Twelve years is a long time to wait for a game, but the Diablo faithful have had to do just that since developer Blizzard released Diablo II in 2000. Since then people have leveled and looted for years and gradually mastered its gameplay systems. Blizzard too has learned a lot over the last decade, and has wisely applied these lessons to the design of Diablo III. At its most basic level, Diablo III is still largely the same game, but with flexible skill systems that encourage you to constantly reshape your hero into whatever you need them to be. In the end, Diablo’s classic, loot-driven formula where you pick from a few pre-determined classes and level them up proves to be incredibly addictive the third time around.
Some people love Diablo III for its story, and the third’s narrative is stronger than its predecessor, but still filled with clichés and predictable twists. But that doesn’t really matter all that much, because the story merely serves as a way to tie together the various dungeons and quests in your hunt for gear. Quality voice acting and some truly incredible cut-scenes between Acts help flesh out the universe, but past the first playthrough it’s not really anything worth paying attention to.
Even when the story failed to grab me, the loot system kept me hooked. Bringing your axe down for a killing blow or blasting an enemy with a skill that rips the flesh from their bones is empowering, but the eruption of gold and treasure that spews into the air induces a rush of jubilation. Picking through the gore that was my enemies so I can pluck out the gold and choice items is like panning for precious metals. No matter how many times it happens I still click on the treasure as fast as I can, quickly opening up my inventory to see if I’ve hit the mother lode or a dud. Some items have their stats revealed the second you mouse over them, but when a yellow item drops and you have to wait to identify it there’s a moment where you feel like you’re waiting for lottery numbers to be announced. It results in instances of elation and frustration, but with the bad times come the moments where I’m enveloped in a sense of joy, where the hours I’ve spent wading through monsters for the umpteenth time feel more than worth it. No other game besides Diablo III has engaged my hunger – my need – to get loot in the same way. I dream about it at night (seriously), and dwell upon it while I write this sentence.
Even when the randomly generated magic items have stats you don’t need they have a lot of value, even more so than before due to Diablo III’s revamped economy. Non-magic items are all but worthless, so when it comes to unwanted magic items you have to choose between selling them to a vendor for much-needed gold, auctioning them or breaking them down into parts for crafting at the blacksmith. Gold is dropped in random amounts from monsters, but, unlike previous Diablo titles, it’s used in more meaningful ways, and far more scarce. Not only can you use it to purchase items from other players, but it’s also used to level up your blacksmith and jeweler, purchase additional space in your stash, and repair your equipment. In fact, gold feels so useful that even when I run through a dungeon and get no usable items, I still feel like it was time well spent since I earned gold.
If wealth isn’t an issue, it’s best to take your unneeded items to the blacksmith. The blacksmith breaks down magic items into component parts, which in turn can be used (along with gold) to craft new weapons and armor. It creates agonizing moments where you could sell an item for short term gain in gold, or take a chance and break it into parts to create something new. If you pay the gold and work towards upgrading your smith, crafted items become really useful. While not quite as exciting as finding loot off a monster, each crafted item’s randomized stats ensure little moments of elation. The jeweler rounds out the crafting system, but the gems he fashions have predictable stats, taking away all the mystery of what you’ll get. Still, the jeweler provides the same meta-benefit as the smith, giving you another venue to feel like you’re making progress since their leveled-up status carries over into other characters and difficulty settings.
If you’re not selling it to a merchant or using it for smithing, your magic items should go to the auction house. Here you can enter a virtual market powered by the community (though currently only for gold transactions, because the real money auction house has yet to be implemented despite appearing as a bullet point on the back of the box), selling items either straight from your stash or directly off of one of your characters. People flush with cash can also use it to pick up items for their hero instead of hunting for them, quickly searching for specific armor slots or weapon types with a series of drop down menus. It’s nice to have a system integrated directly into the game, though it’d be better if you could access it from within the game world, rather than the main menu. What’s genuinely awful, though, is that Blizzard has set a seemingly arbitrary 10 item auction limit, leaving me in a situation where I’m perpetually waiting for something to sell so I can move the next item out of my stash. It’s incredibly annoying.
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