Best Diablo 3 Announcement reaction gifs ever...

[rooter]

I've got a bit of experience with data centers and traffic and I'll say this, traffic does not always behave the way you anticipate it to.  There are also budgetary factors at play here and I've been down that road too.  What is experienced on a launch day of a hot game posses similarities to a DDoS.  I've been on the ground in data centers when events like this occur and it's a fun/terrifying experience.

They had preorders and sales projections to gauge what the server demand would be during the launch week. Nobody preorders a game or buys it on launch day only to put it in a drawer and play it a month later. Especially a game with the feverish anticipation of something like the Diablo franchise. And there were no budgetary factors at play (or at least there should not have been). We're talking about a game that will make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for Blizzard/Activision. Hundreds of millions. You build out the appropriate server capacity for a game like that. And to deliberately fail to do so because you know that after the launch-week server demand will be dramatically lower would be a terrible business decision. Look at all the bad will and negative press this has generated. You meet launch week demand and then repurpose excess server capacity later on. You don't leave millions of users unable to play their new game so you can squeeze out a few extra pennies of short-term profit. That's ---smurfing--- retarded.

I couldn't agree with you more.  World of Warcraft had the same problem every single time a new patch was released.  Blizzard just doesn't care, because it's not profitable to have bad ass servers to accommodate everyone for two days when they can just have average servers that handle the traffic when the hype dies down.

I played my Diablo 3 character up to level 5 and I turned it off out of boredom.  Is the entire game just pointing your mouse at something and smashing the button until it dies?  Once in a while, I would tap the right mouse button for a slight change of pace, but it didn't seem to be necessary.  Am I missing something?  Does it get better?  Is this how the previous versions of the game worked?

[Vigo]

Is the entire game just pointing your mouse at something and smashing the button until it dies?  Once in a while, I would tap the right mouse button for a slight change of pace, but it didn't seem to be necessary.  Am I missing something?  Does it get better?  Is this how the previous versions of the game worked?

That's exactly how the previous games were. I haven't played D3, but in D2, you would get new skills, spells, etc. Eventually you would rely on that a lot more than simply bashing things to death. I think you can also just hold the mouse button on the enemy down instead of repeatedly clicking. Save you some finger cramps.

[shmokes]

Stupid or not, it's what they did. 

Right, clearly. I'm just pointing out that there's no excuse for it.

Yeah, yeah, a couple of them got sanctimonious about the server connection and I'll never give them a dime and blah blah blah but it's, c'mon, Diablo 3.  

I think you're seriously overestimating brand power. Where is Lara Croft or Wolfenstein or Doom today? Where's Sonic the Hedgehog? It is not at all uncommon for once-great brands and entire studios to fall from grace in this industry. Major bungles like this matter. And to have all this server outage right in the midst of an already loud debate about the legitimacy of requiring an always-on connection to the server for a single-player game . . . it does real damage to the company's name and reputation.

Hell . . . you say yourself, "C'mon . . . it's Diablo 3." Look what you're doing there! That statement isn't based on having played the game. It isn't based on reviews of Diablo 3. Based solely on name-recognition, you consider the game a no-brainer must-buy. Think for a second how incredibly ---smurfing--- valuable that kind of currency is. You don't ---fudgesicle--- with something like that to save a few bucks on servers. And don't tell me, "It's Diablo . . . it's name is invincible," cos the same could easily have been said of those other brands I listed above, and many others that have fallen into relative obscurity.

[Hoopz]

Here's another reason that playing a single player game that requires internet access blows:

Diablo III accounts are being hacked
May. 21, 2012 (3:28 pm) By: Matthew Humphries
 

Anyone who picked up Diablo III at launch has no doubt suffered a lot of frustration when trying to play the game. The mere mention of “Error 33″ will make many wince. But it seems there’s a new threat to advancing your character through the game: accounts are being hacked.

Over the weekend a growing number of reports were logged of accounts being hacked. In each case the legitimate user loses control of their login and friends find themselves talking to a complete stranger. They usually turn out to be someone who has purchased the account and is now playing in their place. Or at least, that’s what is being said during a chat session. It could actually be the hacker using the account and making up an excuse to distance themselves from the hijacking.

