I knew I should have specified "most disappointing game of the year except Diablo 3". Not surprised that it's dominating this thread. The backlash against this and The Old Republic really makes a mockery of game critics.

Duke Nukem Forever?

People expected Duke Nukem to suck.

guild wars 2 by far

diablo 3 / gw2

diablo 3 / black ops 2

Atari 2600 Pac-Man though.

For me personally, I couldnt even finish the campaign it was that bad. I put it in envelope and sold it on ebay and got most of my money back

+1

To be fair, it's not that D3 sucked. If it wasn't called Diablo, it would of been seen as a decent but flawed action RPG. The expectation was I would still be happily playing it now.

It would have failed miserably. So many other games that are like it, it wouldn't have stayed as long as it has. So many bugs/exploits caused the economy to be so utterly screwed up. Granted, yes, the first playthrough was great, but any time that you had to interact with AH, you could see how bad it was. People were getting hacked because they joined a public game: that would kill any game with a smaller fanbase. 25 million for a good weapon? No one has 25 million, except the guys who used the exploits to beat the game in the first few days and farm with OP characters, before they were nerfed.

etc etc, I played for about 3 months and put in over 300 hours, I speak from experience.

SWTOR is lucky it was released like a week before 2012. I'd probably go with GW2. I was hyped to play Diablo 3 but I wasn't super hardcore about D2 so I wasn't expecting much. Those people who put D3 as most disappointing, have you played it recently? I recently went back to the game and have been having a blast.

RMAH made Diablo 3 tolerable. For a week or so you could make ~$300-400 a day just crafting and selling sage's seekers lol.

Serious question: What is the biggest difference between D2 and D3 that turned you off?

Way too carebear-y.
Way too buggy.
Too many exploits.

The devs didn't know what they were doing. They half assed tested it. They listened to casuals who played maybe 10 hours a week into the game when they made changes/nerfs/buffs.

They pretty much made the game a joke, promising that Inferno would take months to beat and it was super impossible. Game was beaten within like 5 days. Why? EXP bugs, people got to 60 within the first couple of days. 2 classes were super broken with really overpowered skills that trivialized the game with the worst gear possible. How did they fix this? Semi-nerfed the 2 classes and then made the monsters easier and increasing the drop rate of the higher end items.

For me it was simple: Randomized dungeons make D1 and D2 almost infinitely replayable and are a huge part of the draw for me.

D3 has almost no randomization AND it's a lot shorter, meaning you're going to be running the same areas again and again.

I played through it and got one guy to 60, but as soon as I played one character through the opening dungeons, then played another and noticed the dungeon layout was the same, I knew immediately the game was going to be disappointing.

The bugs and the exploits and lack of class balance sucked, but it's kind of expected on launch. The lack of randomization smaller total game length makes it feel like D3 has 5% or less of the "total play time" or D1 or D2.

I can still go back and play D1 or D2 because I will actually have to explore levels, and the item hunt will actually be unique every time I play it. Not so in D3 at all, and that makes it, without a doubt, the most disappointing game of 2012 for me.

I've poured on the hate for D3 in these forums but honestly, if the acts were longer and the maps truly randomized, 95% of my dislike for the game would evaporate immediately.

Level cap, no skill points, no stat points, no ladder, 4 player max, etc.

The exp bug is wrong with regard to how people got 60 fast. You don't even need to step into inferno to grind to from nothing to 60 in 2 days. Choosing a DH or wiz did help with regard to farming early on. That is where the game really lacked in the beginning. Wizards and DH had very little gear dependence. Just get as much blue gear with IAS and the main stat and they could actually farm inferno.

and no pvp.

Even jay "the douche" wilson said if pvp doesnt come out by the end of this year it would be a disaster.

sounds like you all got activision'd a bunch this year.

I know they changed it, but the final straw for me was "rage timers". I knew I wasn't ubergeared like they wanted to tackle Inferno, but I thought I could manage it through careful play. Nope, if you didn't beat a monster in some random amount of time, without warning you started losing %10 of your life a second.

What a horrid game design decision.

lolol

Rage timers are a game mechanic to prevent zerging. It's not that bad...and for the most part it worked early on in the game.

Wow I can't believe I wasn't the only one who thought this.

ET in December of 82 was the nail in the coffin, but PacMan in March built the coffin and ordered the nails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(Atari_2600)

I honestly don't remember anyone but the publisher being all that disappointed in ET. Obviously it was a huge license and a massive flop. And not like we'd gotten to the stage of expecting movie tie-ins to suck. But was anyone really anticipating it that much?

Pac-Man OTOH was Mario+Sonic+GTA+WOW and it blew.

Lol wait there's still no PvP in d3? Hasn't it been like 6 months?