Diablo 3: The Auction House is Mephisto

As I begin to type this review, Diablo 3 has been available for 123 hours on American servers.  According to my profile page, I've played for 67 hours and 5 minutes.  So, I've played Diablo 3 for a little over half of the time that has transpired since it was released.  I mention this to indicate my frame of reference in reviewing this game:  I like it quite a bit.  As part of my adoration for the game, I wanted to take a brief break and toss out some random first impression, because I'm curious as to how they'll read in hindsight a few months from now.

During server down times, I've read numerous reviews and forum posts that indicate a great dissatisfaction with the game.  Most dissent falls into one of these general categories:

1)  y I haz 2 b onlien 4 singal playar gaem!?
2)  olol story is cheesy / predictable.
3)  SO SHORT!  NOT WORTH $60!
4) lewt grind lawl

Perhaps the best way to begin a review of Diablo 3 is to acknowledge the mindset that gives rise to the above dissent.  We'll characterize it in terms of this Penny Arcade strip:

When the folks at Blizzard started to make Diablo 3, they had to decide who their intended audience would be:  For whom would this game be designed?  In my mind, they categorized their intended audience as divided between two camps:

1)  People who played Diablo 2 in single player 12 years ago.

2)  People who have been playing Diablo 2 on Bnet for 12 years.

Stated Simply:  Blizzard designed a game for Group 2.  Numerous aspects of the game are designed with bnet in mind.  They seem to have approached D3 with the question, "How can we make D2 better for folks on realms?" and designed a game that contains, as far as I can tell, everything we always wanted when we were playing online.

There are many aspects of D3 that are amazing and wonderful.  The game is divided into specific quest chunks, so everyone is always on the same quest.  When you join a game, you're automatically on the same quest as everyone else.  Players can quickly teleport between games, and to other characters from town once they arrive in the game.  Stats and skills have all been streamlined to allow greater clarity and customization for specific fights.  Your hirelings keep the gear you give them, and you can switch between them at your convenience.  The auction house greatly simplifies item acquisition.

Unfortunately, I'm worried that this is a case of the Gods punishing us by giving us what we wanted.

Diablo 3 feels different than D2.  At the same time that I adore and appreciate specific features of D3, I realize that they're cutting against the immense nostalgia I hold for Diablo 2.

Maybe it's easiest to focus on one thing, and explain what I mean through that.

Diablo 2 was about item acquisition.  What compelled us to kill Mephisto 70+ times a night was the urge to get the String of Ears, or another Goreshovel.  We wanted loot, and Mephisto had the loot.  So, we farmed Mephisto.

But in Diablo 3, Mephisto doesn't have the loot.  The auction house has the loot.  Moreover, you don't want a Goreshovel, or a String of Ears.  What you really want are the Rare items that have stats similar to Goreshovel and String of Ears, but whose numbers are higher.

So, instead of farming bosses for the sake of getting your Goreshovel, you're really farming bosses:

1)  On the off chance that they happen to drop an item with the stats you want.

2)  So you can get items to sell to get gold to buy the item you want.

#2 is what make me worry about the long term appeal of Diablo 3.  And, I mean, sure, Right now I'm lvl 55 in Act 1 hell.  So I still have a bit of a way to go.  Yet I already feel like part of my desire to play has diminished as a result of realizing that I'm just attaining gold to buy items.  After I kill Azmodan a few times, I'll hop on the Auction House and search for a rare item, lvl 50+ with MF, Dex, and Vitality.  Then I'll rank them by lowest buyout, and assess whether or not the numerical increase is worth the cost.  I'm not killing Azmodan to get gear.  I'm killing Azmodan to get items that I sell for gold that I can use on the Auction House to buy gear I want.

The "game" isn't killing mobs.  The "game" is searching the Auction House in the hopes that the item stat combination I want is available for a reasonable price.

Diablo 3 has replaced killing Mephisto 70 times, with clicking "search" 70 times.

And that's cool and awesome and fantastic and oh my god it's so much more efficient and wonderful.  All of the frustration from combing chats looking for items is gone.

But, the loss of that frustration, and the complete lack of a struggle to acquire gear...does sort of remove the appeal of gear acquisition.  I don't feel that sense of attachment to my gear that I felt in Diablo 3.  This isn't my Blade of Ali Baba that I traded a bunch of runes for.  This is my whatever legendary shoulder that has MF and dex that I found at 3 a.m. for 9K gold.  I don't need to feel attached to any item, because there are 50 more on the Auction house.  All I need is the gold required to attain them.

So, Diablo 3 is awesome and wonderful and why the fuck aren't you playing it right now.  It's everything that I wanted, as is evidenced by my having only slept about 10 hours since Tuesday.

At the same time, though, I am quite worried that 3 months from now I'm going to think, "god...I really wish this game didn't have an auction house."

Because, as it turns out, I think I prefer killing Mephisto to searching a database.