I know it's a first impressions review but from what I've read:

Duelist, Witch, Ranger, Templar, Marauder, and Shadow. Each have their own distinct flavor, but all share a common passive skill tree.

Tells me you truely haven't done your research on this title.  Classes share  no differences other than the avatar's looks and the position on the skill tree. Any of the classes can be exactly the same. All skills can be learned by all classes.

A Witch can be a two-handed maul expert and a duelist can be a summoner or a mage. There's no distinction between them. Only the distinct flavor are the skills themselves.

Originally posted by Tsumoro

Originally posted by Shaike
Am i the only one annoyed that you cannot (even with money) expand your inventory??????

Ah see, I was a little bit like you at first when I played this in closed beta. In Torchlight you gather all and send it off with your pet to get your gold. In D3 you kinda garner what you can and flog it off when you next have a pit-stop, or use the way points available.

However, PoE acts a little differently. You are literally picking up the items you want to bargain with, trade for orbs or use/transmute. You are meant to leave behind the stuff you do not want, you get no benefit to them and I think the game does quickly teach you this.

So from Act 1, you pick up the whites etc and start running back and forth, you think, 'cor, I am not getting any benefit from this'. So your reigns begin to relax. Typically I will only take yellows in for barter. At later levels and difficulties you begin to start eyeing up all those whites, stuff with a good quality level and whether they have any sockets and links to it. A white, good quality chest piece, 6 linked will fetch a nice price on the market because it gives people of a higher level more options to play about with it to turn it into something good and viable.

But this is how you learn in the game. I would strongly recommend people, who are mature to perhaps make a default character for at least chapter 1, then move on to a hardcore character. The community I have found is much more civil and mature when looking for answers and advice.

This game is near perfect, however, the community is full of ninja looters, DDOSers, and level rushers.  It's terrible when you try to kill everything upto a boss, only to get to the boss room to notice that he's already dead and you get no credit because some higher level rushed up there and killed him because more loot drops in a full group than solo.  If they fix these issues this game would be perfect.

I know some might say it makes it more hardcore or something like that, but it doesn't.  Once you get a couple of uniques ninja looted or try 15 times to kill a boss for a quest and never get to kill him, or get killed numerous times while you're lagging from a DDOSer, you'll want to quit in minutes...

Edit: This is one thing people that do all these things don't understand.  You are only hurting yourself in doing such actions.  You'll end up in a game that has hardly anyone in it, and the players in it are all cheating and stealing from everyone else.

 The more you play the game you'll realize that this game suffers the same issue as Diablo 3 with it's itemization. Unique items which take ages to obtain are completely worthless being out shined by rares that are easily obtained like candy throughout the game.

 Because of the fact that rares are better than the uniques there's no real reason for a player to stack the magic find to obtain these pieces of gear. It's only a matter of time until they find the next best upgrade.

 Even if said uniques are "decent" for their level when you look at the majority of them they typically have a negative side effect. For example there's a level 58 Two-Handed Maul with a 200% increased damage modifier. That modifier puts the max damage of the maul at 189 damage. However, the side effect to wielding this maul is that you will no longer be able to crit.

 Why is that said maul bad? To begin with it's a level 58 weapon with only 189 max damage. I currently have a level 44 Shadow with a claw that has 201 max damage on it. This makes the claw better in every way possible. It has higher damage, the ability to crit, and it's ~20 levels lower than the unique maul.

Hopefully GGG will fix these blantant issues with their itemization. Otherwise there's no point to be farming bosses if you're able to obtain the same gear from normal monsters. There's no point for a hardcore character to play it risky because the no longer need to dance with the devil for better gear.

Originally posted by Mtibbs1989

 The more you play the game you'll realize that this game suffers the same issue as Diablo 3 with it's itemization. Unique items which take ages to obtain are completely worthless being out shined by rares that are easily obtained like candy throughout the game.

 

 Because of the fact that rares are better than the uniques there's no real reason for a player to stack the magic find to obtain these pieces of gear. It's only a matter of time until they find the next best upgrade.

 

 Even if said uniques are "decent" for their level when you look at the majority of them they typically have a negative side effect. For example there's a level 58 Two-Handed Maul with a 200% increased damage modifier. That modifier puts the max damage of the maul at 189 damage. However, the side effect to wielding this maul is that you will no longer be able to crit.

 

 Why is that said maul bad? To begin with it's a level 58 weapon with only 189 max damage. I currently have a level 44 Shadow with a claw that has 201 max damage on it. This makes the claw better in every way possible. It has higher damage, the ability to crit, and it's ~20 levels lower than the unique maul.

 

Hopefully GGG will fix these blantant issues with their itemization. Otherwise there's no point to be farming bosses if you're able to obtain the same gear from normal monsters. There's no point for a hardcore character to play it risky because the no longer need to dance with the devil for better gear.

I think you are missing the purpose of unique items in this game. They are not there to be the best items, they are there to let you take advantage of unique properties without having to skill for them. Take a pair of gloves which give you Conduit.. or a Bow which fires an extra arrow..

They are suppose to be there to build around, not to slot in place of whatever you had before because they have universally better stats.

