This Year in RPGs: May

Diablo III (released 5/15/2012)

Diablo III is the follow-up to the extremely successful Diablo II. A decade after release and people are still playing the second entry in the Diablo franchise.

There was quite a bit of pressure on the team developing Diablo III; it had to be a follow-up worthy of the franchise but at the same time the team desired to innovate the ARPG genre. This led to them foregoing conventional skill trees. The real money Auction House also generated some controversy once it went live, a week or so after the servers first came up. In order to stop certain people from spamming actions such as clicking pots to receive items and gold, the stat Magic Find's impact was reduced. To myself and many of the people following Diablo III, this seemed like adjusting gameplay elements in order to obtain more money from the auction house.

But besides that, the actual game of Diablo III was met with some controversy. Critics called the villains cliché, and criticized some of the plot choices. So why am I still recommending that it be played?

Because at its heart Diablo III is an addictive, compulsive, fun game. It's still a worthy entry in the genre of ARPGs. Besides many other titles on this list whose devs have already packed up and moved on once their titles shipped, Blizzard continues to work on Diablo III. Supposedly since I played it last it has continued to improve, and because Blizzard is committed to quality (and making money *cough*) they will continue to develop the title, ironing out bugs and eventually adding more content.

Lots of people complained that Diablo III was not as complex as its predecessor. Well, a lot of those people forget that Diablo II didn't hit its stride until it received its first expansion, Lord of Destruction, which introduced the rune system, among other things like new classes. So, too, in time will Diablo III grow to be an even better game. It may have its kinks, but the future of D3 is looking pretty good.