Diablo III Forum Watch : More Beta First Impressions

Tags : diablo 3 impression, diablo 3 beta, diablo 3 news

During last weekend’s Diablo III Beta open play test we posted a bunch of first reactions from fans getting their first taste of the Diablo III beta. Since the free play opportunity ended we’ve seen a lot more such posts go up in our Diablo 3 Beta forum, and here’s a summary of the latest fan opinion offerings.

DMB offered a polished appraisal of the overall beta, plus coverage of all five classes. He liked almost everything but the control system, at least once he surmounted hours of technical issues getting the game to download, install, and lauch.

PlanktonBoy made the best of his weekend with though testing, and he wrote up a lengthy discussion with indepth comments on all five classes, including their best and worst skills.

Lifeless posted, “effingfinally (a beta story)” with a big list of his likes and dislikes from the beta. He liked the combat, crafting, skill runes, and more, but worried about the lack of character customization options and simplistic difficulty.

Daemonaz finally got to play the beta, and loved it, even the classes he wasn’t that eager to play. Only the terrible skill UI design, tiny chat window, and the constantly popping up lore books and tool tips, bothered him. That and having to wait three more weeks to play again.

In the Name of Zod listed his top five Beta likes (numbered Alpha – Echo), with the Elective Mode for skill selection on top. If find someone naming a hidden check box that regains partial freedom of skill assignment an odd top choice, personally.

On the other hand, SwiftArrow made his first forum post ever to laud the Beta which he loved… except for the terrible straitjacket skill system that forced him to use such a limited variety of skills. (Thus will every sensible Diablo player react should they fail to discover the Elective Mode.)

Arachnophiliac made his first post ever to offer thoughts on the beta experience. He claims to be a casual player and likes most of the changes to D3 that make the game more accessible, such as cool skills being available from low levels, rather than being forced to hoard skill points for the good skills that didn’t come in until level 24 or 30.

Raveharu is a long-time forum poster who finally got some beta playtime, and enjoyed it greatly. He liked the feeling of his characters gaining power, the monster design, the sound, and the NPCs. He was less fond of the glowing dungeon entrances, overdone monster death animations, and chat channel interface.

PunkonJunk enjoyed the beta and loved the Wizard, but he’s worried about the long term function of Inferno and the Auction House.

Finally, I’ve been soliciting player input on the highlights and lowlights of the Diablo 3 Beta. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the overall process (as a fan and/or player) hit up that thread and let us know what you think.

Update: Two more I missed, rescued from comments:

sgtTenor covers all the classes and overall game issues, and is a big fan of practically everything. He singles out the character customization for special praise.

Kimiyy skips the positive feedback and goes right to a list of four things he doesn’t like: cheesy in-game animations, the closing NPC dialogue window, the small and linear early areas, and the voice acting.

Source: diablo.incgamers.com/