Free Diablo 3 open beta this weekend.

Diablo® III Open Beta Weekend - Diablo III

 

I'm starting to wonder if the bug actually was all about getting attention (read: intentional). Either way it seems like those of that didn't get access the first time around finally get a chance, so I'm happy.

 

I am so excited. Gotto order few pizzas in advance for the evening xD

 

dont forget the red bulls!

 

I think this would have gotten the same amount of attention, but more positive without the bug. The only people who cared about the bug would have been people who were interested in the diablo 3 beta anyway.

I figure they intended to open this weekend but accidentally opened the flood gates.

 

what bug?
10chars

 

There was a problem with them letting everyone in early so they braught the servers down to fix it.

 

The Tera beta is doing rather well at the moment (number of people)... I wonder if Blizzard is trying to rain on their parade by dropping the d3 open beta the same weekend as the Tera open beta...

I have no doubt both will be/are amazing games, but to me it seems like they are feeling a bit threatened... Main reason I say this is due to the really late notice... IMHO if it was a for sure thing they would have announced it maybe a week ago so people could have been building hype this entire time...

Hmmm... Oh well. Have fun beating up on demons everyone!

ps... Red bull is meh, Monster is the gamer's energy drink.

 

I really doubt Tera is a threat to blizzard at any level of imagination.
Sure people will buy it, but they will play for few months and forget.

 

I think the bug earlier was them internally testing this and accidentally putting it live. They probably had no idea if they could give beta to every account and not have the system crater, so they tested, but accidentally let it go live.

Anyway, good news for people who want to try it out, not like I haven't had the collectors pre-ordered for 6 months. For everyone, don't get your hopes up too high, the beta is like 45 minutes long.

 

This is the time I REALLY HATE MYSELF for not having a laptop . I a need IB laptop now!!

 

I don't know about "threat" as the two games are different in nature.

Obviously the two games might have common audiences where they must choose to play one or the other, but those people will likely play both.

One is a social game in a persistant world, the other is a hack-n-slash effectively single-player game for anyone with a mental age over 11.
(battle.net makes up the worst community in all of computer multiplayer)

So for instance, if you feel like a social game to meet new people... Tera, or a game like it. If you feel like single-player or "meet a RL friend online for a quick dungeon-hack"... Diablo3.

I sincerely doubt Tera will be forgotten so quickly.

 

Anyone else getting connection error 3003? :/ can't seem to login

 

hehe beta stress test ftw!

"Dagnabbit blizzardadmin2, I told you we needed to upgrade to handle the higher load! Perhaps we should use TWO hamsters to run the servers?"

 

Keep getting random errors -
You have been disconnected from the Battle.Net service
Too much load on servers
Battle.Net down for maintenance

 

All that most of us are are people giving Battle.net server stress by trying to connect to the damn servers, I doubt many of us will be actually getting into a stable game, not until Sunday evening at least.

 

I just found out my current five-year old desktop is not capable of running D3. My video card does not meet the minimum specs. Hopefully in a few weeks I can buy a laptop.

 

By stress test, do they mean "Let's see what happens when we put more people in a server then it was designed for?'

 

^this
10chars

 

So how did someone discover that bug which let him login? Either it was inside info leaked by someone from blizz or someone was trying to hack accounts and successfully logged in.

 

Isn't this game coming out in a month or 2 anyway?

 

One month minus five days.

 

It wasn't anything special, just a few days ago for a few hours anyone with a Bnet account could log onto the beta.

It was basically just like now, except Blizzard had not said it was an event or anything, and they killed it after a few hours.

 

Meh tried it for about 30 mins...the lack of character building / complexity really makes it feel like any other linear RPG.

 

it feels so much different then d2, doesn't feel like it'll be as addictive as d2

 

Agreed. They took out almost ALL the vital "addictive" RPG elements that made D2 so great and lasted so long. Sure it's gonna be a fantastic game, but it'd be hard-pressed to even last a quarter as long as Diablo II did (and still does).

They went over-the-board with streamlining Diablo III, simply put.

