Got beta. Will report on how it compares. There's no NDA, so I'm gonna just drop pretty much everything I get.

EDIT: First note: No more multiplayer lobby. You can join a random game or search for games based on quest they're on, but you can't talk and set-up before going in.

EDIT2: Messed around some more. Can't customize game names and there's a 4-man limit to a game.

 

Well I'm not getting it then. I wasn't going to before this anyway. But this is just fucking STUPID.

Thanks for fucking up Blizzard, they're certainly not getting my money. And since Blizzard is using WC3's game engine for D3, they aren't getting my money. Fuck them up the ass with a rake.:facepalm

 

I assume you get an e-mail if you get a beta invite?

/me sadface

edit: FYI, if you bought the full year of WoW, I think you get invited automatically.

Q: When do I get Diablo III and the other exclusive benefits?
A: You'll be able to download and play Diablo III as soon as it's available and once you complete the one-year term, it's yours to keep, even if you cancel your subscription. Tyrael's Charger will be available with Patch 4.3, and beta access will go live with the beta launch

 

I'd agree with this completely. WoW's ingame cinematic's were incredibly lacking, part of it is the art style, the other part is the way it tries to tell the story. A big part is that nothing's every actually made me care about the story in WoW.

You've actually reminded me to rewatch those cinematic's. The one with the bell tolling and the rose petals falling as Arthas returns was just fantastic. That last line still gives me the chills. "What... what are you doing my son? Succeeding you, father". Same thing when he and the lich king become 'one'.

The starcraft 2 cinematics were actually extremely good as well though. I think it's just a general failing of the WoW part, they're trying to make them too seamless with the game. Part of the charm with the cinematic's was just how far above and beyond they were compared to the game.

In fact, if you look at the opening cinematic's of most of the WoW games, those were actually fine. WOTLK opening cinematic, Vanilla opening cinematic, those were fine. It's just the ones in the middle of the game that were really disappointing.

 

Okay, so far, I can't even really test D3. They're either stress testing the servers or they screwed up somewhere because there's massive lag just trying to connect.

Loading the game took a around a minute or more. Logging in was about that same time. Trying to start a game is inconclusive so far since it hasn't even started and it's been around 2 minutes.

EDIT: Note to all, make sure you do full instal instead of just up to "playable". Full removes a large majority of the lag.

EDIT2: Game is a lot easier at the start now. Picked the Wizard class. Can only have 2 active skills for the first 5 lvls. Can actually kite most monsters and pick off mobs easily.

Health drops are everywhere. Kill a mob and you get a little red orb that auto-heals a nice chunk of HP. Not sure how plentiful they'll be later.

Skills are automatically acquired upon level up, with a new one popping up basically every level. There are 3 passives unlocked at lvl 10,20,30.

Skill slots are unlocked with level up. You get the second at lvl 2 and more at 6, 12, 18, and 24.

The map's pretty useful to. Auto-displays the entrance to small dungeons and where new quests are.

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Oh, and gold and the health orbs are automatically picked up by walking over them. No need to mess around with right-click spam any more.

Potions are assigned only one spot and can only have one type at a time so far.

Wizards have this new resource called arcane power. It has stupid-fast regen, 12 per second.

If you change your active skill slots, then the skill goes on it's CD first before you can use it. You can't change a skill that's on CD. They also don't tell you how much damage your skills do.

There aren't any more stats and skill points on level up now. Your stat menu has been merged into your inventory menu.

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More stuff:

Instanced locations still in the game. As soon as you log out, the world resets.

There are check points now. If you hit one, when you log in, you'll be in the same area you logged out instead of being sent back to town.

Certain weapons are class-bound now, such as cross bow for demon hunters.

The stash starts out with 14 slots and you pay to open more slots.

---------- Post automerged at 09:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 PM ----------

More stuff:

Town Portals are now basically infinite spells. They require you to channel for about 5s and then they warp you to town, leaving a portal behind to go back. No item slot or scroll tome needed.

All equips that aren't accessories take up 2 inventory slots now. Always 2 vertical ones. Accessories and belts take up 1 slot.

Some dungeons now have a portal item at the end of it that will let you warp back to the dungeon entrance. Takes about a 4s channel to activate.

Some of the new item mods are rather interesting. Some increase the range you can pick up items and improve exp gain by a flat amount instead of percentage.

You now need to go to an artisan to "salvage" magic items for crafting materials. Artisans also can use those mats to create weapons and armor for you.

 

So what you're saying is, D3 is WoW for casuals.

