D3 Moves to open beta (in Off-topic)

That's right folks, today at noon PDT Diablo 3 is opening the beta to the public, only requirement is a battle.net account. So to all of you, like me, who didn't get an invite, get moving!

Oh, and I forgot to say, it's only open for this weekend, so take advantage of it while you can!

so much D3 posts.. makes me think that I'm the only one that finds Diablo not really so.. special.

While I thought D1 and D2 were completely awesome, I am leaning more towards you with D3 Q. I'm still trying to decide if I want to get D3 or not.

That being said, if anyone wants to do some multiplayer this afternoon, I'll be up for playing.

I feel like they took too long time make a third one.

Their time came and went.

Not to mention they dumbed it down so much it might as well be a facebook game.

How so? I haven't been keeping up with it or seen any game play.

No skill or stat points and spell damage (even wizard's spells) based off of weapon damage (i.e. a 2 handed axe will make you do more damage than say a wand) are good places to start.

No skill or stat points? Then what is the point of the game?

To beat the bad guys of course :)

So, anyone playing?

No, they've capped the servers atm, so can't get in... But i will keep trying...

Been playing all evening.

Not sure I'd have bought D3, seems like it should have been release at least 5 years ago.

But was fun.

Kinda boring SP, a lot more fun MP with friends.

Oh well, I get it for free anyway. ;)

Played 3 Hrs... Beat the demo... Hope they polish the graphics up a bit before release, but all in all it is Diablo with all that entails... Some new twists, but pure hack and slash collect the loot gaming...

After the Open Beta Weekend, I would like to sum up D3 with the following;

Style over substance

D3 looks amazing, and has a lovely atmosphere.

But Blizzard decided to remove literally every aspect of interaction in the game to produce the worlds most dumbed down 'action-rpg' game ever hyped.

Have 4 utility abilities. Spam your big hitting resource using ability. When you can't do that any more, spam your no cost resource building ability.

Rinse, repeat, as you make a 4 level run to get some rather meaningless loot for your character. Loot that is so generic, you can and should use whatever you get, that just gives more than what you're using now.

The charcaters are little more than visual differences to each other, and stats and abilities don't really matter.

Just keep spamming on those massive AoE packs, and grinding your mostly useless gear! (Becuase it's great fun to see enemies spewing masses of useless grey/white items! Ifthey didn't your players would realise how limited the gameplay actually is!!!).

GG Blizzard, you've really hammered the last nail into the coffin of the Diablo series.

I expect a game like D3 to be able to be downloaded for free over something like PSN/XBow Live/Steam these days.

But, hey, at least I'm getting it for free.

I feel sorry for the folks that are waiting to spend money on this game.

:(

Oh, I'll leave you all with;

>25 Kills! MASSACRE!!! +20XP

>YOU'VE DESTORYED 6 OBJECTS!!!

I played through the beta 4.5 times quickly (sorry Witch Doctor, ran out of time), and it definitely felt like a Diablo game, and had some nice touches. It does feel a year or three out of date (probably because it took them damn near forever to finish it.) The dumbing down is annoying, though that is slightly (SLIGHTLY) offset by the "instant respecs" that enables instead. That being said, this is not a day 1 purchase for me, primarily due to the ridiculous battle.net always-online requirement for single player.

I'm looking forward to Torchlight 2 much more, and they've done it the right way -- embraced modding, no stupid DRM, not trying to build a cash cow with an auction house, and just $20 again.

Now that the open beta is over... back to Legend of Grimrock. (=

After having access do the D3 beta for a few months now, and being a massive fan of the first two games, I'm thoroughly disappointed to say the least.

I want to meet Jay Wilson in person just to tell him he ruined the franchise for any diehard fan of the first two, and that he's worse then Peter Molyneux in regards to hyping up this game so much, when utterly disgraces what the franchise is known and loved for in the first place.

They wasted the last 10+ years to perfect garbage, congrats Blizzard, you never cease to amaze me.

"Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation. The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III."

Know what I say to that? Good you made a game that should've been ready for release in '08 and now you are finally releasing it 4 years later after dumbing it down as much as you possibly could. Bravo Blizzard, bravo.

As a former diehard blizzard fan, I take this as yet another slap in the face, all the while they are still holding out their other
hand ready and willing to take everyone's money.

I was actually relatively excited for the game when I first got to play the beta, then they introduced the last few patches that changed pretty much everything that was known about the game at that point. All the new stuff I found enjoyable about the newest version Diablo was taken out and the combat system was completely whittled down to being utterly pointless.

I didn't feel as harshly as some about the Beta, but I do feel like they dumbed it down to the point of sapping some fun out of it... and killing your ability to customize, but I had fun playing and I'm sure I'll still play it a lot...

I completely agree with gl and xeno, as i said earlier, the dumbing down is terrible. Its sad when the diablo characters are as customizeable as call of duty characters. Its no longer an RPG imo, just a 3rd person action game.