It’s unclear why this is able to happen, but it seems to be occurring regardless of whether your account is protected by one of Blizzard’s authenticators or not. That suggests the hackers are somehow hijacking active sessions, which would bypass the need to recheck security on that account.

For the affected gamer it’s a case of contacting Blizzard and waiting for your account to be rolled back to a pre-hacked state. That inevitably leads to some progress being lost. The hacker/s is also taking the opportunity to steal gold and items, of course.

Apparently Blizzard took the European servers offline on Sunday for 4 hours following many of these reports. It could be the downtime was related and they have patched the hole. But be aware that even with Blizzard’s requirement for a constant Internet connection, your account is vulnerable to attack.

[kahlid74]

I've got a bit of experience with data centers and traffic and I'll say this, traffic does not always behave the way you anticipate it to.  There are also budgetary factors at play here and I've been down that road too.  What is experienced on a launch day of a hot game posses similarities to a DDoS.  I've been on the ground in data centers when events like this occur and it's a fun/terrifying experience.

They had preorders and sales projections to gauge what the server demand would be during the launch week. Nobody preorders a game or buys it on launch day only to put it in a drawer and play it a month later. Especially a game with the feverish anticipation of something like the Diablo franchise. And there were no budgetary factors at play (or at least there should not have been). We're talking about a game that will make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for Blizzard/Activision. Hundreds of millions. You build out the appropriate server capacity for a game like that. And to deliberately fail to do so because you know that after the launch-week server demand will be dramatically lower would be a terrible business decision. Look at all the bad will and negative press this has generated. You meet launch week demand and then repurpose excess server capacity later on. You don't leave millions of users unable to play their new game so you can squeeze out a few extra pennies of short-term profit. That's ---smurfing--- retarded.

There is a large disconnect between what should be built and what is actually built.  I've been in a many situations where you have millions of dollars in equipment falling out of support by years end and the CIO/COO only wants to spend 1/3 of what you actually need.  In the end there shouldn't be an excuse, you're right, but stuff happens, and I've engineered enough DC's and seen enough DDoS's to not let it bug me anymore.  Also, it depends on how they build their infrastructure, but reusing a component isn't 1 for 1.  I've found 60% of what you deploy for a large "hit" can be redeployed after traffic begins to shape as expected.  Servers can also be some of the cheapest components in said DC's (depending on design, Pizza box vs blades vs BYO).  The big kicker for someone like Blizzard will be in Load balancers/traffic shapers and IDS/IPS whose licenses can't be reused and are expensive as hell licensing wise.

With that said I get just as infuriated as the guy next to me when I can't play right when I want to, but I accepted long ago that Diablo 3 was an online only game and i can deal with it now.  I tried to play this morning for a few minutes before heading to work and the servers were down for 8 hours.  I was upset.

Here's another reason that playing a single player game that requires internet access blows:

Diablo III accounts are being hacked
May. 21, 2012 (3:28 pm) By: Matthew Humphries
 

Anyone who picked up Diablo III at launch has no doubt suffered a lot of frustration when trying to play the game. The mere mention of “Error 33″ will make many wince. But it seems there’s a new threat to advancing your character through the game: accounts are being hacked.

Over the weekend a growing number of reports were logged of accounts being hacked. In each case the legitimate user loses control of their login and friends find themselves talking to a complete stranger. They usually turn out to be someone who has purchased the account and is now playing in their place. Or at least, that’s what is being said during a chat session. It could actually be the hacker using the account and making up an excuse to distance themselves from the hijacking.

It’s unclear why this is able to happen, but it seems to be occurring regardless of whether your account is protected by one of Blizzard’s authenticators or not. That suggests the hackers are somehow hijacking active sessions, which would bypass the need to recheck security on that account.

For the affected gamer it’s a case of contacting Blizzard and waiting for your account to be rolled back to a pre-hacked state. That inevitably leads to some progress being lost. The hacker/s is also taking the opportunity to steal gold and items, of course.

Apparently Blizzard took the European servers offline on Sunday for 4 hours following many of these reports. It could be the downtime was related and they have patched the hole. But be aware that even with Blizzard’s requirement for a constant Internet connection, your account is vulnerable to attack.

