Diablo 3 Open Beta this weekend

[hpmons]

Ok I've barely paid any attention to Diablo 3 for a year or two, but there's an open beta for this weekend!

http://diablo.incgamers.com/?p=17577

Not sure if it will actually run on my crappy laptop, but I suppose I shall try to beg/borrow/steal someone else's.  Starts from 7pm (or 8pm?) today.

[Slaaaaabs]

Worth a try. Not a fan of the WOWification of the graphics, but the gameplay seems as solid as ever.

[hpmons]

Error 3003, then error 37 and now error 12! Surely I must be getting closer to playing it!

Well...the login screen's music is nice.

[Slaaaaabs]

Did you manage to play in the end hp?

I can safely say all the server shenanigans put me off a launch purchase. The Ubisoft always-online DRM was bad enough, but this is a fucking joke. Why not allow players to create "offline only" characters for times when their server shits the bed?

Also hard to get a feel for how the game will actually play when you can obliterate massive groups of enemies with the greatest of ease, getting health orbs for your "effort" making you immortal. Including a glimpse at the higher difficulty levels would have made all the difference.

Still not a fan of the graphic style, but this little "darken & sharpen" shader mod helps. I do love that a lot of the environment is destructible so all the little bits of wood and stone go flying along with the corpses of the recently deceased.

[hpmons]

Well it was basically a stress test, so they were expecting it to be messed up - the whole point was so that they would have it running smoother at the actual launch.  Yeah, it will probably be a bit iffy for the first week, but then its in the middle of my exams, so I don't want it distracting me too much anyway.

Yeah, I managed to finish the beta with the wizard, and got some way with the witch doctor.  Quite enjoyed it, drooling at the thought of its actual release.  The graphics don't bother me too much, but yes the death system does a bit.  Health orbs do make things a little too easy, but the worst thing is that you lose pretty much nothing by dying.  Go back to last checkpoint, which is usually incredibly near, don't lose any gold, exp, items.  Meaningless. Although I don't quite have the guts to play Hardcore personally.

I do like the skills system though, which I wasn't expecting to, though shame there isn't some little cost for respecing.  The auto-assignment of stat points does feel like a loss, but I understand why its there - in D2 there was basically one agreed way of distributing stats for each character which was optimal, so no one bothered with anything else.

AND SHARED STASH! YAY!

So a few negatives, a few positives, but damn its D3 so I'll be playing the heck out of it regardless.

[RickyGerbail]

i got a really good impression, and i'm one of the crankiest old school hardcore gamers out there. the only thing i didn't like was that they had a teenage girl involved in the plot, Cains niece or whatever it was. Just stuck out like a sore thumb. hopefully she'll die a horrible death and dissapear. Played as a witch doctor and really felt that the intelligence stealing skill gave a momentum to just keep going, if you stop killing you get weaker quick.