Diablo 3 open beta is open. And Beeting.

[Joose]

omgzomg

Anyone else doing this?

EDIT: The downloader uses the same Magical Pirate Technology* as the WoW downloader, so its currently fast as all hell. So to speak. I predict that, when it actually goes live, the Battle.net servers will be reduced to a pile of ash.

*torrent

[Shada]

had to fuck around with my router to get the damn blizzard downloader working, but it's goin' now. Even with P2P disabled it's downloading at 3mb/s.

edit: or, it was. it suddenly decided to stop completely a few notches past the "Playable" mark.

more edit: okay fuck it, every time I start up the downloader it downloads a little bit then restarts my router, even with P2P disabled. why bother.

[Joose]

For those of you without broken routers: Someone somewhere (I forget where now, might have been in the installer or something) said that it required 15gig of space. Dont see that and panic, the download/install is actually slightly under 5 gig.

[Dog Pants]

I'll give this a shot when I get home. I'm deeply divided over the game, although I think I'll probably go for it. A dabble on the demo beta should hopefully cement my resolve one way or the other.

EDIT: Or not, it's this weekend only. Back to waiting for the reviews for me.

[Mr. Johnson]

I think I'm going to avoid this till it comes out, more surprises that way.

[Thompy]

Back to waiting for the reviews for me.

There will be a "Starter Edition". If it's the same as WoW/SCII then it'll be unlimited in time but restricted on levels and social interaction, but most of the core gameplay will be there to test till your heart's content. It'll likely become available some time after release.

[Dog Pants]

If I'm honest with myself it will probably come down to how many 5punkers buy it. If it looks like something I can play with a few friends on a friday night I'll most likely buy it so I can join in.

[HereComesPete]

Whoops, I appear to have had a closed beta invite sat in my gmail for ages, it logged out a while ago whilst I was doing a thing and I never bothered to check it.

[FatherJack]

I'm leaning towards not buying this, I was all excited when they announced it, but that was years ago and I'm bored of waiting and no longer care. I'll give the beta a chance to change my mind though.

[Thompy]

So having playing for about 30 mins I'm amazed.

My only experience with a hack and slash ARPG before this was about 2 hours of Torchlight, which I found to be a completely empty, boring experience. Fair enough, I thought, it's just not the genre for me. But Diablo has grabbed me, as I almost thought it would, it just feels right. I found Torchlight combat to be a big mess of nothing, but Diablo feels tightly controlled, engaging, addictive (with achievements for good measure), satisfying has good readability and by god I think I could trawl through dungeons for hours even well passed the completion of the story. Completion on the hardest difficulty should take some considerable time and I'm thinking I'll enjoy it immensely.

[Grimmie]

Just got it installed. Thought that it wasn't working as I was getting an error 3003.

Diablo 3's open beta stress test has been temporarily capped due to some server stability issues.

"We've temporarily capped Diablo 3 open beta concurrency until we can address some stability issues," Blizzard community manager Bashiok said.
Users can expect Error 37 and login failure when attempting to log in to the Diablo 3 beta. With that being said, if you are seeing Error 3003, click on Options and change your region to "The Americas". Open Beta is limited to U.S. servers only.

http://www.gamezone.com/products/diablo ... ily-capped

Now I can log in :D

[Grimmie]

20 minutes in; Monks are as fun as I thought they'd be.

[Anery]

I'll give this a shot when I get home. I'm deeply divided over the game, although I think I'll probably go for it. A dabble on the demo beta should hopefully cement my resolve one way or the other.

EDIT: Or not, it's this weekend only. Back to waiting for the reviews for me.

I'll DL it and let you have a dabble when you get here

[Joose]

Its been a bit shakey this morning, but it is a stress test so thats to be expected. The short bits ive played are excellent though.

Like most Blizzard games, they have gone for doing the standard formula as good as possible rather than trying anything revolutionary, which means anyone who has played any ARPG before will be comfortable with the control instantly. The visual feedback of zombies and critters being blasted to pieces means its easy to tell what's going on by just looking at the action, and the powers themselves feel satisfying to use. Enemies are appropriately gross, loot gets dropped enough to make you feel you are making progress without feeling like you are being swamped with gubbins, and gold still flies out of bodies like its made out of rubber or something. It colourful and interesting whilst still being gritty and dark (somehow. I'm still not sure how that works.)

Its a bit of a lazy way of summing up games, but I cant think of a better way of saying it: If you enjoyed Diablo 2 when it was new, you will probably enjoy Diablo 3 now. If you like ARPGs, you will probably enjoy D3 a whole bunch. If you have played a few ARPGs in the past and not liked them, this is unlikely to change your mind. It doesn't do anything significantly differently, it just does it really well.

