[Aptorian]

Found the game in my mail box just now. Installing as we speak.

[Sindriss]

Ah, you bought the CE? I cannot install until it becomes the 15th in usa I just want to play now....

And I have no idea what to create yet. Both monk and barb seem uberfun from the beta. Yet looking over the skills, I think a wizzie is superstrong when they hit mid level. They are just incredible boring the first 10 levels for sure..

[Aptorian]

I pre-ordered via Coolshop. Hard copy not digital. Still wont be able to play until the game goes live at midnight I suspect.

I am going for the barbarian. That was pretty much all I played during Diablo 2. Dual wielding Two handed Swords with stone skin and elemental resistance out the wazoo, just chopping my way through everything.

EDIT: BAH! It rejected my installation because:

"The fire from the sky still falls. Diablo III has not yet launched."

Now to click the install button every 30 minutes in anticipation even though it doesn't launch before 00.01 CET.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 14 May 2012 - 02:35 PM

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Sindriss, on 13 May 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

I really don't think you can judge anything regardin the difficulty just based on the first 20% of the first act of the first difficulty (or however much percentage it is).

I am seriously considering skipping work a few days to play this

Prior to having played this I may have agreed with you.
But seriously, I don't think you understand how easy it was. (don't worry a few people I've tried to explain it to haven't quite understood initially)
I was really quite looking forward to trying a bunch of different classes (start with Monk and really wanted to try Sorceress and Demon Huntress) and spending most of the weekend on it. I was not expecting it to be hard, but it was so very easy that I actually didn't feel like playing it anymore after my Monk (I gave it a tiny try with the Sorceress between beating the boss and then tweaking the Monk, then gave up).
THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO BE BEFORE!
I absolutely was not kidding when I said after a little bit of effort she was essentially invincible. I could have had Warcraft style God Mode on (characters are invincible and do about 1000% damage) and it wouldn't have been any easier. Maybe a little faster but that's it.
It was so ridiculous, I didn't even feel like I was an awesome badass, I just felt like there was no point playing.
And again, I have never felt like that before. I'm still going through Amalur despite feeling like hardest difficulty is easy, D3 I just stopped. I do play a lot of games, I'm pretty good at games, but Shiara does not play much and even she commented it looked too easy. And that was while I was doing my damndest to handicap myself.

And yes, they have upped the difficulty since, which is good, but they clearly thought this was an okay starting point (and as I heard it they upped the difficulty of just the first act) and that concerns me.
Yes, Inferno should hopefully be an awesome challenge. But, I am not Gothos, I want to enjoy the game as I play it not simply wade through a chore so I can get to endgame. That thinking is a big part of what I think is wrong with WoW.
And you'll need to finish the game 2-3 times to get to Inferno...

Anyway, I am merely voicing how I felt/feel. I decided quite a while ago that I will not be buying this game because of their online only nonsense. But I was a big Blizzard fan once, I was and am still hoping it's a great game. So I'm really not trying to say anyone else should dislike it.

This post has been edited by Lucifer's Heaven: 14 May 2012 - 02:37 PM

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Aptorius, on 14 May 2012 - 02:21 PM, said:

I pre-ordered via Coolshop. Hard copy not digital. Still wont be able to play until the game goes live at midnight I suspect.

I am going for the barbarian. That was pretty much all I played during Diablo 2. Dual wielding Two handed Swords with stone skin and elemental resistance out the wazoo, just chopping my way through everything.

EDIT: BAH! It rejected my installation because:

"The fire from the sky still falls. Diablo III has not yet launched."

Now to click the install button every 30 minutes in anticipation even though it doesn't launch before 00.01 CET.

That's annoying and somewhat silly that it won't let you install it pre-emptively.
I think they allowed it with SC2...

