This is basically a long ramble. Keep in mind this is last years Blizzcon demo so I’m sure a lot has changed. Also you might know a lot of this info already.
Hello,
I guess I will share my experience with Diablo 3 this weekend. For those who didn’t know you could play Diablo 3 at the Hyatt Regency in Austin on Saturday and Sunday. The way they had it set up was 8 computers for Diablo, 8 for Starcraft 2 and 8 for Cataclysms. This was a pretty small event for some giant tournament for Wow and Warcraft 3. This was the demo from the last Blizzcon where you played in the desert.
You could only play for 15 minutes at a time as long as there was a line and other people wanted to play. If there was no line you could play for as long as you wanted. Of course Diablo always had a line so you constantly had to get up and start all over.
All 4 of the announced player types where available male and female except for the female monk she was grayed out. Once you clicked on the kind of character you wanted to play it asked for a name and then you’re in. This was only single player so you could not play with the person sitting next to you. I played as Barbarian first.
The characters started at lvl 12 with a full suit of armor and weapons. Your skills where already set up for you since the first 12 skill points where pre-spent in certain skills. As you lvl you get 1 skill point where you can put it towards any skill that was available. I was only able to get to lvl 14 since I kept getting bumped of the computer every 15 minutes. Your backpack starts off kind of small only holding somewhere between 15 and 20 items however you get a secondary pack that allows you to hold a lot more. I found myself having to throw out a lot of items because my pack was full and there was no vender to sell to or salvage in this build. It felt to me as if items where dropping a lot more in D3 then in D2. There was loot everywhere. It was very nice to just run over the gold and it auto picked up. The only items that dropped where white, blue and yellow nothing higher. The health orbs system worked out pretty nicely. I was a bit worried about there being no health potions. As you know health potions are back in and they drop all over the place. The only thing is they are on a timer. The potion will heal you immediately as apposed to the health orb that healed over time but you could only use one like once every 10 seconds. I did see in the Barbarians skills a passive skill that added to the percent of orbs dropped per kill. Something really cool I noticed was this multiplier that kept coming up in the bottom right corner that would say like Massive Kill Streak 25 kills +100 XP. That was a cool bonus.
You started inside of a giant ridge with the walls of the mountains on both sides of you. There was like 4 guards there and an npc that gave you the main quest. The main quest was to go to the village in the monk game play video (don’t remember the name) and kill everything that moves . There are 3 sub quests that where available but you had to find them. The smaller quests where from random events. There would be an NPC about to die and he would tell you a story. Another quest that I came across was this dungeon, once you entered it there is a message that says you have 3 minutes to kill as much as you can and loot everything before the dungeon collapses. The ceiling keeps falling down and there was a timer on the right side of the screen. These dungeons are awesome the graphics look great. The background was destructible, which was cool to destroy the environment. The quests did have a voice over and would show up as text in the bottom left corner. The rewards for these quests were a random yellow item and 8,000+ experience.
As you venture out you find all kinds of monsters. Some where champions most where normal. This one champion was pretty hard; his magic ability was Thorns from the Paladin in D2. He gave me a bit of a challenge. The pace of the game still feels very fast. At some times you may come across 50 monsters at once. Oh, blood goes everywhere. The exploding palms (at least I thought it was exploding palm, that put the beating heart above the monsters head) was great. Tag one monster with this and run away. He will explode and do area damage and take out everything next to him. This created some awesome bloody chain explosions. I also noticed that teleport was available for the Wizard at lvl 25+. Basically, we got to run around in the desert and kill stuff. The area was pretty large and the monsters did get harder as you got farther in.
For a game they say is not close to being finished it looked amazing. I can’t wait for D3 to come out.
The difficulty wasn't bad soloing everything. Keep in mind we are probably on normal. The Barbarian can take hits for days so it felt kind of easy. Although, I did try the other 3 classes and that was a bit different. Playing as the Monk was a little harder. I’m used to being able to take hits. He held his own for a while but you did have to back up sometimes to heal. The Witch Doctor and the Wizard where much harder to play, their health dropped significantly faster. You had to kite the monsters a lot. So as a Barb the game felt easy, as a Wizard the game felt hard. I really think the difficulty will come down to the items you have.
