Slashdot Mirror
Diablo III Beta Begins
dotarray writes "Diablo III really can't be that far off now. Blizzard has just announced that the closed beta test for the game has kicked off – meaning you can start checking your inboxes for an invitation now."
The expanded Friends&Family test had been underway for a week or so, but now gaming sites are getting invitations. Of course, given the popularity of Diablo III, phishers are out in force with fake beta invites. For those who opted-in, the best way to check is to simply log in to your battle.net account. The beta is limited in terms of content — it only includes the first couple hours worth of play in Act 1 — but all five classes are available for play. There's no NDA, so plenty of commentary has sprung up already. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has early impressions of the Demon Hunter. Blizzard has also created a skill calculator for anyone who wants to play around with character builds ahead of time. The beta will be expanding in waves as they ramp up stability tests.
Alright! Another 3 years of my life is about to disappear!
... but I already gave both my wrists to Diablo and Diablo II. They are now RSI ridden husks, ready to be discarded and replaced with official Blizzard prosthetics.
While the body fails me, my mind -- sharpened in the Halls of the Blind and practiced at hunting for elusive pixels outlined with the tab key -- remembers is training well, ready to once again take arms against the forces of Hell.
Sometimes, when I sleep, all I can hear is the clicking of the mouse and the 1, 1, 1 of potions chain-quaffed in haste. The clicking, like the jaws and mandibles of a billion fiendish ants, coming to tear me limb from limb unless I find the last piece of Tal Rasha's Wrappings. ... and the Baal runs. Endless Baal runs, searching, always searching...
Now gaze ye upon my graveyard of Hardcore mode characters, mortal, and despair . Despair as I do when inspecting this broken, shattered life; a veteran of a digital war, a soldier of fictitious battles... ... stay a while, and listen.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Huskystarcraft has a 4-part youtube series of co-op play. Great to watch if you don't have access to the beta yet! They play a wizard (so full of himself, it's great!) and witchdoctor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoGQmKi0Iq0 (1st part)
Perhaps slashdot has changed and people aren't going to care, but it used to be about more than just playing games.
DON'T FORGET! Blizzard is the company that set the precedent for validity of EULAs (wow glider case), demanded real names on battle.net and sued an open source battle net clone out of existence.
IF YOU VALUE FREEDOM YOU CANNOT PLAY THIS GAME!
The way they handled this game is idiotic. It's like they know they're about to run out of WoW stuff and now they need another cash cow.
Keep that in mind guys, it's not open for everyone yet - nor is it even closed for random invites. - So don't bother losing your marbles or logging in to bnet / email to check.
Don't have an ETA when but obviously soon, my wild guess - maybe another 3 to 7 days.
But if I need a fix, there is just no finer digital crack than a Diablo game...
Screw the mouse, main line it baby!!!
Diablo II just barely came out! Let's us fucking enjoy it at least.
The end is here, no more "sign of beta".
Hide the children and women! The Betacolypse is upon us all!
i've already won ten million dollars in the British lottery and may need to see a doctor about how large my penis has become, she wants me so badly.
on top of that, my battle.net account has been under investigated for ilegal actions and i need to login to hackmyaccount.ru/battle.net-account/ and click the "i am the owner of the account shown below" button so they don't ban my diablo 3 beta trial key and prevent me from claiming my free winged zebraconponycar.
blizzard keeps telling me not to click links in emails, but just to login to my battle.net account to see if i've got a beta invite, but heck the link looks so inviting..
Keep checking. Blizzard staggers their beta invites so that different people are at different stages of play. If you don't get one today you may in a week or a month.
Diablo III is borked too badly for me to be interested.
I just checked out the video from HuskyStarcraft, and I guess I must be missing something. Aside from the DRM that forces you to be online to play, and the fact that they censor your character names, how is this an improvement over Diablo 2? It looks like exactly the same game, just at a higher resolution.
Way back in the WoW beta, I remember fantasizing about Blizzard making a Diablo III using some of WoW's technology. By which I meant the best of both worlds, a game that looks and plays like WoW but set in the darker Diablo universe with single player and LAN play. Instead, we get basically the worst of both worlds, a dated look and feel saddled with unnecessary online requirements. Next.
...I was very interested in Diablo III, but it's been so many years that in the meantime, life happened to me, I grew up, and lost interest in spending my time playing online video games. Diablo I and II were a lot of fun, but it's hard to muster the enthusiasm for stuff like this as I've gotten older.
I wish the parent could have my babies!
DRM'd Network Only Activation? Nah, it's a bloody game, I don't need it and they, apparently, don't want to sell it.
Oh memories of these hardcore level nineties chars... Remember losing some madly staffed hardcore chars to some nasty modded minions etc. Also remember my heart beating hard when *nearly* losing some of my favorite characters.
