Since it was mentioned, here’s the post where medierra first introduced Hyboreal to the team:
I’ve read the argument that the simplified stats and skills were just placeholders, but that’s not exactly reasurring, because you can tell a lot of time and resources has been spent into the graphics/appearance. You can’t help but wonder if they’re going to make it look better (to placate the longtime fan complaints over D3 being too cartoonishly colorful) rather than addressing gameplay issues.
Blizzard said they were going to give quarterly updates; only time will tell if anything improves.
I will review it very carefully before ever paying blizz any money again. I used to be a big supporter of the Diablo franchise until Blizzard turned it into WoWblo. Worse still, it’s been casualized and normalized to the point that it’s no longer challenging or rewarding in any way.
Limited build diversity
Limited item base
Limited Elite and Boss combat mechanics
Leveling 1-70 in a day, fully geared in 2 days.
Limited and boring endgame - endless gem upgrade via endless rift runs to get +1% bonus to stats
Shallow campaign and lore
No action against botters
No DC and server lag protection - RIP hardcore characters right and left.
Now, before you attack me with the “fluent combat” and “stable multiplayer” arguments, know this, I have sunk thousands of hours into D3, played every class and every build extensively. Was in top 10 in HC and SC in multiple seasons. Even got the green leathery wings, which can only be obtained by mastering ALL set dungeons (meaning using every class and every set at a decent skill level). I wanted diablo to keep going strong 
but Blizzard decided otherwise and killed it.
Grim Dawn is what D3 should have been and better.
So no, not interested in the hype. D4 has nothing on GD from what I’ve seen so far. Graphics wise it looks worse than PoE. I’d rather pay Crate another 100$ towards GD2.
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Looks fine to me so far. Killing enemies has some GD spirit in it - the crazy physics that makes enemies fly + the added triple A awesomeoness of models that aren’t solid (well, actually, this has been done even by the old TQ - skeletons and automatons in particular would spill all over the place - guess GD scrapped this because it has been too much of a framerate killer).
We’ve seen runes in the gameplay trailers so I’m pretty sure they know what to go for this time.
I’ll definitvely buy and play it. D3 would be fun if it wasn’t so “pointless” for an action RPG. Getting to L70 super early with nearly no further character progression - meh. Add the awful, uninspired itemization too…
PoE isn’t for me. 3-months long ladders and constantly replaying the main plot would bore me to tears and this comes from a guy that spent 2500 hours on Grim Dawn before completing it.
It baffles me that people pay 60$ or more for a subscription to an online single player game. Why don’t people get together and boycott these types of games? We can not let them take our rights and freedom away just because we think these games are good or whatever. For the past couple of years, they have been updating their EULA’s constantly to push us even further down the road of being irrelevant. Soon there will be no game sold by these major companies… only subscriptions.
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What I’ve seen so far watching videos from BlizzCon doesn’t impress me at all quite the opposite it’s totally underwhelming.
Presented at BlizzCon was like the most boring character building I’ve ever seen. With nothing that really matters because you choose a sequenz for learning and levelling your but in the end with some time you’ll have all skills at max level and attributes being completely taken out of the game.
I don’t know whats their intension but even items looked like crap at BlizzCon. Seen legendaries had like 3-4 stats broken down to overly simple things like +def +dam +mana … of course that could be a rushed built of items just to have some for the demo to run but that supersimplified items just fit their thoughts about simplifying character building.
Also this whole damn open world online multiplayer lets put world bosses into the game thing. I mean who the hell told them that this is a great idea and that people really want this? Because I can’t remember any game I’ve ever enjoyed that world boss crap. It’s always the same shit. A boss that spawns for everyone at a time you have no influence on so forcing you out of whatever you did to that moment to then go to a fight which is cluttered by tons of players on an enemy which is nothing but a giant bulge of HP which takes long long time to kill in a fight boring like hell and often going to be a lagfest.
The only thing that looked interesting was the idea of bringing runes back and allowing you to build your own runewords instead of having predetermined ones.
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I didn’'t watch the full trailer, it just seem to be over done. as for the gameplay trailer, not sure on that either. Looks like the combat is a bit bareboned to me.
Never played D3, not sure if I will play D4, until there are more details on it, and more gameplay, I think this is a skip.