[Dog Pants]

I'll DL it and let you have a dabble when you get here

Nice one, I can see how I like your new mouse too.

[FatherJack]

Played a couple of hours as a Witch Doctor. It's well done and pretty satisfying, I usually get a bit annoyed with fixed-view games as I can't what's just off-screen, but I didn't really find that with this - the enemies and your attack ranges are perfectly matched for the screen size, although my zombie dogs do have a habit of legging it off-screen. What I did get tired of was the repetitive gameplay - two hours is about the max for me before I want to play something else - but the story is good enough that I'd be back for another two hours in a day or so.

I don't know if I was doing it wrong, but I found all the skills but the first ones you got pretty useless - since you have to select them and lock them to the mouse you're kind of forced to stick with the ones that work in every situation. For the Witch Doctor, that was to use grasping hands to slow them, then blast them with poison darts (re)summoning the zombie dogs as required. The other skills were good in some situations, but you have sacrifice one of the primary ones to use them - without grasping hands you are quickly surrounded, and the recharge on the alternative to poison darts was too slow to deal with multiple enemies. Maybe they're meant for one-on-one boss fights once you've dealt with all the secondary mobs.

I don't think it's a must-buy for me, not on day one at least. It'd be nice to own, level a character by jumping into it occasionally and doing a bit of 5punky multiplayer now and then, but it isn't so much better than Titan Quest that I couldn't scratch the itch by playing that instead.

It's certainly more immediate than Titan Quest - that depended quite a bit on you getting really lucky with a drop - in Diablo 3 you get to see a nice variety of enemies, explore quite a few places, interact with the environment, get a bunch of skills, have plenty of decent useable items to equip and see a good chunk of story all within the first few quests of the game. Titan Quest felt like a slow plod through samey locations in comparision, and Torchlight just felt like you were stuck in a loop, only getting a tiny bit further with each iteration.

[Thompy]

I don't know if I was doing it wrong, but I found all the skills but the first ones you got pretty useless - since you have to select them and lock them to the mouse you're kind of forced to stick with the ones that work in every situation. For the Witch Doctor, that was to use grasping hands to slow them, then blast them with poison darts (re)summoning the zombie dogs as required. The other skills were good in some situations, but you have sacrifice one of the primary ones to use them - without grasping hands you are quickly surrounded, and the recharge on the alternative to poison darts was too slow to deal with multiple enemies. Maybe they're meant for one-on-one boss fights once you've dealt with all the secondary mobs.

This perhaps seems too obvious, maybe I'm interpreting you wrongly, but you can assign other skills to 1-4 on the action bar. Initially each of the 6 spell categories is locked to a specific key i.e. MB 1-2 and Key 1-4, but you can select "Elective Mode" in options to put spells where you wish, enabling you to have more than one spell from each category equipped.

[FatherJack]

This perhaps seems too obvious, maybe I'm interpreting you wrongly, but you can assign other skills to 1-4 on the action bar. Initially each of the 6 spell categories is locked to a specific key i.e. MB 1-2 and Key 1-4, but you can select "Elective Mode" in options to put spells where you wish, enabling you to have more than one spell from each category equipped.

I'm only two hours in and have only unlocked Key 1, so with MB 1 and 2 that only gives me three slots to play with, even though I have six skills including my weapon. Elective mode sounds useful once I have more skills to play with, stops it being too restrictive which I was worried about.

[Roman Totale]

I've found it relatively enjoyable so far - played a Demon Hunter and a Barbarian to level 9. I don't normally play Barbarian style classes, but this one is incredible fun for smashing the shit out of things (though I question the decision to give the first primary skill a knockback effect, given that Barbarians rely on giving and receiving damage to build 'rage').

Main problem so far - it's really easy. I know it's only a beta, and only the first level, but I haven't died once. Even the big bosses go down only slightly less quickly than your collective mothers. Still, I reckon it will be fun for multijapery.

[Grimmie]

Allegedly most of the skills and weapons have been beefed up for beta, just for demonstration purposes, and to keep people playing for the stress-test. The real game probably won't be that easy.

I've played a Monk and a Wizzud to level 10 and enjoyed them both thoroughly. Specially like the decision to allow the Wizard to use any weapon whilst casting spells, as spells do a % of weapon damage. No longer stuck with boring staves or single-element wands, you can cast magic missile through your short-sword and carry a shield. Ace.