Ah well, enjoy it when you can play it

EDIT:
I really hope Blizzard weren't doing the online only to prevent piracy, 'cause I just found out that while they may not yet have a pirated version of the game (it isn't quite out yet, so that's to be expected) you can download a fully working pirated version of the beta

This post has been edited by Lucifer's Heaven: 14 May 2012 - 02:50 PM

[Gothos]

Preloading my digital copy. Off for a nap of sorts until 23:00 or so

[Aptorian]

The game is pre-installing now. Anticipation building. That lonely guitar music they play really makes my nostalgia tingle.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 14 May 2012 - 03:51 PM

[Defiance]

Lucifer, I think you're overreacting. Diablo II's initial difficulty was artificial insofar as few people spent more than a minute thinking about how they were going to spend their talents. "I can spend all of my points in one skill? Screw that, I want every skill!" was the rational for many people, which ended up making the game a lot more difficult than it actually should have been.

Will normal mode be easy? Sure it will. Even with mediocre builds, I find it impossible to die anymore in Diablo II normal. I would wait to judge the game until you play Nightmare. If you don't start dying a bit in Nightmare, I'd say that's cause for concern. The first 1/3 of Act 1, though, shouldn't get you too worried about overall difficulty.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Defiance, on 15 May 2012 - 04:42 AM, said:

Lucifer, I think you're overreacting. Diablo II's initial difficulty was artificial insofar as few people spent more than a minute thinking about how they were going to spend their talents. "I can spend all of my points in one skill? Screw that, I want every skill!" was the rational for many people, which ended up making the game a lot more difficult than it actually should have been.

Will normal mode be easy? Sure it will. Even with mediocre builds, I find it impossible to die anymore in Diablo II normal. I would wait to judge the game until you play Nightmare. If you don't start dying a bit in Nightmare, I'd say that's cause for concern. The first 1/3 of Act 1, though, shouldn't get you too worried about overall difficulty.

Like I said, I don't think you understand how easy it was. I actually didn't want to play anymore... Man I still have D2 and Titan Quest installed, I consider them staples for lans, I'm pretty easy going with games, and generally happy to play most things.

I mentioned it in an earlier post, but I did finish the entire beta, playing recklessly and intentionally refusing to use items with life steal. Also never equipped my healing spell and chose other equipped powers based on coolness, not effectiveness. I intentionally handicapped myself and still got through the entire thing without using a single healing potion. Ended up with I think 46 of them.
I know the beginning is meant to be easy, but would you consider the beginning of D2 easy? I would, and it was fine. If you want to, go play it, handicap yourself how I did and charge every group of enemies you see without a care in the world. Even drag a few groups together while they attack you, to make it a bit harder. What's that you died? Ah well, see, I wasn't even in enough danger of dying that I used a healing potion/ability in D3...
And when I said I put a bit of effort into making my character better afterwards, well that took me a grand total of about 5 minutes to buy some equipment and put a bit of co-ordination behind my skillset, and bam, I was invincible

That is ridiculous...

It's worth mentioning to those who don't know me in person, this isn't a big rant or anything, I really am just trying to convey what I experienced, and only continuing to try because there is discussion about it. I don't mind if you want to continue, I just don't want come across as going on and on about it. I have a habit of coming off waaaay more agressive/emphatic/angry in text communication than I actually intend/am
I don't think my complete inability to be concise on things that I feel require extrapolation helps...

On a happier note, how is everyone enjoying their first day of it?

[Gothos]

OK, having played through most of the night, I can say a few things now.