 

I saw this on the Subreddit of Diablo yesterday and it's very interesting to me.  Users with Authenticators or token based two factor authentication have really only two ways to be compromised.  The first is a MITM intercepts their token and then relay's that to blizzard on their behalf.  The issue with this is that such a large number of people have been hacked, it makes me feel like perhaps a login server has been compromised on Blizzards side and is working for said hackers.  The second way, which is far scarier to me, is if the seed database was compromised (this is what happened with RSA).  At that point they have the capability to generate said tokens at will with the seed numbers and the date/time stamp of current.

Either way you look at it, hackers are building their armada of items so when the RMAH goes live they can flood the market with equipment/gold and make lots of money.

[shmokes]

but I accepted long ago that Diablo 3 was an online only game and i can deal with it now.  I tried to play this morning for a few minutes before heading to work and the servers were down for 8 hours.  I was upset.

It's so funny that the only person managing to convince me that it's unacceptable to have an online requirement for a single-player game is the guy advocating for the online requirement. This is NOT okay. If they can't make the thing work, they have no business putting it on the market. They're gonna end up with a class action for breach of warranty on their hands. All the stuff I said earlier about online checks being transparent seems to be completely without merit.

[Samstag]

Playing Titan Quest for the last week or two has reminded me that hack & loot gameplay just doesn't do it for me anymore.

[kahlid74]

but I accepted long ago that Diablo 3 was an online only game and i can deal with it now.  I tried to play this morning for a few minutes before heading to work and the servers were down for 8 hours.  I was upset.

It's so funny that the only person managing to convince me that it's unacceptable to have an online requirement for a single-player game is the guy advocating for the online requirement. This is NOT okay. If they can't make the thing work, they have no business putting it on the market. They're gonna end up with a class action for breach of warranty on their hands. All the stuff I said earlier about online checks being transparent seems to be completely without merit.

Even the biggest data centers need maintenance.  Stuff gets taken down all the time.  Sometimes you need a hard reboot too if the code just doesn't do what it's supposed to or is written poorly.  If it's truly deemed not able to be taken down, the code is then built to make it fully resilient.  The problem usually encountered however, is that resiliency of that level requires a chunk of capital that executives can never seem to wrap their heads around.  In the end it's a risk vs reward thing that has clearly paid off for them and all other MMO's.  People get pissed, but eight hours later when they're playing the game again they seem to forget their gripes until they get bored of the game.

This isn't a hospital, or someones life we're talking about here, it's a game.  It's a game with a clearly defined online component.  They didn't slip it under the covers, they told you about it before you bought it.  Maintenance is a given.  It sucks, but it's the way it goes.  Hospitals have multiple levels of resiliency because they have regulations to adhere to and people's lives where when handled improperly, can provoke legal action.  There are no laws or regulations on MMO's.  Only laws in general terms of providing services.  If you read the TOS, you'll see they don't provide a figure for how much up time you should expect.  So if you feel that 20 hours of downtime over the course of a month breaches the contract of service they provided you by all means take them to court.  I'm pretty sure you won't get a judge anywhere to give you a judgement.

[shmokes]

Terms of service are irrelevant. You can't EULA your way around statutory rights (Uniform Commercial Code). When you put a product on the market it comes, by law, with a warranty of merchantability requiring, among other things, that the goods reasonably conform to an ordinary buyer's expectations. It's silly to speak of "even the biggest data centers need maintenance." This isn't maintenance. It's failing to provide proper capacity. And contrary to what you said, this is nothing like a DDoS attack. DDoS traffic is unanticipated. Diablo 3 is a game made by the company with more experience than any other company in the world in MMO games. Their sales predictions weren't off (and preorders can't be off). Plus, it was extensively beta tested. They can't argue they were caught with their pants down. You said yourself that servers to handle the level of traffic generated by Diablo 3 requires, " . . . a chunk of capital that exectives can never seem to wrap their heads around . . . it's a risk vs reward thing that has clearly paid off for them . . . ."  In other words, they simply cut a corner to make more money and in the process they shipped a literally defective product. That's not something you can put in a TOS.

[Samstag]

[Malenko]

yet I still love it. Beat normal on saturday, almost done nightmare. The drops are getting epic. PIcked up a 3 sockets armor last night, weut!

