DIABLO III BETA BITCHES

Finally, the long-awaited email has arrived in my inbox:

I got my DIII BETA KEY!!!

I was wondering why I hadn't received one, what with my (relatively) souped up PC. I noticed last night that my desktop resolution as specified on my beta profile was only 1024x768, so I reuploaded my system specs with the higher resolution I've been using for a while now.

Well, probably was just a coincidence.

Anyway, I am so fucking psyched! I get to play at least parts of DIII right up to probably a little shy of release, and apparently all the character classes are implemented, so I can be a witch doctor straight out of the gates.

Perhaps will upload screenshots and impressions up here, if I can tear myself away from the game long enough :p

make sure you're not breaking any NDAs before you talk about it.

I think they shut down the NDAs when moving out of their friends and family beta

there's a few people who are streaming DIII gameplay already, no NDA issues there, I'm pretty sure

right on. I know Blizzard is pretty lax with their NDAs anyway

Fuck.....you....


Imma go cry now.

I just got my key yesterday as well, but I tried my friend's beta when he got it about 2 months ago. I'm not gonna bother playing with it though. I already know I'm gonna buy it anyways,

http://www.overclock.net/t/1209417/b...-keys-sent-out

Makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Nick2.1

Fuck.....you....


Imma go cry now.

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Thank you.

That's all I've ever wanted to hear :D

I wish I could have gotten on this shit, but I don't know if this computer will run it, even though the last ones could be run on a battery, screen, and some paperclips.

I wish Best Buy didn't troll us and that the game really did come out 2/1/12 :p

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

I wish Best Buy didn't troll us and that the game really did come out 2/1/12 :p

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I know; the bastards!

Alright, here's a little info that might not be completely clear without experiencing the game, as well as other general information:

First, of course, the meat-and-potaters of DIII are the skills and itemization systems. Itemization has changed a bit, but still will mostly be familiar to any player of Diablo-esque games. The skill system, on the other hand, is completely revised.

There are no skill trees anymore. Instead, one skill is unlocked per level. At first you can only equip two abilities at a time, but every 6 levels thereafter a new ability slot is unlocked until you have the maximum of SIX ability slots at level 24 (out of 60). By level 29, you'll have unlocked ALL the skills of each class, 24 per class.

However, it doesn't stop there, not by a long shot. In addition to unlocking these skills there is also a slot for one rune stone per ability slot. Rune stones are drops from creatures, appearing in Act II
Nnormal and beyond. Rune stones modify or completely change the ability that they modify. There are 5 colors: alabaster, red, gold, indigo, and black. So in essence, you actually get 5 abilities for every 1 ability unlocked.

There are 7 levels of rune stones, with the highest only being rare drops in the new Inferno difficulty, and the lowest being fairly common drops in Normal. Obviously the higher the level of rune stone, the more powerful the modified ability.

In addition to active abilities, there are also 3 slots for passive traits that are unlocked at levels 10, 20, and 30. By level 30 you'll have all your passive traits, 17 in total. Note that passive traits are ALL UNIQUE to each character class.

So, to summarize: 24*5 rune stone-modified abilities = 120, of which 6 can be equipped, and 17 passive traits, of which 3 can be equipped.

Blizzard has said this results in about 97 billion possible combinations per character class, though of course not all of them will be viable, and not all of them will be much different from each other. Still, seems like a rich territory of choices to me.



I'd go on but I need to go for now.

The 100,000 testers invited recently is a good sign, they are stress testing the servers.

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Originally Posted by sycld

I know; the bastards!

Alright, here's a little info that might not be completely clear without experiencing the game, as well as other general information:

First, of course, the meat-and-potaters of DIII are the skills and itemization systems. Itemization has changed a bit, but still will mostly be familiar to any player of Diablo-esque games. The skill system, on the other hand, is completely revised.

There are no skill trees anymore. Instead, one skill is unlocked per level. At first you can only equip two abilities at a time, but every 6 levels thereafter a new ability slot is unlocked until you have the maximum of SIX ability slots at level 24 (out of 60). By level 29, you'll have unlocked ALL the skills of each class, 24 per class.

However, it doesn't stop there, not by a long shot. In addition to unlocking these skills there is also a slot for one rune stone per ability slot. Rune stones are drops from creatures, appearing in Act II
Nnormal and beyond. Rune stones modify or completely change the ability that they modify. There are 5 colors: alabaster, red, gold, indigo, and black. So in essence, you actually get 5 abilities for every 1 ability unlocked.

