Quote:
Originally Posted by Blaster86
Diablo 2 was a great game, but the Diablo series no where near as long-lived as Warcraft and no where near the sales and world-wide acclaim of Starcraft. It was and continues to be the weaker sister of the Blizzard franchises, and I don't expect this to change with another sequel. Putting it up against something as huge as Star Wars, I just don't think the good folks at Bioware are too worried.
I expect The Old Republic to not only get better publicity, but factoring in Activision tampering, better reviews.
I will get flak for saying this and it kind of depresses me as a fan of the first two games, but I am genuinely expecting D3 to be a bust. The changes that Activision is seemingly forcing on Blizzard products (early releases, changes that are incredibly unpopular with the fan-base) is really taking away punch from what was an amazing game developer.
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Diablo suffered in number of followers I believe because of UO. Initially it did very well and sold a lot of copies, but by the fall of the next year UO was out and a lot of people (like myself) made the switch over and never looked back. UO was basicall Diablo without rules and a persistent world.. so essentially it was a "better version" of the game.
So WC1 didn't have a superior game to compete with, neither did SC1.. Diablo did, directly.
Diablo 2 releases in 2000 when UO was starting to wind down a bit, but by then there was already so many other games out it just didn't matter.
Now I understand that Diablo was primarily a single player game etc.. but its multiplayer feature became VERY popular and because of this it was directly compared to early MMO's, it was also seen as a sort of trail blazer or stepping stone. Over from MUDS and ICQ chat rooms to battle.net to UO to EQ etc...
I think D3 will do well, but the Diablo series is a far cry from the Warcraft or Starcraft series. This is of course me going off of my experience with the game and similar gamers, I have not bothered to google any type of facts. Someone with more time could do so and settle the argument quickly.