Luci, the difficulty isn't that low as you describe. Apparently, buddies tell me that the part up to the Skeleton King has been upped a notch, and the content beyond him goes steadily up in difficulty. Most certainly, you can die in Act I Normal.
I don't think you should judge a game by the beta. After all, BETA IS BETA and that's that. It's not a demo version of the full game, it's an incomplete build made for catching bugs, errors and imbalance. And it did just that.
As for your comparison to D2, I don't think D2 was difficult at all, ever. Vanilla D2 was ridiculously easy. You'd start a new character with no items and either go solo in an 8 player game, or pop /players 8 in single player to up the experience gain with little to no extra threat. You could go start farming Act IV at level 55-ish no problem. Even in the expansion, where they boosted the difficulty a lot by adding immunities and further decreasing resistances on Nightmare and Hell, I still did Mephisto loot runs in 5-10 minutes each on my lvl 81 sorc with craptastic gear. The only thing that ever killed my Hardcore characters was lag spikes.
No, Diablo II was not difficult at all.
I can already see this being more difficult if the curve goes up at the pace I've been experiencing so far. I'm pretty sure the different difficulties could be compared to difficulties in WoW - let's say Normal is 5-man Heroic Dungeons, Nightmare is the Raid Finder raids, Hell is Normal raids, and Inferno is Heroic raids... if so, if the difference is of that magnitude, well, Inferno won't be anything like anything else in the game. I'm looking forward to wiping for a few hours on the Skeleton King...

[Tattersail_]

I've never played any Diablo game. Would you recommend and why?

[Gothos]

It's the most enjoyable hack'n'slash series in existance.

[Aptorian]

Tattersail, on 15 May 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

I've never played any Diablo game. Would you recommend and why?

Have you played any kind of point and click action games before? Because it's sort of a genre on to it self. Diablo 3, much like Starcraft 2, is basically just a 15 year old game idea with much, much better funding and technology.

The allure is sort of subtle. Diablo is probably the grand daddy of the loot driven rpg, at least the one that made it popular. It's all about the grind.

I've played a couple hours so far. It's the same old Diablo I played 12 years ago but it's still one hell of an experience.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Gothos, on 15 May 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

OK, having played through most of the night, I can say a few things now.

Luci, the difficulty isn't that low as you describe. Apparently, buddies tell me that the part up to the Skeleton King has been upped a notch, and the content beyond him goes steadily up in difficulty. Most certainly, you can die in Act I Normal.
I don't think you should judge a game by the beta. After all, BETA IS BETA and that's that. It's not a demo version of the full game, it's an incomplete build made for catching bugs, errors and imbalance. And it did just that.
As for your comparison to D2, I don't think D2 was difficult at all, ever. Vanilla D2 was ridiculously easy. You'd start a new character with no items and either go solo in an 8 player game, or pop /players 8 in single player to up the experience gain with little to no extra threat. You could go start farming Act IV at level 55-ish no problem. Even in the expansion, where they boosted the difficulty a lot by adding immunities and further decreasing resistances on Nightmare and Hell, I still did Mephisto loot runs in 5-10 minutes each on my lvl 81 sorc with craptastic gear. The only thing that ever killed my Hardcore characters was lag spikes.
No, Diablo II was not difficult at all.
I can already see this being more difficult if the curve goes up at the pace I've been experiencing so far. I'm pretty sure the different difficulties could be compared to difficulties in WoW - let's say Normal is 5-man Heroic Dungeons, Nightmare is the Raid Finder raids, Hell is Normal raids, and Inferno is Heroic raids... if so, if the difference is of that magnitude, well, Inferno won't be anything like anything else in the game. I'm looking forward to wiping for a few hours on the Skeleton King...

I did say they have upped the difficulty. I wasn't the only person who complained. Apparently it was their number one complaint from the beta, so it wasn't just me
And yes and no. Judge the game as a whole from beta? No. But judge certain aspects that were fully implemented, yes, that is fair. And a beta that late, they were just after easy to respond to feedback, bug hunting and server testing (and they pretty much stated as such, so it's not just me guessing). Just because it's a beta doesn't mean everything is incomplete.
However easy D2 was, this was easier by several magnitudes.

And good I wasn't trying to say the game would be horrible, I just said that that was my major concern about it and tried to convey why. There were a few other things I was dissapointed with, the mediocre (note: not horrible, but pretty average) graphics among them. Though none of them would have been a deal breaker were I not already refusing to buy the game anyway.

Quote

It's the most enjoyable hack'n'slash series in existance.

