Time Capsule from PoE Closed Beta -- a classic PoE vs D3 thread circa 2012

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radiatoren wrote:

As for game-music none of the games are near the classical status of Chrono Trigger, Monkey Island, Bubble Bobble and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. But then again, it will take years before we really learn to appreciate game-music and by then it is probably gonna be less of a factor since both games will be so different or even so far gone that it doesn't matter.

I completely disagree with this. Diablo's music defined a genre; no one who played Diablo 1 will ever forget that music. Especially the Tristram theme. The 12 string guitar there was nothing if not classical.

Chrono Trigger's overrated, musically. It was Mitsuda's break-out hit, created under great duress and the keen eye of Uematsu. Xenogears and Xenosaga episode 1 are Mitsuda's finer works, especially the latter, which I consider his opus to this day. Also, both of the latter were infinitely more classical than Chrono Trigger. Infinitely. Especially Xenosaga.

Monkey Island? Really? I played that one several times and can't remember much of the music. I was too distracted by the puns, I guess. Great puns. Great duels. Classical music? Not quite.

Bubble Bobble? I only remember one theme from that, and then the sped-up version when things got frantic. I wouldn't consider that classical at all.

A link to the past had some great themes, but none of them were inherently classical.

As for taking years to appreciate game music? Heh, that boat's sailed I'm afraid. I've been attending symphonic performances of video game and anime music since 2004, even worked with arguably the world's first dedication video game and anime orchestra...and attendances peaked around 2007 or 2008, maybe 2009. That was the golden age of VGL, VGO and Play! all butting heads. Since then, at most you'll get a rehashed 'Symphonic Square' concert or two in Europe a year (these are very, very good, but seriously, the vgm world has a lot more to offer than just Square-Enix music), maybe a stray concert here or there.

For a long time I felt that video game music would be the new classical. I invested a lot of time and some money into it, even (I am prone to such things, as you may have noticed). But after a while, it became clear that no, it's still just a sub-genre in a world that generally doesn't care. And it never will, mainly because musical tastes are getting worse by the day. People no longer need well-written scores: I mentioned Transformers earlier, and Gears of War. Both Jablonsky works, both absolutely the same in style and mode. Give me something like the soundtrack to "Requiem for a Dream" over *another* tired overblown orchestral score anyday. Seriously.

...Give me Diablo 1's music over World of Warcraft/Diablo III's bloat anyday as well.

Also, hi darkwolf. Nice to have an 'Alpha' wolf join the pack, as it were. :)

I need a bit more time to digest what Tagek, Avireyn, Disillusioned and ManiaCCC have been discussing in my oh-so-long absence (I go out to dinner, and come home to this. Yeesh).

Also, I only played WoW during its beta. I feel woefully underequipped to discuss it other than to say I believe it marked the decline of a Blizzard in which gamers could trust to deliver quality products straight out of the box.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Also, hi darkwolf. Nice to have an 'Alpha' wolf join the pack, as it were. :)

I need a bit more time to digest what Tagek, Avireyn, Disillusioned and ManiaCCC have been discussing in my oh-so-long absence (I go out to dinner, and come home to this. Yeesh).

Also, I only played WoW during its beta. I feel woefully underequipped to discuss it other than to say I believe it marked the decline of a Blizzard in which gamers could trust to deliver quality products straight out of the box.

Well that's a little unfair. You can't have an mmo that's balanced out of the box. No mmo has done this so far.
I played wow for a pretty long time, and it was great fun.
In the MMORPG genre, it's the definitive best game out there.

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Tagek wrote:

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Also, hi darkwolf. Nice to have an 'Alpha' wolf join the pack, as it were. :)

I need a bit more time to digest what Tagek, Avireyn, Disillusioned and ManiaCCC have been discussing in my oh-so-long absence (I go out to dinner, and come home to this. Yeesh).

Also, I only played WoW during its beta. I feel woefully underequipped to discuss it other than to say I believe it marked the decline of a Blizzard in which gamers could trust to deliver quality products straight out of the box.

Well that's a little unfair. You can't have an mmo that's balanced out of the box. No mmo has done this so far.
I played wow for a pretty long time, and it was great fun.
In the MMORPG genre, it's the definitive best game out there.

