Diablo 3 Open Beta Weekend.

[Alex_H]

I am SO excited about this game, I really cant put it in to words.

Anyhow.

We're pleased to announce the Diablo III open beta weekend, which offers open access to all players with a valid Battle.net account! Beginning this Friday everyone is invited to log in and help us put the game and servers through their paces in this three day stress test as we march toward the game's release on May 15. You can begin downloading the Diablo III client right now!
From Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT you'll be able to log in, team up with friends, and play each of the five heroic classes to level 13 as you fight to save the world from the impending demonic invasion.


Wooooooo

[Urgat]

I'm downloading. I've been eagerly waiting for it, but I gotta admit it seems to pale compared to other games of the same kind (like the new Lineage). Crossing fingers so it's as good as I hope.

[Emerett]

Man, I really do hope the community is better than the DOTA, LOL, HON.

Those games have some of the most volatile, angry, insulting communities on the internet.

[Urgat]

Well, I've run through the beta yesterday in a couple hours. It's not any better or any worse than I expected. It's as over-simplified as I feared, and, well, it was enjoyable. But not much more. I suspect it' has as much to do with me having changed a lot as it has to do with the game, but I remember playing through the demo of the first Diablo a dozen times before the actual game was released. I don't really feel like playing this one through a second time. And I guess, as the old whiner I am, that I actually AM bothered with the fact the visuals are not as dark as the with first one. Plus the visuals are, sometimes, quite bad: I see a hanging corpse, visibly mangled, I think "cool!", I push Z to zoom and.. eew... they didn't spend much time on that one, that's for sure. Sometimes the game feels lazy. Whatever piece or armor you drop, it's going to be a big metal piece of gear. Back in the days, you'd drop a leather jacket, it'd be a leather jacket that'd drop. It's a detail, but it bothers me. And I shouldn't have played as a barbarian, he looked way too much like he was wearing parts of WoW armor sets. Well it plays fine, though I'd have hoped I could hit one monster after the other without having to release and click again. Thanks Pete that the good old "hold shift" is still there.

Yeah, Lineage Eternal is more appealing to me, which is kindda sad, I bloody loved the first Diablo (the second less so).

[eldargal]

I enjoyed it more than I thought, I've only every been a vague fan of the Diablo series. The graphics seemed fine, I didn't encounter any bugs and I really liked the fact that the female barbarian wasn't a skinny little waif.

[Souleater]

Played for about an hour. Initial impression was that it was okay but nothing spectacular. Graphics didn't seem that impressive fairly pedestrian. Didn't really get to a high enough level to play around with character much. I reserve final judgement until the actual game.

Did enjoy throwing jars full of spiders at enemies as the Witch Doctor. His abilites are pretty funny/sinister/cool.

Not as much fun as Dungeon Defenders MP.

[J.P. Biff]

After finishing one playthrough with the witch doctor I had the same reaction as I did to Starcraft 2. It seemed like the first one only with better graphics. There are new things that are cool, but nothing that made me REALLY get excited about it. Its like most movie sequels. They're good, but most fail to capture the excitement/awesomeness/orginality or whatever made you love the first one.

[Voss]

After finishing one playthrough with the witch doctor I had the same reaction as I did to Starcraft 2. It seemed like the first one only with better graphics. There are new things that are cool, but nothing that made me REALLY get excited about it. Its like most movie sequels. They're good, but most fail to capture the excitement/awesomeness/orginality or whatever made you love the first one.

I can sort of agree with that, but from a character perspective, its a lot worse than D2. The level of customization is just really lacking. Having level unlock everything pretty much means that each class has an optimal build for certain level ranges (basically whenever a good attack or rune is unlocked, though some of them are so terrible there isn't any reason to use them). So every version of <class> will be exactly the same as every other version of that class.

Blizzard's current design philosophy (both in this and WoW) seems to be player choice should be minimized at all cost.

Also the ranged classes seem objectively superior to melee classes. They simply take less damage, forever. To a certain point this makes sense (because wandering into stabbing range is just more dangerous than standing back and blasting), but there isn't any drawback or benefit to make the melee choices interesting or viable.

Except for some of the spell effects (particularly the wizard) the graphics just look dated and kinda sad, as well.

Man, I really do hope the community is better than the DOTA, LOL, HON.

Those games have some of the most volatile, angry, insulting communities on the internet.

Blizzard's community is really, really bad. Visit their forums, its often a litany of pure hate that puts warseer to shame.

[Putty]

I was too busy during the weekend to finish the Open Beta proper... I only hit lvl 7 with my Daemonhunter and never even finished the "demo". I think I played until the part where I found Cain.

My impressions?

1. too WOW-ish
2. skills-tree is noob-proof (coz u do not invest in permanent skills, you can swap them out anytime... just their effectiveness)
3. i see little things that irk me... like 10k gold to unlock more slots in the stash (zzzz gold sink zzzz)
4. i really liked the special quest item that allowed me to sell my junk whilst adventuring... they got rid of it and i was =/

Overall, not very keen to actually purchase the over-priced game... and I think I do not fit into their target demographic anyways... too little IRL time for me to "Diablo" all over again!

[eldargal]

Sounds like a fitting sequel then. I always found Diablo to be cartoonish, noob friendly and lacking in options when compared to, say, Baldur's Gate I-II which were released around the time as the Diablo I &2. Never expected D3 to be any different, and it wasn't. But I did enjoy smashing stuff with a barbarian more than I expected.

