thud

@sygon
1. Really? There is "no doubt" about it? it's a 100%, set in stone, developer confirmed, hard fact? Bull.

2& 3. meh.

4. Reskinning their old model? I thought all the complaining in the comment sections here was about how D3 has changed too much or has been "dumbed down" as y'all would translate it even though everyone is raving over Torchlight because it is in fact exactly this, a pretty 3D reskinning of D2.

perfectly fine with this. SC2 DOTA mod is plenty of arena PVP to tide me over.

@Fabius Bile

Honestly I have zero interest in the Torchlight series. I played through the first one and while it was a solid and well polished game, It wasn't all that different from Diablo II. The polish and 3d graphics are nice, but if I want to play D2 I will just go play D2. Diablo 3 is getting a lot a flack for making "big" gameplay changes (mostly from people who've yet to even get into beta mind you), but I welcome the changes. Again, if I wanted to play D2, I'd go play D2. D3 needs to be familiar to the series while still providing enough changes to make it it's own game worthy of my time and money.

A better sweeping generalization would be:

D3 is for fans of the Diablo series.
Torchlight is for D2 fans with shiny new computers.

"There have always been technical walls between players on different platforms"

*cough* Apple *cough*
The walls he speaks of are not technical, but legal. Apple's licensing and app store approval polices are a huge headache.

If A = B and B = C then A = C.

A: MMOs have closed beta periods before launching.
B: but everyone complains that beta has become nothing more than a marketing period with a player cap.
C: Pathfinder will do the same, without calling it "beta"

Pathfinder's "launch" = any other game's "closed beta"

@DarkWalker

orly? I haven't actually looked into GW2 since I never played the first but now I just might have to.

@ClassicCrime

Believe me, I have done plenty of raiding, raked in the epics with my friends, and gotten plenty of grief for my "unique" build choices, haha. but it's only when I jump in with a guild who need a few more players for a run that the "omg you don't have X skill?!!?!? why did you put points it that stat/attr?!?! GTFO newbz" start happening.

It's seems the hardcore raiding guilds only ever want cookie cutters builds and that just bores me. I want to try new things, experiment (it's just a game after all, have some fun). My friends and I all appreciate each others build experiments and can run raids with the same expertise as most raiding guilds because we know how to play each others strengths and weaknesses.

(and on a side note, any game that actually has these "fail builds" you speak of is not worth playing. in any good game such a build would be fixed by devs in the same manner that overpowered builds get nerfed. Perhaps you meant to say: "any build that isn't exactly the same as the next guy and therefore safe, predictable, and boring?")

@SnarlingWolf

What you just described is precisely the mechanics of "bubble and burst."

Remember the dot-com bubble? Everyone was getting money thrown at them by VCs, a lot of money. It was all about rapid growth, get as big as possible, as fast as possible, with as many customers as possible, even when it means you're spending so much your sitting on net losses, big losses. It's a business model that takes the risk of the market not persisting long enough for that initial spending to balance out into amazing profit over time by retaining customers.

The MMO market is the same. Jump back a year or two before everyone went f2p and think about the status of the major f2p publishers (gameforge being one of them). They all had 5-10 games hosted, one for every "theme" imaginable, even if the company was in its infancy. They spent a lot of money to buy publishing rights, casting out as big of a net as possible to pull in as many players as possible. But the games were all "crap" as you called them. Maybe one was profitable, but the rest were losing money. Over-saturation means none of these guys can retain customers. The market didn't persist.

Pop goes the bubble.

But fear not! Out of the wreckage of the dot-com crash arose Web 2.0. Innovation when it was needed most. MMOs can surely do the same. We just have to wait and see who can weather the storm and come out on the other side unshaken.

Don't get me wrong, I like playing with other players...but don't tell me when I have to be logged in, don't tell me what content I'll be playing though, don't dictate how I should craft my character build, don't (as the above comment details) put me through an application process to see if I'm "worthy" of your group. I'm not applying for a job, I'm trying to play a game, MY GAME, on MY TERMS like any true RPG should be.

Damn near the top of my dream MMO feature list is the removal of grouping/party systems all together. Hey, that guy fighting the mini-boss over there is dying, again, and again, I'll go help him, *party invite from thud*, ...., *party invite from thud*, dude! this stupid game won't let me help you if we aren't grouped, ...yo he dead, again. Why can't I just walk up and help this kid? Why doesn't the game just KNOW that I'm there to help this kid? Why doesn't it just do this grouping automatically and behind the scenes? If a guild is a useful way of finding players to play group content with, then wouldn't getting rid of grouping as we currently know it make guilds nothing more than friend lists with fancy names and titles?

I haven't touched flyff in years, and don't really ever plan on going back, but it's always good to hear of games still going strong in today's dump-it-if-we-don't-break-ten-million-in-revenue-in-the-first-three-weeks-after-launch mmo market.

kinda bummed, both were games I was watching (never played). oh well, the market is over-saturated with games that are only "average" anyways...