 

Got to play some today on a friend's account. No, it's not WoW for Casuals. Wait until you learn about and find the ability modification system. I forget the name of it right now, but it allows for a lot of variety within your abilities and capabilities, even within a single class, and is quite a bit more versatile than the specialization-points system.

Nor is it as simple as that system if you want to do well with it.

 

If you have multiple characters, the cool thing is that the crafters carry over for your entire account. For example, I leveled my crafter on my wizard to level 2, when I created a Demon Hunter, it was still level 2. So i leveled it to level 3, and when I logged into the wizard, it was level 3!.

The crafted items are pretty awesome too.

 

Beginning of game is decent. Only real complaint is limited active skills. Haven't played enough to see all the bugs and other weird crap people have said.

Item identification is now also a channel spell. 3s then boom. Identified item without needing scrolls or anything.

I kind of enjoy the salvage and the crafter system. Lets me acquire stronger armor by sacrificing loot that I don't need or want, though the need for random rare salvage materials makes it annoying since I haven't found any guarantees in the system yet.

Companion skills are something new to dabble with. Each get a skill per 5 lvls, 4 skils max. Get to choose between two types of skills. Not sure how other companions are, but the first one for Wizard let me choose between a taunt to pull aggro off me if I'm about to die or a heal skill.

Anyone have questions they want answered so I can look for them?

 

How is the leveling? is it as fast as in D2 or did they change it?

 

Slightly slower, from what I've been able to tell. There's lost of bonuses to amp up the Exp a bit, such as multi-killing with one skill or breaking lots of objects in quick succession, but the overall pacing seems pretty decent. No real struggles to level up.

By the time I killed the Skeleton king, which is the first act boss, I was level 9.

First act is pretty damn easy on the Wizard too. Lots of AOEs and ranged attacks combined with the health globes that restore more HP based on your Int = cake.

Skeleton King isn't even hard, just mildly time consuming because of his large HP bar.


Then again, I uncovered the entire map in every area I explored, which would mean me getting about 1-2 levels ahead of what people should be. I bet Skeleton would be more difficult if I engaged it at lvl 7 without my self-crafted weapon and lvl 8 laser spell.

 

Laser Spell? Damn. I already miss those Fire bolts.

You said something about the active and passive skills. in D2 there were only a few passive skill per char, sooo how is it now? what do they do?

 

Don't know yet. Haven't gotten to lvl 10, where I unlock my first passive. There's only 3 per character unlocked every 10 lvls.

And the lvl 2 spell for wizards is basically shooting a darker "night sky" version of fireball.

 

And how is the skill branching, I mean like the Sorc in D2 where you had a fire,lightening and cold skill tree and you could branch in either directions. Is it still so, or did they simplify it?

 

What branching? You're literally handed every single one of your skills as you level up. There are no skill points to build a skill tree at all so far.

The only real "branching" is what 6 skills you load up in combat and how you modify them through your equips and augments.

 

It seems then I will stay with D2...

 

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This is a good explanation of the runestone system, and gives a tiny bit of better insight into what he's talking about skills-wise.

It's not a branching skill system, but instead you get 24 skills, and six different types of runestones. Each runestone has a very different affect on the spell you use it on. Changing them in significant and dramatic fashions. Allowing for a much greater customization of your skillset, instead of locking yourself into one path and never being able to diverge if you want optimal output.

Furthermore, there are Seven Ranks of runestones. The highest two you only get in Hell Difficulty.

So lets see, 24 to the sixth power of possible combinations.

Lots of skills. Lots. And Lots. Of Skills.

 

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Now I wasn't a fan of the art style switch, but why the hell did they throw the grime/smoke/fog filter ontop of it? Looks like crap imho. The particle effects look great, but the rest of the game just looks super dated =(

 

I'm pretty sure they added the smoke/fog/grime filter ontop to add to the gritty, dark atmosphere of the game. I like it.

A. You have to keep in mind that they're trying to make sure it can play on systems that have a broad range of capabilities.

B. I happen to disagree, I think it looks great, actually. Very polished, colorful, responsive, with a fair level of detail for what it is.

C. It's still in beta, it's fairly common for games to have several graphic upgrades over the course of their development and testing cycle. SW:ToR, for example, had a graphics update even just 1 week before it was released.

So have a fair amount of other games I've tested.

Also, if you remember, this was a complaint many had about WoW as well, but over time they polished it and improved it. I doubt they're not doing to do the same with a game still in beta, that is a hugely anticipated release.

 

StarCraft 2 is actually another example of this. I forget when it happened, but they just out of the blue added some new graphical levels to SC2 some months after release.