I dropped $60 to buy Diablo 3 based on the quality and playability of Diablo 2. Now that I’ve experienced Diablo 3 would I buy it again? No. In my opinion this game is not the same quality as Diablo 2. Some people love it, others hate it. I’d suggest reading forums, not just on the Blizzard site but other reputable sites as well to see how players feel and why before plunking down that money.

I won’t go into the release glitches, bugs and issues other than to say it’s normal for a newly released game to have some issues but in my opinion Diablo 2 had and still has more than it should have. For example, I don’t like dying because of game lag. Some players have posted in forums that they feel they paid to be a beta tester and I tend to agree with them – at release parts of the game as advertised weren’t fully, or at all. People who expected pvp still don’t have it as of this posting.

Unlike Diablo 2, D3 has two auction houses: the gold auction house and a real life money auction house. If you plan to farm items and make game gold or real life money, keep in mind you can only list ten items at a time. Because of so many items having the same name but different stats on it, it is extremely difficult to search either to get the lowest price and if you’re selling, it’s hard to know what you should ask for an item.

As for the real money auction house, I don’t agree with it. People with real life money to spend can pretty much buy their way through the game by purchasing good gear. Actually,though, buying gear through one of the auction houses may be the only way to get it. I’ve farmed for hours and hours to try to get gear for my two characters and seldom does anything drop that is anything close to something I can use.

There are four levels: (besides hardcore, which is simply a level where if you die, you really die and have to start over) normal, nightmare, hell and inferno. They are the same thing – it just gets harder each level. Repeating the same stuff over and over in hopes of better gear gets really boring. Compare it to leveling multiple alternate characters in World of Warcraft through the same content.

You would think each level would give you better gear each level but not necessarily. Once you could smash vases and barrels and sometimes get a magical item drop but now you seldom do and are lucky to even get gold from them. Some normal chests that once spilled magical gear now only spit out common ones. Armor racks you can loot now spew gray or common items more often than a magical piece, if they drop anything at all. Even some of the mobs that you almost die trying to kill won’t drop anything for you. The nerf bat has been swinging and the game has only been out around a month.

People come up with character builds that work well. When something works too well it gets nerfed. Some players were stacking attack speed to survive. It just got nerfed. So, anyone who spent game gold or even real life money to stack attack speed got a slap in the face. For example, I know someone who had 20,000 less dps when they logged in after the patch. Interestingly enough, the cost for higher level characters to repair their gear was also increased dramatically. So let’s see…you do less damage so you die more, but it’s going to cost you more to repair your gear now. Yeah, that makes great sense, especially when you see gear listed in the gold auction house for millions of gold.

Some things that badly need fixing haven’t been. As you progress you will unlock companions that can travel with you and help out a little. There’s a big problem with them though – they run off on their own, attack what they want, when they want and tend to aggro things to you. In areas where there are baddies locked in cells, they’ll attack them and let them all out on you while you’re fighting other baddies. Imagine a hunter pet in World of Warcraft on aggressive in a dungeon but a lot worse because you can’t even call these guys back to you, you have NO control over their behavior.

Honestly, if I had it to do over with I would have requested a refund for this game within the first ten days of trying to play it. I’m disappointed enough in Diablo 3 to think I may not even buy the next expansion of World of Warcraft and that is coming from someone who has seven max level characters there.

I’d suggest you read forums and do your homework before deciding whether or not to purchase this game. If I had a “do-over” I wouldn’t have, but it may be the perfect game for other players. If you enjoy things like having brick walls built around you so you can’t try to get away from baddies, which have bubbles around them so you can’t harm them while they beat the crap out of you, it just might be the game for you after all. As for myself, I’m looking forward to the realease of Guild Wars 2. If it’s what I think it will be not only will I seldom log into Diablo 3 I’ll probably be cancelling my World of Warcraft subscription as well. I hate to see a game that had so much potential end up not being fun.

DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own personal opinion of a game I spent money for and I am not telling people not to buy it – I’m saying that based on my own experiences with it I wouldn’t buy it again. Other people may feel differently.