There are 7 levels of rune stones, with the highest only being rare drops in the new Inferno difficulty, and the lowest being fairly common drops in Normal. Obviously the higher the level of rune stone, the more powerful the modified ability.

In addition to active abilities, there are also 3 slots for passive traits that are unlocked at levels 10, 20, and 30. By level 30 you'll have all your passive traits, 17 in total. Note that passive traits are ALL UNIQUE to each character class.

So, to summarize: 24*5 rune stone-modified abilities = 120, of which 6 can be equipped, and 17 passive traits, of which 3 can be equipped.

Blizzard has said this results in about 97 billion possible combinations per character class, though of course not all of them will be viable, and not all of them will be much different from each other. Still, seems like a rich territory of choices to me.



I'd go on but I need to go for now.

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Act 2? I suppose they must have added more, I'm wondering if I should put my beta key to use and play through it. I really only played the beta for 15 minutes back when I had my friend's key. I don't really have any purpose to test it for them, just to play it, even though I already know I am buying it. I'm doing enough beta testing for DOTA2 so no time really. Such a fat download though and I don't have the best of connections.

I had some issues a few months back anyways, I tried downloading it, was about 90% done, and closed it to pause it so I could use my internet bandwidth for other things, opened it later and it restarted.. though I tested the pausing over and over later by closing it and it worked perfectly fine -_-. That and my character had disappeared the 2nd time I launched it, so I didn't wanna bother going back and playing through it.

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Originally Posted by Nick2.1

The 100,000 testers invited recently is a good sign, they are stress testing the servers.

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Yep, that's what I'm thinking and hoping too.

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

Act 2? I suppose they must have added more,

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Oh, no, no... I just know that runes will start dropping in Act II of Normal. The beta still ends at the Skeleton King on Normal (for those that don't know, that's only 1/3 of the way through Act I),

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I'm wondering if I should put my beta key to use and play through it

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Well, I suppose only if you want to try out each of the 5 character classes.

I guess the issues you were experiencing may have been resolved by now. One thing I'll say that's unrelated to your issues: if you do try it again, just let the WHOLE game download before playing, NOT just after the progress bar turns yellow in the "Playable" part. Otherwise the game will freeze for seconds at a time each time you use an asset which hasn't been already downloaded.

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Originally Posted by Vengeful Scars

I wish I could have gotten on this shit, but I don't know if this computer will run it, even though the last ones could be run on a battery, screen, and some paperclips.

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oh, so what most people run LoL on

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

oh, so what most people run LoL on

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Why do you mention that crap hole in here.

and oh well I already redownloaded the beta :p. I have too many games to play right now though :[

because I enjoy LoL

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

because I enjoy LoL

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WELL YOU CAN GO AND

jk

I won't judge you

hehehe i know

i just like casual play more than anything else - even LoL has some ridiculous tryhards that are too much for me at times. I can't imagine playing HoN or DotA2 in that kind of climate

:D

Since I haven't said anything about the game for a while, I'll add this little bit.

The class that the most people will either love or hate, with little in between, is the Witch Doctor.

There two qualities about the Witch Doctor:

1) He's the funny one of the group. For instance, one of his abilities is Fire Bats, which is a short ranged AoE channeled flamethrower. He summons bats, which are set on fire through a flame above him, and fly straight towards whatever's in front of him.

Get it? Fire Bats? Ugh.

A lot of people don't care for the pun, or the ability, but I have to say it's not such a bad ability.

Actually this brings me to my next point:

2) All the other classes rely primarily on big blasts of damage. The Witch Doctor is unique in that he relies heavily on DoT effects and pets, supplemented by more limited direct damage abilities. For a lot of players, I think this makes them feel "weaker," especially in Act I of Normal where the enemies die really quickly. I suspect that at harder difficulty levels this will change as enemies take longer to kill, but nonetheless you don't get that satisfying rush of blasting things to bits.

I don't get Fire Bats...

But he sounds like the Warlock in WoW, I never played them, but without their pet they just seemed to DoT my priest to death.

I still haven't even touched it.. I let my friend use it and he's been hogging it but meh I don't really care lol. Signed up for Guild Wars 2 Beta earlier today T_T

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Originally Posted by Vengeful Scars

I don't get Fire Bats...

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http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Firebat

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But he sounds like the Warlock in WoW, I never played them, but without their pet they just seemed to DoT my priest to death.

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WoW-type MMORPG's and Diablo-type action RPG's are totally different, and because of that the Witch Doctor has a completely different feel compared to the Warlock in WoW.

