Diablo III Beta this weekend

[Zaal]

Well, had a bunch of fun with it.

Play the provided quest through to completion: with a Wizard and then with a Harcore (permadeath) Barbarian.

Can't help but thinking that the game really comes close to "borrowing" from d&d ...

Diablo Diamond Skin = kinda like d&d stoneskin
Diablo Blur = kinda like d&d blur

okay, not really an apples to apples but for example I don't recally either of those in the 1st diablo and maybe i'm stretching a bit but still...

anyway, was a bunch of fun.

however... at times difficult to log on and play - of course it's a beta so no issue there.
but really annoying is having to be logged onto battlenet while playing - why the hell is that so? why does one really need to be logged on , from a single player perspective?

clearly the game isn't designed to take things like lag into consideration and when you lag, you die... just plain stupid imho.

[griffin_230]

Yeah, I tried it and maxed out a Wizard (lvl 13) for the beta. Loads of people had server problems trying to login during the first day or so.

As a single player game, it was fun playing with an NPC that acts a bit like a hireling in ddo, but he levels up as well and you can select skills for him and gear him out. The public co-op games with 4 people in the group are enjoyable too, even if it was a zerg-fest most of the time. You can't really change your main stats as you level up. Think you can only change them via equipment bonuses. Various skills (e.g. different aoe spells) get unlocked as you level and you decide which ones will be part of your limited "loadout". Similar idea to DCUO and I guess the new Neverwinter game.

The physics engine is very cool, but it's using the CPU so you'll need a decent processor to handle the physics. I've read in the Diablo forums that people are experiencing client fps drops during certain parts of the game, even on their very high-end PCs, so there's definitely stuff that still needs ironing out before launch.

The game might be a bit too simplistic for some people, but it's good fun if you like that kind of thing I guess.