 

Omg I played for a few minutes. Is anyone getting intermittent lag? I thought my laptop could handle it on like medium ish settings but it is stupidly choppy. I wonder if this is server issues or what. I have everything to high and shadows off. Shadows on low gets my fps down from 45-60 to like barely 30 but lags like hell after. Is it really that bad? Or is there more optimization/new drivers needed for better gameplay?

http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/video-card-support-for-diablo-iii

The GTS 360m is also on their list of high performance D:

 

Damnit! Why didnt they announce this a week sooner...
I just sold off my P150HM and the P170EM wont be coming till after the 29th!
I guess ill have to try running it on a NVS 4200...
Want to see if D3 will be worth buying with them taking out all the good stuff (stats and skill points, which were the main deal for me to make completely customised chars).

 

im so thankful for this beta. played it for couple hours, never played any game like this before so didnt think i would like it. but its absolutely brilliant.
blizzard you have a day one buy right here. thank god for the open beta

 

I just beat the BETA on the Witch Doctor.

What a disappointing game. It feels so simple and easy, there's absolutely no challenge at all. No deaths, no potions used and I could easily take on 20+ mobs solo with zero trouble. I'd aggro 4-5 rooms purposely to make it more challenging but it just ended up still being easy.

I placed so much hope into this game and put my expectations high. I don't think I've ever been let down this much by a game before.

Issues:

1) Talents - Not diverse at all. You're given the option to select a new ability, however due to very limited choices, the points are already pre-determined for the most part. You get NO talent tree like those found in WoW, SWTOR, Rift, etc. You get some half-as* tree that is not unique at all. Picture 1/4 of the WoW/swtor/rift talents per character (maybe less) and that's your total talent selection.

2) Stats - I went into the game thinking I could customize my own stats, but discovered that this option was removed/stopped because it was too complex for new players? Really?

3) Bindings - Extremely poor binding selection. You're basically forced to use what's already been assigned with limited customization.

4) Ability UI Bar - It feels like I'm playing a hero from a Starcraft 2 custom game with limited abilities. Very poorly made. 6 abilities total on your bars? Really? So 2 mouse clicks and 1-4, that's it. If you want to use other spells, you have to manually open a UI and rotate them, because God forbid someone gets a brain aneurysm from using more than 6 abilities in a video game.

5) Chat Interface - A couple notches below the standard MMO quality. You can't even customize your chat boxes!

I could go on, but there's a picture of what to expect.

It's like Blizzard is marketing this game for people with no brain. We have a game that's taken what, 8-10 years to make and this is what we get? A watered down kiddy game with no skill and no customization.

Diablo 3 = Dynasty Warriors
(button mashing a small selection of abilities with barely any customization - It's fun for the first hour, that's it)

Diablo 2 was MUCH, MUCH better. I'm going to re-evaluate whether I purchase this game or not, because as it stands, It's so mindnumbingly boring, that I just don't think I have it in me to invest levelling time into this. I'm a big Blizzard fan and this the biggest disappointment I've seen from them.

--

Is it just the BETA that is watered down this bad or can I expect the retail to be the same, guys? Friends were telling me that they removed the skills selection and big talent trees to make it more appealing to the masses = /

Anyways, there's my personal opinion of the game - let's keep it at that

 

Skill choice will open up as you level more since 1) the skill pool will increase in size and 2) "skill rune" pool for each skill will be unlocked more.

However the lack of permanent RPG character customizations are good as gone; ditto with the key-binding. It's almost as though they want to optimize this for console control format with minimal hotkeys / key-mapping / character customizations, but I'm not sure if that was there intention or they just wanted to streamline the game to oblivion. Either way the results are the same, which is this mess.

I really love the game's sound and looks though, shame those are coupled to such a shallow core gameplay.

 

I couldnt sum it up better. After just 30 minutes of gameplay i felt as if id been turned into a braindead zombie.
Dont get me wrong, im an old Blizzard fan (played and loved everything from the first Warcraft and Starcraft, the Diablo series and even tried WoW, which isnt really my thing but it was something entirely new and revolutionary at the time) but this game just left me utterly dissapointed. I doubt ill buy it at all, maby in a few years when its selling for a few bucks on sale somewhere just for the sake of owning the entire series...

 

Hey speaking of that, D2 ladder is resetting again a week before D3 release, any of you wanna hook up and try a ladder run on hardcore mode?

 

i can't logon getting error 31500 saying my account info is wrong

but its right!

 

Still a problem, most people can't log on at all.. neither can I now...

 

@People logging in for the first time and having issues:
For those having a log in issue, you have to create a battletag in your bnet account and then return to the D3 login screen - your email/PW will then work.

