Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Collector's Edition
CUSTOMER REVIEW
The Original Release of Diablo 3 in 2012 was Blizzard's first major blunder in a history of sterling game releases.
While the gameplay was fun and exciting and the game looked great and had a great story, the driving factor behind these games is a sense of progression and continually being rewarded for playing on harder difficulties. The introduction of the Auction House ensured that you would always find better items on the auction house than you could in game. In game loot that dropped had a very small chance of even having stats useful for your character and an even smaller chance to be better than what you already possessed.
I spent hours continually clicking the refresh button on the auction house listings, looking for an under-priced item that I could resell at a profit so I could buy an item I could use, instead of actually playing the game. After a few weeks of "playing" the auction house I pretty much had the best items in the game with the nearly best stats possible making the actual exorcise of playing the game pointless.
Fast-Forward to 2014 and Loot "2.0" and Reaper of Souls.
Blizzard Has taken Everything that was good about Diablo 3 and discarded the rest. Items now drop with a much higher chance of being useful to the character you're playing than before and there are much better chances to get one of the improved legendary items.
Additionally there is now an unlimited number of "Paragon Levels" which give you useful stats for each level you get that will always ensure that even if you don't find an item you want during a play session you're at least contributing to your character in a meaningful way by collecting experience that will ultimately make your character more powerful. Probably the greatest addition to the game outside of the improved loot system IMO.
With Reaper of Souls you get an extra Bank Tab, another character class and a whole new act as well as level progression up to level 70 which puts everyone who didn't spend a fortune in time or money on the auction house back on an even playing field.
The Addition of the Mystic further increases the odds of getting an item you'll want. Ever find an item with only 1 stat missing that you'd need? Now the Mystic gives you a chance to reroll any stat into another stat of your choice!
This is what Diablo 3 should have been all along!
Collector's Edition Features:
Digital Extras: Haven't played with Transmogrification yet but the Spectral Hounds is pretty hilarious and is amusing to watch. Not particularly useful but enjoyable much like the wings (I still like the Starcraft II CE wings the most).
The Mouse pad is exactly the same mousepad that Blizzard has used in their collector's edition's since WoW:Cataclysm (Which I'm still using as my mouse pad). Very high quality mouse pad but ultimately probably not the reason you buy the CE
Soundtrack: After listening to the entire sound track and watching the behind the scenes video on the making of the music I definitely appreciate the amount of thought and creative genius put into the music. That said, it isn't particularly what I'd term "Easy listening" or uplifting. Has a definite dark edge to it and outside of a few choral orchestral moments it fits the dark theme of this expansion quite well. I can't say it will make it into my play list but I may break it out again if I'm feeling some D3 Nostalgia at some point years down the road.
Keys to other games: The Game comes with several "Friend" key invites for Diablo 3, Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. The only nice thing here are three HearthStone "Card Pack" keys which give you 5 free cards each (A $9 total in game value).
Behind the Scenes case: Includes both a Blu-Ray and a Dvd. Finally! A way to watch those amazing cinematics and these look better than ever on Blu-Ray with an HDTV! They also have the Story boards that show the building of each of these cinematics which is pretty interesting as well for those who love watching how these epic cutscenes are made. The Behind the scenes footage is all very interesting for Blizzard fans (only halfway through it all).
The Art Book: Standard Blizzard Collector's Edition fare. Gorgeous artwork used in the making of the game, will look great on my shelf next to the other Blizzard CE books.