Diablo 3 open beta weekend. Right now!

[CoolOtaku]

Go download it!

Anyone else gonna be giving this a shot? I'm downloading it right now. Assuming the servers are stable enough, we should play together if anyone else here is getting it. Frankly, I'd be shocked if I were the only one here getting in on this action.

[Phakiel]

This is not important to me.

[Priest4hire]

I've just finished downloading the beta and I'll take it for a spin. I've got the game pre-ordered and this time I won't have to wait a week to play it. Yay for being able to download the thing and play it even as my physical copy is in the mail.

[CoolOtaku]

I have now played through the beta content (all of the available quests) with the witch doctor, wizard, and demon hunter. I don't know if this is particular to the beta or if it's actually like this in the real game, but I had a hell of a time finding better weapons for my characters all three times. I was using my starter wand on the wizard until about twenty minutes before I got to the last available boss and it was torturous. My friend was playing as a monk and he would kill an entire mob before I could kill one lousy skeleton that was all up in my face. On my demon hunter I didn't get anything of significance until I beat the last boss. I at least had a couple mediocre weapons to use for a lot of it instead of being stuck with the beginner weapon, but wow.

The jump between better weapons was atrocious. I kept finding all sorts of melee weapons, but only the barbarian and the monk really get much use out of those. The witch doctor can at least equip them, but I honestly have no idea if those affect his attacks since he never gets in close to the enemy.

Overall, I've had a great time playing it (when the servers weren't down for maintenance). Since they put so much emphasis on the online multiplayer aspect of it, I would have really liked to see the option for character appearance customization, but oh well. After playing it this much and enjoying it every time, I'm thinking that I will indeed buy it at some point down the road, perhaps once they've released an expansion for it with more character types.

[Priest4hire]

I just tooled around for a few minutes. Some random observations:

It's not exactly graphics powerhouse. I have it cranked up to 2048x1536 with everything maxxed and it isn't even making my PC work hard. Not that's bad. I noticed it's does thing where a body will have a visible weapon but you can't pick that up because it's not actual loot. 20 years ago that made sense, even if there were RPGs to have realistic loot rules, but now? It's a reminder of how conservative the genre can be at times.

And zombies. Again. Blizzard has a thing for the undead.

[CoolOtaku]

Originally Posted by Priest4hire

And zombies. Again. Blizzard has a thing for the undead.

What company doesn't these days? Zombies are the new slime.

[Priest4hire]

Yeah, really. Thing is, the undead aren't scary when you turn them into cannon fodder for badasses to wade through. In WoW I can't think of a single undead that managed to get more than a 'that's neat' response out of me. Speaking of, this game sure felt like WoW. Yeah, there's probably some confirmation bias there and WoW is derived from Diablo. Still, if you told me this game was based in Duskwood I'd probably believe it.

It was weird having to log in to play a single player game, and I'll be damned if I blow real money on their auction system. This really isn't a direction I'd like to see games go even if I can see why they did it.

Based on my obviously very limited exposure, I'd call this game very slick and polished yet very unambitious. At least, as far as the game itself is concerned.

[Evil]

I have two things to say.

Spider jars are fun.

Blowing things up as a wizard is awesome.

[CoolOtaku]

The auction system is hands-down the scariest thing I've seen in gaming in my entire life. I sincerely hope it's a huge failure because I never want to see it or anything like it ever implemented again. The road is just too dangerous.

[Bogeta]

I would have preferred a revamp to the graphics of diablo ii, a new act, and a plethora of new items. But I guess an entirely new game will do.

Yeah, the graphics are WoW'esque (Cartoony), but whatever. I'm going to spend an enormous amount of time playing this game. At least until GW2 is released.

I fully support the auction house, it's so much easier to trade in that fashion, and you don't need to create "mule" accounts to hold shit since you can just sell it. RMA is fine too, players competing with RMT web businesses will be fun to watch. It will be used, because people (including myself) will be willing to throw some coin away for elite items.