Originally Posted by Fomori

For those who are disappointed with Diablo 3, thought I would mention Path of Exile in case you weren't aware. It feels a lot like Diablo 2 with some elements of Torchlight (gem slots in weapons).

if i recall correctly the gem slot thing was in d2, (well the expansion) allowing you to slot runes and/or gems in weapons.

I haven't had any connection problems with the game yet. Whatever, here's my battle tag if you kid want to play.

Daven#1952

Originally Posted by suburbbum

I haven't had any connection problems with the game yet. Whatever, here's my battle tag if you kid want to play.

Daven#1952

Did you start playing at launch or somewhere a day later?, day 1 was the worst, it's definately cooled down now.

Well, I ending up playing during my lunch today. Started a witch doctor. I played the beta before the free weekend, and they`ve changed a lot since I played, but for the most part, nothing is new for me, just yet (havent killed the skellie king yet). You can now (or rather, again) change your skills on the fly, which im not too sure about. I personally liked having to do it in town and at the start of dungeons and stuff. It made you commit. Though, I hear the later difficulties, the longer you go without changing, the bigger the bonus you get for MF, which is awesome.

Does anyone know, do they still have those little companions that collect gold for you? I loved those things.

Runes! Awesome!

Anyone that says there is no customization is on crack. This game will SHINE come later difficulties. absolutely SHINE.

Only played for an hour or so. Absolutely hooked already. Got D/c'd 2 times, but I was able to reconnect right away. Still annoying though. And a bit of rubber banding.

To Blizzard, I say congrats and thank you on a brilliant game (and fix your damn servers).

And to Diablo I say, Welcome back, old friend. Welcome back.

Still waiting on a boxed copy in my slow ass mail country. If anyone sends me an invite I'll love you forever. Script-love. And I'll give you both my invites when I get the game (no nigerian princes involved)

It would suck not to be able to play on the weekend, a game you ordered a month ago. PM if you can, I'll make it worth it

You can have one of mine if you want, Ehnn. But I wont be able to give it to you till tomorrow. About 26 hours from now. Wont be home tonight to send it.

I'd love that. Thanks man

Not that I wish to turn this into a Guest Pass begging thread but if anyone has one spare it'd be most appreciated, I'm still on the fence as to whether to buy this or not as I missed the beta.

EDIT: Pass recieved, many thanks GO POLYCOUNT! BattleTag: Ghuntard#2819

Impulse bought it tonight, wasn't planning to as I'm super excited about it and I've got sooo many games to finish first and I know I'll just get tempted to play it... which is exactly what I'm going to do!

Would love some B.Net buddies:

TeeJay#2646

(EU)

Torch#2303 here, EU - if you wanna add

Originally Posted by Polygoblin

I heard Kotaku say something about how this skill tree doesn't allow you to "customize" your characters abilities saying that most high-level characters seem to end up with the same abilities. I was worried about this, but as I've been playing through, I'm having a tough time deciding WHERE I want to expand my tree. Somehow, I've got a feeling that my decisions will NOT be similar to everyone else's.

It appears I didn't exactly understand how the system worked yet. Looks like, since your'e not limited to where you spend your "points", that every character at the same level has access to all the same skills and runes. Oh well...

oh yeah, I'm YSG#1903 on the North America servers

Originally Posted by slipsius

And a bit of rubber banding.
.

are they actually hosting the games on their servers? kinda feels like it at times.

I have to say now that the severs have cooled a bit and im past act 1 im starting to enjoy it more.

those rocks at the start of act 2!!

Originally Posted by r_fletch_r

are they actually hosting the games on their servers? kinda feels like it at times.

Yes, to prevent hacking.

Yeah apparently the A.I. is server side. Very smart.

My friends and I just finished normal mode... WOW its insane. We kinda skipped over some things, but we are going to take the next difficulty slower. It took us around 13 hours.

Just a little tip:

You can turn on "Elective Mode" which allows you to choose more than one skill from a group. Instead of only being able to pick 1 from each group.

Thats it guys. I'm saying it now. If you ever get the chance never allow the number 37 to appear in any game/mod/art-peace you ever make. That number is retired.

EDIT: infact, I say we make that a hashtag on twitter #Retire37

make it a thing.