GL, are you one that was suckered in with the annual wow pass? ''D3 for free...''?? LOL

apparently there is an option that allows you to customize the skills a bit more... don't remember what it's called but still don't think you get to delegate exp points...

found info

"You may already be fuming because you're a "difficult to masterﾔ type of person, but before you run to the forums, we have you covered. In the Gameplay options, we've added an "Elective Mode" for the skill system. With this checkbox ticked you'll be able to place any skill in any skill slot, as freely as you could before. The Elective Mode option is available at any time with no requirements or need to unlock it."

this quote is from this post

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4475014/Skill_and_Rune_Changes-2_18_2012

so not ALL hope is lost...

Oh I used Elective mode.

It's still useless. As all classes only want;

1 Big hitting resources spender.
1 No cost Resource generator.
0-4 Utlity skills.


LoL

I've played WoW since vanilla. ;) I will be playing for the next year, and am waiting for MoP (while raging about the dumbed down 'talents'). So the AP was nothing by freebies for me.

I wasn't going to buy D3 anyway, before I tried the Beta. This way, I get it to act as a pre MoP content patch for WoW. ;)

Blame Activision, that's what I do.

^ Oh I do blame Activision far more then I actually blame Blizzard, but at the end of the day Blizzard's employees still are the one's actually making the game itself. They did not have to dumb the game down to the point that they did, the game still would have sold phenomenally well regardless, and in my opinion probably would sell BETTER if it were more closely related to it's former two installments.

And that elective mode is a crock, "Oh so I can actually change which keys my skills are linked to by default.. Awesome.. except well.. that still changes nothing."

For all of you that are interested... Here is an interesting link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVTVMqtmxPU

Titled: Why Skill Points were removed with Jay Wilson

^ I've seen every Jay Wilson interview, as a player I still disagree with him, the same thing has been achieved through Re-specs alone in a vast number of Diablo 2 mods over the years that allowed for complete on the fly experimentation and complete character customization.

All they did was make an extremely dumbed down version of the same thing.

Yup.

Ever since the first D1 Character Editor came into being, you were able to reset your sills. Among other things. ;)

That it took Blizzard 10 years to patch it into D2, well, that shoud speak volumes.

Blizzard *intentionally* left respecing out of D1/2, in order to increase the grind by forcing players to recreate and relevel a new toon if they wanted to try a different build.

That sort of forced grind doesn't fly any more. You can't extend the lifespan of your game by these artifical means these days.

Basically I've come to terms with this, game companies want to sell their games to everyone. So, they take already existing great game franchises, and know that it has a strong base. Then, they make the game easier, take less time, and put less effort into it so they can maximize their profits. Basically ruining everything that the base fell in love with.

And by game companies, I mean publishers. Actual game dev companies are awesome; they're just forced to play ball or quit the game.

The new WoW talents aren't dumbed down.

I could go into a long discussion or explanatory post about why that is, but eh.

The current talent trees are 100% mandatory. It requires zero thought to armory some top player and copy exactly what they're doing. Nothing could be more dumbed down than the current system of "Wait for the theorycrafters to tell you what's best, then do that for a year and a half until next expansion."

if you guys are looking for character customization then try out
Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Oh and it's free to play now as well.

^ I played DDO for awhile, while I did find it to be enjoyable, I'm kind of over MMO's right now. Plus its F2P within limits, there is a whole slew of content not available to the free players that must be paid for.

Now I'm not knocking the idea of micro-transactions at all but if I'm going to play an MMO that has them, I'd rather they be for extremely superficial things, then actual dungeons/quests that you can't normally do otherwise.

And yes I know you can technically earn points in-game to buy things from the store as well, but it would take an absurd amount of time to buy all the adventure packs they have available in that fashion.

;)

You don't want to go here.

While the current trees are bad, and have failed at thier pre cata original design (remove boring passives, give real choice), there actually is choice.

I'll use Frost DKs as an example.

Ignoreing the basic swap of DW to 2H (NoCS+ToT - 6 points, or MotFW - 3 points) there are at least 4 different builds, two within the restricted structure of 31 Frost, and 2 without.

Do you choose to work towards Sudden Doom, or Desceration? Do you build a Mastery Based HB spam set up (which ignores the Glyph of Obliterate, Rime and Annihalation), or do you stick with the old faithful Oblterate Build?

Sudden Doom is more useful for dealing with Healers (and Dual Weilding), while Descecration is more useful to a 2H Build (more NS) than Sudden Doom is. Then there's the choice of PResence you run either in, which also effects your build.

Now, with the Current MoP patch, the Talents are bland, cookie cutter, or make no impact.

My Post formt he Beta Boards;

The DK Talents have become blander, with what I feel to be obvious choices each tier.

Tier 1

Unholy Blight.

Rolling Blood is next to useless, and the new Plague Leech is /meh. Kind of like a Warlocks Soul Swap, we can remove FF/BP and recharge a random fully depleted rune as a Death Rune. I can see this trying to be squeezed in as your diseases are aobut to fall off, but we're based around having them up, so we'll need to reapply them anyway. And trading a GCD for a Death Rune, doesn't seem to be that great.

