Seems like the article mentioned Steam numbers, which is probably a bit off considering most people are probably still using Battlenet.
It’s like a month before new expansion of D4, so kinda make sense there’s not much people there
Is it’s the biggest success in 25 years (which I don’t really believe), this doesn’t matter
Rerelease or not, is it that surprising that the thing that just launched has more people currently checking it out than the thing that launched three years ago? D4 had a higher peak at launch, and I would expect D2R to eventually drop off over time.
D4 also had a DLC recently. Yes the D2 update was just now so its spike is newer but it’s not meaningless that D2 has surpassed D4.
Isn’t D2 considered superior to D4? If they released new levels for D2… I’ve been wishing for that for 20 years.
It might be just subjective, but I have played D3 (which D4 is more akin to) and D2, and I got bored rather early. D2 had some great mechanics, but in certain aspects it’s also stupidly rough around the edges when it comes to game design.
Most unique items give counterintuitive and sometimes straight high-on-pot bonuses. It screams that they were designed in the early stages of the game when developers honestly thought a sorceress can just run around and bonk enemies in the head with a staff (which is fair at rather low levels, but by the time you find these uniques… it’s like hopping off of a motorboat onto a floating wooden chair and paddling with a fork).
Before D2R, a bunch of builds were meh at best, weak more often. While classes don’t necessarily have to be all viable by focusing on one specific branch, but it’s kind of disappointing when you realise you can’t just make a curse necromancer.
There are also a bunch of skills that are one point wonders. Again, it’s not a requirement for all skills to scale well with points, but it just feels poorly designed for me when there are so many skills that are not worth spending on them. Critical hit? Why not, add 6-7 points into it (might not be the right skill/number, just an example). But you know what? We also allow you to add another 13-14 points with a negligible difference, because why not. All skills can get 20 points, so no exceptions.
The synergies in LOD were a nice addition and a creative fix for some builds, but some synergies still didn’t make sense. D2R also made some improvements, but if you want to build a Spearzon, you’ll still find yourself paddling with the aforementioned fork here and there.
I have never played D4, but I would still choose D2 over D3. But I feel like the player base is mostly the ones who played it back when it came out, and felt nostalgic about it. As players who grew up with better polished games, I think the younger generation would go with something that feels less like economy class.
I feel like D3 had to both be a new version of D2 and not be a simpler WoW. WoW lifted a lot of its initial design from D2 and improved on it. I could see Blizzard trapped with trying to make another Diablo without killing WoW.
D2 is a better Diablo game than D4. I’ve played D4 and I can see it being fun (not for me but someone else) but it ain’t Diablo, very much a sucessor to D3 tho, that also isn’t a good Diablo game.
Idk how D4 is holding up these days, it was honestly pretty good for a while but I dropped it right after VoH. The biggest issue is endgame was practically non-existent and it was incredibly easy to slap a build together that would one-shot basically everything in the game.
PoE2 scratched that itch far better, picked it up right after I put D4 down and while it’s far from a perfect game, it really did just about everything better than D4 did at the time. I’m not actively playing either game these days but I do plan to jump back into PoE2 when 1.0 rolls around.
They do a major release every 4 months (sometimes delayed by a month or two) with a bunch of added content, new characters, items, etc, it’s nice to pick it up on those 0.X patches because it’s like a slightly new game or free expansion a couple of buddies and I get into for like a month, get a little burnt out, and come back for the next league.
It’s been cool, just wanted to share that in case you weren’t aware how often they’re adding stuff
I have not paid attention to the Diablo series for a while now, but I was tempted to drop back in with D2 for quality of life improvements and new content.
I have D4 sitting around, I just didn’t have the same feeling to try again.
More surprising is they gave it a content patch with a new class. I’ll probably be guilty of buying it on the first sale if i’m being honest. D2 is too much fun and a new class sounds like too much fun2.
I’m with you, but I’m not paying full pop for a 25 year old game. The nostalgia factor gives us rose coloured glasses. Things took a pretty sharp downturn by Patch 1.10 - things got weird - you could, for instance, get a rune word that would turn you into a werewolf, even if you weren’t a druid, and that kind of broke the game in my opinion. a lot of those weird rune words just turned players into weird walking data sheets.
Pretty sure WoW and Overwatch were way bigger commercial successes.
WoW is 22 years old.
Yeah, so what’s your point? The meme is talking about the “biggest success of last 25 years”, so a 22 year old game fits perfectly within that.
It’s like 2 months into the season. Guys, use your heads.
