“We know it's not there right now”
Blizzard Community Manager, Bashiok, posted in the game's official forums about the state of Diablo 3's now infamous endgame situation, stating that the “the item hunt is not enough for a long sustainable end-game.” Players have continuously ragged on about the repair costs and difficulty spike at higher levels, making the game more of a grind than fun.
Bashiok later added later in a post saying that “Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, but we believed pre-release that the item hunt would be far more sustainable, and would work to be a proper end-game for quite a while. That didn’t turn out to be true, and we recognize that.” The Auction and the Real Money Auction Houses have been the main source of dismay of many players who are on the verge of quitting or have already left the game. One has to buy sometimes outrageously priced equipments just to survive the early stages of Inferno difficulty.
The beleaguered community manager admits that Diablo 3 is not World of Warcraft. “We’re not going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months,” he continues. “There needs to be something else to keep people engaged, and we know it’s not there right now.”
Still many are hopeful that the unreleased component of Diablo, the PVP, will greatly help the current endgame dillema. The PVP patch is due in 1.1, but it has not been given a release date.
“We’re working toward 1.0.4, which we’re really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out, and we’re of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas” said Bashiok.
The community manager added, “I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they’re not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it’s a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out.”
What do you think is the real solution for Diablo 3's endgame? Is the game being destroyed by the Auction Houses? And are you still finding enjoyment killing The Butcher again and again and again? Are you even still playing?
Level 60! Time to farm those elites!