@Others
I just tried logging in at this very moment and it works fine - it took two attempts (first was busy server). Try and try again

 

^ yea voodooi i have tried that, also tried creating a new bnet account / battle tag...changing my password on the existing one...nothing works

 

error 37 keeps popping up. Says server's too busy. I guess the server's being hammered by a lot of players at the moment.

 

Server is up now and seems to be doing ok.

On a side note, I thought there was a way to sell junk without going back to town...I can't figure it out.

 

Grab dealy + dogs = insta win.

 

I love playing as a Monk. But yeah, no skill/attribute points suck. They really dumbed down the game! Its too easy!! I hope the retail version is diffrent..

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

I think one thing you all need to keep in mind is that the ENTIRE NORMAL CAMPAIGN is considered by Blizzard to be the tutorial. By the end of the beta you don't even have half of the types of skills unlocked, you haven't even scratched the surface of things like crafting, runes, etc.

The normal campaign is supposed to be easy, and it is supposed to slowly introduce all the mechanics and get the player comfortable with the class and the game. The developers have said that difficulty doesn't really start until Nightmare and Hell, but then it ramps up extremely fast.

Personally, I am glad they have eliminated the superficial fake complexity like attribute points and talents. They really added nothing, D2 basically came down to looking up the mathematically best build online and then building a character to follow the cookie cutter. With the new system everyone will have the same core character, and it will come down to skill, usage, and gear to decide who is better. Rather than who spent 100 hours leveling a perfect min-max cookie cutter character up.

I can't wait, I thought the Barbarian was the most fun to play, and I am looking forward to getting the game on May 15th. I am also interested to see how the cash auction house will work, it is a neat idea, and if it actually works well then it could be a really fun and addicting part of the game.

 

I watch my bro play last night, the d2 feel is retained fine imo. I have no issue about difficulty as it is so easy to twist.
Remember the black soul with physical/light/cold dmg immune right after expansion.

The lack of channel and auto group(not sure, but thats what my bro telling me) is kind of weird though.

D2 never lies on attribute and skill. If someone have to look online to distribute stat then the guy probably fail in the game(pvp, as pve is a joke and unbalanced) . It is all on item properties : ias/fhr/fcr/mbr/dr/res/hp. And you cant just "max" everything as there are trade-offs.

Imo, it would be great if they lock the game to 30fps and bring back the math.

edit: guess i cant read,disagree to agree LOL, now I read it once more, I am seme agree/disagree ~~
D2 had always been gear/skill based. not attributes and talents.
Also if you are legit, heading lvl 98(actually 99 even) probably take less time to gather 1 runeword.

 

I like how people think that normal should be super difficult.....

This is not a BETA. This is a STRESS TEST with the word beta thrown in.

 

nowadays, difficulty for most mmorpg = numbers. add few 0 behind the hp bar /damage = super duper difficult?

Was D2 really a PvE game?(For some it is, for long term player, probably not) nope, MF is not equal to PvE.

 

Nope. There are tons of varied builds that are much more fun to build than the cookie-cutter hammerdin/meteorb/wind druids. The bulk of players were just too lazy to explore them.

And saying that stats/skill points are "superficial fake complexity" that made sense to be removed in D3 is just absurd. These customization systems work GREAT in countless other RPGs and MMORPGs, Diablo II just didn't implement / balance them well. Instead of refining them and making Diablo III a worthy sequel, they just cut them out, dumbing down the game than is needed be.

Heck I could probably formulate a quick balance tweak to how stats / skill points could work in Diablo III as opposed to Diablo II in 10 minutes if I wanted to.

Truth is this Diablo III dev team's iteration philosophy is fundamentally flawed. When they encounter a feature or system that needs to be tweaked, instead of trying their hardest to make it great, they scrap it if it even has the slightest hint of issues or over-complication. Over time they "iterated" away a whole list of classical RPG mechanics, and the game now feels like a shell of what it should be.

 

As someone who never got into diablo 2 (I tried a few times), I found this game to be dreadfully boring.

It was way too easy. The graphics are very unimpressive. Nothing made me want to continue the game.

 

Just tried the beta. They dumbed down too much!! No attribute points? No skill trees? No significant improvement in graphics. Not sure if I want to buy the game yet.

 

The real question for you is, disregarding any time-related differences (e.g. graphics), how do you feel about Diablo II vs Diablo III gameplay / character building?

 

Now we play the waiting game. Been d/l it for like 4 hours, just a bit more to go.