Err, dunno what to say beyond that... I think it's rather obvious.

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

I still haven't even touched it.. I let my friend use it and he's been hogging it but meh I don't really care lol. Signed up for Guild Wars 2 Beta earlier today T_T

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OMG me too!!!

IF YOU GET IT INSTEAD OF ME I KILL YOU

I hope I get it and put it to waste just to spite you.

No, give it to me.

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

I hope I get it and put it to waste just to spite you.

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The DIII key I really don't care so much about.

But I SWEAR to BALTHAZAR... if you DARE desecrate a SACRED GWII BETA KEY, I WILL summon phantasms to stab you to death.


(PS I wanna be a mesmer to start :} )

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Originally Posted by sycld

The DIII key I really don't care so much about.

But I SWEAR to BALTHAZAR... if you DARE desecrate a SACRED GWII BETA KEY, I WILL summon phantasms to stab you to death.


(PS I wanna be a mesmer to start :} )

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I have no clue what you talkin about, never played the first Guild Wars :P, but I watched my cousin play for a while. Not into the whole MMO scene back then, as far as I got was Maplestory.. in a time far far away. Not too much of a P2P/microtransaction person either, thankfully Guild Wars isn't :). I already have no doubts it'll be a great game though,

but nah, i'll get the key, announce it on here, and click delete on gmail, then go to trash, and click delete forever.

You bastard, I hope scyld goes into mega rage mode and hunts you down if that happens.

<3

I know I know.. who even reads IGN..

But official release date from Blizzard, May 15

http://pc.ign.com/articles/122/1220853p1.html

:o nice they announced a date.

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Originally Posted by ShitFace

:o nice they announced a date.

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I don't think Blizzard is too off on their release dates right? I mean aside from pushing from quarter to quarter, they're usually prompt with their release days. Unlike Valve D: :'(

When they put out exact dates, they don't often change them.

I swear I keep mistaking your two avatars for eachother. And damn, sucks that they had to cancel Blizzcon for this.. I mean not that I go anyways.. but what a fun way of gathering nerds that will orgasm at the site of a new trailer.

Nothing like a big auditorium that smells of body odor and bad breath.

wait, they cancelled blizzcon?

For this year, yes. They claimed they have too much work going on.

Ok, so wow...

If you haven't seen the February update on the skill system:

The one thing that has remained the same is that you unlock skills gradually as you level up, in a predetermined order at predetermined levels.

Before the update, you could slot any skill you wanted on any keyboard hotkey or either mouse button. Thus you could have any combination of skills you wanted. In addition, runes were drops that altered or basically completely changed any skill. They came in different colors which affected each ability in a particular way, and they came in ranks where the higher ranks increased the power of the runed ability by increasing numbers in the ability (i.e. how much damage is done, how long status effects lasted, etc.)


NOW... skills are LINKED to a particular mouse button or keyboard hotkey. So that means you have a set selection of 3 to 5 skills that you can assign to the left mouse button, a selection of 3 to 5 DIFFERENT skills you can assign to the right mouse button, a DIFFERENT selection for keyboard key "1," and a DIFFERENT selection EACH for keys 3-4.

So you can only ever have ONE ability active from the left mouse button skill selection, ONE from the "1" hotkey selection, etc.

That really cuts down on the number of builds possible. For instance, all the monk's mantras are now on hotkey "4." They are party-wide auras that have two effects: a very long term one that lasted as long as the mantra was active and a very short-term one that activates upon the mantra's casting. Though only one mantra could be active at a time, you could've done "mantra-twisting," i.e. constantly switching between mantras to keep the short-term buffs up.

Since you can now only have one mantra hotkeyed at a time, this clearly is no longer viable.


Also, runes are now not drops any more, but instead are "unlocked" as you level up. There are no ranks any more either. You just select one rune per ability if you're a high enough level that the rune is unlocked. Thus, they are more like talents now, except you can select 1 out of 5 for each ability you have equipped.


I'm not sure how I feel about this simplification of the system. Granted, it does make class balance much easier. But it also seems so limiting.

Ouch, that does sound really limiting =/

Two things:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963...4_19_2012#blog

See you all in the lagfest this weekend.

Also, there's something called "elective mode" which you can activate that lets you assign hotkeys and MBs to ANY skill you have. Attaching certain skills to a particular hotkey or MB is just a way to help utterly confused noobs, I suppose.

Agh you beat me, maybe I'll play this weekend. I can't play when it releases because I got finals :\. And we can play with friends!

