DIABLO III BETA TEST OBSERVATIONS

After playing the beta for a night, I have some observations regarding the game after playing the barbarian.

First, I love it--has been worth waiting for. Graphics and sound are very well rendered. Your character has both male/female versions, so the ladies playing can have the same gender character (if they wish).

If you played Diablo 2 LOD, you should be able to figure things out fairly easy. Movement pretty much stays the same. You still have the health globe (red) but manna (blue) is gone, replaced by something else.

There are some differences in the inventory and skills menus. For example, you picked up a weapon and want to see how it fits. When you hover over the weapon in your inventory, you will get a side-by-side comparison of your currently equipped weapon and the one you picked up. Exhange is simple, double click on the weapon in your inventory and it replaces the one being used. Another example is if you cannot use the weapon (i.e. belonging to another class), there will be a red "X" on the weapon.

Your quest chart is different and you can scroll up or down on the conversations from the various folks. You can chat with other players while playing the game.

Gameplay is pretty straight forward, just like LOD. However, you are required to converse with certain characters before moving on and you get your quests from them.

When you hit a monster, hit points float away from the monster and you have the ability to see how much health is left in the monster.

So far, the game seems to follow a similiar storyline as Diablo 1.

Now that I'm at the door to the last big boss, I have some more thoughts.

One of the things that kinda irritated me in D2 LOD was the need to re-kill every monster on the map after leaving midmap for whatever reason. Along with that, I also hated it when I died as I lost all items in my inventory that was not stashed away in my chest or when the chest was full, I could not store anymore.

D3 fixed that. When you die, you are respawned at the last checkpoint and all items in the inventory are still there. If you want to stash anything in the chest, however, you have to "rent" space in the chest. Also, you do not have to slay the same monsters twice.

There are some menus that are misleading and/or confusing but you do not have the ability to chose how you spend your points after a level up. The program arbitrarily spends those points, spreading them out over your vital stats.

Note to oneself: Every time they update the beta, you start all over again as they erase the old character..........

Gonna be kinda hard to keep from spilling some of the secrets from testing the beta as I don't want to be a spoiler. Blizzard has updated the beta twice now since I started testing and added stuff to it. We are now on patch #6 as they fix what the beta testers see as problems.

The other globe is call "Fury" and it kinda makes the game interesting. As you fight, you get more fury and then use that fury to make killing moves. When you don't fight, it slowly runs out--kinda like getting mad and then making up.

One of the things I find interesting is that you can have a "camp following" consisting of a jeweler, blacksmith, and cleric/medic. You can train them in their respective fields, honor their quests, and in general, they become your support team. Yes, they also fight. You can take items that you don't want, break down the item to it's lowest level and have them remake it the way you want, with some the magical properties that you want and some magical properties that are random.

I will try to get some pic's once I figure out how to make a screen print.

AH, finished. Learned how to craft your own weapons and armor-takes a little doing to figure that out. Another item I learned was how to fight with fury--came in handy during the last battle. Also learned how to hire a follower and see how he responded--very well.

Game is well worth it and I'm guessing that will will run somewhere between $75.00 and $100.00 when it comes out.

Ask your questions now.

can you pay for mine?

dom60 wrote:

can you pay for mine?

If you send me the money.

Don't all games atart off at 59.99... no matter how good or bad they are

Elite wrote:

Don't all games atart off at 59.99... no matter how good or bad they are

You're probably right.

Elite wrote:

Don't all games atart off at 59.99... no matter how good or bad they are

Normal games, sure. Collector's edition games are another story - in fact, Diablo 3 Collector's Edition is currently pre-ordering for $99.99 on Amazon.

I don't buy those sets. Not worth the extra cost for the fru-fru.

Diablo III Cinematic World Premiere at the VGAs

by Zarhym Dec 9, 2011 2:53 PM PST

Be sure to tune into Spike TV’s Video Game Awards, December 10 at 8:00 p.m. / 7:00 p.m. Central. Diablo III’s full opening cinematic will make its world premiere during the show. It seems an appropriate time to share how the tone is set for our forthcoming game, as Spike has announced that they’ll bestow their second-ever Gamer God Award upon Blizzard Entertainment’s three founders, Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce.

Check out Spike TV’s official announcement, http://www.spike.com/press/2011/11/30/zac-levi-to-host-2011-video-game-awards/, for all the show’s details and make sure your popcorn is at the ready.

Opening cinematic was nice but waiting almost two hours of BS to get to it was kinda crappy. They waited until the last 15 minutes before the show got to the D3 part.................

Was the beta the complete game or just one campaign? You just seemed to finish it so quickly is all.

Flak Monkey wrote:

Was the beta the complete game or just one campaign? You just seemed to finish it so quickly is all.

Just the very first campaign to the Skeleton King.

Wonder if it would run on my Dino...
Wife and I need new rigs real bad...but we agreed that she would be first since she has the oldest...but as things sits, that wont happen for quite some time.