Hell is not frozen yet! (Diablo 3)

They've started sending out waves of beta invites for those who have opted in. I didn't get an invite, but fortunately one of my friends did; so I've been on his account playing through it with various characters.

There's all kinds of server stability problems at the moment, which translates into frequent random disconnects, being unable to connect, and severe performance issues. The Beta content is miniscule, and most of it is shockingly buggy; which makes one wonder how broken the rest of the game is, and how the hell did Blizzard think they could pull off a 2011 release.



Problems aside, from a 15 year fan of the series: It's good. It's really, really good. My only concern is the release date, which I'd wager will be pushed back yet again to something ridiculous like Q4 2012.
 
Does it feel like Diablo? Is the setting and the style dark or do the colorful visuals get in the way?

I couldnt get into Torchlight even though it was basically Diablo reskinned. I think the Diablo setting is a bigger draw than I realized pouring those endless hours into those games.
 
It definitely feels like Diablo. You'll instantly feel at home the second you create a character and hop in.

The atmosphere is quite gloomy, and the music is exactly as you'd expect it to be.

Leveling up and not spending skill points is weird at first, but realizing that you aren't tied down to 1-2 good skills that you'll be spamming the entire game (Instead, 6 skills from a pool of ~22 that can be swapped with a simple trip to town, and customized with 5 different runes for crazy new effects) seems like a fair trade to me.

The combat is basically unchanged from Diablo 2, just further refined. You'll still run into those crazy special monster packs that will happily fuck your shit up if you don't know what you're doing. For example, I was cruising through the catacombs, just annihilating everything (and every piece of destroyable terrain) in my path, only to come across a pack of arcane enhanced bats. I dash in, easily kill three of them... only to have several little glowing orbs appear, which shot out these rotating lasers and killed me from 100-0 in about two seconds. It was the first time I had died during the beta, and I smiled and thought "Yep, this is definitely Diablo".
 
Ahhh , before patch arcane enchanted monsters were even more dangerous, spawned little hydras :D I don't have access to beta myself unfortunately but from what I've read in patch 5 or 6 they significantly increased monsters life pool to bump difficulty , which is good.
 
Damn, I now have such a raging hadron collider for this game. All the memories of sifting through demonic poop in the dark and stuffy catacombs, the unhealthy excitement over gold letters, the screaming and the swearing at 3 am when a lightning bat kills you right as you almost clear the final room before a sparkling chest, the evil evil music in the background through it all. Oh yes, the fever is back.
 
I played on someone else's beta about a month ago. Only one character, the monk. I just got my own invite about a week ago - need to fire it up again to see if they changed the skill system. They made the skill system super exploitable before(change skills on the fly) which I hope they have changed. Otherwise, I can see people setting up scripts to change from a defensive build to a DPS build in a split second.
That's about my only complaint. It was easy, but that is to be expected at the beginning levels. The atmosphere, animations, random level generation, sounds, characters - from what I could tell from the short playtime, it's all great and what I had hoped for. Can't wait to waste endless hours with friends.
 
Makagulfazel said:
They made the skill system super exploitable before(change skills on the fly) which I hope they have changed. Otherwise, I can see people setting up scripts to change from a defensive build to a DPS build in a split second.
Click to expand...


They did indeed change things up. Swapping skills now requires you be at a Nephalem altar, which is found in town (and at certain locations out in the wild).
 
Damnit. I want so badly to not want this game with the crappy online-only crap and the real money auction house crap.

But you people saying good things about it is making it quite hard. *sigh*
 
maximaz said:
Damn, I now have such a raging hadron collider for this game. All the memories of sifting through demonic poop in the dark and stuffy catacombs, the unhealthy excitement over gold letters, the screaming and the swearing at 3 am when a lightning bat kills you right as you almost clear the final room before a sparkling chest, the evil evil music in the background through it all. Oh yes, the fever is back.
Click to expand...
Haha, I recognise this so badly. I didn't just fall in love with the game, I actually fell in love with a chick that I met in the game. I actually dumped my girlfriend at the time for her.

I played it very intensely during a 2-year period, when I was 17-19 years old. I can only hope that now, when I'm near 27, I will be able to show more restraint. But boy, what a roller-coaster that time was. :)
 
d3presale_small.jpg
 
Fallout1FTW said:
I think it's sort of lame. It reminds me of Alien Queen
Click to expand...

Nah, it's pretty nice. They could've really been more imaginative with the "III", it's been done to death, but otherwise, looks shiny. Especially considering how much worse and cutified cartoony it looks in-game :roll:
 
They should have made a diablo walking towards the player / camera. Cause everyone knows such a box sells most. :>
 
stupid blizz

letting you download it 2 months before release, tempting you, taunting you, telling you that you are afraid....


now for my question.

do you still have to buy arrows/bolts or do you not have to waste inventory space holding those?
 
TheWesDude said:
now for my question.

do you still have to buy arrows/bolts or do you not have to waste inventory space holding those?
Click to expand...

Quivers are now just offhand items that give stat bonuses. Basically you've got a crossbow/bow + quiver or two little hand-crossbows and no quiver. Arrows/Bolts are infinite.
 
During this weekend DIII beta will be open for everyone, so if you want to spoil yourself the first part of act 1, feel free.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top