Diablo 3 beta this weekend, GW2 beta next weekend. I'm liking April.

heh oh u guyse

i just came rushing here to post this.
i will be on tonight at 21:00 gmt on the dot.
anyone up for playing tonight?

Isn't PDT 8 hours behind you? Meaning it should be 20:00.

well THAT explains where scyld has been.

My battlenet account is finally unlocked and I'm ready to go. I wonder how terrible the lag will be in 4 1/2 hours?

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Originally Posted by Nick2.1

Isn't PDT 8 hours behind you? Meaning it should be 20:00.

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oh cool.
ONLY ONE HOUR.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF OF COURSE A CLIENT DECIDES HE NEEDS SOME STUFF DONE AT 2PM AAAAAAAAAAA


edit: and I was the idiot that said "sure! no problem!"

Downloading right now, thankfully I don't need to redownload the whole client!

Have fun trying to get in, blizz obviously didn't prepare for this.

I was able to get in, if someone wants to add me, my b.net email is [email protected]

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Originally Posted by Nick2.1

Have fun trying to get in, blizz obviously didn't prepare for this.

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Maybe a last minute decision to try and win people over from GW2 :p

My battletag is Poochop#1299

GOD my own internet connection keeps dropping.
EVERY FRICKEN MINUTE

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

Maybe a last minute decision to try and win people over from GW2 :p

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Top things blizzard is worried about:
1. WoW servers going down
2. People realizing WoW is dumb
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99,999. GW2
100,000. Customer Satisfaction

Got a good 2 hours in or so, was pretty fun, I am bummed out about the skills though, but I guess it's not too horrible. It just feels very limited as sycld mentioned. Will be better when all my friends hop on and we use Skype.

Has me wondering if I should pick it up on release or not...... I won't be studying that much anyways....... =)

I managed to play for a bit tonight. I loved it. I'll add you guys tomorrow and hopefully we can play a bit.

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

Got a good 2 hours in or so, was pretty fun, I am bummed out about the skills though, but I guess it's not too horrible. It just feels very limited as sycld mentioned. Will be better when all my friends hop on and we use Skype.

Has me wondering if I should pick it up on release or not...... I won't be studying that much anyways....... =)

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Go to "Settings, then "Gameplay." On the right column at the bottom you should see a check box that says something like "Use Elective Mode."

If you check that, then you can select any combination of skills you want.

However, it's cumbersome. You have to FIRST select the skill by assigning it to its default key, and THEN drag the skill to whatever hotkey you want.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Go to "Settings, then "Gameplay." On the right column at the bottom you should see a check box that says something like "Use Elective Mode."

If you check that, then you can select any combination of skills you want.

However, it's cumbersome. You have to FIRST select the skill by assigning it to its default key, and THEN drag the skill to whatever hotkey you want.

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Cool, I'll check it out soon, not sure what's cumbersome yet but I'll see it when I get there. Gracias

I get it now, I can just change which spells go to what button, and I understand the cumbersome part -_-. Wish there was a quicker way to change which spell loadout you have.

oh I just played 3 hours and beat the beta. I also EXPLORED ALL THE THINGS, so I'm guessing I probably could have run through it in about 1 1/2 or 2 hours.

is that supposed to be the entirety of Act 1? Is it 3 acts like Diablo 2 was?

I think it was supposed to be a tenth of a single act.

Oh turns out if you right click on your equipped spells on the bottom it brings up the screen to choose a new spell, so it's a little faster than S-> click I suppose.

I like the idea of runes, it makes it so even in the later levels you might try out new spell sets because it has a rune and is slightly different now. Crafting was cool, I'm pretty tempted to get it. I know there was a $50 pre-order for physical version, I'd rather have that, but then I'd be a little late. My internet totally sucks to have to download it, but they're going to let us pre-load it anyways right? (but that's currently at $60 I believe).

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Originally Posted by crapoo16

I know there was a $50 pre-order for physical version, I'd rather have that, but then I'd be a little late. My internet totally sucks to have to download it, but they're going to let us pre-load it anyways right? (but that's currently at $60 I believe).

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I already have DIII pre-loaded. You can start pre-loading it as soon as you buy it.

And yeah the basic pacakge is now $60.

I would have bought this game if I didn't just break my AKG Can headphones and had to spend 150 bucks to buy a new pair. Maybe sometime around June I'll get it.

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Originally Posted by sycld

I already have DIII pre-loaded. You can start pre-loading it as soon as you buy it.

And yeah the basic pacakge is now $60.

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dang nice haha.