The old ones were definitely the best of their time. As I've said, I think the new one seem's a bit underwhelming by comparison, but still probably a pretty good game (I do like what they've done with the powers). Either way, there are a few VERY strong contenders coming along in the genre (Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile the first two to mind). And there have been some other great ones over the years (Titan Quest was fantastic and built upon much of what was great about D2).

[Tattersail_]

Aptorius, on 15 May 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

Tattersail, on 15 May 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

I've never played any Diablo game. Would you recommend and why?

Have you played any kind of point and click action games before? Because it's sort of a genre on to it self. Diablo 3, much like Starcraft 2, is basically just a 15 year old game idea with much, much better funding and technology.

The allure is sort of subtle. Diablo is probably the grand daddy of the loot driven rpg, at least the one that made it popular. It's all about the grind.

I've played a couple hours so far. It's the same old Diablo I played 12 years ago but it's still one hell of an experience.

So I could just get Diablo 3 without 1 and 2 and it'll be good, or you'd recommend getting 1 or 2 first because they are much better?

[Gothos]

well, Torchlight was very enjoyable, and to some extent Sacred as well... but neither of them kept me as interested for as long as either of the Diablo games. It's the Blizzard effect, I think.

D3 has the potential to be better than D2. Will be able to tell once I see more of it.

[Obdigore]

Tattersail, on 15 May 2012 - 10:28 AM, said:

Aptorius, on 15 May 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

Tattersail, on 15 May 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

I've never played any Diablo game. Would you recommend and why?

Have you played any kind of point and click action games before? Because it's sort of a genre on to it self. Diablo 3, much like Starcraft 2, is basically just a 15 year old game idea with much, much better funding and technology.

The allure is sort of subtle. Diablo is probably the grand daddy of the loot driven rpg, at least the one that made it popular. It's all about the grind.

I've played a couple hours so far. It's the same old Diablo I played 12 years ago but it's still one hell of an experience.

So I could just get Diablo 3 without 1 and 2 and it'll be good, or you'd recommend getting 1 or 2 first because they are much better?

1 and 2 were pretty good, although a couple games that have come out recently are better than 2. If you just want to get 3, just get 3 and watch one of the vids on the lore behind the game (like on IGN). Its what I'm planning on doing if I do buy 3.

[Aptorian]

I never really liked Diablo 1 but 2 remains a great game to this day. You could play them just to see the comparative leap in quality between 2 and 3 but it is not necessary. Both the instruction manual and the installation window fills the player in on the previous games events.

The Diablo series has a story but it is not particularly deep and clever. Evil demon lords rampage around on the mortal world and the hero hunts them down and kicks their ass. That's basically the gist of it. The third seems to be playing for higher stakes but I am only just nearing the end of the first chapter. I think.

[Aptorian]

You know what bugs me about this game? The god damn battle net server bullshit. I am playing single player but if I leave the game idle, for example running in the background while surfing the web, then it logs me out. Which means that all the progress I made since the last check point just disappears. It seems that I keep my experience and loot but it still pisses me off.

Also it has kicked me from the game because of a bad connection once so far, even though I have a 30 mb download and upload connection. If it ever does this while I am in the middle of a boss fight I will flip my shit.

I wasn't really worried about this always online issue but the above issues are not acceptable.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 15 May 2012 - 01:17 PM

[Lusipher]

Aptorius, on 15 May 2012 - 01:16 PM, said:

You know what bugs me about this game? The god damn battle net server bullshit. I am playing single player but if I leave the game idle, for example running in the background while surfing the web, then it logs me out. Which means that all the progress I made since the last check point just disappears. It seems that I keep my experience and loot but it still pisses me off.

Also it has kicked me from the game because of a bad connection once so far, even though I have a 30 mb download and upload connection. If it ever does this while I am in the middle of a boss fight I will flip my shit.

I wasn't really worried about this always online issue but the above issues are not acceptable.

They're trying to teach you a lesson-go idle in Sanctuary and you die!

Seriously though, the battle.net issues remain one of my biggest hangups for not getting this game.