Finally tried the beta, my impressions.

[raveharu]

Thanks to JCBN, I got about 4 hours of playtime and I managed to squeeze in playing a wizard and WD.

Here are my impressions:

Environment is amazing

Throughout the entire play time I felt like I was moving through a dark, gorgeous but gloomy art work.

This certainly brought back memories of when I first started playing D1, it has the similar feel.

Your character feels powerful, destined to be a hero

Despite being only the start of Act 1, the way the skills are designed make you feel like you owned the game.

Arcane Orb, Wave of Force and Fire Bat, despite being low level starting skills, provided swift crowd controls.

Having experience the new resource system, I must say I LOVED it.

Bye silly potion spammage and town heal, I won't miss you.

Monsters are awesome

I particularly like the wretched mother and imp child. Gosh their laughter, creepy.

What stood out were the cries of the dying monsters, yes it reminded me of D1 again.

I cannot wait to see the rest of them, especially the ones in Act 4.

NPCs & Lore

You can still hear the NPCs talking from a distance or when you pass them by. Excellent voice acting btw.

If you loved the Diablo franchise because of it's rich lore and stories, D3 will not disappoint.



Now what I dislike:

Entrances are too flashy

I have no idea why they made all the entrances glow like it's some sort of gateway to heaven.

Makes the entrances look kinda silly in contrast to the dark moody background.

I believed the players are not blind or too stupid to know that it's actually an entrance. Needs to be toned down.

Some mobs dying animations are too flashy

I know Blizzard have great designers but it makes no sense to make every single ghost mob die like Baal.

Again this needs to be toned down, it gets kinda annoying after awhile.

Lack of interaction

I finally understood why some players wanted the old BNET channels back.

The only thing I could look at the menu was my own character, which is nice but it's so... lonely.

I know this was implemented to remove spams but I hope some sort of universal chat system will be implemented, it was one of the unique multiplayer experience for past Diablo games.


Overall I enjoyed the 4 hours immensely and look forward to playing the complete product

[AlexanderBarin]

My feelings as well, when I first got beta awhile ago, nice writeup!

[raveharu]

I forgot to add one more, the monster affixes.

I died to one of the randomly spawned unique mob in a 4 player game in the Den of the Fallen level 2.

It had a molten afffix and wow, I didn't even notice because I was happily charging into them. Big mistake.

I also met a couple unique mobs with teleport, all their minions also had that affix and the moment I was in their range, BAM, they teleported and mobbed my poor wizard.

Can't imagine later difficulties...

[z00t]

I remember in one of the Blizzcons, they were talking about how when you're fighting monsters, you're often too busy fighting them to notice how cool they are. As a result, when they die, it has to be awesome, because that's one of the things you're really going to remember them by .

Just wait till you fight some of those Wood Wraiths for yourself - killing those things is like the best thing ever XD.

Also - you're so lucky to get those Molten dudes! I did sooooooooooooooo many Den of the Fallen runs to try and encounter one, and I've only met them once :(. I got Jailer quite a few times though, and a couple Wallers, but that's it :P.

[raveharu]

Also - you're so lucky to get those Molten dudes! I did sooooooooooooooo many Den of the Fallen runs to try and encounter one, and I've only met them once :(. I got Jailer quite a few times though, and a couple Wallers, but that's it :P.

I didn't even notice the molten affix until I died and noticed the ground turning into lava.

Now I get why these random unique packs drop the best loot, you have to be really alert and kill them fast, if not...

[HardRock]

I know Blizzard have great designers but it makes no sense to make every single ghost mob die like Baal. Again this needs to be toned down, it gets kinda annoying after awhile.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Remember the Oblivion Knights from D1? They are my favorite monsters ever, possibly out of all RPGs I played, simply because of their death animation and sound. I can still hear them clearly in my head and I haven't played D1 in years. I think Blizzard should strive to make all important monster deaths that epic.

[ADest]

Say whut, Raveharu, the most ardent defender of D3 hadn't even played beta yet!? lol, congrats on finally getting some play time. Yeah, JCBN is awesome like that. I got some patch 14 play time through him. I hope there'll still be people there on #Town-Portal when the game launches for trades and stuff. I never really got into online play of D2, so I thought I might as well give it a try with D3, since it's not like Blizz is giving us a choice.

[Curik]

You can still hear the NPCs talking from a distance or when you pass them by. Excellent voice acting btw.
If you loved the Diablo franchise because of it's rich lore and stories, D3 will not disappoint.

Haha, is this a joke? The first part is subjective, I disagree that the voice acting is anything special but it's a matter of taste.
But the Diablo franchise being known for it's lore and story has to be the funniest part on the forums today.

[starrise]

But the Diablo franchise being known for it's lore and story has to be the funniest part on the forums today.

You must have never read the Diablo 1 manual, then.

[HardRock]

Sadly, I have to agree with Curik. In my experience many people know Diablo as "that game in which you click a lot" and not because of the story. It's a shame really, because I think that the story of Diablo is one of the most unique fantasy tales I've seen and it's a highlight of the series for me.