[shmokes]

Epic.

[kahlid74]

yet I still love it. Beat normal on saturday, almost done nightmare. The drops are getting epic. PIcked up a 3 sockets armor last night, weut!

Yeah, it can certainly be repetitive.  I beat Nightmare last night and it's getting tougher each time as a wizard.  Not looking forward to every mob having the ability to one shot me.  The difficulty isn't scaling as nicely as I would have hoped after all their talk.  

Terms of service are irrelevant. You can't EULA your way around statutory rights (Uniform Commercial Code). When you put a product on the market it comes, by law, with a warranty of merchantability requiring, among other things, that the goods reasonably conform to an ordinary buyer's expectations. It's silly to speak of "even the biggest data centers need maintenance." This isn't maintenance. It's failing to provide proper capacity. And contrary to what you said, this is nothing like a DDoS attack. DDoS traffic is unanticipated. Diablo 3 is a game made by the company with more experience than any other company in the world in MMO games. Their sales predictions weren't off (and preorders can't be off). Plus, it was extensively beta tested. They can't argue they were caught with their pants down. You said yourself that servers to handle the level of traffic generated by Diablo 3 requires, " . . . a chunk of capital that exectives can never seem to wrap their heads around . . . it's a risk vs reward thing that has clearly paid off for them . . . ."  In other words, they simply cut a corner to make more money and in the process they shipped a literally defective product. That's not something you can put in a TOS.

I get your point, but you won't ever get a judge to agree with you and you'd never get into a Blizzard data center to prove they didn't spec out properly.  The wave of a DDoS is identical to the wave of players connecting to a new MMO.  You're right that they should have planned for it and that a DDoS would be unanticipated but what I'm telling you is that in my network chair, the traffic looks the same.  

Either way the games fun, good coop fun and MWO started closed beta yesterday, so I'm hoping to get an invite to that soon.

[shmokes]

I get your point, but you won't ever get a judge to agree with you and you'd never get into a Blizzard data center to prove they didn't spec out properly.  

You'd never get a judge to agree with you about what? And why? Are judges being bribed by videogame publishers? Are they rabid Diablo/WoW fans? That statement makes no sense. The only thing the judge has to agree on is that there is a legitimate breach of warranty claim, which there obviously is (not that Activision breached it's implied warranty, but merely that they might have--that the claim has merit, that it isn't frivolous). The judge doesn't decide the outcome of the case before there's even been a trial. Once the case goes forward, the jury decides whether there was any malfeasance on Blizzard/Activision's part.

As for "getting into a Blizzard data center", of course you'd get into it. All that data, as well as corporate emails, etc., would be provided as a matter of course during the discovery/disclosure phase of the trial. Moreover, Blizzard employees would have to testify in the case.

[kahlid74]

I get your point, but you won't ever get a judge to agree with you and you'd never get into a Blizzard data center to prove they didn't spec out properly.  

You'd never get a judge to agree with you about what? And why? Are judges being bribed by videogame publishers? Are they rabid Diablo/WoW fans? That statement makes no sense. The only thing the judge has to agree on is that there is a legitimate breach of warranty claim, which there obviously is (not that Activision breached it's implied warranty, but merely that they might have--that the claim has merit, that it isn't frivolous). The judge doesn't decide the outcome of the case before there's even been a trial. Once the case goes forward, the jury decides whether there was any malfeasance on Blizzard/Activision's part.

As for "getting into a Blizzard data center", of course you'd get into it. All that data, as well as corporate emails, etc., would be provided as a matter of course during the discovery/disclosure phase of the trial. Moreover, Blizzard employees would have to testify in the case.

So why haven't we seen cases then against UO/EQ/WOW for this "Obvious" breach of warranty claim?  Where are the cases and what were there outcomes?  EQ has been doing your exact definition of "breach of warranty" since 1998 and I can't recall a single court case against it.  If it were that obvious I'd think there would be loads of cases and class action lawsuits and lots of settlements right?

My judge comment deals more towards the idea that in your mind your case is bullet proof and yet in the court of law a judge may side against you because he/she doesn't see it the same way.  There have been many court cases where people felt confident only to be blown away by the decision in the end.  The law is not as cut and dry as it appears.

