All aboard the loot train!
…Say that again? The loot trains left years ago? The most recent one left last week? Well, I shall walk the tracks.
Indeed. I am late to the party. But considering how Diablo III has had years to evolve into the game it is now, I’d say now is as good a time as any to jump in.
I can’t pinpoint why I hadn’t committed to D3 sooner. The timing perhaps never felt right. Maybe I was waiting for the price to come down. I don’t know. The game was always in my sight, always a possible buy, but its favorable particulars went noticed…
That is, until last Friday when PC Gamer posted the news of D3’s new patch (which it declares to be ‘a biggie’) and the launch of season 5. I watched the embedded video and my interest finally flared. What in the Everlasting Mother Love is all of this, I thought. Rifts, Seasons, Set Dungeons, additional map zones, adventure mode. Clearly, Blizzard has addressed D3’s end-game problem – reports of which was another snag that kept me from buying.
After I watched the embedded video, I watched the embedded video again. After I re-watched the embedded video, I sat in silent meditation, reflecting on the gamer’s doldrums I felt myself drifting into. Could D3 be the necessary shakeup? And then I discovered that Blizzard now sells the vanilla and the Reaper of Souls expansion together for $40. Welp, that pretty much sealed the deal.
Now, one week later, and almost finished (I suspect) with Act IV, I am still driven by my Everlasting Mother Love ignorance. A line of inquiry about what this game is continues to piece itself together the deeper I investigate and the more I play. There is a giddy excitement resulting from the fact that I don’t fully understand what rifts are, where they are or what they do, or what happens during seasons and what happens when they conclude. And just what exactly can I do with my Death Magnet Monk once I complete the campaign? The meta-inventory for my loot works… how? Greater Rifts? Scaled Torment Difficulty?
Conversely, I find it interesting to learn about this iteration of the game and how it compares to its three years of evolution. Doubly so to hear about it directly from other ButtonMashers as they re-visit the game, having moved on before RoS was released.
The game feels familiar from my time with D2 all those eons ago, but still something very fresh. To my eyes, Diablo 3 is now far more arcade-y than I previously thought. And right now, I so need it.
What are you playing this weekend?
Tony says
Your enthusiasm has revived my enjoyment of the game, as well, so I think there will be much Diablo 3 happening this weekend. I also will probably knock out a couple of missions in Fallout 4 but the loot in FO4 doesn’t hold a candle to the pinata drops of Diablo 3.