Diablo III

Released on May 15, 2012 by Blizzard Entertainment

Developed by Blizzard North

Diablo III is an action role-playing game that takes place throughout the dark fantasy world of Sanctuary.

You play a hero who engages in fast-paced combat that tests your reflexes and rewards tactical decisions. As you slay hordes of monsters and challenging bosses, you grow in experience and ability, learning new skills and acquiring items of incredible power.

Blizzard just dropped the launch date for Diablo 3 of May 15th. Pre-order already made and I am marking my calendar.

Is this a game on your radar?

News:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2012/03/diablo-iii-launching-may-15/1

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/d3/


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I pre-ordered the Diablo 3 collectors edition last week. I got the Starcraft 2 collectors edition and loved it, decided since its not that much more than the box copy of D3, ill get the collectors as well.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/services/collectors-edition/

Comes with: Diablo 3 PC/Mac game, Diablo skull and 4G usb soul stone, Behind the scenes DVD/Bluray, art of Diablo 3 book & the Diablo 3 soundtrack. It also comes with some digital stuff like SC2 avatars and some exclusive D3 items.

Kind of with pre-ordering the game got you into the beta. Id love to give it a go.


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My quick first impressions from the beta (<1hour in):

I miss the old art style. I wasn't a hater on the original footage, and I think that it's okay for the series to move in a different direction, but so much of the game right now looks like the early areas of WoW when you start as an undead. It's good, its fun, its interesting, but it's not how I think of Diablo.

One thing I really miss are the old 2D sprites. They were so detailed, while the new models seems so cartooney, just like the base models of WoW mobs.

Enough with the bashing. The gameplay is spot on. It's just like you remember except they've added fun little things like environmental damage and a more... Read All


Graphics & Art:

From the first few minutes in you can tell that Diablo 3 is a Blizzard game. It's beautiful and well blended as you have come to expect from their games. I really enjoy the color palette and ambiance that has been created. I read initial complaints that it "isn't dark enough for the Diablo IP", but I am quite happy with it. Graphics are really only a small part of the game but I doubt anyone will be disappointed with the look and feel of the world.

One thing that I can't get past is the environment depth. It screams of Titan Quest - the altitude of cliffs, the depth of chasms. I really enjoyed the effect in Titan Quest and I'm glad to see it again.


I was so excited to get in to Diablo 3! I rushed character creation so I could start playing right away. Something I noticed very early was how easy it was. It was so easy that I actually lost interest in making new characters for a while. I wrote the difficulty off to being scaled down for testing purposes, but I don't think that's the case. To prove my point I had a co-worker watch as I stood in the middle of three cold enchanted zombies and let them beat on me. Keeping my cursor over my health we noticed I was actually regenrating life faster than they were damaging me. Lame.

Well the other day I found that lots of other beta players agree with me on the lowered... Read All


Yes, I have been invited to the beta. I was one of the lucky 100,000 in the last round of invites. I have played through all available content on a few characters now and haven't taken the time to level everyone up to max level.

I was a pretty hardcore player of Diablo 2 online. My best friend and I always played the ladder and even hardcore mode. We would spend so much time after a ladder reset trying to be in the top 10. Saying I have some emotional attachment to the Diablo IP would be an understatement.

I've decided to split my D3 beta impressions into a bunch of focused mini-posts to mitigate my scattered thoughts. So feel free to comment and ask questions, I'll do my... Read All