Diablo III – Closed beta impressions

written by Jarvis Dale on 24.10.11

After 11 years of waiting what seems like an eternity, Diablo 3 is now knocking on the doors of anticipation, scratching at the people who have been eagerly waiting for this game with myself being one.  Boy, it’s been a long wait.

A lot of people are asking the question “Has it been worth it?”  Well, in a nutshell, yes it has.

The graphics have obviously improved with a new engine design but Blizzard’s focus has also been on playability as well as listening to their community and improving the replay value as well as the more tiring aspects like loot hunting. Much like modern games that have copied Diablo’s schematics like borderlands it’s the wanting of better equipment that keeps you coming back for more and Diablo III has again hit the nail on the head.  Diablo III has kept the essence of what made this franchise great and married it with a number of key changes that will surely have a mixed response given the anticipation of the title.  The following notes have been taken from the closed beta and will not necessarily be part of the finished product in their current form.

SINGLE PLAYER

Single player is now only online, as no offline game is currently showing available. You now have a stash that is interchangeable with all of your characters, so those old muleing days where you have to have two copies of the game running to keep a game open and give stuff to your mule are now numbered. Although some people may start to utilise some of their other characters for extra storage from the main stash this creates the much more flexible approach as you no longer have to have multiple accounts active at once.

MULITIPLAYER

All loot that is now dropped is now yours only.  None of the other people in your game can see the loot on your screen. Gone are the days of scrambling to be the first person to click on that unique drop you’ve been hunting down for ages.

Party systems have  now been adapted so that when you enter the party/game you are automatically in the party and don’t have the rigorous activity to ask for an invite. Supposedly PvP is different and possibly will be arena based but none of this is available on beta at present.

Also, when reaching an end boss, if one of your party is there and ready for battle then a pop up comes up to allow you to teleport to them directly and allowing all to take part in the fight as well. You can decline if you want but you will be unable to enter the boss area if you do this.

Searching for games can be done by quest as you join that game based on what quest is active at the time so there are no worries about joining a game that says “act one new” like in D2 and you get in the game with people are at act 3 and can’t complete the quest because it’s already complete.  D3 does away with this by putting you in a game where other people are on the same quest.

You can still play a private game on your own or with friends and seeing who is doing what and where can be viewed on your login screen when going online.

TRADING

Trading is now a lot easier than D2 as they have now got an auction house which makes better use of cash, as cash in D2 was pretty useless as you only needed it to repair and buy a merc predominantly.  As so much gear dropped you didn’t really need money unless gambling which didn’t prove to be an affective use of money. It’s similar to the WOW auction house as it looks like they have taken the best aspects of that across to Diablo 3. There are rumours there might be a real money auction house but these are currently rumours and also will not be available on hard core as this will only have a normal auction house.

CRAFTING

Although there is talk of weapons having jewels that have effects on weapons in various ways like bouncing bombs and multiple arc of lightning. I haven’t come across as level cap was 13 and only act 1 normal. You now have no teleportal scrolls/tomb instead you have a recall stone which you have permanently and is used in the same way and the Horadaric cube is replaced by two things a cauldron of jordan and a Nephalem Cube. The cauldron sells stuff for the same price as shops so no need to pick and choose loot, now you can sell it all on your travels. Also you can break down materials with the cube for raw materials for crafting. Obviously the higher the level of equipment the higher/more raw materials you can get back.

You now have Artisans who craft for you; I was only available to use the blacksmith. You level up the blacksmith by finding pages of training and giving the blacksmith 5 of these in a tomb of training to read with a small cost of currency which increases with the level of the blacksmith. Also visually as you level the blacksmith on his screen his shop looks different. As the blacksmith levels up so do the more craftable items become available to craft, once you have the money and materials. The craftable items were up to rare levels so far from what’s been seen on beta no unique or set items to be found or crafted other than one sword.

LEVELING UP

Unlike D2 the levelling system currently doesn’t allow you to put points in stats like strength, vitality, these automatically increase with the player level and as levels are gained skills are unlocked for offensive and passive.

You now get a passive skill as well at designated levels and have a total of 6 active Skill slots which again unlock at certain levels. So you no longer put skill points on specific skills as the main differences will be through possibly gear worn and the ability changes crafted into the gear.

SMALL ADD ONS

Any old school golden axe fans will like one of the add ons, as every so often you get an imp to chase who drops stuff when you hit it, much like in golden axe in between missions at rest point.

Also you get a handy companion who picks up all nearby gold when you find scrolls for the companion. It varies in creature type, it can’t attack but useful if you forget to pick up gold close by, also you now auto pick up gold rather than having to click on it, although you still have to click on item drops.

CHARACTERS

There are 5 character classes available monk, barbarian, witch doctor, wizard and demon hunter.

Of the characters I used so far are the Wizard and Witch Doctor the wizard at the moment seems to be the Character I Prefer but I guess I am a little biased on that as I loved the sorceress in the D2. The sorceress is much like that in D2 as she is mainly a ranged character that can hit multiple enemies at once, with a particularly good impression of the evil emperor from star wars just with a great deal longer range. She still has a number of old school skills from here D2 days that I can see but wasn’t able to use.

The Witch doctor is as many would say the necromancer replacement from D2 with some qwerky skill alternatives defiantly the pet class with a lot of poison spells as can common pets and poison explosive pets to especially some funny toads. One skill I was dying to try out was a zombie wall, which in previous game play trailers look real fun to use this was obviously a replacement for the old bone wall, but an excellent improvement on it. This again was too high a level to be able to utilise.

I will update the other characters as I learn more from these character types and skills.

Overview

My overall impression it looks to be just as addictive as the previous D2 with some excellent additions to the game play. Although only a short part of the game was made available to play it still grabs you to play over and over looking for the better gear and materials to craft with making replay ability a definite yes. I think it’s going to be a massive smash hit and all those people that have been waiting will not be disappointed. If I had to give it a rating out of 5 stars I would give it a good high 4.5 and only because it’s an unfinished game and would have liked to see the ability to add points onto attributes and skills as I think a lot of Diablo fans did like this ability as it is yet to be seen how the differentiation between specialising is going to be seen on the characters but as it’s a beta and still developing I can keep a very open mind on future development. So if you like your hack and slash and in lots of it this is definitely the game for you and if you liked sacred and borderlands for finding the loot This game is the founder and god of its time for this. I hope you are all as eager as me to get started on the full game I can’t wait role on released I say.