Did anyone have a truly engaging or enjoyable social experience this weekend?

[snifsnif]

I loved the game play, but found my self not typing anything to anyone at all during the 8 or so hours that i was able to play in the open beta this weekend. Was it just my timid nature, perhaps my desire to learn and experience as much as possible using all of the 5 classes as extensively as I could that stunted my ability to relax, sit back, and try to develop a social side to the game? Did anyone meet anyone really cool or helpful that they are going to look up after launch? Was anyone given a great weapon or piece if armor that could have otherwise been salvaged for the givers benefit? it was this aspect of the d2 community that I got addicted to, not just the game play. I know it was a short and crazy open beta weekend, but were there any glimpses of a socially immersive game capable of supporting a community as dynamic as d2 was?

[Kiroptus]

Well i did talk to some people, but there was no need to coop or ask for weapons, everything was so easy, I guess that also contributed to this.

I think normal difficulty will be played solo due to how easy it is, we might have more social and coop experiences on later difficulties.

[megacoffee]

Nope. All I saw were DHs and barbs vaulting and leaping ahead and destroying everything with no concern for the rest of the group, insta-skipping of cutscenes even with lowbies in the game who might not have seen them, and people instantly picking up cross-class gear that someone kindly dropped for someone who may actually need it. I found it fascinating how some people were obsessed with loot knowing the beta would only last the weekend.

[bazinga]

It was barely sociable. No one talked, felt like I was playing with really smart NPCs.

[OldDirtyNapkin]

Its been that way since I started closed beta back in about Oct '11. On the very low end of all my games, I'll get whirled up and start to feed another guy who picksup on it and finally there is some fun convo. Its just hard with text anymore. I think we'll want voice options before expansion hits - of course having text preserves the ambiance, sounds and music.

I think the pace may slow in some "town returns" for ppl to actively trade, or talk about that "one" hard boss or crazy mob you just squished.

[jarpy]

I don't think the in-game chat interface helps at all. With default settings, chat can get drowned in a wash of game messages. It occurred to me mid-game that people might have actually said something, but it had been scrolled off the screen by Leah's rantings.

Players (real people) deserve to have their chat be more noticeable than a fragment of NPC dialogue.

[The Magic]

It was barely sociable. No one talked, felt like I was playing with really smart NPCs.

It seemed like many were less intelligent than the NPCs in the games I was in. At one point, the 3 other people died to a mob. And i use the term mob loosely.

[kRIMBO]

We talk in-game or real life? lmao!
I played a lot of this beta.

I tried making conversation in every public game I joined. Usually like; 'So how are you guys enjoying the beta so far?' and didn't get any responses the whole weekend. And i've maxed 2 characters and got level 9 on the rest. In the last half a day of beta I asked 'So have you guys decided on your favourite character yet?' and got very little response also. It sucks that people can't stop for 5 seconds and type a message which they read and processed in their head. It takes no effort to reply to someone in the game chat.

[konfeta]

Heh, this is the reason why I want better chat channels. Hell, even something like WoW or Path of Exile would work - I find that playing solo while chatting with other people preferable to all other permutations of multi-play.

[Andy2702]

I played with my roommate. He never played Diablo before. It was fun.

Looking back, I may have unknowingly and subconsciously tried to hook him into the series by over-hyping stuff during our play-through, i.e. "damn that grotesque is **** nasty man..." or "wow arcane orb is so sick..." /facepalm


But in public games? I never took my index finger off the left mouse button. I was panting harder than my wizard at one point, trying to keep up.

EDIT: People just don't look at the bottom left of the screen when there's so much action and visuals elsewhere.