Diablo III might be one of the best games ever (or not), but that didn’t stop its fans from bombarding its Metacritic’s page with negative reviews.
Without any coordination, fans who got frustrated with Diablo III’s bumpy launch, found no way to vent out their anger except posting negative reviews on Metacritic.
At the time of writing this piece, Diablo III has a Metacritic user score of 3.6 (out of 10) based on 1357 negative reviews and 645 positive ones.
Needless to say, a lot of the negative review criticize the game’s always online DRM requirement. "If Blizzard demands that the user have an active online connection. The user should be allowed to demand an active online connection," one reviewer argued elegantly.
Interestingly, a large percentage of the negative reviews is more concerned with the game’s "sub-par" graphics and "dumbed down," "casual" gameplay. "A huge disappointment," one review summed it up. "No more skill points to distribute, no more attribute points to distribute, skills unlock automatically as you level up, WoW inspired skills. World PvP removed and the only PvP options is a WoW-clone arena. Legalized gold selling, pay-to-win auction houses - Scripted scenes EVERYWHERE."
Other prominent complaints throughout the (long) list of negative Diablo III user reviews are "simple and cartoonish" graphics style and lackluster story.
Only time will tell but until then, it seems that Blizzard has made a mistake of applying the lessons it learned from World of WarCraft to another game with a different audience that prefers hardcore gameplay and dark atmosphere.