[felix]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

That being said, the AH isn't the culprit (people would trade with one another anyways, and use third party websites-- they still do).

Then get rid of trading. Or rather get rid of trading actual items; maybe switch it to something like what PoE uses as currency (items to add slots, re-roll stats, re-roll rarity, re-roll-just-about-anything, etc). Of course they can't since with the whole RMAH they've kind of dug themselves a nice big hole, but yeah my thoughts are your thoughts: they were stupid enough to balance the game against the auction house instead of the auction house against the game and now hence our (statistically) inevitable disappointment. It's not like the rest of the game is bad, but this ONE thing just breaks so so much.

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

As of 1.04 you actually can find your own items to beat inferno; still takes a long time but it's not as ridiclous as the previous situation I described before, so it's getting better now. We went from 62s only dropping in act 2+ to 62s being able to appear as early as Act 3 of hell. In addition 1.04 61 and 62 weapons are actually usable now, so that makes the situation entirely reasonable.

I wanna get back to it but it's kind of annoying playing with self-imposed-handicaps (to avoid game imposed stupidity). The fact you can't turn the shitty story off is a downer too. There's not that many scripted events, but when you go over them again and again they grind at your sanity and fun. Also, I feel like the maps and progression is way too "story driven". I mean I understand you have to have an objective, but it's like even if I walk 2m it's because some quest dictated I walk 2m. I can't for example just go though the frikin' desert for the sake of going though the frikin' desert, it has to be because of some stupid illusion nonsense. This seems to have also lead to a lot less of "I'm going to go into this really big hole/tower/dimention/etc and going to find treasure! Mwa ha ha!" moments (like the various long labyrinth caves, or towers in D2).

Also. I like some parts of the D3 map randomization, such as how events are shifted around or you can have an open cellar one time, but a closed cellar the next time, or something else completely after that. But, it all just plain looks the same. They screwed up bigtime by not making the towns rotatable. Meaning, you kind of get the same map, but because you're moving in a completely different direction it looks semi-fresh and messes with your spacial awareness. Moving something 10m to the left or right on the other hand doesn't really do that. I know magda's stupid vagina cave is to the north-west each and every damn time; which is boring.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

I am still apprehensive of clicking the Diablo 3 button...

Seriously, last week I opened the game for the first time in weeks, and made it as far as the character screen. But then all the bad memories of wasted time with no reward flood back and I just closed it again.

Well I clicked it a few weeks back (I think) and it was something like: Kill stuff, Hear annoying companion bable, Wait for stupid (not-so-random-after-100-times-seeing-it) slowass scripted event, Close game after 10-15min, from lack of any sort of interest while playing.

It's also kind of hard to click the D3 button when it's right next to the Emperor, Magic, PoE and Dota2 buttons too, all games that aren't all like "just do this pointless gold farming... you'll win! you want to `win` right? c'mon you know you want to win! it's just 36h of gold/gob farming! look, that's how all the `pros` are doing it!". And then there's games like Hawken coming to open beta soon, and Planetside 2 on the MMO side, all of which sound way more interesting PvP wise.