Diablo 3 Beta [Beta withdrawal underway!]

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I'm actually having fun with the skill calculator on the main site. That's never happened before. Oh the possibilities!


I haven't mentioned it yet but I love Bola Shot to death, partly due to watching things go flying after each explosion.
 
I finished up my second playthrough of the beta earlier this week. My first time through was with the Monk, who felt a bit slow for a character that I had the impression was built around speed. Maybe that improves on him with later levels/gear, but I was a bit disappointed initially after the Monk gameplay I had seen. My second go-round was with the Wizard, which felt MUCH more like the Diablo I knew and loved. Maybe it's because Sorc was my favorite character in D2, but I enjoyed my time with her a ton. I was really a fan of her ball AOE skill.

I've been pretty much avoiding impressions up to this point, but is it just me or does this game really have a lot of hand holding? I was fine when Blizz said they were eliminating attribute choices, but is there really NEVER a choice when it comes to your skills? I feel like half the fun of D2 was deciding where to put that skill point when you leveled and the amount of customization between characters that resulted was fantastic. Now every single character per class follows the same route? The quest arrows and indicators make me feel like I'm having my hand held through every quest. It's practically like playing with a maphack on.
 
This bodes well for server stability on release.

Yes. This bodes very well, because
a) Beta build is not the final retail build, especially due to all the artificial restrictions placed on it
b) Whatever problems they encounter, they can see, observe, fix, react to it - therefore the beta is actually helping
c) It is Blizzard. Server stability on a live server is the last thing to worry about. The absolute last.
 
And yet Blizz continues to scoff when people say that an offline option would be a good idea.

I was hoping to get some playtime in this weekend, but I guess that's not happening.
 
I have been checking the jewels (they are not in the beta yet) on Battle.net compendium and seems like it would be ideal to obtain a Radiant Star Ruby ASAP. Feels kinda overpowered an additional 31% exp gain
 
I have been checking the jewels (they are not in the beta yet) on Battle.net compendium and seems like it would be ideal to obtain a Radiant Star Ruby ASAP. Feels kinda overpowered an additional 31% exp gain

It's going to take forever to make a perfect gem.

+exp gain is kinda worthless eventually since most of your character's playtime is probably going to be at max level.
 
Got an arena team ready to go as soon as the PVP-patch shows up.

SBM (Sorc, Barb, Monk), found the two best D2 PVPers I could find :3

My body is ready.
 
Got an arena team ready to go as soon as the PVP-patch shows up.

SBM (Sorc, Barb, Monk), found the two best D2 PVPers I could find :3

My body is ready.

That's probably going to be a good 6+ month wait. Unless of course there's a PTR to test it all out which I suspect will come at some point.
 
That's probably going to be a good 6+ month wait. Unless of course there's a PTR to test it all out which I suspect will come at some point.
The sound of waiting 6 months almost makes me throw up. If they really need 6 months to add arena, then they were nowhere near done with PVP. I for one at least think that they've done most of it (I mean, it WAS playable in Blizzcon), and they're just doing some tuning here and there. So max, like 2 months after release.
 
Uh huh. Somebody didn't play WoW at launch.
Blizzard was incompetent in 2004. Things change.

Wrath, Cata, SC2 all had great launches. TBC and Vanilla was bad though.
 
The sound of waiting 6 months almost makes me throw up. If they really need 6 months to add arena, then they were nowhere near done with PVP. I for one at least think that they've done most of it (I mean, it WAS playable in Blizzcon), and they're just doing some tuning here and there. So max, like 2 months after release.

It's just a hunch. The 2 month wait for it to appear on the PTR sounds about right. But for it to be up and live, would be an additional 2 - 3 months if that.
 
It's just a hunch. The 2 month wait for it to appear on the PTR sounds about right. But for it to be up and live, would be an additional 2 - 3 months if that.
Sigh... by that point, we should've finished Inferno, farming the same boss over 600 times and probably leveled two other characters to 60...

