Diablo 3: Testing the Beta

Warning: The following contains the most minor of spoilers.

After months of waiting to be selected for Diablo 3 Beta testing, and literally years of awaiting the game's release, I was finally able to sample the game this weekend when Blizzard Entertainment finally opened up the Beta testing to everyone with a Battle.net account. While the purpose of this was largely to see how their servers would cope with the explosion of players, many fans viewed it as a demo version of the game which will be released next month (5/15/12). I know that despite being locked out of the server about 50% of the time I tried to log in and experiencing minor glitches which prevent me from joining games once logged in, the open Beta weekend has only ramped up my anticipation of the game's full release.

In the 13 levels and handful of quests the Beta allows you to play the highlight is definitely the amazing aesthetic quality of the game. Both sound and graphics are absolutely stunning to the point where you'll want to just sit in town practicing your moves and playing around with the zoom key. My personal favorite is the Witch Doctor's Firebats (Starcraft reference?) move, which shoots a stream of flaming bats in front of the character. But the graphics are not to be outdone by the sound quality. The dungeons are riddled with the sounds of bones rattling, ground shaking, and blood coalescing into fearsome monsters. On top of that, everything a character says, be they player character or NPC, is actually said out load and there are also sound clips to go along with scrolls and journals found in dungeons as well as lore which you can listen to when you confront new monsters. Unlike Diablo 2 which featured long speeches by NPCs like Deckard Caine and Akara, quest givers that we've seen so far in the Beta keep it short and simple and even feature a little back and forth with the player character whose lines vary depending on your class.

The scripting for Diablo 3 seems significantly better so far than that of the previous installments. That's not to say that scripting in Diablo 2 was bad, but it was certainly tiring and drawn-out and was often just skipped over entirely. The Beta features such gems as "It's a shame that bard got himself eaten. I could do with some music right now," and exchanges between the mercenaries and player character including one in which the Demon Hunter remarks that he doesn't believe in an afterlife because "Isn't this life bad enough?" Each of the 5 classes has a slightly different script when responding to quest givers, all of which give the same results, (ie. you accept the quest) but the way they respond to the mercenaries when prompted varies significantly, displaying the personalities of each class. It's no Portal 2, which I still hold as the best scripted game I've ever played, but it's done well enough that players will actually pay attention when the characters start talking.

The Diablo 3 Beta only allows players to make a small dent in the first act so as not to reveal spoilers for the rest of the game, but so far the storyline is actually intriguing. By the time you reach the end of Beta content you'll be left with such questions as "What's the deal with the fallen star?" and "God damnit, why can't I keep playing?" As a World of Warcraft player I've been steadily growing fed up with the direction of the storyline ever since the Cataclysm expansion, (let's be honest: the pandas are just a calculated marketing scheme designed to draw in younger audiences) but Diablo 3 seems to have all of Blizzard's good writers. In just the first part of the first act we are given quests in which we must help the blacksmith pity-kill his wife and nameless villagers, a templar get revenge on a former member of his order, and rescue Deckard Cain (it wouldn't be a Diablo game without him). The focuses of the quests and the lore that relates to them are madness, betrayal, revenge, and save the NPCs caught up in all the madness, betrayal, and revenge. There are no pandas, no /dance, and no other cutesy WoW stuff. There's only killing.

Anyone who's played Diablo 2 knows that the mutiplayer aspect of the game was seriously lacking in one significant area: looting. Each boss in Diablo 2 essentially gave loot to whoever had empty bags, no lag, and could click the fastest while everyone else got nothing. Diablo 3 features a system in which each player in a party has separate loot and gold. This system combined with separate achievements and events for co-operative play makes teaming up with other players great for all parties (pun intended) involved. This installment in the series also features an Auction House form which players can bid on or purchase gear from each other without having to create a trading game and wait for hours on end until someone finally has the gear you're looking for. It's almost as if Blizzard wants Diablo players to work together in this game instead of just viciously competing with each other. Unfortunately though, there is no PvP element to the game yet, so even when you want to compete you can't. Blizzard said last month that they plan to add PvP combat including some sort of arena system in a patch shortly after the game's release, but as of now the system they have for PvP just doesn't meet their standards.

For now players will have to deal with a purely PvE game, which is not necessarily a bad thing as the dungeon content is stunning. We don't get a wide variety of monsters in the Beta, (mostly various forms of skeletons) but the environments housing these monsters are way more interesting than the previous games. Rather than just standing around waiting for something to fight them, many monsters will spring out at you from walls and traps, as well as climb through windows, form from the blood of dead villagers, crawl out from bushes, burst forth from other monsters, and literally be puked into existence. Most of the indoor environments feature traps which you can use to drop chandeliers or sections of walls on your enemies, and there are even minor experience bonuses for doing so. If you get bored slaughtering the endless horde of monsters, you can destroy many of the objects in the indoor environments for more experience bonuses, including statues, tables, bookshelves, altars, tombstones, and barrels.

Like Diablo 2 we are given 5 classes to choose from, and you have to assume that Blizzard plans to release expansions with additional characters at some point down the road (Blizz is all about the expansions). Each of the classes has a unique play style while still following the Diablo paradigm of "just kill stuff," rather than the Tank/Heals/DPS setup of World of Warcraft. The way talents are done is significantly different, however. Each class is far less customizable and given only a handful of actual skills to use compared to the Diablo 2 skill tree. This game gives the player a choice of 4 skills for each mouse button and the 4 numbered hotkeys where potions used to be (potions now stack neatly in a single item slot in your inventory) which are upgraded throughout the game. Starting at level 10 you can earn passive skills which give you a slight degree of customization as you choose one or the other.

If there is a downfall of Diablo 3 it's looking like it might be how linear the game is. The talents are certainly captivating now, but Diablo has always involved a lot of grinding dungeons which could prove to be boring after many levels using the same basic set of skills. Of course, the achievement system will keep some people grinding away all day no matter what, but if further content proves to be as interesting as the Beta content it may be enough to make the players forget that they're essentially just spamming a couple of moves throughout whole dungeons. The Diablo games are far less open-ended than many other MMORPGs because they lock you in to path to complete quests, beat bosses, finish the game, and repeat on a harder setting, so there will definitely be some grinding. The only question is will this remain entertaining throughout the game given the relatively small set of skills each character has? I'm hoping so because the Diablo 3 Beta has definitely sold me on the game.