[shmokes]

I don't think I suggested that the case was bullet proof. I simply said that Blizzard was going to end up with a class action on its hands. And I'm confident that if one were filed, the judge would certify it, though I'm not a contract or consumer protection lawyer, so I'm open to the possibility that there's something I don't know about that would bar such a case. Whether Blizzard would win a suit against it would depend on what facts came to light in the course of the trial. I suspect (as do you, frankly) that executives deliberately shipped a product that doesn't work properly because they knew that people would grumble and then after a while the initial demand would die down and the problem would sort itself out, and all the consumers would more-or-less forget about it. If this is the case, I think the plaintiffs would have a very good chance of winning (or more likely Activision would settle). Of course, it may not be the case. In which case, Blizzard would argue its case and likely win.

There have been many court cases where people felt confident only to be blown away by the decision in the end.  The law is not as cut and dry as it appears.

But this concept somehow doesn't apply to the scenario of Activision/Blizzard feeling confident only to be blown away by the decision in the end? On what, exactly, are you basing your belief that Blizzard's legal case is bulletproof?

I don't think that the law is, or even particularly appears to be, cut and dried. I've spent a little time on the subject. I think it's fairly complex.

[Malenko]

schmokes, at least tell me I'm more fun to argue with than this guy.

Also, I beat it on Nightmare already too and its still not that difficult. It is getting slightly harder to mob control as a barbarian though, might have to switch to a dual wield twirlie build, but I love smackin the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of stuff and stunning it.

[AtomSmasher]

I unlocked the most overpowered ability I've ever seen with my mage last night, transforming into an Archon.  I found out later that it's overpowered because of a bug since it's only supposed to last 15 seconds.  It was lasting 60 seconds for me which essentially meant I was an unstoppable killing machine for 60 seconds.  I unlocked the ability shortly before getting to the end of Act III where you fight a giant boss, with this ability I beat him in about 45 seconds without even trying.  While in Archon form, you do 10x your normal damage, so all I had to do was shoot the boss with the beam and watch his health bar drop, it's just so absurdly overpowered.

[kahlid74]

I don't think I suggested that the case was bullet proof. I simply said that Blizzard was going to end up with a class action on its hands. And I'm confident that if one were filed, the judge would certify it, though I'm not a contract or consumer protection lawyer, so I'm open to the possibility that there's something I don't know about that would bar such a case. Whether Blizzard would win a suit against it would depend on what facts came to light in the course of the trial. I suspect (as do you, frankly) that executives deliberately shipped a product that doesn't work properly because they knew that people would grumble and then after a while the initial demand would die down and the problem would sort itself out, and all the consumers would more-or-less forget about it. If this is the case, I think the plaintiffs would have a very good chance of winning (or more likely Activision would settle). Of course, it may not be the case. In which case, Blizzard would argue its case and likely win.

There have been many court cases where people felt confident only to be blown away by the decision in the end.  The law is not as cut and dry as it appears.

But this concept somehow doesn't apply to the scenario of Activision/Blizzard feeling confident only to be blown away by the decision in the end? On what, exactly, are you basing your belief that Blizzard's legal case is bulletproof?

I don't think that the law is, or even particularly appears to be, cut and dried. I've spent a little time on the subject. I think it's fairly complex.

I get everything your saying I just have a problem believing it's actually winnable in court if after 14 years of MMO's stomping all over us no one's taken them to court for a pay day.

schmokes, at least tell me I'm more fun to argue with than this guy.

I unlocked the most overpowered ability I've ever seen with my mage last night, transforming into an Archon.  I found out later that it's overpowered because of a bug since it's only supposed to last 15 seconds.  It was lasting 60 seconds for me which essentially meant I was an unstoppable killing machine for 60 seconds.  I unlocked the ability shortly before getting to the end of Act III where you fight a giant boss, with this ability I beat him in about 45 seconds without even trying.  While in Archon form, you do 10x your normal damage, so all I had to do was shoot the boss with the beam and watch his health bar drop, it's just so absurdly overpowered.

Archon is . . .  not . . . that good.  In NM a little bit and in Hell/Inferno if you roll Archon you'll be getting 1 hit KO'd by trash mobs.  Archon is a fun/useless skill in anything besides Normal.  Boss at the end of Act III (Azmodan) is the easiest boss in the game.