Remember my self-cubed "+251 poison" small charm "pestilous of pestilence" or something like that. People in the trade window would get *mad* and offer me crazy stuff for that one.
Ah, these were the non-productive but oh-so-much-fun days.
I hope there's still a hardcore mode. Because softcore, like WoW, is for clueless sissies.
Softcore ain't the same game. Shut up, you're not allowed to talk here if you were playing softcore.
That is how you discern the feel of a game without actually playing it.
The game looks good, but I can't buy it. I travel regularly and I don't always have an internet connection available. Always on connection for single player is a deal breaker.
I will wait for Torchlight 2
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
Um, 95% of the stuff from Blizzard in your In Box is pure phishing scams. People shouldn't be clicking on any links in their In Boxes at all. They should be visiting Battle.net and logging into their account to check and see if the beta is on their account. Please people, do not assume that invite in your In Box is actually from Blizzard or that the link actually points to the download. Chances are it doesn't.
I'm not interested in Diablo 3, unless I can play off and online like Diablo 1 or 2. I'll stick with Minecraft, at least the worlds are fresh when I put a new seed in and there's more seeds then I'll ever see in my life time. Bonus, Minecraft runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Thats where I'll put my money in to companies who produce things like that.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Count me among the thousands of diehard Diablo fans who won't be buying D3 because the player is forced to always be connected to the internet to play, even in single player "offline" mode. That's ridiculous. It's an affront to all logic and decency. But I fully expect Torchlight 2 to scratch the "click for loot" itch - the first Torchlight was a blast and the second one is going to be bigger, better, and even more of a blast.
Imagine the Diablo III engine applied to an Avatar: The Last Airbender video game, where you could control the 5 main characters all at once a-la the original Dungeon Siege, and go off with one or two at a time on sub-quests. And all the voice acting and cut scenes were done by the original cast and writers, with a lot of story mixed in unobtrustively. And you have like, 80 abilities for each element class. And 'leveling' is very much based in your own skill. Blizzard + Nickelodeon... I would love to see them collaborate.
Has anybody playing the demo tried it in wine? I will consider purchasing it if it works, otherwise I'll pass.
I'll keep my money, you can keep your DRM.
While I'm not pissed about the always online requirement as some seem to be, I have to be cautious because I tend to have troubles with my internet connection. I'm not entirely sure if it's my provider, the modem they gave me, or my router. I restart both the router and the modem two or three times a week, sometimes more than once a day. I think this will be frustrating and honestly may spoil the game if kills my character often.
I've put together NoDiablo.com for people-who-would-like-to-but-won't buy Diablo 3 because of the "MMO" additions to the game : the always-connected requirement, lack of LAN play, no mods and the real-money Auction House. I think we can understand why Blizzard's doing it — trying to control the environment to cut down on cheating and adding aggressive DRM to stop piracy — but it's an overly ambitious and unnecessary solution they came up with. The MMO additions don't add real value to the way most people want to play Diablo. It feels like their programmers had the funds to come up with their "dream environment" and they got carried away, focusing on their own "what ifs" rather than asking "what do our customers want?" As far as I can tell, for some people cheating was a real problem in Diablo 2, but only when playing online with strangers. Maybe those players complained loudly and it's all Blizzard heard, I don't know. But most gamers don't seem to think that playing online with strangers is Diablo's core gameplay, so how much of an issue was this really? Enough to justify the changes to the game? Or is Blizzard using this as an excuse to take more control and bring in a few more bucks?
Not sure how much of a chance we have of changing things at this point, but if the MMO additions have made you decide not to buy Diablo 3, please consider lending your support at http://www.nodiablo.com
I'm in closed beta right now (a real one, not a marketing, so I can't say much more than what's already public on their website). Suffice it to say, these guys kick serious butt and the game should be superior to anything I've seen from D3 videos (I'm sure D3 will have better cut scenes, those were the only truly good part of D2 btw).
Oh and Path of Exile is free to play.
For those worried about phishing attacks or not noticing your beta confirmation you can simply log into your battle.net account and see if you have a beta code / access to the download.
Much easier and safer ten trying to depend on receiving an email.
On top of the DRM, Diablo 3 will have an optional REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE which will further push the security of their game environment! Blizzard really wants to make some bank from people endlessly harvesting and selling items for real money! They even announced an alliance with Paypal to let you dump your balance in your Paypal account! Unfortunately, people will most certianly buy in-game items for real money just like they do now via 3rd parties!
Same deal with being connected as with Star Craft 2. I wasn't thrilled at first, but now that I've played hundreds of hours of addictive fun play, the $50 was very well spent.
Check out Crimson Alliance, available through Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 pts ($15). Action RPG in the vein of Gauntlet, Torchlight and Diablo. The best part: 4-player couch/online co-op. I'm playing it with my two younger boys. $15 is a great deal when we can all play together on the same box.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.