In case you were wondering if you should reinstall D3 to check out the "Darkening of Tristram" limited-time event... you shouldn't. You really shouldn't.
I knew that without needing to actually test the content; in fact, I was so convinced of it, that I had my BNet account deleted, rather than waste time testing this crap. But you don't have to take my word for it.
Instead, you can take Kripparrian's word for it:
I'll say it again: Diablo really is dead, Blizzard really are out of ideas, and I don't regret the decision to delete my BNet account at all. But I think that there is one way that the Darkening of Tristram content might make a kind of practical sense... at least, from Blizzard's perspective.
Of the criticisms that have been directed at Diablo III by old-school Diablo fans, most of them seem (to me, anyway) to have fallen into two main categories. One the one hand, are the people (like myself) who were complaining about the game's mechanics and gameplay. To those people, D3 was just poorly designed, and no amount of superficial polish could compensate for the shallowness and hollowness of the core experience.
Others, though, had a different complaint: aesthetics. D3, they said, just didn't look right. It was too bright, too colourful, too slick and glossy, and the soundtrack sucked compared to Matt Uelmen's now-iconic work. D3, the argument went, just didn't look or feel like a Diablo game; Blizzard just needed to fix that.
Pretend, for the moment, that you're an exec at Blizzard, faced with the challenge of winning back a Diablo fanbase that have mostly headed for the hills as a result of a) Diablo III, and b) the way your own people insulted and belittled them for daring to complain about Diablo III. You, Blizzard exec, have to choose between one of two options:
- you can rebuild all of the gameplay elements of D3, from the core outward, at an enormous cost of both time and money, with no guarantee that doing so will win back the trust and goodwill of alienated Diablo fans; or
- you can greenlight a "D1 in D3" mod instead, which retains all of the gameplay of the existing game but overlays the D1/D2 aesthetic on the experience, at a fraction of that cost.
It's a rhetorical question, obviously, since we already know which one was chosen. The Darkening of Tristram, intentionally or not, serves as a perfect test of the aesthetic argument. If D3's mechanics really were solid, and its problems purely aesthetic, then TDoT would have made D3 awesome. Because it really is D3 with a D1/D2 look and feel, including the awesomely eerie Uelmen music.
Instead, it sucks. Because what TDoT essentially does, intentionally or not, is strip away the superficial gloss and polish from D3, leaving its gameplay utterly exposed. Gone is the fluid feel created by D3's excellent animation work; instead, D3's gameplay is forced to carry the entire load. And the result, according to players like Kripparrian, is no fun at all to play.
Kripparrian, remember, liked this game. He's the first person to kill Diablo in Inferno, on Hardcore, before they nerfed Inferno to actually make it playable.; in fact, Kripp & Krippi may be the only people to do so. He played a ton of D3. He used to stream D3. And yet, when presented with D3's naked gamplay, stripped of the fluid animations and slot-machine-stimulating light show, he hated it.
The logic is inescapable. If D3's aesthetics really were the problem, then TDoT would have been the solution. They aren't, so it isn't. Layering D1/D2 aesthetics over D3's just serves to reveal the real issue: utterly unengaging gameplay, the result of a core design that's rotten with terrible decisions.
The one good thing about TDoT is that it's only available for one month at a stretch, and only for one month of the year. Blizzard clearly weren't sure how people would react, and limiting availability serves to a) keep people wanting more, if they did end up loving it, and b) limit the damage, if they didn't.