Got up to level 10 last night before the servers shut down. I know they came back up, but I decided that was a good stopping point for the night for me anyway.
Glorious.
Kyrios
5122
After sleeping on it, I’d say that I’m about 50/50 on the changes from D2. Much of it is just the normal evolution of this type of game, I think, and I can’t say I’m thrilled with it. One really obvious example is that you are ALWAYS on a quest to go somewhere now. Even if that quest is “Find Level 1 of the Dungeon of Super Evil” as you wander through an outdoor area. Then when you enter said dungeon, your quest objective updates to “Find Level 2 of the Dungeon of Super Evil”. One of the things that really worked in Diablo for me is that they just sort of pointed you in a direction, and then you cleared as many monster-filled maps as there were in between you and that endpoint. Everything is a lot more guided here, which I understand in a post-WoW world, but I don’t have to like.
The new skill system works better for me. While I appreciate how people felt about the skill trees, that wasn’t something that was even in the first game, and the new system actually gets really fun as you open up more rune choices. I am less enthused by the streamlining they did with stats/attributes. Taking away the option of where to put the points every level, the fact that gear can have stat requirements, and simplifying how the stats affect the characters takes more of the customization out of it than the skill system changes.
If I had played the Beta I’d have probably been a lot more skeptical coming in: that first half of Act 1 with all of the handholding and the corridors reminded me of Final Fantasy 13. Yuck. It opens up a lot after that, and though I agree that the atmosphere of a lot of the areas isn’t up to Diablo II’s standards (the graphic style changes are a huge part of that IMO), it’s still well above average. The field of view really bothered me, too, similar to Starcraft II; again, I understand why it works this way, but at 1920x1200 I spent a lot of time REALLY wanting to zoom out another 50% or so before I finally got used to it.
For all of that, though, it’s still a Diablo game. Near the middle-end of Act II when you start seeing rares a little more often, the first gems start coming out (Rubies seem a bit OP…!), and the available skill/rune options have opened up a bit, it really starts to get that Diablo level of addicting. I have to imagine it’ll work even better on the higher difficulties, though I am a little nervous about the low-ish level cap. I will be playing this for quite a while though, I’m sure… though I may wait until I have friends who have levelled enough to push me through normal ASAP before I go too heavy into the other classes.
Am I the only one having a lot of trouble with really high ping times? Like usually above 500ms? I thought it was me, since I only play on wireless, but I just went into WoW and I’m at a solid 35ms. Same on LOTRO and DDO so I don’t think it’s me.
I wouldn’t care except that it becomes noticable when you hit the mouse button and it’s 1-2 seconds before anything happens.
Joe_M
5124
Sorry, too busy playing to check in much. It was about 11 hours or so. I’d say it’s easily possible to stretch it to 14-16 if you go through slowly for the story and such, or if you’re new to the blacksmith/gem systems and have to spend some time figuring things out. We did explore every nook and cranny but we skipped every cinematic and event because we’d watched them already (yay youtube).
I’m afraid my memory is way too fuzzy on release D2 to compare the two games. My gut feeling is there’s a lot more going on in D3 but I really couldn’t say for sure.
My friend was having the same issues while other games (Tera) had his usual ping for him. I was playing at the same time and had no ping issues. Weird.
MikeJ
5126
Tuesday morning I was getting about 100ms pings. Tuesday evening is varied between 200-300ms.
I really didn’t want to post in this thread again because the thread name is awful and that’s definitely an important factor to consider! However, how are you seeing your ping in Diablo 3? Have I missed it somewhere? I saw the shortcut to display the FPS, but nothing for ping/netgraph.
There is a vertical bar displaying latency on the right side of your hotbar. Yeah, the thread name is terrible.
KevinC
5130
I was showing a ping of 300ms+ on Tuesday, but surprisingly the game still felt very responsive (they must have really generous client-side prediction?). Today my ping is much, much lower.
About length, I think it’s almost exactly the same as D2 overall - with act 2 being slightly longer and act 3 being slightly shorter. Act 3 in D2 was famously huge because of landmass - and Act 3 in D3 is just meaty.
But I’d say the average player will spend 15-20 hours on normal, the first time. It’s easily doable in 10-12 if you rush it as a team though.
Forgive me but it’s amusing to read about the issues people were having last night on the West Coast. I played last evening for a while, tried a couple of different classes, and stopped playing around 11 PM EDT. Went to bed, got up this morning, and have been playing without any isuses all morning. So it’s surprising to hear about everyone on the West Coast having issues - if I hadn’t come in here and read this, I’d have thought all of the launch day issues had been solved long ago. Hopefully Blizzard is over the hump now, though.
I do find Act I to be pretty easy, but Bliz has said that’s purposeful, so I’m not surprised. I did die once while playing my Witch Doctor when I stood in the poison those tree dudes drop. Since it was really the first time my life’s dropped more than a little, I was thinking “hm, what’s that screen effect mean? What’s happening here?” and then bam, I was dead. I’m taking it slowly, though, exploring, trying to get and read all the lore stuff, so who knows how long it’ll take before I get done with Normal.
KevinC
5133
I’m taking it slowly too. I now have each class up to L10 or so and have only proceeded to Act II with one of them (Witch Doctor). I’m taking my sweet ass time and smelling the roses, because if D3 is anything like D2, I’ll have a LOT of opportunity to blast through the various Acts on the different difficulties. :)
Pogo
5134
Thanks for the clarification. I had assumed your progress actually was wiped from your quests.
I really, really hate the language games use for this type of stuff. “YOUR PROGRESS WILL BE ERASED ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE” when “Progress” actually refers to nothing significant whatsoever.
Jab
5135
Thanks for clarifying, I missed most of the events and lore in Act 1 and wasn’t sure if I could go back or not.
z22
5136
Meh, I expected Hitler complaining about the D3 servers. ;)
Someone needs to do a good Hitler one. That never gets old.
Who is this guy? I know I must be missing some big internet thing from the amount of videos this guy has made. What makes this guy special?
Agree - its the first thing I thought of when I read all the stories last night about server problems! I was able to play a little bit as Witch Doctor yesterday afternoon without problems (btw love Witch Doctor) and planning to hit it hard rest of this week, sounds like they’ve mostly ironed out server issues…
