Fans of the Diablo franchise have long since been tired of waiting for Blizzard to drop some (player vs. player) PvP aspects into their latest title, but it seems that wait won’t be much longer. Unfortunately, it also means that the Team Deathmatch feature that was promised with PvP has been shelved until further notice.
Anyone who has been fortunate enough to check out the Team Deathmatch demonstrations at Blizzard events in the past year will tell you that it is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to PvP. After you’ve played through D3 the required four times in order to truly beat it, of course you’ll want to pick a fight with your friends. After all, they have likely been bragging about how amazing their character is and how many times they have bailed you out. PvP would let you settle score once and for all. And then group PvP, like Team Deathmatch, would allow you to take that same mentality to larger scale combat. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen any time soon.
Instead, the Blizzard team is working on releasing a one on one PVP for Diablo 3, and expects to have more on this in the not-so-distant future. One-on-one combat is fun, but limits the scope of potential combat scenarios. In playing Diablo 3, many players opt for dealing the most damage to multiple targets as possible in case you get cornered. Unless you re-specced for a boss fight, a lot of those players will have never considered a PvP build for their character.
The good news for Blizzard is that likely means an increase in farming and using the Auction House to get the necessary gear, but with so much time having passed since any new content was added it is hard to say whether or not most people will decide that is worth doing at all.
Unfortunately, this was always going to be the problem with Diablo 3. The core game was too short and there was no plan to add new content. Had PvP become available when more than 10% of the users moved into the third time through the game, it would have given people a reason to keep playing. Team Deatchmatch, and really any kind of group combat other than playing through the game one more time, would bring people back to the game in droves. It seems really unlikely that PvP as we currently see it will have the same effect.
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