What is really new?

[Manuk]

Well, if you play SP, just that the AI builds castles will get them attack you with different armies for each nation instead of everyone attacking you with the same crap (slingers, militia, etc).
It was odd that ashen empire attacks you with tons of light units and that an army of vanheim had only a very few national units (skin shifters, hirdman).
I hope that now they bless their units or design a god to have fire 9 instead of 8, or instead of lvl 3 lvl 4.

[Nerfix]

The Awakening mechaning seems to have changed the game dynamics quite a bit too.

[Morkilus]

Improved AI is a huge deal for me. The graphics were improved, by the way. If you were looking for something like Warcraft 2 -> Warcraft 3, well, you're not dealing with Blizzard here.

So OP: I'm curious, besides graphics, what were you looking for in improvements?

[okiN]

Morkilus said:you're not dealing with Blizzard here.

Damn good thing, too.

[Agrajag]

okiN said:

Damn good thing, too.

I second that

[Nerfix]

Why the Blizzard dislike? They've made quality games if you ask me.

[Graeme Dice]

Nerfix said:
Why the Blizzard dislike? They've made quality games if you ask me.

They've made many quality games. They've also entered the Dikumud style MMO market, which is guaranteed to leave a large proportion of their customers who quit playing WoW hating them.

[NTJedi]

Nerfix said:
Why the Blizzard dislike? They've made quality games if you ask me.

Blizzard has made some good games, but they're a little slow on being an effective business. The original Diablo was a smashing world-wide success yet look at how long they took to develop the sequel. Just stupid management to ignore a gold-mine for so long.
Also even tho I was a big fan of Warcraft_2 I never purchased Warcraft_3 because the company was purely focused on graphics and the maps were only 96X96 at maximum.(way too small)

[Gandalf Parker]

I agree with others. I dont think it was meant to be somekind of an etirely NEW game. Its Dominions 2 with enough improvements to be Dominions 3.

I think that mainly we are entering a new era (oops, a pun since Dom3 introduces eras) in the games development. When Dom1 and Dom2 came out there were many player suggested improvements. And they got put in on a regular basis. Then each of them started developing a wishlist full of items which couldnt be put in without large rewrites to the way the game did things. When Johan got frustrated at getting more "cant do" than "can do" suggestions, he seems to start a new version So even though there might not be a visible difference to you, I see it as a step that was needed so we could go forward. And I have no problem paying full-game price for that work.

On the other hand, Im thrilled with additions for solo play. Better AIs, more AI settings, larger maps, more random events, randomly generated maps.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Better solo game might just make it worth my while. Anyone tried it yet?