I didn't say balanced, I said quality. Dark Age of Camelot was quality out of the box. So was Everquest 1 (with whatever expansion you were up to). Even playing the beta of WoW, while I was overawed at the environment, I felt that something was lacking. Some sort of...soul. I couldn't explain it. I've seen people playing it since, from release until recently, and whatever was missing then still seems missing to me now. I still don't view it as a particularly high quality product -- but that's okay, plenty of crack and meth junkies out there.

And I'd never felt that strange soullessness from a Blizzard product before WoW.

Now you're just kindof being mean though, comparing wow players to crack and meth junkies.
It's a great game, and as I said, the undisputable best mmo out there. Why? Every other mmo that competes with it just tries to copy it. Take ToR for example, it's just watered down WoW in the star-wars universe.
Perhaps you don't like the mmo genre in general, but it being the most successful mmo (and even game, really) of all time does say something.

That being said I do feel GW2 will be a serious competitor to it.

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Tagek wrote:

Now you're just kindof being mean though, comparing wow players to crack and meth junkies.

Huh, where did he even allude to that?

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It's a great game, and as I said, the undisputable best mmo out there. Why? Every other mmo that competes with it just tries to copy it. Take ToR for example, it's just watered down WoW in the star-wars universe.

It's a successful game. Which is markedly different from "the best". It has good aspects but it's also deeply flawed in others.

The biggest flaw being that every other MMO -as you point out- tries to just emulate that financial success.
And every single one fails. Which should indicate that WoW's basic concept as a game is not all that perfect.


I do hope that GW2 brings a bit of fresh air into the genre, too, btw :-).

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Avireyn wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

Now you're just kindof being mean though, comparing wow players to crack and meth junkies.

Huh, where did he even allude to that?

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It's a great game, and as I said, the undisputable best mmo out there. Why? Every other mmo that competes with it just tries to copy it. Take ToR for example, it's just watered down WoW in the star-wars universe.

It's a successful game. Which is markedly different from "the best". It has good aspects but it's also deeply flawed in others.

The biggest flaw being that every other MMO -as you point out- tries to just emulate that financial success.
And every single one fails. Which should indicate that WoW's basic concept as a game is not all that perfect.


I do hope that GW2 brings a bit of fresh air into the genre, too, btw :-).

'There's plenty of crack and meth junkies out there'
Ok, it's not a direct comparison, but I still think it's insulting to be compared to a junkie in whatever way.

Also, your logic makes no sense here.
Every game tries to copy it, but because they fail, you think wow's basic concepts fail? Ofcourse not, it just means that WoW already exists, and does it's concepts better than games who try to copy it (naturally), so barely anyone will play those games.

After all, would you buy a knock-off cola brand if it had the same price as real coca-cola but tasted nowhere near as good? Ofcourse you wouldn't. And it's the same with MMo's.

@Tagek, I think there was some information datamined that claimed there were individual +skills within the game. I'm not sure if it is authentic or not. Time will tell at this point.

As for the stock market comparison, I would prefer to keep the stock market being the stock market and the RMAH be the alternative for those without much time on their hands and to try to kill off third-party sites. Having patches that could make or break you in terms of money just spent (especially since Blizzard gives very little notice when they will hit, what with their trademark, "soon") is something that could make the RMAH blow up in their face.

And finally, I will have to partially disagree with Charan about the WoW view. I think WoW is an amazing game just because it has simply took over the genre it invaded. Before, with RTS games, Blizzard was one of the first that dared go that way, and with Diablo they all but innovated their own sort of genre but MMOs had Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and so forth yet overcame all those and *beat* the franchises that made fantasy (Lord of the Rings, D&D Online, they even trumped Warhammer which WC is derived from) and to this day they're still holding strong over Star Wars and to a lesser extent, Rift. Their dominance is honestly captivating and with good reason: WoW is an MMO that is simply fun.

