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I've been playing. Not sure I like where they went with skills, but I need to get higher level to really judge it.
Well I just put in over 3 hours into the game. For everything that Blizzard maybe there is no question they produce quality games. Some other publishers could really take a cue from Blizzard QA/QC program. It's beta and I encountered no real bugs to speak of in that time. The only one perhaps was the alt key which displays the items on the ground sometimes would just turn off on it's own. No big deal hit alt again and it was good to go. I did encounter about 30 secs of pretty severe server lag. Again not to bad considering this is a server stress test weekend. I played a Barbarian up to level 10 before calling it a night.
Quick Pro's and Con's:
Lot's of loot. Woot! LOOTZ!!!
Lot's of hackin' and slashin' I killed a ton of undead in 3 hours. Several bosses and early epics I think is their rating.
Good voice overs. So many games are killed by crappy voice overs.
Really nice graphics IMO. They really work well for the game.
Clearly a quality production.
DIABLO IS BACK!!!
Cons:
Skill trees; I was really hoping for a much more diverse tree. They do have a second tier which allows you to assign runes to the 4 basic skills in each tree. So there is some diversity, but honestly not much. Or at least not as much as I wanted.
No Zoom in/out? At least I couldn't find the keys to do it.
Question of randomness of dungeons. I don't think they are random, so the replay is really going to be loot/monster drops. Not horrible, but I do love me some random dungeons.
Real cash item shop. I hate this concept. I really think it'll feed gold farmers and undermines the purpose of a hack and slash to kill shit and find uber loot. I understand I don't need to buy anything, but I really fear that the public servers will be filled with loot snipers and gold farmers.
All I know is this baby is now pre-ordered and I fully expect to lose my late night gaming time to this game for many, many months to come. It's that good IMO.
@Bison
If you hit the "z" key it will zoom in and out. Sadly it's only 1 level of zoom. I personally prefer to play with the normal zoomed out. Only thing that I've fou d for the zoomed in view is to look at my armor on my character.
There isn't that many active skills, the runes just add different effects, animations, aoe, etc. But with only 6 active skill slots I think that it's enough variation. I've myself switching out abilities all the time to try out different combinations. And starting at level 10, I think, you can start to unlock passive abilities.
Dungeons are random, they could be a little bit more random IMO. The world map isn't random however, except for the locations of dungeon entrances. Then again, we only have access to act 1, so maybe the full game will have some more randomness.
I pre-ordered a few weeks ago. 2nd pre-order this year! What kind of characters are you guys playing as?
The two I like the best is the barbarian and the demon hunter. I played a monk for a few levels and didn't really like it. Haven't played the wizard or the witch doctor.
I've only played the barbarian. I might try another class, but right now just having a really good time dungeon crawling.
I thought I would play through as a Demon Hunter first but the Monk has caught my interest. What don't you like about the Monk, Kushan?
Played some multiplayer before the servers went down. Great fun. The one real positive is that it is not competative looting. So your loot is yours and you are having to worry about looting before your team does. This is a really good deal.
The server stability is alarming. I guarantee this stress test open weekend didn't see even a quarter of the people who will be playing it sometime after release.
What's this about the servers going down for awhile, and nobody being able to play? What is this, an MMO now? :-\ Despite all the downsides, it's friggin Diablo 3 so I'd be lying if I said I'm not considering it.
Quote from: Gusington on April 21, 2012, 04:49:55 PM
I thought I would play through as a Demon Hunter first but the Monk has caught my interest. What don't you like about the Monk, Kushan?
They must have revamped them at some point. When I played them in an earlier beta they just were not fun to play. Started a new one yesterday with some friends and actually liked.
I wasn't having any server issues until this morning and I played 4-6 hours total yesterday.
Well I've spend a good 2-3 hours with each class and I can honestly say that all are fun to play. Surprisingly the witchdoctor was actually much more fun to play then I thought it would be initially. I do wish there was more selections for the look of the characters. A few more models would add some nice varnish to the game. My ranking would go something like this: Barbarian (I just like to smash stuff with melee weapons), monk, witch doctor, demon hunter (the sexiest of the female avatars without question), wizard. However I did enjoy playing each of them.
It has been known for a long time that Diablo 3 was going to require a persistant internet connection to play the game. I would really like to see them add an offline mode, so you can play on the go. I really think this may become an option in the future much like one was made availible for Starcraft.
The pay real cash for items store may not be as obnoxious as I initially thought. It still annoys me. There is a pay for in game gold shop too. I suspect that the prices will be overvalued to start and slowly work their way down as more epics are pulled and put on the market. More important is that each person pulls their own loot, so the ninja factor is removed. I hated that in Diablo 2. You were more worried about positioning near the loot drop than killing the boss, because you knew one of the asshats you were playing with was not attacking just to ninja the loot as soon as it dropped.
Anyway I think this will be great fun both single player and playing with a group of friends.
Are the Witch Doctor and the Monk both magic-based, ranged attack types? Or can they both mix it up in melee too?
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Zombie dog pets!! I'm in.
Well I've got my pre-order downloaded and ready to start the game once it goes live on the 15th. I'm a hack and slash RPG whore.
Me too, no worries. Just get your shots, whore.