of all the others to say “Haedrim’s apprentice is dead. I shall have to inform him.” HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS IS THE RIGHT BODY? IS HE WEARING YE OLDE NAME TAG? And if he is wearing a name tag, shouldn’t it have his NAME and not a fucking placeholder as the servant of someone else?

And for everything they left out of the game, they still managed to bring back Deckard Cain for the exact same fucking “You must rescue the lore master” quest from the first two games. In fact, most of what’s going on in this game has been covered in the first two games already. Blizzard didn’t write a new story. They just shook the dust off the old scripts, shuffled the two stacks into each other, and then changed most of the names. Except Deckard, the most annoying aspect of the first two games. OY.

So, between everything I liked about Diablo being taken away plus the continuation of Deckard Cain, the world’s lousiest plot device, plus the addition of a catty main player who I already want to set on fire, plus lousy fucking writing that wouldn’t make sense if examined by an editor for two seconds, I have zero desire to buy Diablo III. With this last fucking up of games I used to care about, Blizzard has lost me forever as a fan, and I was with them back in the old days of the first Diablo. But I guess WoW really is more important to them as a “revenue stream,” and they don’t care to make a better Diablo game.

Instead, what they’ve given is a piss poor effort that time and again assumes I’m really stupid and didn’t want so many options. (Which makes no sense, given that in WoW, they give players more options, not less.) I loved customizing my Diablo II characters. I spent whole nights crafting special weapons and armors in the second game, only to learn that I’d need to level up and boost my strength to put the darn things on. And I loved that, that feeling of slow progression and character development. So when I got to the end of the game with my nice collection of hand crafted items, the character was exactly what I wanted to play up against the big boss. I went to fight Diablo with the equipment I wanted, and not the equipment I wished I had.

But right off the bat, all the items in Diablo III have the same look. Leather boots and chain mail boots look the same as “cracked shoes.” They’re all brown mid-calf boots. There’s no attempt to make anything look different, so it’s all just loot. And none of it interests me.

Okay, yes, there were a few minor changes that I actually liked, but they don’t balance out all the things I hate about this game. Adding the breakable environments seems cool, except now my shots won’t reach their targets without me first breaking everything in my firing path, and of course enemy fire phases though solid objects. (I’ve already seen enemies float through solid objects too, so collision detection is once again only good for the heroes, not the villains.) Also, I liked that I could just walk over gold to pick it up, while I had to choose which items to take into inventory. That makes sense, and it’s a nice touch. But this is one nice feature in a pile of shit game, and I don’t want the rest of the pile.

This was only a “starter” game, so I won’t give a star rating based on what little I played. But I will say that based on that first 4 hours of questing, I will not bother buying the full game. So I guess I should thank Blizzard for helping my budget stay balanced. But mostly, I want to say, “Fuck you, Blizzard. You ruined Starcraft II, and now you’ve ruined Diablo. Why don’t you make a new Warcraft and see if you can fuck that up too?”

Your mileage may vary, but I’m so, so done with this shit. Uninstalling today, bitches.