Path of Exile’s first mini expansion launches later today. Diablo 3’s expansion launches in a few weeks. If Torchlight 2 could surprise us with some new content before the end of the month, we’d have the action RPG trifecta.

A buddy and I have been playing a bunch of Path of Exile the last few weeks. Guess I was just in the mood to click stuff. I still maintain that PoE is the closest thing Diablo 2 has to a successor, and I do really enjoy both their ability/socket and skillpoint system.

With that said though, I’ve been itching to try out Diablo 3 again since they announced they were finally axing the auction houses. I liked Diablo 3 when it came out… but a few weeks into “farming” Inferno mode, and I realized the game had no longevity for me. Too much tedium and not enough reward. And it felt necessary to turn to the auction house to advance. So a lot of the changes they’ve been making over the past couple of years sounded like improvements that made sense.

I held off on playing again until we got closer to the expansion, though. Now that the Loot 2.0 patch has dropped, I figured it was time to update the game and check it out. Maybe it’s because I haven’t played in so long, or because I’ve been playing so much PoE lately, but it felt like trying to read a different language.

That’s not a bad thing, it just took some getting used to.

I haven’t played enough yet to really judge whether the changes have turned Diablo 3 into something I feel compelled to play for any length of time… and a large part of that assessment will ride on Adventure Mode in the expansion. Still, after the few hours I played, I feel a little optimistic. Not every piece of gear I found was an upgrade, obviously, but I did feel like most of it was at least geared towards my class. Feeling like I have a better chance at finding items I’m actually going to want to use goes a long way towards keeping me interested in playing.