I’m seeing a lot here around queue times, etc. All very valid points. But your post… your question, almost pulling out a sentiment of “what’s the meaning of life for a 35/40+ gamer” is near and dear to my heart so I wanted to give you my philosophy and point of view.
I want to start off by saying 3 things. First, I’m a 35 year old technology professional in the investment banking space living on the east coast. I played heavy amounts of D2 from 8th to 11th grade. I don’t have children and my girlfriend of 8 years is very supportive of my enthusiasm for gaming as we never plan to have children and value our personal time very much. Second, Blizzard could do better here. A lot of these forum and twitter blow-hards don’t have a very good understanding of project/support budgeting, staffing, development headcount, testing, etc, All in the realm of a publicly traded company. Is Blizzard’s “greed” exacerbating the problem? Yes, but only because they have an obligation to their shareholders. Would the Devs jump hard at a longer term ‘strategic’ solution if they could? Yes, they would, but again, there are intricacies around the corporate model and project/support funding that might suppress these efforts, and devs don’t work for free, they gotta eat too. I’m upset with Blizzard like a lot of these folks are and I truly believe Blizz COUL DO BETTER and I believe Blizz WANTS to be better, but again, I have a very hard time picking up the pitchfork and dragging them through the mud on this. And THIRD… Diablo 2 is a HARD game. You constantly need to tune and gear for more difficult play, dying can be frustrating. Farming efficiently take experience and knowledge while also requiring hours of grinding to get gear and runes/currency.
Now I’d like to circle back to your central question. Having a gratifying Diablo 2 experience can take 2 roads. If you enjoy the nostalgia and general game play. If you get that little jaw grind each time you see a half decent drop, even in early game play. If you like the music and are enjoying the new graphics, then great… god bless you. If you want to push BIS, solo farm Hell Baal, get them high runes to drop, do Ubers, etc. You need to invest time. Period.
I don’t like drawing to many separate dichotomies but here we are. D2R is extremely relevant for 2 types of gamers. Young and Old. There are young players with very little life obligations that can afford extreme amounts of play time, reading and learning very quickly, picking up trade lingo as well as strategic exploits and techniques, All of whom never played legacy D2, though who could tell by reading their trading lists. Then you have returning players maybe in their late 20’s to early 40s with varying degrees of general D2 knowledge, playtime available and enthusiasm for the game.
Gaming is an old business. There are 4 solid decades of population growth of gamers. A lot of individuals put the mouse and keyboard down as time goes on, but there are a lot… that simply don’t. There is, however, the emergence of the younger gamer as the Apex. Those whose first game was Halo: Combat evolved, not Donkey Kong. This creates that feeling for a 40+ gamer that they’re way behind.
The one thing we do have on our side, and I apologize for not having answered your question directly, is Time. And the topic of time will not provide you an answer to your question but at least maybe faith in the game. Since your question is typically being asked due to some skepticism and overall future lack of faith in the game.
When I installed Classic WoW, I thought it was the greatest thing to come back to a hard drive. I thought to myself for the first time in a while, “this might be the game I play continuously for over a year”. Blizz and other studios had been churning out honeymoon phase after honeymoon phase for me and I was getting bored with titles in about 3 months. But after some end game grind with Classic, I started getting that same knot in my stomach. Classic was like any other new title or expansion.
Will D2R turn out to be the same? Maybe. But in TIME, the player base will drop off. Blizz’s server issues will most likely fix themselves due to this. In TIME, you can continue at your current pace, have fun with the game and you’ll get that Jah rune to drop eventually. You’ll get that Tal’s armor to drop, you’ll solo Baal for the first time, you’ll get your footing on Teleporting through dangerous area’s to TP into a boss. YOU’LL be the one to HELP people trying to do Ancients for the first time… in Time.
I’m lucky, I have time for this game. But it can be just as gratifying for those that don’t, it just takes a little T I M E.
-Matt