Originally Posted by r_fletch_r

are they actually hosting the games on their servers? kinda feels like it at times.

I have to say now that the severs have cooled a bit and im past act 1 im starting to enjoy it more.

those rocks at the start of act 2!!

Those rocks are money, I didn't really start enjoying it until act 2 as well. Sick of just playing with one other person.

Shaffer#1931

no! slip 37 into everything!

Forgot to add this is my Battlenet: aajohnny#1658

Feel free to add me.

Been playing quite a bit, my first run though on Normal I had an absolute blast with. The varied environments and hand painted style was my favorite part of the game so far. I'm currently in nightmare difficulty in the final act about to take on diablo. Unfortunately, I don't know if i'll be playing this game a month, or even a week from now . The game's only been out a short time, but there seems to be an obvious lack of depth...

Skills:
Couldn't imagine having a different skill setup as i'm tuned to be able to survive just long enough to kill every wave of enemies i encounter with my solo barbarian. Ignore Pain + increased duration seems to be the bread and butter skill for higher difficulty, combined with revenge for life steal. The other damage dealing skills you probably have more leeway with but chances are you're going whirlwind, frenzy, and that skill that turns you into a badass for 15 seconds.

Items:
I'm not making decisions with my items. There is a big fat number that says DPS on every weapon i pick up and all the modifiers in the world they throw on it are meaningless compared to that one number. It's oversimplified. Skills have also been tuned to more or less put out the same damage regardless of weapon speed. I may lose 25% damage here because it's slow, but this skill right here does 25% more for the same reason. In the end it's all meaningless. If more items had interesting modifiers, gloves with higher attack speed, more items with +damage type stats, it would allow for more decision making in item builds but i've found no such items so far.

You do 2 things in diablo:
1. Kill mobs of enemies with the same skilll combination over and over again.

2. Look at magical and rare items that have a high primary stat and vitality.

In diablo 2 it was a big deal finding life tap, mana tap, your first health regen on a belt. Loot came in phases, first you relied on gemmed items progressing from that to self found uniques, then you went from regen to lifetap. You found a weapon with +150% attack speed in nightmare that changed EVERYTHING. You socketed a shield with diamonds and got poor man's magic resistance. You found some weird green chest piece that gave +70% run speed. Etc. etc. The progression wasn't a linear curve with no spikess, it was a roller coaster ride and you didn't know what to expect.

Diablo 3 is overbalanced, there aren't cool tricks to getting gold (remember how you always picked up wands even if they were white?), no cool ways of easy magic resist (no socketing shields for crazy cheap resists), and most importantly weapons are just boring, "Wow this weapon does 20% more than my last one!" compared to "Holy fuck i just found this orange item and i'm doing 5x more damage and every swing refills my entire health globe!". It doesn't feels to be balanced organically. In diablo 2, it felt like they threw in tons of shit and just went, "Ok, lets find a way to balance all this crap" and because of this the game was unpredictable and interesting." In Diablo 3 it feels like then went, "Ok barbs can get X% regen from this type of heal, and X% from this one and this will give them an overall Y regen compaired to other classes." and it was balanced like this from act 1 all the way to hell.

I'll just come out and say it, it feels like the real money auction house has killed a lot of the joy that could have been found in this title. In assigning potential monetary value to items, the system had to be made predictable and safe, stale.

Anyway, just my personal opinion and maybe I've just been unlucky with loot, but in terms of item runs, as someone who played the original and sequel, the past 2 days playing diablo 3 has been the worst item farming I've ever done in the series. After finishing the first 2 difficulties I don't have a single item I'm excited about using on a new character to "twink" , I think that's a pretty major failure. Great cut scenes though.

Sorry to rain on the parade, this game is great for anyone new to the series and the first run through makes the price of admission worth it. It's just a bit of a let down for anyone expecting an item grind like the days of old. It's tuned for profit, not the optimal fun of the item grinder.

@crazyfingers after reading what you are looking for for item hunting reminds me a lot of what Borderlands had with their weapon generation, really if Borderlands had more item slots it would be diablo 2 with guns, I'd like to see that honestly.

Been playing here and there. Having a blast... Joined a few friends games... Good times!!!

I think there should be a sticky or a thread with all the battle.net id tags of the polycounters