Originally posted by Mtibbs1989

 I know it's a first impressions review but from what I've read:

 

Duelist, Witch, Ranger, Templar, Marauder, and Shadow. Each have their own distinct flavor, but all share a common passive skill tree.

 

Tells me you truely haven't done your research on this title.  Classes share  no differences other than the avatar's looks and the position on the skill tree. Any of the classes can be exactly the same. All skills can be learned by all classes.

 

A Witch can be a two-handed maul expert and a duelist can be a summoner or a mage. There's no distinction between them. Only the distinct flavor are the skills themselves.

 

true but not true, if you take a witch and make her a 2h mauler, yes you can, but you will never be as strong as a marauder who does the same.

the min/maxers take the style they want to play, and max that style

Originally posted by Ozmodan
It is what Diablo III should have been instead of the POS Blizzard produced.  

Such an original comment. Never heard anyone say that!

Originally posted by Fendel84M

Originally posted by Ozmodan
It is what Diablo III should have been instead of the POS Blizzard produced.  

Such an original comment. Never heard anyone say that!

so glad Diablo III wasn't like this POS...

Great article... spot on.

I aint had this much fun in a arpg for a very long time and at last one without silly scooby do graphics...

 I love this game !  It has been a ray of sunshine on a rather bleak gaming scene.

Yes, there are some minor issues, bugs and growing pains. No biggie to me.

I do have rule against paying for Beta testing though. So I want them to release. I will gladly send them some money the day they do.

Originally posted by Drolkin
I love running around PoE and killing monster after monster endlessly.

Yea, I agree, grinding in this game is fun, awesome game!

P.S. off topic I think Sacred, Titan Quest and Torchlight are awesome games!

Originally posted by Mtibbs1989
There's nothing benefitial to a character with 0% crit and you've missed the end of my passage stating that because of the fact that rare gear is easily obtainable there's no reason to risk a HC characters life to fight a boss when they can simply just farm the easy monsters safely.

 

There are plenty of builds that already take resolute technique so having that as a drawback on an item is fine, in fact it's quite nice. What about the unique Maraketh Bow, Darkscorn? Converts 25% of physical damage dealt and recieved to chaos damage. Sounds like an easy 25% damage reduction for anyone with Chaos Innoculation or a quick and easy death for Life/ES builds. Just because you can't see an immediate use for something doesn't mean it can't be used efficiently. I seem to recall the most OP build GGG have ever seen anyone play revolved around the node Eldritch Battery, bet you expected that didn't you?

I play exlusively HC characters and 'farming the easy stuff' doesn't work unless your gear is way way way behind. Let me copy/paste something that might help you understand why. It's all found on the mechanics thread on the beta general discussion forum.

Drop rates
There is a penalty to the chance of currency items (scrolls, orbs, etc.) dropping in areas with a monster level more than two levels lower than your character level. For each additional level that you have compared to the area's monster level+2, the chance of a currency item drop is reduced by 2.5%.
So if you are level 30 in a level 20 area, you will see 20% less currency item drops on average:
2.5*(30-(20+2))=20
A level 30 character in a level 28 area will see no penalty.
Currency item Drops are not increased or decreased in this way when fighting in areas above your level.
For the purposes of this penalty, your level is never considered to be higher than 68. Therefore a level 75 character receives no penalty in a level 66 area.

The second thing that will stop you farming lower level areas is that the modifiers (and sockets) that can roll on items is determined by the item level, which is the same as the area level (Unless it's dropped from a magic or rare monster, those can be 2 levels higher than the area level I believe). This means that farming lower level areas is just not going to cut it long term, you'll be getting less orbs and you'll be getting worse mods on the items that are dropping.

If you don't think there's enough reward for risks taken (especially for HC characters) then why not go ask players like Nugiyen who are farming end game maps as oppose to the normal game areas why they are taking such unnecessary risks? The only time when the risk isn't worth it is if you can't build a character properly or don't understand your limits.

Originally posted by paulytheb

 I love this game !  It has been a ray of sunshine on a rather bleak gaming scene.

 

Yes, there are some minor issues, bugs and growing pains. No biggie to me.

 

I do have rule against paying for Beta testing though. So I want them to release. I will gladly send them some money the day they do.

 

It's open beta now, you don't need to pay! Just create an account and away you go.

Originally posted by Drolkin
I love running around PoE and killing monster after monster endlessly.

 I don't know if you're joking or not, but I got tired of it pretty quickly actually (like by level 5).......There were just too many gamebreaking elements in this game.....I'm glad all the bnet kids found their true successor to Diablo 2 but this game just wasn't for me.

Originally posted by Mtibbs1989
There's nothing benefitial to a character with 0% crit and you've missed the end of my passage stating that because of the fact that rare gear is easily obtainable there's no reason to risk a HC characters life to fight a boss when they can simply just farm the easy monsters safely.

 

Man, I just recovered my acc here to post to you. That 200% hammer is EPIC for the Berserker 'Cookie Cutter' build, because those chars has 0% cit chance from a skill called 'Resolute Technique'. Check any top end Berserker, all of em has that skill. So if a Berzy wears that maul, it don't have any negative side effects, and actually an epic maul for that build.