Battle Report - Diablo III beta weekend ? Video Games Reviews ...

In order to make sure that their servers are properly configured for launch day, Blizzard needed to open the flood gates completely and allow the entire world to peek into the nightmare world they have been creating for us with Diablo III. As a long time fan of the Diablo franchise, and a player that sacrificed more hours than I am willing to admit on Battle.net, the ability to really dig in and get a feel for the game was very exciting.

As promised, at 12 PM PDT on Friday the login page for Diablo III opened up and allowed scores of users from around the world to try the game out, and give the Blizzard staff an idea of how many users each server could handle. Now that the open beta is closed, we wait the seemingly impossibly long wait for the game to be fully released and reminisce the good times on the battlefield.

The world of Diablo III

Diablo III has had a controversial past. In 2008, when the original screens of the game were shown to the world, many fans reacted poorly to the in-game graphics. Many felt that the grim look of the game had been replaced with better lighting, vibrant colors, and even (gasp) rainbows. It didn?t take long for the Art Director to quit, followed immediately by promises from Blizzard that the game would remain the same as it had been. After playing through the entirety of the open beta with all five of the characters offered in the game, I can tell you that I did not spot a single rainbow.

Since most of the first act happens in catacombs and a cathedral with a gaping hole in it, at night, I didn?t expect rainbows though. Despite being in a dreary little death town, I found no shortage of vibrant colors. Even the ?fallen star? crater was an electric blue. Blizzard did a great job taking the dark things and making them dark, but also introducing plenty of color where it was appropriate. Visually, the game was very well done.

The voice acting in this beginning part of Diablo III was absolutely confusing. The Wizard, as voiced by Crispin Freeman, sounds really great throughout the game. The Barbarian and the Witch Doctor both sound horribly stereotypical, in both their male and female counterparts, and seemed to lack the personality found in the Wizard character. The voice of Decard Cain has clearly degraded with his age, turning him into a frail old man that is unlikely to survive the next gust of wind. Each of villagers had a clearly different sound, even if they weren?t different actors. This hit or miss experience in the game was strange, but since you aren?t likely to interact with any one character in the game for very long, it probably wasn?t a huge point of interest for Blizzard.

Blizzard does something a little different in the first act, something I haven?t seem in the previous Diablo games. In the beginning of the game, you are pretty specifically guided through the first series of interactions. As if the large golden exclamations weren?t enough, you need to complete these interactions, and even a mission or two, before in-game road blocks are removed for you to explore the game. This removes the early ability to go an force your way through a few level ups to make the missions easier, a tactic that is made wholly unnecessary in the beginning of Diablo III.

Gameplay

In keeping with the Diablo series, you pick a character, choose a gender, and are thrust in the game. Each character has a health bubble and a ?skill? bubble. To make things interesting, the Witch Doctor is the only character that uses mana as we knew it from previous games. The Wizard uses Arcane Power, which is different from mana in that you have a fixed amount of Arcane Power that never increases as you level up. Arcane power refills at an incredibly fast rate, however, which creates a very different gameplay mechanic for the Wizard. The Barbarian has a Rage meter that fills as he fights, and allows him to unleash significantly stronger attacks when he has enough of it. If you are not dealing damage, the Rage meter goes down slowly.

Aside from your attacks that require your skill bubble to have some juice in it, each character has a selection of defensive and offensive maneuvers that have a cooldown time that must be reached before you can use them again. By the time you reach level 10, the gameplay switches from a monotonous clickfest to a strategic dance between your skills and your abilities.

Each of the attacks and skills have a rune power that can be added to them to increase their effectiveness, or to add functionality. While you are unable to see this in the open beta, the layout creates a system where you can build a character around techniques that you find the most beneficial to your playing style. The added depth here will make PvP fights much more interesting, and in general will create more rounded characters for the rest of the game.

Like every other Diablo game, the items you pick up in your conquests will be much better than anything you buy in the shops, which really just become places for you to sell the things you don?t want. As you pick up new items, your inventory will make you aware that you have an item that is either better than an item you currently have equipped, or if you have picked up an item that fits an equipment slot you have yet to fill. So far in the game we?ve seen no signs of the dreaded socket system from past games, but there is a crafting area that allows you to forge better items. You?ll wind up spending lots of gold in order to make crafting fun, which isn?t easy to do in the beta. Crafting will likely not be something most players even consider doing until after level 10.

It will be really interesting to see how the ?real money marketplace? works out in the game, but it seems like the crafting ability in game will be a useful skill for anyone hoping to take advantage of that system. Since neither PvP nor the marketplace were offered up in the beta, there?s not as much known about how that will work out.

There?s been a lot of negativity in the gaming community about Diablo III forcing users to remain online, even when you are flying solo. In exchange for your ability to play offline, Blizzard has given us what I consider to be one of the most flawless systems of multiplayer co-op I have had the pleasure of experiencing. Like all multiplayer games, you have a friends list. If you decide to join a friend, or group of friends in the game, you are presented with their battle banner in the main town of the act. Click on the banner, and you are immediately teleported to their location, where you can immediately join the fight. Loot shows up for both users, giving the same amount of cash and prized to each person, and the difficulty of the game increases appropriately for each user you add. It was quick, painless, and immediately made the game more fun to play. I can?t imagine a better way for Blizzard to have implemented this.

Final Thoughts

I was very impressed with what Blizzard has shown us in the Diablo III open beta, though it was far from a perfect experience. I was told by a Blizzard insider that the game was made intentionally easy for the beta, and to expect a greater difficulty in the full game. Any server glitches that I experienced in this open beta ? and boy were there a ton of them ? I will happily chalk up to the Blizzard team adapting on the fly to the scores of users that descended upon their latest project.

Ultimately, Diablo III gave me exactly what I asked for ? Blizzard took their years of experience in fine-tuning games like World of Warcraft and used it to evolve one of my top games of all time. After this weekend, I have complete confidence that Diablo III will be my next favorite PC game.

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