Let us compile a list of D3 annoyances.

[Lissa]

The story. The idea behind the story isn't innately bad, and Act I does a decent job of showing it. Act II starts showing cracks in the storytelling, and Act III just kills it off completely (especially the end). Act IV is Act IV - win the war, yo.

A blind squirrel that can't find its own nuts could see where this was going.

This is why Metzen has got to stop being Blizzard's story person. He started out halfway decent back in the WC2/SC1 days, peaked in WC3, and has steadily gone down hill since then with moment of brilliance on occasion since WC3, but they're few and far between. I will agree with Act 1, it's good, won't win an award, but it's good. Act 2 is so blantantly telegraphed it's not funny. Act 3 is bleh with a horrible end. Act 4, please.

[MongoJerry]

In Diablo III, you can justify Hardcore as a separate mode given so much is shared between characters, it does feel almost like `cheating' if your regular characters inadvertently give your hardcore ones a big leg-up.

It's only an issue for the person with little self control, and who harbors self-guilt. When I "cheat" at playing solitaire, I'm not deceiving anyone -- I know what I did, and if winning is THAT important, then there is my own special diabolic and personal enjoyment. Ladders would be different. I'm not sure if you can be so disciplined (e.g. even using the blacksmith who is already trained up to master level by prior character investments) without seriously handicapping yourself versus other hard core players.

You're forgetting the multiplayer aspect of the game(s). When I play hardcore, I want to play it with other people also playing hardcore who are helping each other and covering each others' backs. I don't want to mix with people who are playing glass cannons who think it's a perfectly acceptable tactic to die and resurrect over and over to defeat an encounter. A separate hardcore mode provides a way for a community of such players to easily find and play with one another. It's quite enjoyable for me.

[LochnarITB]

OK, Blizzard, you want us on your servers to protect your product, fine and livable. However, please don't punish us for playing single player by timing out our games when we have to afk. For someone that plays slow and explores and must enter every dungeon, remove every bit of fog of war and bust every bustable, it is very annoying to have to redo large chunks because you want to be Big Brother.

[Roland]

When I play hardcore, I want to play it with other people also playing hardcore who are helping each other and covering each others' backs. I don't want to mix with people who are playing glass cannons who think it's a perfectly acceptable tactic to die and resurrect over and over to defeat an encounter. A separate hardcore mode provides a way for a community of such players to easily find and play with one another. It's quite enjoyable for me.

Playing Hardcore does not make you better than everyone else. Playing Softcore does not mean you're an idiot. When (or should I say IF?) you hit Hell difficulty, you can BEGIN to talk to me about what constitutes tactics. Sometimes deaths are unavoidable in the higher difficulties, like when a mob from the corner of the screen Vortex's you into the middle of their Molten / Vortex / whatever pack and you die almost INSTANTLY from 28k life, when you couldn't even see what the mobs were before you were dead (let alone devise "tactics" on how to survive the encounter).

Lose the fucking attitude about softcore players. It was old on Day 1. Now it's beyond irritating.

My biggest gripe with D3? HC players acting like complete dicks. There - I said it.

[kandrathe]

Playing Hardcore does not make you better than everyone else. ...

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[Archon_Wing]

Wtf. Of course playing hardcore doesn't made you better than anyone else.

Unless it's me playing.

[zParticle]

We are quite literally the 1%, if you look at the server counts. Don't mind our evangelizing hardcore mode—for most of us it's not about elitism at all—we just happen to enjoy the thrill and the camaraderie of keeping each other alive. Everyone should try one hardcore character "just for the hell of it" even if you don't put much time into it.

[MongoJerry]

Playing Hardcore does not make you better than everyone else.

Roland, I simply explained why there was a need for hardcore mode after your and kandrathe's posts about how "Hardcore is a game-enforced ruleset that you can easily do yourself." I explained precisely why there is a need for such a mode in a multiplayer environment. That was true in Diablo II and is even more true in Diablo III, where grouping up is even more important. I simply do not want to play a self-imposed hardcore mode with people in my party who are dying and resurrecting each other as if it's nothing. Having a separate hardcore community allows hardcore players to meet up and play together, and that's a good thing.