[Thanatos_elNyx]

Diablo cartoonish? We must have played different games, didn't you see the torture racks and other devices of torture, did I mention torture.

Yes they are very hack'n'slash but I wouldn't say that the Diablo fan base are Noobs.
No need to insult a whole group of players.

Baldurs Gate is a very different animal to the Diablos, it is like comparing Starcraft to Shogun Total War.

[eldargal]

I do tend to get my newb and noob mixe up I must admit. I was being silly, but I do find it a bit amusing to see Diablo fans complaining about a lack of depth when for me that has been one of the defining characteristics of the serious. Simple hack and slash, nothing wrong with it, but I personally didn't find D3 any more or less deep in gameplay terms than its predecessors.

[Satan]

I do tend to get my newb and noob mixe up I must admit. I was being silly, but I do find it a bit amusing to see Diablo fans complaining about a lack of depth when for me that has been one of the defining characteristics of the serious. Simple hack and slash, nothing wrong with it, but I personally didn't find D3 any more or less deep in gameplay terms than its predecessors.

Didn't get a chance to try it out this weekend, but to me Diablo has always been what most developers were trying (and failing) at to make today - an action-oriented RPG.

The Diablo games weren't particularly strong on the story in the games themselves (whilst having a decent background to be found outside the games), but for gameplay they've been excellent. I hope they continue to be, and that the game doesn't suffer from bad character handling.

[Voss]

Diablo cartoonish? We must have played different games, didn't you see the torture racks and other devices of torture, did I mention torture.

Background themes don't really create a cartoonish/not-cartoonish dichotomy. The style is pretty cartoonish, and the overall feel does come across as campy, particularly whenever someone is monologuing about the background, or on the rare occasions villains are speaking- its a scenery-chewing cheese fest. Its very hard to take seriously, and the torture is pretty much limited to high-school melodrama territory.

As for noob friendly, yeah, thats hard to argue against. As long as you can click a mouse, you can get through the game (at least on normal mode)

Didn't get a chance to try it out this weekend, but to me Diablo has always been what most developers were trying (and failing) at to make today - an action-oriented RPG.

Yeah, I can't ever think of these games (and others like them) as RPG anything. Not action rpg, not rpg-lite, or anything else. There really aren't any rpg elements to speak of, because there is no real interaction with the game world. Its just a fantasy-setting action game with a stat system.

[Thanatos_elNyx]

As for noob friendly, yeah, thats hard to argue against.

I wasn't saying the game isn't Newb-Friendly; I was saying it wasn't, necessarily, Noob-friendly.

[Satan]

Background themes don't really create a cartoonish/not-cartoonish dichotomy. The style is pretty cartoonish, and the overall feel does come across as campy, particularly whenever someone is monologuing about the background, or on the rare occasions villains are speaking- its a scenery-chewing cheese fest. Its very hard to take seriously, and the torture is pretty much limited to high-school melodrama territory.

As for noob friendly, yeah, thats hard to argue against. As long as you can click a mouse, you can get through the game (at least on normal mode)



Yeah, I can't ever think of these games (and others like them) as RPG anything. Not action rpg, not rpg-lite, or anything else. There really aren't any rpg elements to speak of, because there is no real interaction with the game world. Its just a fantasy-setting action game with a stat system.

Ture. But they're action-oriented. I don't know what the deuce DA 2 is supposed to be, but it ain't no Diablo, that's for sure. Skyrim's better, but not there yet.

[Urgat]

Blizzard's community is really, really bad. Visit their forums, its often a litany of pure hate that puts warseer to shame.

Depends on the servers. I play(ed) on a regular PVE one, but on RP ones, people are way more civil. Of course, they're a bit odd, too

Background themes don't really create a cartoonish/not-cartoonish dichotomy. The style is pretty cartoonish, and the overall feel does come across as campy, particularly whenever someone is monologuing about the background, or on the rare occasions villains are speaking- its a scenery-chewing cheese fest. Its very hard to take seriously, and the torture is pretty much limited to high-school melodrama territory.

That's true of Diablo 2, but not the first one. It's not quite so glaring as the difference between Warcraft 1 & 2, but it's still pretty obvious. Diablo 1's grimdark put Warhammer's to shame. Its final cutscene is a very good example. Diablo 2 was already more merry and so on.

One thing that makes that Diablo 3 not much Diablo to me, is "no Mat Uelmen". It completely changes the mood, even if the musics weren't bad per say (but none clung to the mind like, say the Tristram theme in the first game).

[Voss]

Depends on the servers. I play(ed) on a regular PVE one, but on RP ones, people are way more civil. Of course, they're a bit odd, too

I wasn't really thinking of the servers, mostly just the forums. Though back when I was still playing, I was on RP servers, and trade chat, at least, was awful as well. Filled with bigots, immaturity and the occasional really vile bouts of hate speech (for the 'lulz', apparently). Turning off trade chat and avoiding goldshire made it bearable, but it was often unpleasant, particularly on the weekends. Oddly enough this wasn't really a problem until a year or two ago. During BC I almost never saw really poor behavior, but towards the end of lich king and the beginning of Cata it was at least a weekly bout of really terrible behavior.

I wasn't saying the game isn't Newb-Friendly; I was saying it wasn't, necessarily, Noob-friendly.

I suspect you are being humorous, but I have no idea of the distinction you are trying to make. My point is the game-play is so simplified that its really hard to be 'doing it wrong.'