Wolcen's existence is a problem for Blizzard

It is CryEngine gorgeous and fun to play. I played the D4 demo at BlizzCon and D4’s visuals are not an edge over Wolcen’s. Wolcen has not launched without its issues, however. It is currently experiencing its Error 37. This can be forgiven. Wolcen Studio is a small development team of thirteen and they simply did not prepare for the surge in popularity of their game. All will be fixed in due time. At the moment, though, Twitch viewership is at 51.8K, ahead of World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Warcraft 3: Reforged and without functioning servers, all possible because the game admits both online and offline profiles. Offline profiles cannot be played online. This solves the cheating problem (sorry, no, Blizzard does not require a persistent internet connection to combat cheating) and respects gamers and solo players (sorry, no, inadequate bandwidth is not a convincing argument for offline options–freedom, respect, and options are why offline options should be available in a game with singleplayer modes). I am a solo player first and so this is, quite frankly, a dream come true. Wolcen has its own identity, but I can’t help but feel I’m playing Diablo IV. It’s that good. There are annoyances which I’m assuming will be patched out in future updates including referring to my female character as “him” and missing portraits. I have experienced three freezes in 14 hours of gameplay. Again, this is easily forgiven given the size of their development studio and the fact that they began development with crowdfunding. Given that, this game should be regarded as a miracle. Their first update on Kickstarter was May 15, 2015 and thanked its backers for 25000 dollars raised in 24 hours (as of today total money raised is 406979 USD). Wolcen released Feb 13, 2020 putting the development time for this small cash-strapped development team at about 4 years 9 months. Now this is a Diablo forum so why are these important observations to note here? Why did Blizzard not do more with Diablo 3 with their vast resources and deep reservoir of talent? Why was 12 years of development required for Diablo 3? Why is a persistent internet connection required for Diablo 3 on PC and planned for Diablo 4 on console and PC? In Wolcen all cosmetics are earned in game, there is no shared world, no mounts, and the game can be played offline. Its existence confirms the massive appetite that exists for these types of games with this simplicity. Wolcen is magnificent and with time it will only get better and my hope is that it is a massive financial success and the team focuses on updates and expansions. Lastly, I hope Blizzard is paying attention, surprises us with a druid class for Diablo 3 and an offline mode on PC, and makes a Diablo 4 that is worthy of the tradition.

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+1
Wolcen is the D3 we never had…

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If you like wolcen better, play that instead…

Never going to happen lol

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I’m already at endgame and I don’t think it will be a problem. It has some ideas Blizzard can look to, but I find my D3 experience much better so far. I also don’t think the small team can keep up regular content, although now the game has been solidified as a proper ARPG, it shouldn’t take as long as the initial game did.

As for D3, Blizzard North started working in it in 2003, they quit or were canned by 2005, where the game was rebooted and possibly rebooted another time before the 2008 reveal. Wolcen is a vastly different game than was Kickstarted, a very different game from Alpha EA, and still a it different than the Beta EA.

OP you are comparing a game that has been out for 1 day to one that is almost 8 years old.
Bring on D4 and it will destroy Wolcen with twitch viewers. Wolcen is just the new kid on the block. Flavor of the Day ! :ice_cream: :ice_cream: :ice_cream: :ice_cream: :ice_cream:

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While Wolcen is likely no threat to D4, it really shows the innovation in the genre. And it takes a direct shot at pretty much the only thing Diablo had left; the fluid combat.
Diablo 4 needs to step up its game, more than what was shown in the Blizzcon demo imo.
Much more depth in the build customization in particular.

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Spent yesterday playing wolcen, it’s not good. From endless bugs, google translated tooltips, no content after campaign, boring (even compared to d3) itemization, female model WTF, janky af resource system, weapon choices locking you out of a very limited selection of skills half of which are trash, cannot potion while attacking, summons lol, alternating between skills is not smooth, untargetable enemies, ailment stacking is a big part of the game yet no icon indicators on enemies, apocalyptic looks cool but is completely pointless, no auto sell, no inventory sort, crashes, cannot reassign LMB from autoattack.

Haven’t done any crafting so I can’t comment there, the game is visually pleasing in all aspects, armor, environment, enemies and transmog. Story is pretty decent.

I can’t get over the tooltips though, they’re horrendous and they haven’t improved much since I bought it years ago.

So “Wolcen’s existence is a problem” hardly, i’m hoping for more from TL3 and Last Epoch, and of course D4 and POE2.

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Wolcen’s existence is a problem for Blizzard

No ! :face_with_monocle:

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From what I’ve seen from bloggers the game is no way for me - Looks like something to play in an arcade after you put a quarter in the machine.
ARPG’s in general are heading in the wrong direction, too much arcade madness, not enough RPG emersion. But heck that’s just me.

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I prefer it that way. I can understand that is not for everyone.

Wolcen like PoE, is too complicated for me. I’m not even interested in Wolcen anymore.

I did like how they made a blog post about adding more servers, more space, in order to fix known server issues. Wish blizzard did the same to fix the lag in D3.

PoE2 looks more of the same with some minor, but needed changes. TL3 looks more of the same. Last Epoch, last time I checked it out looked and played so bland, I haven’t touched it in over a year, but as a concept looked interesting. Just read they took out most of the time travel stuffs that were central to the game.

D4 looks like a nice hybrid of old and new in a shared space. I have more hope for D4 than the previous titles. But anything can happen.

Yeah, I understand, the target audience is young and have different interests, not much I can do about that. Just play whatever I can find I like.

It’s a safe bet that the D4 developers are playing Wolcen, and taking a close look at what people are liking, and not liking, about the game. That’s just a common sense thing for developers to do. There have also been plenty of comments in this forum directed towards the devs about what people enjoy about POE. I haven’t tried Wolcen yet, myself, but I think it’s a good idea for people that have played to be specific about their feedback to the D4 devs about interesting things Wolcen has done. This is feedback that will evolve over time as the games we are playing evolve. Graphics? Quests? Endgame? MTX? Combat? It’s all important feedback.

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I mean, all devs do this as well as play other games not in the genre of the game they are working on. It would be project negligence if they didn’t.

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Wall of text Crit +1000 learn to paragraph please!

We will see how good Wolcen is, very little is known about it, there empty FAQ pages, no open tools and a relatively plagued release.

Twitch viewership is always high for new games on release especially when top streamers are playing it…

Anyways I’m playing it and it’s good so far… We will see. PS the Wolcen team is 17 not 14.

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Screw that, there’s people here that hold a grudge over that in D3 8 years later.

'Cause it’s new you goofball.

Nice wall bro.

20 characters

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No, the continuing toxic player base is the problem for Blizzard and other game makers. Honestly, I don’t really do not have any idea why they even bother to play any game they constantly try to infect with their putrid nonsense. :brain: :boom:

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Wolcen doesn’t look that great except the ground. But offline mode is a real +. Cause I’m plagued with bad connection in my small village. And it’s super annoying to get disconnected a lot.

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