My problem is, Blizzard are hitting the eastern market, so making games that suit their tastes and style. And besides, Blizzard hasn’t made a decent game in a long time. Oh yes, will skip Warcraft 3 reforged as well, as that is just a reskin, and the original iss still great to this day, even if that is a bit off topic.
I think Blizzard is losing steam and getting desperate, D4 is a desperate act to get some fans back. But apart from the classics, this new blizzard I have zero interest in.
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Looking good so far, I like the art direction they are going and fluid moment-to-moment gameplay. Itemization is super simple, but it’s too early to say anything about it really. All will change million of times before release anyways.
Hopefully, it will be worth the wait.
I’m pretty sure just the advanced graphics and fluid combat will be the primary attractive features for lots of player for a long time.
just like diablo 3
hopefully no more enemies and bosses flashes white brightly like flashbang when being damaged because that really hurts my eyes when i saw diablo 3 gameplay once upon a time.
its like the old ps1 horror pistol controller rail shooter game crypt killer where everytime you shot the gun, the screen flashes white repeatedly. really bad for the eyes.
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The Barbarian concept of “multi-weapons” looks neat but that’s just about it for me personally. After seeing PoE’s gameplay preview whatever was showcased in the D4 preview looks old already. Of course it’s not a fair comparison because it is very likely that D4 is still way early in development.
Personally I am not interested in either due to their always online nature. That’s just not for me, here’s hoping that Wolcen and Last Epoch don’t disappoint.
Not sure how many fans they’d be able to win back. Word around the street is that they might end up changing some stuff in Reforged so that it fits the WoW lore. But then again, it is likely they are just rumors.
If they really gave a rats ass about fans then they’d have gone with an offline mode in D4. They could have just made it so that the offline chars can never interact with the online ones. That would have helped with the cheater problem that a good portion of the current fanbase likes to bitch about.
Nah. That ship has sailed, my friend: nobody significant cares about offline gaming any longer. It isn’t that “always online” is specifically a desirable feature, but it definitely is “if there is any reason to use online, it always online.”
My subway commute curses this habit. 
what’s the latest blizzard game that allows players to play offline without any online connection whatsoever?
I was gonna say StarCraft II, but then I found out that you can only access the so called “offline mode” by logging in at least every 30 days. Same with all the recently remastered games like WC3 Reforged. That is not a real offline mode 
So yeah the answer to your question is probably Lost Vikings 2 
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lost vikings 2? never heard of it. in my mind when i’m thinking about the last blizzard game to not need any online connection to play single player, its warcraft 3.
yet with warcraft 3 being reforged right now… i can see blizzard wanting to remove every trace of classic warcraft 3 in the net… then force us to always connect online even if we just want to play warcraft 3 reforged alone. because blizzard want everything online all the time for the glory of $.
although… diablo 3 is playable offline in the console versions. so its kinda hurt less for single player gamers.
you know, all this online only features means mods are a no no for these online only games. diablo 2 with mods are awesome.
but diablo 3 and 4 with mods? i dunno. online only isn’t friendly to mods.
It’s a pretty cool puzzle platformer, I used to play it on SNES. Always-on wasn’t a concept back in the day Well except in Ultima Online which came out the same year as Lost Vikings 2, in 1997.
I was joking though, you’re right it’s probably Warcraft 3.
I guess there was a technical reason for that. I bet they would’ve made it always-on if they could.
I think they already announced that D4 is gonna be always-on for console versions. Sucks if you wanna play on Xbox.
“Not friendly” is the right expression. Because “Not possible” would be untrue
I know some people who play an MMORPG that was shut down officially long ago, but they kept it alive with modded servers. Not gonna say which one cause I’m not sure if that’s even legal.
But it is possible, and if big players like Blizzard would invest more into moddable online services, more people would be inclined to invest in these servives as well. But then Blizzard would probably charge $$ for each mod to keep the service running 
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The visuals look very nice but ofc this is 2019 so that was not an unexpected matter,even GD after it got this beautiful lighting effects looks way way more polished
But i have to see alot more of gameplay aspects and ofc more classes to truly evaluate my money on this
D3 had a very bad taste that this has to wash off
really ? i thought visually it was rather underwhelming
Visual is very subjective and differ per user.
Has microtransactions. Always online. MMO structure.
Yeah thats a pass from me 
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basically what blizzardvision’s gonna make all the time from now on (exception is starcraft remaster and warcraft 3 reforged. but they might also become always online and given microtransactions).