‘Diablo III’ disappoints with third re-release

By Jared Amdahl, Staff Writer

People sometimes say that the third time’s the charm, and in the case of Blizzard Entertainment’s latest video game, this saying comes into effect.

It is not very often that a single video game will be released three times over the course of two years.

However, these things do happen, and over the last two years, gamers have received three releases of Blizzard’s mega-title “Diablo III.”

On Aug. 19,  the most up to date installment of  “Diablo III”, “Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, The Ultimate Evil Edition,” was released onto next-generation gaming consoles Xbox One and Playstation 4.

It was a painstakingly huge mistake on Blizzard’s part, to fail to produce a game worth playing the first two times “Diablo III” was released.

The fastest selling PC game in history, “Diablo III” has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.

Fans of the “Diablo” series are so hardcore, you can find a healthy gaming community still playing on the first and second installment of the franchise, “Diablo” and “Diablo II” which were released in the years 1996 and 2000, respectively.

It did not take long for fans to begin complaining about “Diablo III” a couple months after the game was released because a large number of people had already stopped playing.

What went so horrifically wrong with “Diablo III”, which should have been one of the greatest video games ever made?

Blizzard was more interested with money and hooking players into another “life-stealing video game,” rather than creating an overall engaging and wonderful experience for everyone to enjoy.

The difficulty was too hard after a certain point in the game, and it was no longer fun.

And the ability to buy in-game items with real currency, such as US dollars, gave little point to spending time looking for items in game, which is what players were supposed to do.

Sooner or later, most gamers just didn’t want to play “Diablo III.”

It didn’t take Blizzard long to fire the development team of “Diablo III” and bring in old member of Blizzard North that was once a Bay Area California based developer to fix the problems.

The transformation of “Diablo III” lies mainly in its jump from PC to console gaming.

As a PC game, “Diablo III” is barely memorable, besides the frustrating aspects of the game.

It is too restricted and does not push the envelope of what computer gaming does, making it not worth it for most PC gamers.

But as a console game, it really does not get much better.

“Diablo III: Reaper of Souls The Ultimate Evil Edition” is awesome in its entirety.

Blizzard’s developers took every little thing that “Diablo” gamers have been complaining about “Diablo III” over the course of two years and fixed it.

Better Internet servers to play on, better items, more play-ability and character customization features are just the scratch of the surface to the things that have been done to “Diablo III”.

But in reality, it comes down to the fact that Blizzard delivered a little too late.