The State of the Diablo 3 Beta (Two Videos)

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It's been almost four years since Diablo 3 was announced, and its development began years earlier. Its predecessors helped define the action RPG genre, so anticipation is high among fans of the franchise. The game has undergone closed beta testing since September, and a lot has changed since then. Now that Blizzard has settled on May 15th as a release date, we thought this would be a good time to take a look at the state of the game as it currently exists. These two videos show actual gameplay of the various classes, explain the skill and rune systems, take a look at the auction house, and go over many of the other changes since the beginning of development. (Click to play the first video, and the second one will play automagically after the first one ends.)

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[damnbunni]

Not necessarily RELIABLE internet access.

I live in the US, just outside a town of 200,000 people. I'm half a mile from a school.

In order for me to get RELIABLE internet that's faster than dialup would cost me $2,419.60.

Per month.

I use cellular internet. It's not terribly expensive, and it works well enough, and it's fast enough. But it does lag out and drop out a lot, and if I lost my game progress every time it did, I'd get mightily pissed.

I get mad enough as is when Steam decides that since it can sort of see the internet, but not connect to the Steam server, then it won't even start up enough for me to put it in offline mode, so I can't play Steam games nyah nyah.

And that's just a check at the client start, not a constant connection,

Re:Meh.

[guido1]

Now all I hear about is DRM and auctions.

If I wanted artificial restrictions, I'd go lock myself in a dark room for a few hours. If I wanted an auction, I'd go browse eBay. I don't want those, though. I want a visual interactive story, so I'm going to play a video game.

Having been in the beta since November or so, all I can tell you is that you're visiting the wrong websites. I've bought 0 items at an auction house, and sold just as many. Maybe this means I won't end up with the top 10% of gear, but that's fine by me.

The story is there, the gameplay is there. Tristram is once again in trouble. Decard Cain is still old. The button mash fast "sweet got a rare" fun is still present.

If you're convinced you won't buy it, or have a moral obligation not to due to the DRM, fine. I found it to be a nice continuation of the series and will be plopping down my $.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Y2KDragon]

On a whim, I dug out my old Diablo II and Lord of Darkness disks. Registering my game on their BattleNet site was easy, and was given new "in game" keys for downloading the client, with patches. Sure, the graphics don't look so good, but I can play. And the online servers are still there, allowing people to play the full-featured game, with all the benefits of the network. If being connected on-line is going to be required to play for Diablo III, Blizzard has shown that they will make sure that the game is available.

Re:The real state of Diablo III

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - when Battle.net is down you can still play, you just don't get any awards / medals / unlockable things.

You would think that because SC2 is like that... but unless you provide a good citation, my opinion is that D3 is like WOW, where the game logic *IS* in the server [as it seems on the reverse engineering that has been happening on the game communication with battlenet servers]. So if you are not connected, it is impossible to play (or crack) the game. Of course, until a cracked server leaks like it happened in WOW.

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[paulatz]

If I'm not going to buy it, you're not going to eat in any case

Re:Yeah but does it work on Linux?

[beaverdownunder]

First off, not all linux applications need to follow the GNU. You can distribute a linux application with any license you please -- it may hinder repository access with particular distributions, but there's nothing stopping you from creating your own application manager, putting THAT in the repository, and then using that to distribute your games. Just saying.

Second, freemium is how it's all going to be in a decade full stop. You might as well get on that wagon now. And GNOME and KDE are almost to the point where Grandma can be trained to use it just as easily as Windows, which is the benchmark I tend to use when I consider the emerging market for a particular operating system. So, I expect that in another decade, there'll be a fair whack of linux machines with a fair whack of non-nerd users.

Finally, why you'd write anything in any language you can't cross-compile without great expense or redevelopment I just don't understand.