The State of Diablo 3's Endgame, and Why The Hunt for Items Isn't Worth Playing

Straight from the horse’s mouth: we have news from Bashiok, a Community Manager over at the Blizzard forums for Diablo 3. Blizzard has (finally) publically acknowledged that the end-game strategy first planned for those of us who have a level 60 character with multiple play-throughs under our belts isn’t sustainable:

"We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they're going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already)."

This sounds open and honest. Blizzard definitely miscalculated how much time people would spend searching for items and killing all those uncommon and rare enemy packs before the novelty of item hunting wore off. The game was shipped ahead of itself, with no clear end-game plan. Those of you who have already played out Diablo 3’s interest know what it felt like when you realized all that was left for you was Harcore mode, and even that was a gamble with Battle.net hiccups and lag. Bashiok acknowledges this as well:

"But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren't going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it's not there right now."

Bashiok goes on to explain that patch 1.0.4 is in the works right now, which will contain more tweaks and fixes like previous updates; these have typically been bug fixes and small changes to class spells, stat calculations, and alterations to the auction house. But while there are some huge features in the pipeline, like a PvP arena, for the immediate future we are left with the game more or less as-is.

At least these bigger additions will be a boon for Diablo 3 as a game in the long-term, right? Bashiok doesn’t seem to have much faith that the changes already planned for Diablo 3 are going to fully accomplish what the developers have in mind, and might not be able to elevate end-game engagement for the players:

"I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they're not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it's a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out."

Patch 1.1 is when PvP will be released, and with no release date estimate on that patch, Diablo 3 players are left wondering when it will be worth getting wrapped up in again.

For now, there is Inferno difficulty – which is accessible after playing through Normal, Nightmare and Hell – and the Hardcore mode where characters are permanently lost once killed in-game. Inferno has a notoriously tough curve from Act 1 to Act 2, and the item hunt we’ve been going on about is the only way you’re going to be able to make through to the end of Inferno. Hardcore offers a higher level of accomplishment, and frankly now that a lot of people have quit playing, the Battle.net servers have been able to support Hardcore mode play with minimal lag spikes or freezes.

Are you happy with the content Diablo 3 has provided? How would you change the end-game content to make it more endlessly playable like the previous installment Diablo 2?