Diablo 3 is superior to Diablo 2

INTRODUCTIONI have been a gamer for a long time. I’m 26 and the first game I can remember playing (called Brat on the Atari) was in 1991 so I was 4. I played a bit of Diablo 1 back on the console and never came remotely close to clocking it on any difficulty (as it was hired from a video library). Then, when I was 12 I got my own computer and for Christmas, I got the amazing Diablo 2. In all my years, I cannot think of a game I loved more than Diablo 2 and subsequently its expansion pack Lord of Destruction. Wow I played that game a lot. I distinctly remember keeping the thick game manuals in the toilet so I could read them over and over, like actual tomes of knowledge written by Deckard Cain. Anyway, I played it a lot. Every day, after school I’d play it until bed time including eating dinner in front of the computer. Arreat Summit was the first website I can remember bookmarking… but there is something I remember now retrospectively. I never got very far. I cannot remember playing Hell difficulty much, if at all. I think (it’s difficult to remember) I had maybe 2 character about level 60, a Barbarian and a Sorcerer (it was a long time ago). It wasn’t a particularly forgiving game. When Diablo 3 was officially announced, I simply had to revisit Diablo 2 (known as D2 and D3 from now on), so I bought it again, linked it to my Blizzard account and cranked that mofo up. Some updates had happened but it was mostly the same game. The pygmies in Act 2 weren’t as annoying as I remembered and there were more runewords, some balancing changes behind the scenes and Uber Tristram for super challenge but basically the same game I grew up with. Anywho, I played a bit, deciding on a cookie cutter Necromancer build which I copied to a point. Within an hour or two, I realised that it would take me dozens upon dozens of hours to get even a chance at a single piece of endgame-viable gear so I shelled out twenty or thirty bucks on an unaffiliated site for what was almost certainly gear collected by a bot, got myself power levelled to Hell Act 5 and did a bunch of Baal runs until I got passed level 90. And the nostalgia of it all was wonderful. I played a bit here and there (including playing a bit of Act 1 Normal with by brother who was also excited for D3) and faded back off in favour of other games and real life stuff.Diablo 3 came out and I didn’t have a computer to play it on. So I built one with money I probably should have saved to pay for more important things (like somewhere for myself, my pregnant partner and my step-daughter to live, lol, don’t worry that stuff was paid for anyway) and bought it. I played my Monk through the Normal difficulty campaign with self-found gear (the Auction House was still very much in its early days then and I never used it) and then moved house, didn’t have the internet and 12 months passed. Now, I’ve been playing Diablo 3 again and I must say, I’m having a complete blast with it. I’ve got a Paragon Level 10 Monk doing 97,000 DPS and surviving Inferno MP6 quite well. I’ve spent some money on gold, flipped a few items for profit on the AH (which is fun in itself) and joined a guild of people who know a lot more about the game than I do. I’m playing it every day and with 4 classes I’ve barely touched and a lot of room for progress with my Monk I can foresee many, many more hours of gameplay ahead.The reason I’m doing this debate is because within the Battle.Net forums, I’m seeing a hellava lot of people saying Diablo 2 is a lot better and I just don’t see it. I’ve read the best from both sides of the argument and as I do, I made this debate to bring the discussion/argument to DDO.So without further ado, here are my opening arguments:ARGUMENTSEASE OF USEMany people say that Diablo has been ‘dumbed down’ with the removal of stat point and skill point allocation in favour of auto-stat points per level and all skills being unlocked at level 60, but restricted to the 6 slots (left click, right click and buttons 1-4.)I beg to differ. How many people were honestly able to keep their first Diablo 2 toon? I’m guessing nobody. That’s because there was no possible way of fixing the mistakes you made with your stat points when you first started playing. Even once you did read the forums and articles on correct stat point allocation, you almost HAD to put them a certain way to be viable in the latter difficulties of the game or risk being inferior to everyone else. That problem is gone. Likewise with skill points; how many ways could you really configure your skills and still be able to kill Baal on Hell difficulty? Sure, you could fvck around with interesting builds but what I think people seem to forget is that you can still do that now. With 6 types of skills, multiplied by 5 different skills per type, multiplied by 5 runes per skill multiplied by 6 different slots for you to put your skills in, subtracting the ability to use the same skill with a different rune in more than one slot AND the 3 passive skill slots with 13 choices, you have literally quadrillions of combinations [1] and that’s without taking the gear into account (I’ll address gear more in the next round.)TIME WELL SPENTOnce upon a time, I did Baal runs with a Hammer-din [2] bot to level up my Necromancer. If the bot didn’t auto-grab it and the other players didn’t grab it, it was basically worthless (maybe to sell for gold to fix your gear.) That’s what I remember about D2 gear. Now obviously other people had different experiences. Maybe they had friends or guild mates who would share their gear. Maybe they fairly took turns for every drop that Mephisto gave when he died. That’s irrelevant, because the majority of players didn’t have that unless they put time and effort into the game. With D3, everyone get their own drop. No-one can see yours, you can’t see anyone else’s and bingo, the problem is solved. So you jump into a game (and I’ll cover ‘finding games’ in the next round) and you start mashing mother fvckers with some strangers. Maybe they’re cool, so you add them to your friends list. Maybe they think you’re cool, so they add you. Regardless, you’re mashing sh!t. And you mash and mash (just like you mashed and mashed in D2) and you’ve got a whole bunch of rare items and none of it is good enough to use or sell (I’ll cover using items in the gear section of the next round and selling in the next section) so what do you do? You salvage it of course and then you can use the Blacksmith to craft an item. It’s like rerolling gear. Sure, it’s random and sure, you’re probably not going to craft something good either (once you get decent gear anyway) but even those crafting materials have sellable value because when you craft, especially once you’ve max levelled your Blacksmith, you can choose what kind of item you’re rolling for and if you roll enough you’ll probably get something of value. Additionally, while you’re grinding you’re earning gold, which brings me to my final round 1 point…A PROPER ECONOMYFinally, I have to mention trading. Trading is so, so vastly improved from ‘the good ol’ days’ of D2. Now, if you find something you can find it’s approximate value by looking at the in-game AH, put it up for trade, receive the currency of the game (gold) from that trade and spend it all within the game. You’re wanting an item with a certain combination of statistics? Easy, the AH has a searching function. You don’t have to troll through a billion trade games or the god awful trade channels of old. You can see the approximate price and buy it with the currency you’re earning just by playing the game.CONCLUSIONI have a lot more points to add, but my introduction took up a lot of characters so I’ll be leaving them for the next round. The main point I’ll be getting at it accessibility.SOURCES[1] http://www.mmo-champion.com...[2] http://diablo.wikia.com...