So, I recently got into the Diablo 3 EU beta and wow. Seriously, wow. This game is BAD. I'm shocked it managed to get past even the new Blizzard's QA team.

I'm getting 200ms ping and having that registered as "good" (ie. in the green in terms of latency) by the game, with random 500ms lagspikes. It's entirely possible that the EU beta's servers are set up in the US, but I get at least 160ms from US servers in every other game, and god only knows. This leads to a shit tonne of artificial difficulty and near death experiences.

The CoD-esque levelling mechanics are laughable, as are the ways abilities work. Every level, you get a new ability or a new upgrade for one of your abilities, and you will ALWAYS have every ability at max level. You have no choice in what order you get them. The only thing that distinguises you from other players is gear.

Switching out abilities gives you a 10 second (or thereabouts, not sure on the exact figure) cooldown on that ability, which means switching out abilities or having more than six active abilities is unfeasible, which can lead to situations where you get attacked and don't have the right ability for the situation.

All this just feeds into having the easiest general loadout and spamming the attack until everything is dead, regardless of the situation. You approach everything in the same way, deal with it in the same way and the like. You won't vary from other player's experiences either, as they're ALSO doing it in the same way.

Don't get me started on how horribly the classes are in general. They're not archetypal, they're not very balanced (heavy armoured barbarian / monk more easily kills stuff than the flimsy wizard?) and they're just not very fun. Witch Doctor is a bad necromancer clone, Demon Hunter is like a crappy D2 assassin, Wizard is just a poor man's sorceress, Monk is actually alright in terms of overall design and Barbarian is just a straight rip from D2 and therefore the best class in the game.

The healing potion / healing orb issue just shows how schizophrenic the design team is. On the one hand, you have healing potions which allow you to decide when you need healing and use them when you need them. On the other hand, you have healing orbs which drop randomly off mobs and heal you when you walk over them. Of course, due to this, healing orbs are utterly useless, or at least could be better replaced by healing potion drops, and is a fine example of "lol wut are we meant to be doing again???".

Graphically, the game is horrible. It reminds me of Icewind Dale 2 in terms of looks. You could say it has a certain style to it, if you thought style could mean "looks like it's from early 21st century". Low polygon models, ugly arse textures and a general bad colour scheme just makes the game seem faded and already aged. Compare it with, say, Diablo or Diablo 2 in modern resolutions and they don't look nearly as aged as this game.

Controls-wise, the game's okay-ish. Everything's pretty much the same as Diablo 2 (shift to stay still whilst you attack, ctrl to view thingies, alt to view items etc), and everything is therefore okay.

I just fail to see how this is a Diablo game. To me, it feels like a poor Korean Diablo-wannabe that made a bunch of bad design decisions because they had a massive budget, a lot of time and no idea how to improve on the original.

The graphical changes, gameplay changes, EVERYTHING changes have just ruined the overall experience and turned it into a game worthy of nothing more than the award of "Worst AAA Game of 2012".

Give Path of Exile a shot if you can grab a key somewhere, I'm finding it to be very addicting, and the skill system is excellent. 

Originally posted by Adhesive33

Give Path of Exile a shot if you can grab a key somewhere, I'm finding it to be very addicting, and the skill system is exellent. 

Planning on doing so. Mainly can't wait until Torchlight 2 comes out. :(

Can't say i agree with anything you posted. The game seems very good to me.

I was super excited about Diablo 3 when I got into the beta. When i first got in the game was on patch 12 and was pretty good. In the last few patches they have been stripping away what made Diablo so successful in the first place. Guess you could call it the WoW-effect. Dumbing the game down. Stripping customization. Removing rune drops because "omg i dont want to spend hours hunting for them to make my character better" because thats not what the game is all about /sarcasm. 

This is really a prime example that shows sometimes endless money does Not equal quality. I honestly would have been happy if they took all the classes from Diablo 2. updated the graphics and set it in a new world. Would have easily sold millions but nope got to make a piece of shit that only people so far up blizzards ass will buy xD.

/rant off. slightly annoyed with how they basicly butchered one my childhood game series :P

Thank god Path of Exile is amazing and is really the true successor to the Diablo bloodline. Really hoping Torchlight 2 will so shine. I highly recomend trying to get into the beta for Path of Exile. like I said its really well done :)

This topic seems less about Diablo 3 and more about coaxing people into getting POE beta.

/chuckles

...thats quite the opinion

Im in d3 beta in canada. No problem with latency... sorry your having that problem.

In my opinion i think they have done a great job with the changes to d3. Glad its not just d2 with a different skin.

Got me CE preorder and cant wait to play

Why bother posting it, just don't buy it.

Although I think it lags a lot when you first start playing, that goes away after a while.

I have 8GB of ram so i'm sure it's loading into memory.

Day one purchase for me.

Originally posted by katasteel

Why bother posting it, just don't buy it.

Yeah shame on the op for posting a negative opinion on a forum.

well evryone knows that since first beta and see some gameplay footage before beta release ,threat is pointless its obvious the game is  wayy diferent from d2 and not what fan expected from d3.

still it seen good for others but its not what we really expected even whit the rmt shop ;/

I agree with many things you said. Its imo a dumbed-down version of D2 with upgraded graphics (not much). I had no problem with latency though. However, I did pre-order it, mostly because there are no other games to play at this time, im so bored.

There's absolutely nothing anyone can say that will keep me from buying and enjoying D3.

Originally posted by ArEf

Originally posted by Adhesive33

Give Path of Exile a shot if you can grab a key somewhere, I'm finding it to be very addicting, and the skill system is exellent. 

Planning on doing so. Mainly can't wait until Torchlight 2 comes out. :(

LOL at Torchlight 2.

Steampunk with giant fonts is cool amirite?

TL1 was a 1 week game at best.  TL2 may be a 3 week game until mods come out.

Originally posted by katasteel

Why bother posting it, just don't buy it.

Although I think it lags a lot when you first start playing, that goes away after a while.

I have 8GB of ram so i'm sure it's loading into memory.

Day one purchase for me.

/sigh

Your RAM has nothing to do with server latency (lag)...

So basically

New = Bad

The same, but improved = Good

Gamers fear change

Blizzard has made it apparent throughout their development process that they lacked a clear vision from the start. This thing fails both as an "upgraded D2" and something truly unique.

If I could describe it properly, it would be a mish mash of different concepts and mechanics whose purpose is to attempt to appeal to everyone.  

Meh, I prepurchased it because I enjoy the diablo series as a whole. So long as it satisfies the minimum requirements, I'll probably enjoy D3.

I look foward to playing gw2, d3 seems to have a lot of people hating on it. Which means they have vested interest in POE and tl2.  have you actually seen any videos of TL2? Really? You're looking foward to that? 

I think d3 has massive potential and they will easily be the hottest selling game of 2012. Even if GW2 is as amazing as it seems, different genre. But d3 will stand alone, doesn't mean i'll be playing it all that much when gw2 launches, but it'll be a fun month or 2 until it does.

There has been so little seen and played with in beta, it's like saying you decided not to buy d2 because the demo runs of blood raven were boring and too easy.

LOL?

I have to disagree with OP. It lives up to the diablo series and I will most likely buy it when it comes out. The graphics are great and they made some gameplay changes but most of them are annoyances that existed in diablo 2.

Glad to see atleast one player review didn't make D3 out to be some sort of perfect game as if Blizzard can never do wrong.