Diablo III Previews
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A great deal has been made of the potential for disaster of requiring the game to be played online through battle.net, even when soloing. I was surprised to find that in playing for dozens of hours I experienced only two glitches that caused me to lose any progress, and one was about a minute after starting a new game right after the servers came back online following an update so I didn't lose much (and it seemed fairly understandable since I had joined about the second the server came back). The couple of hours waiting for the servers to come back online were far more of an annoyance it will be very frustrating if one wants to play a single-player game and cannot because the servers are not available. It is forgivable for game servers to go offline for updates in a beta, but if this happens often in the live game it is going to make for some unhappy players. (In playing the game several times over the course of a week, I only encountered the servers being down once, so it's hard to say how often this might happen going forward.) The other glitch was in the middle of a longer session, and I lost a more significant chunk of progress. Again, it's hard to say if this will happen once the game is live, but it seems logical it will not be impossible, and at some point someone is going to lose a rare item like the epic doodad of killing everything, and if it is me, I'll surely blow my top. The game saves your progress at checkpoints, a monumentally dreadful choice in combination with the requirement of playing online. I pray Blizzard reconsiders this and offers the ability to actively save your game. If they don't, I expect cautious players will learn the habit of transporting back to town immediately after scoring excellent gear and other goodies.
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In many ways, Diablo III is what a fan of the series is hoping for: A slicker, modernized variation on the action/RPG's addictive loot-acquiring gameplay. My main concern is that without enough challenge, this new installment might not hold the same lasting appeal as its forebears since one of the objects of better loot is becoming more powerful, which doesn't matter as much if you can still succeed without being as mighty. Lack of difficulty also doesn't go well with the absence of a significant death penalty, or an auction house where players will be able to buy new gear for cash money. Since this is the very beginning of the game, it may ramp up. It also may be that the intent is to make the "normal" difficulty level more accessible to newer or casual players, and those of us who want more challenge will be satisfied by a harder mode. Blizzard has shown no hesitation to continually rebalance World of Warcraft in its live version after all these years, so it's likely that Diablo III balance tweaks will be plentiful as well, making assessing the game's difficulty like hitting a moving target.
Then we move on to Tom's Hardware that has put out three more installments for their hands-on preview since we last checked. Here's a sampling from the latest:
Given that my Witch Doctor is now at level 8, I also have an unlocked third ability slot. For now, I've chosen Hex, a Support ability that summons a Fetish Shaman for eight seconds. This Shaman will hex enemies into chickens who in turn cannot perform offensive actions. Like I said before, the Witch Doctor has interesting abilities that many Diablo fans will really enjoy.
Like the Magician, the Witch Doctor relies on mana to use the special abilities. And like the other characters, the Witch Doctor's ability set is broken down into three categories: Physical Realm, Spirit Realm and Support. My character's Poison Dart, Plague of Toads, Zombie Charger (I'll have to try that one out) and Corpse Spiders are all Physical Realm abilities -- I have five more still to unlock. The Spirit Realm abilities include Haunt and Horrify, with four still remaining locked. Finally, my Witch Doctor's current Support spells include Summon Zombie Dogs, Grasp of the Dead and Hex, with four additional abilities remaining to be unlocked.
As previously stated, the Witch Doctor is probably the easiest to master out of all five, followed by the Barbarian and the Wizard. The Monk is probably more difficult to use than these three because he/she is somewhat hands-on when it comes to tackling enemies, but doesn't have the stamina of the Barbarian class. The Demon Hunter can be difficult simply because he/she uses two separate sets of skills that rely on two separate energies. Instead of one whole globe of mana, the Demon Hunter's reservoir is split in half, thus each side is depleted quicker than if they consumed the entire container.
