With Reaper of Souls just 6 days away from release, some friends and I have really gotten back into the game and have been enjoying the current patch. I was one of the first of my friends to experience the patch when it came out and immediately noticed the quality of the game improve dramatically. In the current state, I would say it’s where Diablo 3 should’ve been right from the start.
Yesterday marked the end of the Auction House and while there were aspects I enjoyed, I think if the game had been released in its current state, the Auction House would never have been needed. Looking back, I think all the problems in the game revolved around having the Auction House, especially the Real Money Auction House. Although you could skirt around dealing with Inferno in the early days by using the Auction House, it really wasn’t the aspect of the game people truly wanted. It was so bad that it just became a joke where people spent more time in the Auction House than the game. I think Kripparian talked about how the Auction House was the game. In truth back then, that’s exactly what Diablo 3 was.
Sure, it was kinda fun trying to make loot in the Auction House, but at a certain point you didn’t feel like you were going anywhere. The Paragon levels, while something to strive for, really had little value. And when you started a new toon, you would have to grind those Paragon levels all over again. But what was the point?
The only point to the game was just making more gold to farm harder monster powers in being able to purchase the really high end gear. So people would be motivated to create bots to do all the hard labor for them. Honestly, it didn’t feel like a fun game anymore. It just felt like a time sink for gambling. At that rate, you were better off playing Keno in Las Vegas.
The current patch completely makes all these issues history. The itemization is far better, paragon levels give you something to strive for without boxing you into a single character, the talents now can be mixed and matched for more diverse builds, the gear you get no longer is the same/cookie cutter types and the fights themselves are reasonably challenging but not frustrating to the point where you want to give up. In short, you have a fairly good basis, which is pretty amazing compared to where it started.
For myself, I’ve been having a great time just plowing through things once again. What this has done for me is really whet my appetite for Reaper of Souls. I wasn’t really considering buying it before but after hearing about the current patch and giving it a try, I’ve been utterly astounded and feel that Reaper of Souls will provide even more entertainment with more levels, content, monsters, the Crusader and the Adventure Mode. I know a lot of my friends are anticipating the game coming up and it’ll be great because I’ll have more friends to play with this time around. At any rate, I have to admit that I was wrong and Blizzard really came through in delivering the product that I feel all of us in hearts wanted when Diablo 3 was first released. Hopefully, they can keep up the quality on this end in other aspects of their company.