This game keeps getting better and better, in retrospect

I joined the BETA on 22 augustus 2011. I had been waiting for a few months for a BETA invite and behold, there it was. I joined, played for a few months, invited a friend and we cleared the content that was present back then (I think up to ACT II without an end-boss).

We knew that the game would still be in development long after the release of DIII and TL2 and quite frankly, we didn't give it much of a chance. Not because POE seemed bad, but there's no way a free title could win against two such giants of names.

How wrong we were. We have long stopped playing DIII. Besides its horrendous storyline, I personally feel they did away with most things that made DII great and I just didn't feel the game. Its difficulty was not in the mechanics, but in the health pools and damage output of mobs. Not in the tactical approach, but in the surprise instagibs. The RMAH was a core design around which the game was balanced, not visa versa, an approach I absolutely loathe. I realize they have by far corrected most 'mistakes' and went back to being a shadow of DII:LOD, but it's too little, too late.

TL2 is a good game, but has an entirely different style. Hardly any gore, less gritty and mostly a direct copy of TL1 with a minor change in fov. While amusing, it has nowhere near the depth of POE. Its multi tree system is nice on one side, but bad on the other. It automatically forces people into builds that work, with the exact same skills, because everyone can pick up what they want from a small selection of abilities, of which some are clearly better than others.

Jumping back into POE last week is like going back to the actual next generation ARPG. One plays ARPG's for a few select reasons; Slaughter, loot and character advancement. Where Diablo III forgot its roots and sought to build a moneymachine disguised as a game and TL2 simply didn't hand me the tools I want to manage my character, POE hands the player all that and keeps adding more. The differences between a year ago and now, are immense and no doubt more are planned. I'll still have to see how the cash shop will impact the game, but right now, in BETA, this game has more spirit, more vision and more reason to succeed than those other two combined. Goliath will lose this one.

I'll get home soon and I've decided to donate some money if I can, although not all payment methods are accessible to me.


Disclaimer; Not a x VS y debate. Just a moment to capture a thought I had when I finished playing yesterday.

I've 'escorted' the changes that POE made further and further since last december, more or less continuously, and I really can imagine how you have must felt when jump in the actual stage from the view and expectations of the beginning of this year. It was very impressive to notice all that small (and less small) things that were changed or added, it must be a blast to see them all 'at once' now.

Other than you, I never doubted anything of POE's way, and my D3-related expectations and fears seems to have become true, without the need to convince it myself: they will make it impressive and give it a good flow of gameplay, but they try to attract even the last one able to hold a mouse (and blend them by their big name) - and fleece them as much as possible...

I pretty much had the same experience as the op... jumping back into the game last month was really cool. I feel like the game got a lot faster and interesting in the last couple of month. Really looking forward to the OB now :)

Amen. :D

Except I fell in love with this game from the first moment, 0.9.7 for me. Stopped playing in 0.9.11 due to GW2, and came back last week. Told myself I wouldn't do more than mess around in legacy a bit, not another character before OB. Pretty soon I was releveling in default to get a good feel for all the changes. :)

OB is going to be awesome.

Aye, I'm really looking forward to open beta, because a few more of my friends want to get a hands-on and I only received one extra Beta key :O)