This is a wall of text. TL;DR: hey, I’m a disgruntled Diablofan, looking for a new home.
I’ve been mentioned this game some time ago by a friend. I’m a big fan of the ARPG (or, how I call it, Hack&Slash) genre since Diablo I, and played all sorts of titles like Sacred, Titan Quest, Nox, Demon’s Souls, etc., so I’m always looking out for new releases.
Until recently, I’ve been waiting for Diablo III. I wasn’t too happy about a few random things here and there (graphic design, armor that changes look depending on what class wears it), but I could live with them all. Not every game will cater to your every whim. I was really looking forward to buying the game at release.
But the latest 3 announcements - real money auction house, removal of skill points, and no offline play - I can’t bring myself to look forward to that game anymore. It’s not what I expected from Diablo, and I’m not sure if that leaves any room for it to be a good game standalone, even. I’ve also noted that when I voiced my concerns, the community didn’t take it too kindly. Many people who agreed with me left all together, and most of the supporters remained and began to insult anyone who disagreed with them, calling us crybabies and the like. Not really a community I want to be a part of any more, there is a limit to how many Blizzard fanboys I can handle.
I’ve looked over the game and I liked what I’ve seen. I’m generally not terribly optimistic with low-profile projects like this, but the screenshots look good, the art style is much more appealing to me than that of Diablo III (or II) or Torchlight - it’s not cartoony nor is it so dark that you can’t see anything, just about right. Reminds me of DS2 and Gothic a bit. The UI design seems good, as well, and I liked the video. So here are the questions I ask:
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Will this game feature offline play? I’m OK with one-time activations like TL did, but I don’t tolerate continuous internet requirements when I prefer to play SP games in MMO downtime. I’ll probably want to play both SP and MP, but I want my SP to be offline.
A follow up question, will this game have coop? Suppose me and a friend want to play together, can we do that in the full game? -
On the buy page, there are 3 versions, 2 of them provide beta access. Alpha access I believe would be to the current version of the game, so how far away is beta, even if it’s a very lousy approximation? I ask this because I prefer to space my payments so that I don’t spend too much money in the same month, and I assume the game may have a condition that if you do not buy the game prior to beta starting, you wouldn’t be able to gain access to beta later / the price will rise.
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Is this dev team in a healthy state? Wouldn’t want to pay for a game and then have the dev team disband the next day. I know nobody has proper insight to that except the devs themselves but maybe you could convince me that the game is alive and kicking haha.
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Will I be able to play this game without any additional add on service such as Steam?
Thanks in advance for the answers.