As far as the evangelism for hardcore mode goes, I don't think that hardcore players are better than softcore players, but I do find the game experience more rich and intense when I play it. In addition, I find that the hardcore community is closer, bonds more, helps each other out more, and tends to play a more close-knit kind of game even when all of the group started off as strangers in a pug game. I think that this is an experience that would appeal to fellow Lukers, and I highly recommend everyone trying it out.

[MongoJerry]

Back on topic, I'm a bit annoyed by the fact that when you beat a major boss for the first time in a difficulty, you only get blues in Nightmare through Inferno. I get that Blizzard doesn't want the bosses to be the target of farming, but still, when you beat a boss for the first time in a difficulty, you should get a rare or two and maybe have a higher than normal chance for a legendary the first time you beat a boss in that difficuty.

[kandrathe]

I simply do not want to play a self-imposed hardcore mode with people in my party who are dying and resurrecting each other as if it's nothing. Having a separate hardcore community allows hardcore players to meet up and play together, and that's a good thing.

As far as the evangelism for hardcore mode goes, I don't think that hardcore players are better than softcore players, but I do find the game experience more rich and intense when I play it. In addition, I find that the hardcore community is closer, bonds more, helps each other out more, and tends to play a more close-knit kind of game even when all of the group started off as strangers in a pug game. I think that this is an experience that would appeal to fellow Lukers, and I highly recommend everyone trying it out.

I'm not dis'n hardcore, so much as pointing out that you CAN be disciplined if you choose to be -- and if you are playing with "friends" then you should be able to agree to follow the same "rules" for your flavor of the game. But, for me, being that I'm more casual, I'd rather not toss out a char and whatever remains of my sanity whenever I mess up or hit a lag spike.

[Elric of Grans]

Server downtime. Awful. I just learned there is a regular server downtime that is set at a time when the US are all in bed asleep... which just happens to be prime time for Oceania and South East Asia. Currently unable to play single player and will not be able to do so until tomorrow. Well, I could tonight if I stay up until 2am, but I need my beauty sleep. Easily the worst DRM added to any game and something I hope everyone learns from and never ever considers repeating in a single game ever again. I doubt Blizzard has any possibility of removing it for us, but I would sure like an apology and acknowledgement that it was a terrible idea.

[smegged]

Server downtime. Awful. I just learned there is a regular server downtime that is set at a time when the US are all in bed asleep... which just happens to be prime time for Oceania and South East Asia. Currently unable to play single player and will not be able to do so until tomorrow. Well, I could tonight if I stay up until 2am, but I need my beauty sleep. Easily the worst DRM added to any game and something I hope everyone learns from and never ever considers repeating in a single game ever again. I doubt Blizzard has any possibility of removing it for us, but I would sure like an apology and acknowledgement that it was a terrible idea.

If this maintenance is going to be regular I'm going to ask for a refund on this game. I've had it with the 3007s and the prime-time maintenance issues. I did not fork out my hard earned to be a beta tester. I have enough bugs to deal with at work than you very much.

I could handle Tuesday nights being down time while I used to play WoW. It was a break that forced me to do something else. But I have less time now. And it's really not acceptable for this game, which is effectively a single player game, to force me offline on one of the few nights I have to play.

It's so frustrating, because there's so much to *like* about this game. But if I can't play it, then I can't play it.

[Mavfin]

What's a 3007? (Seriously, never encountered it.)

I've been playing to where it might as well have been single player for all I could tell. Ping's about 50, just like my WoW ping. I haven't seen anything to give me a hint what all the fuss is about, other than the few times they took the servers down to fix a couple things. Even then, I just leave that session, wait the 60 sec for the server to drop, and start another w/o logging out.

[smegged]

What's a 3007? (Seriously, never encountered it.)

I've been playing to where it might as well have been single player for all I could tell. Ping's about 50, just like my WoW ping. I haven't seen anything to give me a hint what all the fuss is about, other than the few times they took the servers down to fix a couple things. Even then, I just leave that session, wait the 60 sec for the server to drop, and start another w/o logging out.

