Diablo v WoW

So, like many people with the Annual Pass - or simply fans of the series - I'm playing a lot of Diablo 3 (I'm on Act 3, having beaten the first major boss, Gluttony-dude.)

I should mention that this is the only Diablo game I've played, so everything here is specifically about Diablo 3.

WoW clearly has a lot of Diablo DNA, and I know that a lot of the initial class design for WoW was inspired by Diablo. Both are RPGs that have you killing big monsters for shiny loot, crawling through dungeons, managing your gear loadout.

So I figured I'd compare the two.

Despite its multiplayer capabilities, Diablo is at its core a single-player game, like the vast majority of games I play. That means that you, yes you, can face incredibly powerful demon lords on your own (well, with a sidekick. Question: I have become incredibly dependent on the Templar's healing and health regen abilities. How the hell do you play with anyone else? Note: I'm a Wizard.) It's actually kind of strange to be able to go kill Belial, Lord of Lies on my own, because I'm so used to thinking of giant monsters in Blizzard games as the ones you need a group of at the very least 5 to beat.

It's actually pretty cool to be self-sufficient (well, as long as I have my Templar buddy around. I kind of feel bad for the Scoundrel and the Enchantress, because I almost never take them anywhere.) It also varies the gameplay a bit. In WoW, if you're dps you typically only use your "utility" moves in PvP or very special situations. While running a dungeon as dps, you usually only switch between your "AoE" rotation or your "single target" rotation (or sometimes a "cleave" rotation, for smaller groups.) In Diablo, you don't really have a Tank, per se (though I've found that if I can get the Templar to wedge himself into a doorway, blocking the swarm of skeletal soldiers or what have you while I blast them from behind him with my Electrocute, we're nearly unstoppable.) When you're on your own, suddenly stats like Vitality (Diablo's version of Stamina) and armor start looking more attractive, even to a squishy Wizard, and things like Frost Nova (similar to the Mage spell, but it also stops them from attacking) and Shock Blast (which does damage and tosses enemies away) become very important parts of your arsenal. Hell, Demon Hunters (thematically a cross between a Rogue and a Hunter, with a tiny dash of Warlock thrown in) have an entire secondary resource system specifically for defensive moves.

It's also kind of cool that you get a little cast of characters that follow you around. While the dialog sometimes gets repetitive (I can't tell you how many times the Templar's asked me how criminals are dealt with in my land) you do feel like you're the leader of a little band of intrepid heroes - even the crafters have decent personalities.

There are some issues, however. Diablo uses a kind of dungeon randomizer - whenever you enter one of the game's vast dungeons (and most of the time you spend killing things is in these,) the game will take several basic room tiles and stitch them together, filling it with enemies and objects appropriate to that dungeon. You'll sometimes come across areas that are more deliberately laid out, when the plot or gameflow demands it, but it means that even on the same character, if you leave a dungeon and come back (other than using the "crap, I've got to go back to town and empty my bags" Town Portal spell,) the dungeon will have a totally different layout. The point here is to make sure that you don't just memorize the layout and speed through it on every playthrough, and it certainly achieves that, but the unfortunate side effect is that a lot of the dungeons lack flow. You're killing the same set of enemies from start to finish, and while there are cool devices like crumbling walls or chandeliers to drop on them, it mostly feels like more of the same until you get to your next checkpoint.

Gear has a similar feel to it. In WoW, the randomized gear you occasionally get is usually made into enchanter fodder (admittedly most of the magic gear you get in Diablo also goes to the Blacksmith) while you tend to equip either quest rewards or specific boss drops. In fact, a lot of the motivation to run a dungeon multiple times comes from the need for a specific loot drop. In Diablo, however, there are literally no specific loot drops (at least none that I've seen so far.) The best you'll get (again, this is just over halfway through Normal mode) is a yellow-titled item. These are items that you pick up, spend a couple seconds "identifying" and then find that they are specifically designed with certain stats (and they tend to be a lot better than the blue pieces, which are equivalent to WoW's random green drops.)

But these drops do not come off of specific bosses - I have no need to go kill the Skeleton King again (though I bet it would be a hell of a lot easier this time around, assuming he doesn't scale up with my gear/level.) So it's strange, despite being a game that is all about the dungeon crawl, there's not a whole lot of motivation to retread past conquests. Unless I'm playing it wrong.

Dungeons in WoW are really well-designed, actually. There tends to be a real flow to them, and it allows the trash to be nearly as interesting as the bosses. Diablo dungeons are basically like the giant field in the Firelands at all times - yes, there's some trash pulls there that require different strategies, but for the most part it's a big slog.

One more thing - making Left Click both your cheap attack and your walk button makes it really frustrating to get out of fires and the like when there's a swarm of enemies (or just a really big one) around you.

Mind you, I like both games, and while novelty has its hold, I'm playing Diablo. It might take me a long time, but I intend to play through it on all the classes, but I think that WoW is ultimately a better game. Even as a single-player game, the quests in WoW have evolved past employing only simple "kill x of these guys" - the only problem with it as a single-party game is that the big stories are somewhat anticlimactic.

I should also take a second to note that the ability and rune system in Diablo looks very much like the ideal they're striving toward with Glyphs and Talents. It's especially successful given the need for "utility" the single-player game uses, but it's also interesting in that by restricting you to six abilities at any given time (including buffs) and a maximum of three passive effects, you find yourself having to make real choices (My indestructible non-boss build? Electrocute with Chain Lighting, Ice Beam with Snow Blast - for the tough elites - Frost Nova with Shatter and Forceful Blast in case I get swarmed. Like the Templar, it's hard to wean myself off of this build.)

Edit: Oh, and one other thing I love about Diablo 3 - your money is account-wide. In WoW, assuming everyone's on the same server and faction, you can send gold around easily enough (minus the 30 copper, which wasn't a lot of money even in Vanilla days, unless your max-level toon was level 5 or lower) but there's something very convenient about just having the gold you collect on one dude be available on the others.

This also extends to your crafters: because the main in-game gold-sink (aside from the Auction House) is the training of your crafters, it makes sense that, given that it's everyone's gold, everyone should benefit from the training. In fact, even though you don't get Shen, the jewelcrafter, until Act II, your other characters will see him in New Tristram with all of the jewel recipes he's trained for (he even has special dialog there, which requires you to have an alt.)

Actually, Diablo is generally very Alt-friendly. With shared gold, and the fact that there is no such thing as "soulbound" items, you can very easily drop off powerful gear for your other characters. While your first guy might struggle by with some outdated, low quality gear, the awesome rare pieces you pick up can be put in your stash and picked up by alts as soon as they're high enough level to wield them. That's how my Demon Hunter (who started as my main, but was quickly outpaced by the Wizard) wound up with two insanely powerful hand-crossbows with which she slaughtered her way through dungeon after dungeon.

WoW could benefit from a few of these concepts. One: I love the Stash concept, even if the space there is pretty limited. It's kind of like a personal guild bank. I can't tell you how many times I've wished that I could just toss certain items into a communal storage space - things like cloth and basic trade goods - so that my characters could pick them up as they needed them. I also wouldn't mind making Gold account-wide. That way you wouldn't have to worry about a new alt needing funds before they can access a mailbox. It would also really help anyone who decides to reroll on a new server, and encourage people to try the other faction.