The dungeon with the 3 minute quest was really cool. I stayed in the dungeon through the full 3 minutes to see if it would say you fail and kick you out or what. Turns out if you stay the full 3 minutes you die and you restart at the last check point.
The playable demo did feel large. It had a lot of sub areas that branch off like in D2. Also, since they kept bumping us every 15 minutes the random map generator kept changing the layout of the game. This made it feel much larger as well. However, I get the impression this is a very small area compared to the total game.
Hello,
The dungeon was not small but not to large. Probably the size of the dungeon in D2 when you first start and come across the cave where its very dark and you have to kill all the monsters then it lights up ( I don’t remember the name of that quest). I was able to make it through the whole dungeon and it looked like the entrance was also the exit. I never found an alternate way out of this dungeon. Other ones did have a way out however it just brought you back to the same place as the entrance.
On another note I just saw the article about the gems and having 14 different levels. From what I played the other day gems dropped all over the place, much more than in D2. I stopped picking them up because there was no place to sell them. I can’t imagine it being to difficult to reach the top tier if you replay some easy areas a couple times. Also rings and amulets dropped a lot as well.
Hello,
The dungeon was not small but not to large. Probably the size of the dungeon in D2 when you first start and come across the cave where its very dark and you have to kill all the monsters then it lights up ( I don’t remember the name of that quest). I was able to make it through the whole dungeon and it looked like the entrance was also the exit. I never found an alternate way out of this dungeon. Other ones did have a way out however it just brought you back to the same place as the entrance.
On another note I just saw the article about the gems and having 14 different levels. From what I played the other day gems dropped all over the place, much more than in D2. I stopped picking them up because there was no place to sell them. I can’t imagine it being to difficult to reach the top tier if you replay some easy areas a couple times. Also rings and amulets dropped a lot as well.
Thanks
I would not consider the drop rates of those demos a "official" thing. Blizz already told us in the b.net forumn that they increased the drop rate on demos or else people would not experience the diversity of items due the low amount of time to play.
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"In time the hissing of her sanity
Faded out her voice and soiled her name
And like marked pages in a diary
Everything seemed clean that is unstained
The incoherent talk of ordinary days
Why would we really need to live?
Decide what is clear and what's within a haze
What you should take and what to give" - Opeth
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Hello,
I guess I will share my experience with Diablo 3 this weekend. For those who didn’t know you could play Diablo 3 at the Hyatt Regency in Austin on Saturday and Sunday. The way they had it set up was 8 computers for Diablo, 8 for Starcraft 2 and 8 for Cataclysms. This was a pretty small event for some giant tournament for Wow and Warcraft 3. This was the demo from the last Blizzcon where you played in the desert.
You could only play for 15 minutes at a time as long as there was a line and other people wanted to play. If there was no line you could play for as long as you wanted. Of course Diablo always had a line so you constantly had to get up and start all over.
All 4 of the announced player types where available male and female except for the female monk she was grayed out. Once you clicked on the kind of character you wanted to play it asked for a name and then you’re in. This was only single player so you could not play with the person sitting next to you. I played as Barbarian first.
The characters started at lvl 12 with a full suit of armor and weapons. Your skills where already set up for you since the first 12 skill points where pre-spent in certain skills. As you lvl you get 1 skill point where you can put it towards any skill that was available. I was only able to get to lvl 14 since I kept getting bumped of the computer every 15 minutes. Your backpack starts off kind of small only holding somewhere between 15 and 20 items however you get a secondary pack that allows you to hold a lot more. I found myself having to throw out a lot of items because my pack was full and there was no vender to sell to or salvage in this build. It felt to me as if items where dropping a lot more in D3 then in D2. There was loot everywhere. It was very nice to just run over the gold and it auto picked up. The only items that dropped where white, blue and yellow nothing higher. The health orbs system worked out pretty nicely. I was a bit worried about there being no health potions. As you know health potions are back in and they drop all over the place. The only thing is they are on a timer. The potion will heal you immediately as apposed to the health orb that healed over time but you could only use one like once every 10 seconds. I did see in the Barbarians skills a passive skill that added to the percent of orbs dropped per kill. Something really cool I noticed was this multiplier that kept coming up in the bottom right corner that would say like Massive Kill Streak 25 kills +100 XP. That was a cool bonus.
