WTB Mana!

Over the past month or so I’ve heard people, both in my guild and on my twitter go on about how excited they are that Diablo 3 (D3) is coming out.

So here it is the day of the release and I’ve been playing since 3am, I know wonder how many of my guildies and how many of my other WoW friends will I lose to the dark callings of Diablo?

Granted I say this and I have the full understanding that I, myself will also be splitting my time between WoW and D3, that isn’t my concern.

My concerns lie in the fact that it’s the end of an xpac for WoW and not much to hold people to it. Yes there are some, like my guild, that are still lovingly progressing on heroics, but there are more out there that are either already 8/8H or they don’t plan on attempting them at all.

So I’m curious as to how many will abandon Azeroth for the rugged plans of D3 and all it’s Demon Hunter goodness?

 

To Be Fair

Granted the silver lining of the timing is something that needs to be taken into account. If you really look at the time table, Blizzard has released D3 at an optimal time. It’s like they have a marketing department that generally knows what they’re doing.

They drop this game, which for a substantial amount of us is “free”, when WoW is going to be hitting it’s lull.

So in the times of GW2 Betas, and Tera they’re providing our never sated gamer hunger with a new game, Panda Beta(for a lot of people.), and we still technically have content left to conquer.

What may be siding even more in their favor is the fact that D3 is free to play. If you are like me, a one MMO girl, it’s mainly because I refuse to pay for 2 games a month. I know it’s only $30, but I can’t wrap my frugal brain around more than $15ish, a little more with remote.

 

Great Scot!

Fast forward 2 months, I’m being optimistic, that takes us to mid July lets say a miracle has happened and Pandera is being released come August 1^st.

This is where the sustaining power of D3 and WoW will come to a head. I’m a realist and understand that there are a GREAT number of people that will return to Azeroth to see the coming of the Pandas, but how many people will just say “Meh, I’m enjoying myself here still, I think I’ll give The Jade Forest and all it’s wonders a break and visit them at a later date.”

D3′s appeal to me personally is the amount of choices you have, while you only get 6 abilities that you can use at one time on any given character, those choices can be tweeked in so many ways, that you could spend months trying to find the perfect character for yourself.

In the end I have to concede that most of the time Blizz knows what it’s doing in the marketing department.

Yeah, yeah I know. HEY STOP THROWING TOMATOES!

So in the end will it all work out and we’ll go back to our generally disgruntled gamer selves? Yeah I think so.

/Cheers

---