10 Year Anniversary
Last weekend, on May 15, was the 10 year anniversary of the game I probably spent the most amount of hours playing: Diablo 3. Certainly, one of the franchises I enjoyed the most, ever since Diablo 2 was released way back in the day.
Back in 2012, I was one out of 4 people (FOUR!) standing by the door of the store before it opened. Many times I’ve seen videos of people piling up against doors, running through like mad as they opened, punching and elbowing each other for the copy of a game or for that long-desired gadget. Well, this was obviously nothing like that, yet somehow I felt the need to walk fast once the doors opened. Maybe it was the anxiety of getting a new game, or the strange fear of empty shelves. What if the game is not there somehow?
Some other kid got there before me, perhaps he ran, and was asking for directions nervously even though the gaming section was right next to him. He dashed and slid to hug one of the game copies out of the shelf. I slowed down as to not be confused with the likes of that kid. The guy from the store was already pointing towards the shelves. I smiled and nodded, although I didn’t need directions. Full shelves, and nothing to worry about.
With the wind on my back, I cycled back home and installed the game on my laptop (that’s what I had back then). Looked at the time: still 4 hours to go to work. Amazing. It was at this moment when I got prompted to create my Battle.net account, and ‘Blackthorne’ came to life. It was the only Blizzard game I remembered playing (on the SNES) when I was a kid, and thought it was a cool idea as a call-back to use it as my nickname. It was actually funny to find out later that the game had a call-back to that game as well - they adhered Blackthorne to the lore of Diablo 3, and that hero has a set of items in-game. Game was ready. I was ready. Logged in, created my Barbarian and played as much as possible until I had to go to work - I arrived late that day.
It was only when I reached work that I heard from other (gamer) colleagues that launch-night was a nightmare, learned about error 37, and all the drama with the servers being unavailable. We spent the whole day talking about the game and got together in the evening to play some more. We dived into the game thinking it would be like Diablo 2 but better, with hopes of finding good loot and slaying demons all night. It wasn’t long until we realized this was far from reality. Connectivity was still a problem, and even after pushing through and beating the game, progression was slow and drop-rates for good loot were atrocious (even in late-game areas). We played for many hours without even seeing a legendary item, not to mention a useful one. Rare items were the best we could hope for…unless we spent gold or real money to buy legendary items from the auction house (and most legendaries were still bad back then). We lost interest in the game quickly. People complain about the game today, but it used to be much, so much, worse.
It was on March 2014, a few weeks before the release of D3’s expansion (Reaper of Souls), that the auction house was discontinued and the loot system reworked. The game revitalized with the new expansion and my interest renewed. Somewhere in August the same year, Seasons were introduced to D3, and even though it was weird to have your progression reset every start of the season, the replayability was fun. We got together with friends, start over, and race to complete objectives. D3 quickly became an excuse to meet and spend time together with friends, especially the ones living over-seas. Nowadays, I’m the only one from that group that still plays the game - although, if I’m being honest, I don’t play as much as I used to.
Not many games have the capabilities to endure over time, and as much as people had complained about the Diablo franchise not living up to expectations of the past, or about the decisions Blizzard made during development of the game of its features, many people are still brought together to play the game and enjoy a fun time with friends. Cheers to that!
