Thoughts of the Open Beta

[Happy]

Now the Open Beta is closed again how you felt playing D3?
How many chars you tested?
Was D3 like you thought it to be?
Are you missing something?
Was is better than the glorious D2?
Was the Beta long enough (max killing the Skeleton King)?
Did you tried Hardcore chars?
Was is hard enough or was it to easy to play?


Tell me what you think of the Beta.


Here are my answers :

Now the Open Beta is closed again how you felt playing D3?
I felt great! I loved D2 and now finally playing D3.....WOW ^.^ just great!

How many chars you tested?
Because i wasnt able to log in for the whole saturday i just tested the barbarian, the wizzard and the monk.

Was D3 like you thought it to be?
More than 10 years work could be better but the game itself is just great....the atmosthere, the grafics, the sound, it fits ^.^

Are you missing something?
Im missing the skill system of D2. I remember the Ice sorceress, the fire sorceress, the lightning sorceress, the hammer paladin and so on...you had more possibilities to evolve your character. Also it seems that there is no weapon socket system anymore. sadly.

Was is better than the glorious D2?
in some specs definitly yes.....in some definitly no. In total i would say as far as i was able to see D3 its as good as D2 but we'll see.

Was the Beta long enough (max killing the Skeleton King)?
Yes. Short answer^^

Did you tried Hardcore chars?
I tried a hardcore barbarian...somehow it wasnt harder.

Was is hard enough or was it to easy to play?
For me it was much too easy to play. I remember parts of D2 where i could kick my screen through the whole room because i died so many times^^ In D3 i played through with my chars without dying just one time.

 

[tommerbob]

I'll do my review in sections:

Classes

I played all 5 classes to level 13. It was a fun weekend.

Before the open beta, in order of best to worst, my favorite classes were: Demon Hunter, Wizard, Monk, Witch Doctor, Barbarian.

Now that I've played the game, from best to worst: Wizard, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor.

The class that suprised me the most was the Barbarian. I never cared for the Barbarian in D2, but this one was a blast! I love his raw power. I was also suprised by the Demon Hunter. While fun, the class was not nearly as fun as I thought. A lot of the skills did not ring well with me.

Overall, I enjoyed all of the classes. None of them seemed boring to me, although the Witch Doctor was my least favorite.

Skills

After many many hours of playing public games, I rarely found another player who used the same build as me. There could be 4 Barbarians, all only level 10, and they could all have different skill setup. This is a testimony to how effective Blizzard made the new skill system.

Enjoyed the Wizard and Barbarian skills the most. They were powerful, looked cool, and felt satisfying.

The Skill UI is horrible. I swear if they hired a 12 year old to make the UI, he would have done a better job. Its clumsy, bulky, and difficult to navigate. They really dropped the ball on this one.

Skill tooltips could use some work. The simplified tooltips are a total joke, and the advanced tooltips still don't give you all the info you want. They don't show you the actual damage you do.

Loot/Items

No more clobbering all other players for the shiny blues or yellows on the ground. Everyone gets their own drops. One of the best improvements they've done.

The Demon Hunter was most restricted in what weapons he could use, because most of his skills are based on bows/crossbows. Other than that, no complaints.

Parties/Multiplayer

4 players in a game feels like a good number. Even with only 4 players, there were times when the screen became completely cluttered with spells and player minions. It would be chaos with 6 or 8 players.

The Banner system is cool. I liked being able to teleport right to where the other players were.

The Public Games feature needs a lot of work. Its far too restrictive.

I do not like how public my profile is. Anyone can view every detail about my profile. I wish there were ways to restrict access to my profile.

I am also hesitant about the "Quick Join" feature with friends. Its cool to be able to join up with a buddy instantly, but what if I want to play solo for a while? That happened last night. I was enjoying my solitude smashing my axe into demon faces, when a friend-of-a-friend who I added to my friends list randomly joined my game and started playing with me. I was a little put-off by that. There is an option to turn this off, but I wish it wasn't an all-or-nothing feature. I wish it had additional options.

Gold/Currency/Crafting

I love having gold as a solid currency. Finally!

Gold is extremely useful for many different things, and I can definitely foresee "gold find" as being a very useful stat to have on items.

I spent most of my gold on crafting. Its like gambling from Diablo 2 without the frustration. Props to Blizzard on this.

However, I don't like the crafting UI. Its too big. I think it could be simplified a lot without losing any features. This isn't a big complaint, just something I noticed.

Difficulty

It was too easy. Numbingly easy. Blizzard has repeatedly said that Act 1 is basically a "tutorial" for the game, and difficulty will quickly ramp up after Act 1. I just hope they are right.

Graphics

I really like the graphics and art! A lot of people don't like the cartoony style, but I do. The colors are crisp and clear. Really really well done.

The physics are awesome, but the rag-doll effects for slaying monsters is a little overdone.

Servers/Connection

Besides the typical server interruptions that are expected with a stress test, I experienced almost no lag. My connection remained very good almost the whole time. There was one evening (saturday evening I think?) where I couldn't make any games or join games. This was a bug that they fixed, and I was back online within a couple of hours.

How does it compare to Diablo 2?

Far better, in every way I can think of. Diablo 3 actually reminds me a lot more of Diablo 1 than it does of Diablo 2.

I can't wait for May 15!

 

[Jaujarahje]

Did not play too much unfortunately. I played Demon Hunter to lvl 10 and beat it and played Barb to level 5.
As was previously said, way to easy. The only time I died with demon hunter was when lag prevented me from moving, other than that I never got touched.
I played solo the whole time and never did public games so I can't comment on that. But it seems like it would be fun with a party of all different chars.
Loved the beta, wish they offered a harder difficulty, but oh well.
Can't wait for full release

 

[YourFace]

I felt that the open beta shouldn't have been restricted to only Act 1, because if players spend a lot of time and effort getting to act 2 or three, they would have a lot more of a reason to continue and get the game when it comes out.

 

[thewrongvine]

It was cool. Had no effect on whether or not I am buying it (as in I would buy it no matter if the beta was good/bad or if there was no beta at all).

About the difficulty, tommerbob has it right I believe, they said they wanted the beta to be very easy and let people pretty much own everything. I'm not worried about difficulty of the actual game at all, I don't see any reason why anyone should be. If the real game ends up being not challenging enough, I'm sure they'll fix it.

Anyway, the beta was nothing special as a beta, but it served its purpose for both players and Blizzard I'd say.

 

[YourFace]

The beta was kind of a let down, but I don't think players can really judge the game based off of it, unless they hate the gameplay, graphics, etc.