However! I do think with WoW's gigantic success that Blizzard saw with how they simplified MMOs for people with WoW they could do that with future titles. I cannot speak for SC2 as I do not own it nor have played it but it shows some in Diablo III with how they've chosen to do these select, simplifying decisions that I feel detract from the game and make an already easy-to-pick-up game insultingly easier.

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Disillusioned wrote:

@Tagek, I think there was some information datamined that claimed there were individual +skills within the game. I'm not sure if it is authentic or not. Time will tell at this point.

As for the stock market comparison, I would prefer to keep the stock market being the stock market and the RMAH be the alternative for those without much time on their hands and to try to kill off third-party sites. Having patches that could make or break you in terms of money just spent (especially since Blizzard gives very little notice when they will hit, what with their trademark, "soon") is something that could make the RMAH blow up in their face.

And finally, I will have to partially disagree with Charan about the WoW view. I think WoW is an amazing game just because it has simply took over the genre it invaded. Before, with RTS games, Blizzard was one of the first that dared go that way, and with Diablo they all but innovated their own sort of genre but MMOs had Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and so forth yet overcame all those and *beat* the franchises that made fantasy (Lord of the Rings, D&D Online, they even trumped Warhammer which WC is derived from) and to this day they're still holding strong over Star Wars and to a lesser extent, Rift. Their dominance is honestly captivating and with good reason: WoW is an MMO that is simply fun.

However! I do think with WoW's gigantic success that Blizzard saw with how they simplified MMOs for people with WoW they could do that with future titles. I cannot speak for SC2 as I do not own it nor have played it but it shows some in Diablo III with how they've chosen to do these select, simplifying decisions that I feel detract from the game and make an already easy-to-pick-up game insultingly easier.

Well I still personally doubt that they will be in the game.

But regardless of that, it's your own choice to be buying those items like that. Also, with regards to nerfs, if you know a skill is too strong, why would you buy an item for it, knowing the skill will probably get nerfed soon?
That just sounds like idiocy to me.

In the end though, I really don't think this is going to be too big of an issue. Diablo 2 barely had anything worth calling 'balanced' yet it received very few balance patches.
Diablo 3 is being made with balance as a high priority. This, coupled with the fact that there will be no periodic content changes / additions like in MMos, there will simply be very few (if any) significant balance changes throughout the course of the game.
If this was a game like league of legends where the balance changes a lot with every patch, things would be different.

Also, I think they did learn some things from WoW, but starcraft 2 is a game that makes a good argument against what you're saying here. The game is hard. Really, really , really, hard. I consider myself moderately hardcore when it comes to games, and that game is too much for me.
So really, although they definitely learned a lot of things from wow, I'd attribute diablo 3's systems more to design decisions than to an ongoing trend that was born from wow.

Are you *addicted* to WoW, Tagek? If so, I say put the crack pipe *down*. I could elaborate at great length how can easily equate a hardcore MMO addiction to drug addiction, and then extend that to point out that WoW is the world's most popular MMO and remains relatively cheap and accessible. Are you going to pretend for one second that WoW isn't made to be addictive? Really?

Also, I find this absolutism of MMOs before WoW and MMOs after WoW quite distasteful. To me, WoW was no more original than Diablo (see bicycle/motorbike analogy before). It took DAoC, EQ, Ultima Online and *any* other half-decent MMOs out at the time, distilled the best parts and used a slightly more impressive graphics engine from Warcraft 3. Did it make MMOs a household word? Did it become the preferred game of millions around the world? Yep. Basically, did WoW bring the shunned notion of the MMO out of the basement and into everyday lexicon? Yep again.

Twilight did the same for vampires.

Whether I'm comparing it to a cheap, highly addictive drug or an equally cheap, highly popular series of books, WoW is undeniably a bad product. Mass-produced, designed to make as much money as possible with little to no regard for the well-being of its users, peddled en masse by people who care only if you pay your monthly bill to get your fix.

Extreme? Maybe. I've known WoW addicts in real life too. Like I said, I played the beta and saw the potential for it.

So before you take any real offence at my analogy, try to keep in mind that not everyone who uses WoW is addicted, indeed maybe not even all that many, and that my original statement merely equated it to a cheap, addictive, and potentially self-destructive indulgence that can readily take over your life, if you let it.