The 3007 is an error that occurs when the connection to the Blizzard login servers is closed due to a timeout. It doesn't happen to everyone and it entirely depends on the implementation of your networking hardware (network card, router, ISP etc...).

Many people have reported it (it seems to be a particular problem for people playing from Australia) and Blizzard's response is to provide a workaround which exposes your computer to hackers. They do have a "soft" workaround to the problem - join general chat and ensure that some text is posted to general chat every minute or so (the timing depends on how long it takes for your connection to be reset).

This has the effect of me having to ensure I am constantly spamming chat, basically whenever my last spam message disappears from the screen.

Not only does this bug effect you while you're playing, but it ALSO can kill you while you're watching a cutscene. I had the end of act 1 cutscene stopped halfway through, just so the server could tell me that it had a 3007 error. It just killed the cutscene and told me of my error. I had to log back in and watch it again.

It really kills the sense of immersion and if it doesn't get fixed soon there will be a player riot on our hands.

Not only does all of this apply, but I am really getting fed up with playing a single player game with 250+ ms lag (which was typical for WoW as well) because I happen to speak with a charming accent.

Blizzard have two to three weeks to fix this before I demand a refund under their 30-day clause.

---

I think that the most disappointing thing for me is that they already got the starcraft 2 model right and they had 9 years to perfect WoW. Starcraft 2 was seamless from day one. You could play the single player offline if you wanted to and playing online only ever resulted in queuing in the first couple of days, and it wasn't long when it happened.

[Chesspiece_face]

Ok, here's one from me:

I am sick and F'n tired of accidentally pulling one of my skills off the hotkey bar in the middle of a hectic fight. If they want to allow people to pick up the skills off of the hotkey bar and move them around then they should at least offer an option to lock the bar. What's even worse is that if you do manage to get your skill assigned back and on your bar you still have to contend with the timed lock-out before you can actually use that skill. Upwards of a minute during a brutal fight where you can't use one of your key skills is unforgivable.

Any small benefit that the ability to move around skills on your bars offers is completely outweighed by the fact that this will, eventually, get you killed.

Edit: And not so seriously: I really wish the character limit for names was longer... I want to call my Witch Doctor Hexual Chocolate.

[LavCat]

Edit: And not so seriously: I really wish the character limit for names was longer... I want to call my Witch Doctor Hexual Chocolate.

I'd like to be able to reuse some of my D2 names.

[Taem]

Path of exile does it the best; when you die on an hc server, your character is converted to the sc realm. Not sure why Bliz didn't do this also.

[Elric of Grans]

Most people who play hardcore would not want to continue the character in softcore, which is probably why Blizzard did not include it.

Another really stupid thing. Certain attacks put `something' on you. I put it inside quotes, as I do not really know; some kind of a debuff or something. A small icon appears at the bottom of the screen where you often will not notice it, and it is pretty small, and you have to highlight it to see what it means. Something I am sure we have plenty of time to so in the middle of a major battle... They need to replace this notifier with something (a) far easier to see (eg an effect over your character, like most games) and (b) let us know what those effects mean so we can react when we see them.

[NiteFox]

A couple of minor UI ones:

1) How many patches did it take for us to be able to reorder our characters on the character select screen in WoW? At least three expansion's worth. And now they've forgotten to implement it in D3, and older characters are placed at the bottom of the stack rather than at the top. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

2) An even more minor quibble: How many patches did it take for the crafting interfaces in WoW to get a "have materials" filter? A similar thing would be less useful for the blacksmith, but an absolute boon for the jewelcrafter.

[Mavfin]

2) An even more minor quibble: How many patches did it take for the crafting interfaces in WoW to get a "have materials" filter? A similar thing would be less useful for the blacksmith, but an absolute boon for the jewelcrafter.

Both Jeweler and Blacksmith have 'Have Materials' and the Bsmith has 'Can Equip' also.

In the tabs where you actually make items (or combine gems), there's a dropdown in the upper right, defaulted to 'All'.