My experiences, 200+ hours

Along with most, I bought the game when it released and have been playing it ever since. I was not sure WHAT to expect, so I wasn't really disappointed too much. I wasn't expecting a D2 clone like so many were. I thought i'd share some of my experiences, thoughts, crticisms and concerns.

Thoughts!

~ The game is great overall IMO. The economy is definitely settling in right now. I'm not sure if I agree all to much with the tweaking of various things. I kind of follow the thought process of, "Let it all work itself out." In terms of farming and item grinding, etc etc. The drop increase was neat, but now I can't sell anything on AH haha.

~ I really enjoy the ambiance of the game! The music, the environments, the graphics, everything was done very well in my opinion! It really feels like a Diablo game, plays like one, etc etc. I was not disappointed. It's a clear continuation of the franchise!

~ For all it's faults, (release bugs, lag, shutdowns, etc) I find the game to be enjoyable overall. I do look forward to future content though!

Criticisms!

~ I play a Monk as my main. I was EXTREMELY upset to ding 60 and get into Inferno. I was used to smashing face in melee combat and having a great time! I then had to gimp myself to survive Act 1 in inferno, and basically be a slow, resistance tank. I do not feel at all that this is how the monk was designed to be played :( Shortly after I hit 60 IAS got nerfed into the ground so that just made the monk even more boring. It's so boring :( Sit there, hold click and tank. I figured the monk would be more of a high damage, in and out of combat, dodgey type of character with healing abilities! Oh well, I still dig my monk mostly I suppose. I would like to see what happens to the classes in 1.4!

~ Social environment. I was very disappointed when I found you could only have four players in a game, and even more disappointed when I found there was no lobby with a games list! I really miss joining games like, "free for nawbs" and whatnot. Mule parking! Woo! Exciting :D That game lobby with custom games just really added to the user tailored experience. If this was implemented in D3 I would be over joyed :) Make a public custom game where you only want to farm.. say... Festering Woods, Cemetary and Watchtower. Games would be called like, "FW-CE-WA 1" or something like that. This way people who wanted to do that could join, everyone was on the same page and woo! (bring back baal plox, taco baal!). The trade games were always fun. That with the lobby with the characters across the bottom really made you feel like you were immersed in the D3 online universe with other players. Their games and presence was tangible and you didn't feel so solo. Right now I play with one friend mostly and we don't like to do public games because people are generally just grinding quests. I really miss the ole days of the public feel to the game! I guess that's what I want most from D2, in D3.

Concerns!

~ End game? Obviously everyone has spewed a ton of crap about this. Im still trying to gear my monk so she can clear A3, but everything is so expensive and the grind does seem really far off. Many have speculated that the economy has been force tailored to encorage people to RMAH so blizz gets its 15%. While I realize this obviously might be their plan to bring in money to run servers, I feel that they need to tread EXTREMELY CAREFULLY with how they tweak the item grind. Right now it feels extremely daunting. I look at the gear I need and hope just seems to fade. Obviously the intended effect would be, "Hey just spend 10 bucks on RMAH." Well... I don't want to be strong armed into paying money just to experience some more Inferno content. I feel like the balance between presenting an economy to players that has opportunity for the semi-casual player such as myself to make gold, but presenting a challenging enough economy to get the occasional RMAH'er to do as such needs to be found. Remember, Blizzard needs to make profit off of the game. They are in a tight spot to satisfy the player's experience, while making money for operations and future investments.

In summation, I am satisfied with D3. I am feeling a bit of wear from a seemingly further and further off gearing road block. I do not make alot of money IRL regardless of working full time. I cannot justify spending 50-100$ to get semi-decent gear to play further into the game. However I do not wish to spend 200+ hours trying to save up hundreds of millions. There needs to be a quantifiable return on item grinding time investments that can be easily balanced! I love the flow and play and aesthetics of the game. I believe if Blizzard introduced some more social features to the game, got PVP rolled out, and offered some new dynamic content implementation of some sort to keep fresh challenges and opportunities for players to stay entertained and a more rich multi-player experience, they would have a great product everyone (probably not, still whiny bitches out there, MOST PEOPLE) would be satisfied with. Once things of that nature get rolled out and a good economy balance is struck, LET IT SIT! Work on things like performance and the sort. I don't know why so many people bitch about rubber banding, I barely ever have any negative experiences between client/server except for the random disconnects during down time.

Also! If there is any Monk pros out there that want to help me steer my monk in the right direction for gear/skills i'd appreciate it :) I'd like to progress further into Inferno and farm something other than Act 1!

Hope everyone has fun with their D3 experience as well!

Edit - Words.