[AtomSmasher]

I unlocked the most overpowered ability I've ever seen with my mage last night, transforming into an Archon.  I found out later that it's overpowered because of a bug since it's only supposed to last 15 seconds.  It was lasting 60 seconds for me which essentially meant I was an unstoppable killing machine for 60 seconds.  I unlocked the ability shortly before getting to the end of Act III where you fight a giant boss, with this ability I beat him in about 45 seconds without even trying.  While in Archon form, you do 10x your normal damage, so all I had to do was shoot the boss with the beam and watch his health bar drop, it's just so absurdly overpowered.

Archon is . . .  not . . . that good.  In NM a little bit and in Hell/Inferno if you roll Archon you'll be getting 1 hit KO'd by trash mobs.  Archon is a fun/useless skill in anything besides Normal.  Boss at the end of Act III (Azmodan) is the easiest boss in the game.

I did get destroyed by Diablo when I tried to use Archon against him, but only because he has that cage attack, and I have no idea how it is on the harder difficulties.  All I do know is that on normal difficulty, after I got that ability, there was zero challenge until I reached Diablo.  Anytime I'd reach a decent sized mob or one of the "special" versions of the monster, all I had to do was go Archon and they are all dead nearly instantly, then I'd wander for the rest of the minute destroying anything in my path.  The Act III boss may be weak, but even so I shouldn't be able to stand in one place, use one of my abilities and still win in under a minute. 

On a side note, before I beat the game I thought I would want to play through it over and over again like I did the previous Diablo games, but after beating it I now have no interest in doing so.  Not sure why since I did enjoy the game.

[Malenko]

barely beat the butcher on hell, actually needed help from a friend to do it. Mobs are getting insanely tough, especially the blue/gold ones. I would have liked to play today, solo, but I cant play single player cause the servers are down. :/

[05SRT4]

barely beat the butcher on hell, actually needed help from a friend to do it. Mobs are getting insanely tough, especially the blue/gold ones. I would have liked to play today, solo, but I cant play single player cause the servers are down. :/

I know its killing me, I just got into hell mode and the servers went down. I got a small taste of it though. I definitely need some more DPS!

[kahlid74]

I did get destroyed by Diablo when I tried to use Archon against him, but only because he has that cage attack, and I have no idea how it is on the harder difficulties.  All I do know is that on normal difficulty, after I got that ability, there was zero challenge until I reached Diablo.  Anytime I'd reach a decent sized mob or one of the "special" versions of the monster, all I had to do was go Archon and they are all dead nearly instantly, then I'd wander for the rest of the minute destroying anything in my path.  The Act III boss may be weak, but even so I shouldn't be able to stand in one place, use one of my abilities and still win in under a minute. 

On a side note, before I beat the game I thought I would want to play through it over and over again like I did the previous Diablo games, but after beating it I now have no interest in doing so.  Not sure why since I did enjoy the game.

Archon makes you even weaker than you were.  So if you're a DPS wizard rocking Glass cannon and you turn to Archon you'll be feeling the pain.  I was able to play through Normal, NM, hell and get into Inferno and then it was boring.  Too much grinding too fast with not enough variation.  I'll probably come back to it but I just got into two games Beta's super early and I'm pretty sure there goes all of my time lol.

barely beat the butcher on hell, actually needed help from a friend to do it. Mobs are getting insanely tough, especially the blue/gold ones. I would have liked to play today, solo, but I cant play single player cause the servers are down. :/

The butcher was tough on hell, but still doable for me (wizard) but Belail was impossible.  Azmodan/Diablo were doable on Hell as well but I need space to use my abilities as a wizard and Belail's enclosed area was really hard on NM and almost impossible on Hell.

The blue/golds are hit or miss for me.  If I get them in an open field even if they have jailer/waller/arcane/mortar/shield/illusion I can survive no problem.  If they however have all of that and are in tight spaces, it can become an issue.  It also depends on what abilities they have.  In hell there's a gold ability where all the mobs around them can't die until the gold dies.  My goodness good luck with that.  Fighting that gold mob I felt like that barbarian dude who beat inferno solo, whose fight with Diablo lasted over an hour.

barely beat the butcher on hell, actually needed help from a friend to do it. Mobs are getting insanely tough, especially the blue/gold ones. I would have liked to play today, solo, but I cant play single player cause the servers are down. :/

I know its killing me, I just got into hell mode and the servers went down. I got a small taste of it though. I definitely need some more DPS!