You started inside of a giant ridge with the walls of the mountains on both sides of you. There was like 4 guards there and an npc that gave you the main quest. The main quest was to go to the village in the monk game play video (don’t remember the name) and kill everything that moves . There are 3 sub quests that where available but you had to find them. The smaller quests where from random events. There would be an NPC about to die and he would tell you a story. Another quest that I came across was this dungeon, once you entered it there is a message that says you have 3 minutes to kill as much as you can and loot everything before the dungeon collapses. The ceiling keeps falling down and there was a timer on the right side of the screen. These dungeons are awesome the graphics look great. The background was destructible, which was cool to destroy the environment. The quests did have a voice over and would show up as text in the bottom left corner. The rewards for these quests were a random yellow item and 8,000+ experience.
As you venture out you find all kinds of monsters. Some where champions most where normal. This one champion was pretty hard; his magic ability was Thorns from the Paladin in D2. He gave me a bit of a challenge. The pace of the game still feels very fast. At some times you may come across 50 monsters at once. Oh, blood goes everywhere. The exploding palms (at least I thought it was exploding palm, that put the beating heart above the monsters head) was great. Tag one monster with this and run away. He will explode and do area damage and take out everything next to him. This created some awesome bloody chain explosions. I also noticed that teleport was available for the Wizard at lvl 25+. Basically, we got to run around in the desert and kill stuff. The area was pretty large and the monsters did get harder as you got farther in.
For a game they say is not close to being finished it looked amazing. I can’t wait for D3 to come out.
Thanks
The difficulty wasn't bad soloing everything. Keep in mind we are probably on normal. The Barbarian can take hits for days so it felt kind of easy. Although, I did try the other 3 classes and that was a bit different. Playing as the Monk was a little harder. I’m used to being able to take hits. He held his own for a while but you did have to back up sometimes to heal. The Witch Doctor and the Wizard where much harder to play, their health dropped significantly faster. You had to kite the monsters a lot. So as a Barb the game felt easy, as a Wizard the game felt hard. I really think the difficulty will come down to the items you have.
The dungeon with the 3 minute quest was really cool. I stayed in the dungeon through the full 3 minutes to see if it would say you fail and kick you out or what. Turns out if you stay the full 3 minutes you die and you restart at the last check point.
The playable demo did feel large. It had a lot of sub areas that branch off like in D2. Also, since they kept bumping us every 15 minutes the random map generator kept changing the layout of the game. This made it feel much larger as well. However, I get the impression this is a very small area compared to the total game.
If you have anymore questions let me know.
Thanks
The dungeon was not small but not to large. Probably the size of the dungeon in D2 when you first start and come across the cave where its very dark and you have to kill all the monsters then it lights up ( I don’t remember the name of that quest). I was able to make it through the whole dungeon and it looked like the entrance was also the exit. I never found an alternate way out of this dungeon. Other ones did have a way out however it just brought you back to the same place as the entrance.
On another note I just saw the article about the gems and having 14 different levels. From what I played the other day gems dropped all over the place, much more than in D2. I stopped picking them up because there was no place to sell them. I can’t imagine it being to difficult to reach the top tier if you replay some easy areas a couple times. Also rings and amulets dropped a lot as well.
Thanks
I would not consider the drop rates of those demos a "official" thing. Blizz already told us in the b.net forumn that they increased the drop rate on demos or else people would not experience the diversity of items due the low amount of time to play.