I really ask myself how many people will actually play Hardcore? Blizzard stated that RMAH will be denied for anyone who wants to play in Hardcore-Mode. Simply because they dont want people to have the frustration of losing a character due to whatever reason, equipped with stuff that you bought for actual RL-cash.

From my point of view RMAH will be one of the major attractions in this game, for many many people.

But whats up with Hardcore then? Only a few players will play it? What do you guys think?

What the fuck is RMAH? Too many acronyms out there.

Originally posted by Jimmac

What the fuck is RMAH? Too many acronyms out there.

RMAH stands for Real Money Auction House.  The hardcore characters won't be able to use it but they still will be able to use the Gold Auction House which is completely seperate from the RMAH.  

So your question is will people still play hardcore?  Of course.  Hardcore is not mainly about item finding,  it's mainly about challenging yourself and getting an adrendaline rush when you are about to die.  Personally, I will probably only do it if a few of my friends agree to do it with me for the fun of it.

My friends are surprisingly not interested in D3.  Most of them think d1/d2 were darker and grittier and D3 too pretty and offending to them.  I don't know about that.

A couple others are super against the RMAH and feel it's just a sellout to the gold farmers.  We shall see how that turns out.

For me, I just am bored of Diablo in general to get it.

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Originally posted by Jimmac
What the fuck is RMAH? Too many acronyms out there.

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In answer to the original question: yes, I have seen some people specifically say that they were on the fence between softcore and hardcore, and then decided to play hardcore precisely because they are anti-RMAH, and want to play in a game mode where it is not present.

Personally, I'm interested in the idea of the RMAH and am looking forward to seeing how it pans out. Also I don't want to play hardcore online - I only played hardcore single-player in D2, where at least I knew that if I died, it was my fault, not the fault of the internets dropping or lagging.

As stated, hardcore isn't about starting your character and buying all of the best equipment with the spare cash in your wallet, and then claim an air of superiority.

Hardcore is about grueling, hard work with high risk of killing off your character in the process of leveling.  Then being able to stand at the top of the mountain with a maxed out hardcore character with the ability to say "I leveled to max without dying once.  Eat it punks."

For the record, I'm completely against the RMAH to begin with.

My friend who has played D2 for a few years is pro-hardcore for D3 due to the absence of RMAH but I find the mode a bit too...hardcore for my tastes (especially because the game has huge gear diversity). I'm not sure if no RMAH will convince me to play hardcore but I'm always up for a challenge so we'll see.

My reason for not wanting to try d3 is exactly RMAH, so hardcore might just be a reason for me to try it.

I have bad experiences with d2 hardcore tho, always die to battle.lag at some point.

A RMAH free normal server might be more interesting.

For those concerned about lag killing your hardcore character, you might want to read this:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Latency-Diablo-3-Action-RPG-PayPal-Auction-House,news-12526.html

A summary:

"According to the testers, Blizzard has developed a secure and tamper-proof method of client/server communication that allows the local client to handle its own calculations and send the data to the server for verification. Latency is eliminated because the client does not wait for the server to respond, but instead moves on as business as usual. However, the server inspects the data for tampering, and if it detects foul play, it will disconnect the player from the network."

Zethcarn, that's good news (and I can confirm from the beta that D3 plays beautifully, with Australian latencies being completely unnoticeable). But that's to help with regular round-trip latency. It's not going to help you if you have a storm of packet loss, or several seconds of dropout, or lose connection entirely, and your client can't send its data to the server for verification.

Anyway I probably spoke too strongly, I'm sure I'll relent at some point if softcore starts to get stale. Might take an actual internet death to keep me out of hardcore, not just the fear of one. :-)

Originally posted by waynejr2

My friends are surprisingly not interested in D3.  Most of them think d1/d2 were darker and grittier and D3 too pretty and offending to them.  I don't know about that.

A couple others are super against the RMAH and feel it's just a sellout to the gold farmers.  We shall see how that turns out.

 

For me, I just am bored of Diablo in general to get it.

You can adjust a darker feeling to the game with several so called FXAA Tools out there (like you could in skyrim)

You can see it right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcnIIVYSuLM

spread the "news" (nov 2011) to your friends. pretty sure they reconsider.

I tried this tool in the beta, and the difference is huge. dont forget the dynamic combat in diablo 3 - which is really impressive and feels amazingly fluid. you cant judge screenshots. never will.

I ultimately gave up playing hardcore in Diablo 2 because I could either expect to die in a lagspike or to only fight ridiculously easy monsters so lagspikes couldn't kill me. For the same reason I won't be playing hardcore in Diablo 3.

However, if they were looking to put in a really strong incentive for me to play hardcore regardless, disabling the RMAH certainly is the way to go.

Really doubt Blizzard would create a laggy game in 2012

This might get me to play D3. I only ever played HC in D2. Yes I died a lot. Swore I would never play D2 again every time, but 20mins later I was back making a new HC character. After a while SC just wouldn't do it for me.

Interesting. I am not bothered by the real money AH though. In D2 I played mainly softcore but I did play hardcore from time to time.

That mod which alters the graphics looks sweet. And lol at people who say D2 was grim and gritty. It was not nearly as dark and grim as D1 but I still loved the game. D3 looks sweet too. 

Then again graphics were not the main reason I played D3, not even close.

I was never really concerned about the RMAH, If people want to spend RL money on gear, that is their choice, I know I wont be dropping any RL dollars there.

I never really paid attention to ladders in D2,  you would think not allowing the RMAH in hardcore would be good news for people that do care about that stuff tho. On the other hand, knowing that someone who bought all their gear loses everything when they die would have been awesome.

The latency news is good, should save everyone a little frustration, But I wonder how many will still blame the lag for those lost characters?

Originally posted by tixylix

Really doubt Blizzard would create a laggy game in 2012

Everyone else has laggy games in 2012, and so will Blizzard. At the very best they can do much to reduce stress on their own network, but they have no way of controlling the Internet itself.