I think DPS is hugely important but by the time you start rolling in Hell and after that inferno, you need to start focusing on DPS and resist gear.  Mobs in Act IV Inferno do 500k damage to wizards, so you need resists and armor to survive after 1 hit.  Even then you'll still run into mobs that 1 hit you.  They wrote a blog post about how they are going to get rid of the 1 hitting crap but for right now it's still prevalent.  So start building up your resist gear!

[AtomSmasher]

I did get destroyed by Diablo when I tried to use Archon against him, but only because he has that cage attack, and I have no idea how it is on the harder difficulties.  All I do know is that on normal difficulty, after I got that ability, there was zero challenge until I reached Diablo.  Anytime I'd reach a decent sized mob or one of the "special" versions of the monster, all I had to do was go Archon and they are all dead nearly instantly, then I'd wander for the rest of the minute destroying anything in my path.  The Act III boss may be weak, but even so I shouldn't be able to stand in one place, use one of my abilities and still win in under a minute. 

On a side note, before I beat the game I thought I would want to play through it over and over again like I did the previous Diablo games, but after beating it I now have no interest in doing so.  Not sure why since I did enjoy the game.

Archon makes you even weaker than you were.  So if you're a DPS wizard rocking Glass cannon and you turn to Archon you'll be feeling the pain.  I was able to play through Normal, NM, hell and get into Inferno and then it was boring.  Too much grinding too fast with not enough variation.  I'll probably come back to it but I just got into two games Beta's super early and I'm pretty sure there goes all of my time lol.

I was a DPS wizard rocking glass cannon and I did so much more damage then with any of my other abilities.  I don't see how 1000% dps from a constant attacking beam for a full minute can possibly be weak.  Who knows, maybe part of the glitch is that I was doing 10000% damage, all I know is that enemies that would take 4-5 hits from my strongest attack were instantly vaporized when I went Archon.  When I unlocked it, the game went from challenging to a joke.

[kahlid74]

I did get destroyed by Diablo when I tried to use Archon against him, but only because he has that cage attack, and I have no idea how it is on the harder difficulties.  All I do know is that on normal difficulty, after I got that ability, there was zero challenge until I reached Diablo.  Anytime I'd reach a decent sized mob or one of the "special" versions of the monster, all I had to do was go Archon and they are all dead nearly instantly, then I'd wander for the rest of the minute destroying anything in my path.  The Act III boss may be weak, but even so I shouldn't be able to stand in one place, use one of my abilities and still win in under a minute. 

On a side note, before I beat the game I thought I would want to play through it over and over again like I did the previous Diablo games, but after beating it I now have no interest in doing so.  Not sure why since I did enjoy the game.

Archon makes you even weaker than you were.  So if you're a DPS wizard rocking Glass cannon and you turn to Archon you'll be feeling the pain.  I was able to play through Normal, NM, hell and get into Inferno and then it was boring.  Too much grinding too fast with not enough variation.  I'll probably come back to it but I just got into two games Beta's super early and I'm pretty sure there goes all of my time lol.

I was a DPS wizard rocking glass cannon and I did so much more damage then with any of my other abilities.  I don't see how 1000% dps from a constant attacking beam for a full minute can possibly be weak.  Who knows, maybe part of the glitch is that I was doing 10000% damage, all I know is that enemies that would take 4-5 hits from my strongest attack were instantly vaporized when I went Archon.  When I unlocked it, the game went from challenging to a joke.

What's your current Damage and HP?

I'm also talking about NM/Hell/Inferno, not normal.  In NM/Hell/Inferno mobs have exponentially more HP and do exponentially more damage.

[AtomSmasher]

What's your current Damage and HP?

I'm also talking about NM/Hell/Inferno, not normal.  In NM/Hell/Inferno mobs have exponentially more HP and do exponentially more damage.

No idea, and as I said before, I'm only talking about normal.