Tier 2

Lichbourne (PvP) / Purgatory

Lichbourne is a solid PvP choice (and it allways allowed Death Coil to heal you) and AMZ is a Raid Cooldown. But I see the new Talent Purgatory being the go to choice here. 3 Seconds of more DPS, with the potential to save you from death. Too good to pass.

Tier 3

Death's Advance (PvP) / Aspyxiate

Buffed so you can never be snared. WooT. Chilblains is nice, but why Snare on FF, when we've got CoI and the option for another AoE snare (see Tier 6). Aspyxiate is good, a bonus for PvE, where snares don't really matter.

Tier 4

Conversion

Death Pact is good, but only for Unholy. Death Siphon is also good, but tied to Death Runes. Conversion, with no cooldown, will be the go to heal. Anytime you have excess RP (or are playing Frost...) fire up conversion.

Tier 5

Runic Couruption.

Blood Tap is still bad, and R.E. suffers form the RNG fail it always has.

Tier 6

Remorseless Winter

Do you want an AoE DG? Maybe. A 2 Min immunity to CC might be good in PvP. If your opponents don't just LoS you round a pillar, as you can't leave the AoE. But an AoE Sanre/Stun, on a 1 min coodown, coupled with being immune to snares (Deaths Advance). The choice. As for PvE, /meh.

Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I left 'nilla WoW around 1.9 to try out DDO.

It wasn't anything close to "the closest to a PnP game of D&D you can get on your PC" and was just a bad WoW wanna bee, with actually even less 'roleplaying' then WoW.

Back then WoW had factions you could choose in game (Goblins versus Bloodsail buccaneers) that actually made an impact in game.

And the second quest my *Paladin* had was to break into a warehouse and steal a gem.

Really.

A Lawful Good Paladin, breaking and entering and stealing someone elses Property...

GG DOO, GG.

Oh and as for the new MoP Talents.

Some tiers are pure PvP Talents, which are meaningless for you if you PvE.

You might just as well not put a point into them, for the use and impact they will make.

But But GL... don't you see the rating on wow is what 14+ if not higher....!!? We must cut it down to only 9 talent points so people have to pick them very carefully and a 6 year old could set up the talent tree... after all cookie cutter = best in game yes!!? (rollseyes) Sadly, that's their entire thought behind it with 72 points you could fill A talent point tree plus half of another... with current points (i forgetted how many there are upon posting this) you can fill A tree and a few more in either of the other 2 trees = bad... but with 9 well now your EXTREMELY limited on what you choose to use... however i'm still of the opinion blizzard needs to refund gold :D (mount training including flying, all the talent training that will now magically just happen of MoP no more ability trainers (i guess they can't afford to pay those NPCs anymore...!!?) and let's not forget LFR - Looking for yeah i can't be nice and finish that cause i'm not going to say ''raid'' LOL :D

That interview vid makes me sad, "mass dumping of points" did not occur in D2 either, they were limited to 1 point per level starting at the skill lvl req.

He also talks about people only getting the high level skills, but this was not an issue in D2 either. With the introduction of synergies, it was entirely possible to create good characters using lower level skills.

Also, "no going to a website to find character builds" because all the characters are the same, no customization whatsoever.

I think its been so long since he played D2 that he forgot these were not problems in D2.

After having played the beta, I honestly feel that I had a more customizable character in CoD than D3, which is just sad.

Nah, it's Blizzards Devs inability to create enough exciting (and not pure passive) Talents *and* be able to balance them, that led to the removal of the Trees.

Nothing more. Everything else is just a PR whitewash.

:(

/sadpanda

I think blizzard is currently making all of us sad pandas :(

If you want a very simple Diablo-esque game to try on the cheap, Torchlight II opened for pre-order yesterday... Only 19.99 and you get Torchlight (the original) for free with it.

They even offer a pre-order four-pack (with the fourth free) so you could party with your friends for the price of one copy of D3. *smile*

I enjoyed Torchlight, was just nice to have something on the Mac (T2 will be a bit before they get the Mac release off the ground, and no hard release date has been established yet for T2 on Windows...).

I put something like 80-90 hours into Torchlight and that was without any multi-player. You can build a right army of conjured skeleton followers and your pet. Not sure how T2 will be as far as classes and customizability, I just know there is more of it than the first (only three classes in T1...) Gem system is kind of fun too, though gets tedious after a while (as most of those types of things do).

Anyway, if D3 has been dumbed down such that something like Torchlight offers similar customizing, you can't really beat the 19.99 price tag...

I've never tried Torchlight. :(

You should give it a try... Comes free with the 19.99 pre-order of T2, or I am sure it is down to five or ten bucks now on steam... It's enjoyable, even if the graphics tend slightly more toward the cartoon-y...

Even had a "hardcore" mode where when you die, you die -- all the way. Have to start another character if you play in that mode. *smile*

I'm actually a huge fan of torchlight and I will be snagging T2 as soon as I can.

cool, so we have some people for multiplayer then? :) Fastest twenty I dropped all year the day this went on pre-order.

D3 is out... and I do like torchlight, but I still love diablo also...

I pre-ordered TL2 as well. Been playing the Path of Exile closed beta, it seems closer to what D3 should have been.