Jesus Christ, this really WAS the worst news they could've announced for this game.
 
I'm still trying to figure out what exactly they thought was so bad about the current implementation of PvP was, when I'm pretty sure the majority of players would be just dandy playing the version they had at Blizzcon.

Sorta like the same reason I'm trying to figure out why they had to go add even more development time by rehauling the entire rune system when Jay Wilson is on record saying 6 months ago that it's already pretty cool as is.
 
Blizzard was incompetent in 2004. Things change.

Wrath, Cata, SC2 all had great launches. TBC and Vanilla was bad though.

TBC was not bad, and I was there at midnight :P
Only "problem" it had was a mob respawn rate set too high, meaning that you killed, you killed, you killed..and you killed, killed that same mob almost as soon as it died, as it respawned almost immediately :D (it was a scalable respawn system's first test : ) No lag experienced, and no server restarts (Venture Co.)
 
Blizzard was incompetent in 2004. Things change.

Wrath, Cata, SC2 all had great launches. TBC and Vanilla was bad though.

I wouldn't say they were incompetent, pretty much no MMO launch ever went smoothly before that either. Shit breaks when things get launched. It's the way of the MMO world.
 
All of the WoW launches have had problems, a majority of the problems are not due to incompetence. The genre is a technical nightmare compared to most others.
 
All of the WoW launches have had problems, a majority of the problems are not due to incompetence. The genre is a technical nightmare compared to most others.

Also the initial success and popularity was a shock even for Blizzard. They had no idea just what was coming when their servers went live. Since WoW's launch, I've seen multiple MMO's launch with an excessive amount of servers and preparation for a similar event.
 
Wrath and Cata launches were fine for me and I think most people. BC only had problems because they put everyone in Hellfire, apart from that it was rock solid compared to Vanilla.

Vanilla was obviously a mess.

So was D2 actually when it launched. I actually remember being more frustrated with D2 on launch than with Vanilla.

I suspect they have more of a handle on these things now.
 
TBC was not bad, and I was there at midnight :P
LOL

Not sure if you're being serious, forgetful or joined a low populated server :3

When I talk about TBC launch to my old friends, we laugh for consecutive minutes. It was a fucking mess. EU Bladefist.
 
LOL

Not sure if you're being serious, forgetful or joined a low populated server :3

When I talk about TBC launch to my old friends, we laugh for consecutive minutes. It was a fucking mess. EU Bladefist.

EU Venture, perfect. Yeah, it was a mid population server back then (lower than low nowadays). Not something like Stormscale EU nowadays. But I am serious - and it shows how different experiences are depending on realms. I can imagine the fullest servers getting hammered easily, in any kind of launch..

That is why it is going to rock that Diablo III does not use a strict realm system like an MMO.
 
That is why it is going to rock that Diablo III does not use a strict realm system like an MMO.
Fuck yeah, it's gonna be great.
 
I'm still disappointed that we're limited to 4 players per game though

And no offline play :p

oh well went ahead and pre-ordered. hoping that my latency to the EU servers aint in the 800ms sector. Wonder what it would take to have blizzard use one of the local data centers for the game :<
 
I'm still disappointed that we're limited to 4 players per game though

I do not care personally. My main time with the game will be with other GAFfers (hopefully EU gaf will be ACTIVE on this one, unlike with SCII - though I admit, I was part of the problem with that for becoming inactive), and if there will be two+ paralell groups farming stuff, then that is that.

I am too used to WoW's 5 player as a marker now, 4 players is actually way more manageable in terms of being able to instantly recognize whether you need to do something in a situation or something is already on the way from the party. The potential for REAL synergy is really high - and I do not mean stacking auras synergy, but gameplay synergy.

And no offline play :p

oh well went ahead and pre-ordered. hoping that my latency to the EU servers aint in the 800ms sector. Wonder what it would take to have blizzard use one of the local data centers for the game :<

Uhm..they are? O_o EU will be on EU servers, US on US, etc. Or are you somewhere else, planning to play on EU servers?
 
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