First off, I’m not one of those people who shout “BOYCOTT” out of spite or anything. The simple matter is that while I used to be very excited about Diablo III, that excitement has turned to disappointment and in all likelihood I won’t be playing this game. While many people may be purchasing Diablo III for an excellent multiplayer experience, I usually prefer to play these types of games for the solo experience. It seems that each new announcement about the game from Blizzard just spoils the excitement further. While one of these things wouldn’t cause me to skip the game, their combined effects set a depressing cloud over the game for me.

No UI Modifications

Not only are they not supported, they are explicitly prohibited! This is a terrible decision. As a mod developer, I love to create mods for games, improving the user interface for both myself and others. Mods allow games to endure and create new experiences, and allow a wider variety of players to enjoy the game. I understand it may be difficult to limit modifications to prevent cheating, but I think wow does a fantastic job at it.

Online Only Play

I’m against this type of move. While sure it may help Blizzard avoid piracy, it also puts creates an unnecessary inconvenience for their customers. You cannot play the game on a laptop. Our troops who often times have unreliable or limited access to the internet cannot play this game. The game has a maximum lifetime; it will only be playable as long as Blizzard seems fit to run the servers. Time has proven again and again that players like to go back and play old games. I still play Diablo II from time to time. I just bought FFVI for PSN. The final straw is, because Blizzard refuses to enable a privacy/offline mode for Real ID, I’ll be forced to deal with people anytime I play. The appeal of Hack-n-slash games for me is the ability to shut off my brain and slay millions of monsters. It’s a perfect escape from reality!

Purchasable Items.

I have never seen the appeal of this in a game. If you can just buy the best of everything, what is the point of even playing the game? The point of a game is to face a challenge and use your skills to overcome that challenge. It’s very satisfying! Being able to purchase items is very tempting, and once done ruins the game in a lot of ways. Sure you may be able to kill everyone super easily, but is it really as satisfying to kill them with over-powered equipment as opposed to spreading their blood across the battlefield with your skill? While mostly I can just avoid not purchasing items myself, it creates another problem. Players that play straight and achieve prowess through hard work and skill alone don't receive any recognition. People will begin to just simply assume that anyone who is good just bought their stuff online. So having this feature available to other players affects everyone.

Eyefinity / Surround Support.

Again, not only is the game not support these features, they explicitly ban the usage. Most games that I play with my eyefinity setup don’t provide much advantage or even usefulness in the extra monitors. Instead having the peripheral vision creates a sense of immersion that simply makes games more fun! For example, I play Civ 5, Anno 2070, Might and Magic VI, WoW. The benefit in those games is near 0, and in fact you usually have to work a bit harder to handle the UI. But the immersion is fantastic. It makes you feel like you’re really in the game! PC Gaming is about embracing new technologies that pushing the field. Deciding to explicitly ban this feature is just silly.

Anyways, I’m not saying Diablo III will be a bad game. For many people it will still be awesome, but for me it lost most of its appeal. I’ll probably be playing Torchlight 2 which offers a great hack-n-slash experience without any of negatives that come along with Diablo III.