My take is this... I'm not abjectly opposed to a subscription fee. However, some of the issues I have seen with b.net (at least the free b.net) would be issues I would rather not expect when paying a subscrip. Some of this includes bots, games crashing when players are still in them, and some other issues. Other then some people's indications of what they have seen with WoW, I don't have first hand experience, so would rather reserve judgement on what does, or does not transpire on subscription based b.net, as opposed to the b.net I've logged into and played on... The experience, might not be the same afterall...
I do know however that for a time I had a subscription for Everquest. The game also didn't like my former Athlon XP 1900+ setup, as the game would crash every so many minutes into game play. I had even lost characters before, and had to get other players help me retrieve my body, as when it crashed my comp (that game just didn't like my previous hardware for some reason), my body kept running but I wasn't attached to the server anymore. Logged back in and oops...
No offence, but as long as that game wasn't running stable on my hardware (regardless of the cost), I wasn't going to continue paying a monthly subscrip. I had renewed the subscription on occassion, just to see if the problem had been resolved, but it never was.
When finances are more in order however, I might be willing to give it a chance. Also, some of the buddies I've played LoD with, have gone on to play WoW themselves, much of the time...
vern said:
I doubt they have new dungeons and features in Diablo:LOD after five years. The upcoming 1.9 patch adds some nice features and new content including new instances. Can't really compare apples and oranges. Just as someone would pay for hosting ... users pay for WoW. Players are paying for the service, not the individual product.
Actually, the 1.10 patch was another major revision, somewhat along the lines of the 1.08 patch. Though not as big as LoD (aka no new act or char classes), there was an introduction of synergies which has almost forced people to rebuild their chars to make use of it, as well as a crap load of new rune words, which in some places have replaced uniques as the "must have" elite items.
Things like eBOTD (etheral breath of the dying), where a single handed zerker axe I have out in open (OK, I was testing some stuff, to see what I would want to shoot for on realm chars) can do 500 1 handed, very fast attack speed damage. It also includes a lot of interesting mods.
Or things like enigma, which can allow any char class to teleport now, items that will add auras (be it to players or mercs) and some other modifications. All in all, it has seen some changes...
In .11, there's also now the quest of killing the ubber uniques, in a tristram portal one can open in act 5, after getting the various keys. Ubber mephi was a royal pain though
Some of the minions down there, are also now immune to 5 forms of damage... As reward, one can get a hellfire torch, which has way better stats then an anhillus, and some other drops... I guess this could qualify as another "quest" of sorts, albeit it isn't one that shows up in the quest log.
