明天文章出爐囉：
Lord of Record Sales: Blizzard Says Diablo III Is Fastest Selling PC Game in History-Courtesy of Time Magazine
By Matt Peckham | @mattpeckham | May 23, 2012
Blizzard
Surprise, Diablo III sold to the moon and back since its release last week on Tuesday, May 15, says developer/publisher Blizzard in so many words. In fact the company says more than 3.5 million people picked up a copy of its action-roleplaying trilogy closer during the game’s first 24 hours on sale, which would make it the fastest selling PC game of all time (based on Blizzard’s internal sales data and reports from “key distribution partners”).
What’s more, Blizzard says the 3.5 million figure doesn’t include over 1.2 million additional players who received a copy of Diablo III in trade for signing up to play World of Warcraft for a year. Add the two figures together and you get 4.7 million global Diablo III players out of the chute. And if you do the math for the first week’s sales, Blizzard says the figure shoots up to more than 6.3 million players. That’s well over half as many total World of Warcraft subscribers (around 10 million subscribers in November 2011). What can you say? The power of Blizzard.
Blizzard says it launched Diablo III at over 8,000 retailers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The game was also available as a digital download direct from Blizzard in all of the above regions plus Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil (several additional Latin American countries along with Russia will see the game hit shelves on June 7). Blizzard adds that the above sales figures don’t include players in Korean Internet game rooms, where it says Diablo III “has become the top-played game, achieving a record share of more than 39% as of May 22.” Furthermore, it notes that the game has been “fully localized into Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, European Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Korean, and traditional Chinese.”
GameStop calls it “one of [the company's] biggest PC launches ever,” while Amazon says it broke the site’s record for “most preordered PC game of all-time on Amazon.com” as well as “best day-one sales for any PC game ever on Amazon.com.”
Diablo III Battles Battle.net Blues as Players Slam the Game in Reviews-Courtesy of Time Magazine
By Matt Peckham | @mattpeckham | May 17, 2012
Blizzard
“Has anyone heard whether Diablo III‘s out yet?” I had to double-check myself, spying that on a message board earlier this week. Blizzard’s chthonic action roleplaying game actually arrived on Tuesday, May 15, as expected, but you wouldn’t know it, given the dearth of media hullabaloo.
Actually you might know it, given the deluge of complaining about Battle.net, Blizzard’s online master control program. It’s required — as, therefore, is an Internet connection — to play the game at all times, whether you’re cleaving infernal succubi solo or in multiplayer droves. The game launched with all kinds of bugs, some of which I’ve personally encountered, some of which you’ve probably encountered and many that’ve been (cleverly) documented in this “beginner’s guide” to the game (see Venturebeat’s “World exclusive Diablo III review!!!!” for another angle). The two most egregious issues: Random game-breaking interruptions, and problems logging on in the first place. Blizzard launched an “emergency” maintenance update yesterday, promising to “monitor the servers for any additional issues.” Cloven-hoof-toes crossed.
The reason we haven’t yet been inundated with reviews, is that Blizzard didn’t offer critics early access to the game (though to be fair, the company gave us plenty of hands-on beta time), which is why you didn’t see a bazillion stories on Tuesday. They’ve been trickling in since, so we have the Guardian, out of the chute a day later with a 4 out of 5 star writeup, though the reviewer uses most of his word count to ding Blizzard for barely updating turn-of-the-century gameplay.
So the key question remains, was Diablo 3 worth the 12-year wait? That depends on how you play it – for single players, it’s an entertaining and gorgeous-looking dungeon hack but it’s a bit short, extremely linear and hardly pushing any boundaries. Playing online (and Blizzard isn’t really giving us a choice) makes it a better balanced and more compelling challenge, with all the potential to be the kind of lifestyle substitute that Diablo’s legion of hunter-gatherer fans should relish.
Bitgamer strikes similar chords in its otherwise upbeat 85 out of 100 review.
Really, we just wish there was something in Diablo 3 that justified the enormous wait and hype that’s been built around it over the years. There isn’t, though that doesn’t make it a bad game – it is, in fact, quite a good game. It’s playable and fun and exciting and interesting; it’s taxing on hardcore mode, easy when played solo and designed to be played by groups of friends together. It’s fun, even if it’s not ground-breakingly so.
And then we have the “first impressions” posts, like this one from Wired, calling the game “beautiful, addictive nonsense.”
This game has no control over its own mechanics. When people die, funny money and enchanted doodads always come flying out. The game’s rules don’t bend, even when those rules ruin attempts by the developer to tell an interesting story … That said, all of the actual game parts of Diablo III are wonderful. Blizzard added in loads of tiny refinements to the formula. You can pick up gold by simply running over it, warping to town no longer requires scrolls and the skill system is far more approachable. These make the game feel snappier than its predecessors. None of the game’s depth has been removed by these streamlinings.
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