~Beyond the Border~ > Genji's Battle Arena

[Diablo 3] In anticipation of May 15...

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ApharmdB:
... who's going to take an occasional break from DotA 2 and buy the game for this?  :D

I'm sure there'll be a horde of monks and possibly several server crashes based on the open beta, but that's not going to stop me from playing one either. Having played the open beta and leveling a monk and a wizard to 13, I have the following observations.

Easy stuff...
1. Difficulty level - about the same as Diablo 2's, i.e. piss easy in the first 1/3 of normal difficulty Act 1, which is where the open beta took place. The Skeleton King is the equivalent of the Countess both in placement within the act, and roughly in terms of difficulty as well. The monk and the barbarian, which my brother played, both have no issues crushing him without so much as quaffing a single potion.  Btw can we just call the Skeleton King Leoric now? This is about as spoilerish as saying that Anakin becomes Darth Vader. But from what I've seen, the game has the potential to get much harder later on with the different mods that mobs can spawn with.

2. Presentation - Yeah it looks like a cross between WoW and SC2. Not a bad thing mind you, but you do need a computer that can handle SC2 decently. For the record, my jurassic 8 year old Core 2 Duo desktop handles fine at max HD res when running fullscreen windowed mode. It runs Windows 7 64-bit with 4gb ram and an nVidia 8600GT for reference. Diablo is the sort of game where better graphics, complete with fog and weather effects and good contrast/lighting, does lend a lot to the game, especially so in conjunction with the well-done orchestral ambient music within which you'll recognize Tristram's theme. Sometimes you can spot where Blizzard got lazy and re-used the same soundbites from D2, but who cares if it suits the game right? Quest presentation feels more organic despite their linearity because NPCs brief you along the way, and transition between areas is a lot smoother than D2X's, probably all pre-loaded during the course of the game.  Monsters climb up from cliff edges, rush out from bushes or dark areas, etc. It all makes the game world feel that much more alive. The ambience is a lot closer to D1 than D2 was.

Right along to the more important parts...
3. Gameplay - Controversial. Personally I feel that skill trees have been oversimplified - there are none now. You no longer need to choose whether to take Lightning Bolt now, or save that skill point for something else, nor need to assign any stat points (they're automatically assigned on level up). There's also no more quick-switching of skills. You get a signature skill on your left-click which is free to cast, an active on the right-click which uses up your class-specific resource, both of which can be augmented by runes which you will also get at pre-determined levels, and 4 special skills (in different categories) to assign to hotkeys. Skills on cooldown cannot be swapped and upon swapping, they automatically go into cooldown, so you'll have to plan ahead which skills you want to bring to a fight, e.g. when having 2 monks in a party, it might be useful to have one that blinds enemies and the other on healing duty since they both use the same hotkey slot. There IS some customization though, in the form of passive skills - learning some will preclude the learning of others. So yeah, gameplay has been simplified and streamlined to the point where you mostly just need to left-click and occasionally, right-click. Well, you can get followers (mercs from D2), of which only the templar is available in the beta, and if you're bored of left-clicking mobs to death (the wizard will want to right-click more), you can talk to them :x

4. ITAMZ PLZ - Too early to tell. With limited mods on a limited number of items available in the beta, I couldn't find many good things while exploring and even running Leoric for a day netted me all of a frickin' rare belt for the monk which he dropped as a quest reward. Crafting however seems to be where it's at. The crafting system is very similar to Hellgate: London's (one of the very few things that game got right). You can salvage magic and rare items, breaking them down into parts which you can then use to craft other items at a cost. You'll have to train your blacksmith/artisan up (costs gold) to gain access to new recipes. For what it's worth, some of the mods that I've seen on the early magic weapons are much more significant than the stupid +1 light radius mods that we used to see in D2. Despite that, expect your fair share of cracked sashes.

5. Systems - Loot is personal now. Your loot remains yours and cannot be picked up by others. Teleporting to party members involves just clicking on their banner in town. Before starting a quest, the game will send a message to everyone asking if they'd like to be a part of it. Responding with a yes teleports you to the quest area and starts it for the party. There's a 1 minute timer on the invitation. If not, you'll be excluded from the quest and cannot get the reward/drop even if you walk into the area and strike the boss. Stash and gold is shared, as is the blacksmith/artisan.

It currently feels like D2X with some of D1's atmosphere and with graphics done right. Well it feels good enough for me to buy if it's not stupidly expensive like SC2 was (and I still bought that, wtf?) and play through at least once, and possibly go online with it again. Whether it will stand the test of time as D2/D2X did though, I don't know.

Amraphenson:
Not a fan of the oversimplification I'm hearing, but probably gonna buy it anyway.

Yukarin:
sorry can't read.

I'm planning to be either a witch doctor or a demon hunter, and of course I'm going to buy the game.

Helepolis:
Pre-ordered my copy month ago. I managed to get into the game yesterday to test out my sorcerer.

Visuals - Well. I expected bit more detail in this game. This all looks bit vague and texture do not look very sharp. Sure, the rest of the areas have been done nicely and I guess there is enough that pleases the eye. Though they took so long to produce this game, they better be having promising things. Else it is just going to be another Duke Nuke em forever thing.

Gameplay - Who ever designed "walk over loot to collect" is an idiot. I hope you can turn this off (haven't looked whether I could). Because nobody wants to pickup every single item that drops from mobs. Movement through areas seems smooth, your original left/right click thing. Though I have to heavily agree on the skill tree thing.  I cannot believe they would do this. Guess it is to please the coolkidzzz these days.

Feels to me that Diablo3 is rushed. We all know how awesome 3rd episode of games/movies are. But I guess the full game will tell.

Dorakyura:
What about Battle.Net
Server connections. Can everyone play with everyone or is it like SC2 region shit. Noone wants to play with 80% russians on the servers

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