38 replies to this topic

[icuurd12b42]

Read the Review/Mini Guide here

Big Fan, played Diablo 1 to death. Diablo 2 was a big disappointment for me, played for like 3 hour and trashed it. not sure why all I remember is it sucked....

1:00 AM May 12-12. downloading Diablo3 pre-release... 7 GB... Stay tuned...

3 AM, halfway through the download, jeesuus... Netflix time

5 AM, Diablo DL manager progress bar has been up to 100% for 30 minutes yet no indication it's done. Not starting a setup. It says it got 7.6 of 7.6 GB.

5:20 Window updated my system and forced a restart while I was not looking. some files in the download folder are at 0 BK... the setup.exe is there. but it fails to install the game. The files in the download folder total 800 MB. not 7.6 GB.

relaunched the downloader. the darn thing restarted from scratch. Another 7 GB another 5 hours... This thing's gonna blow my provider cap.

...Pissed off. Up yours Blizzard... Going to bed

3:00 PM, Checked the PC, wiggle the mouse to get rid of the screen saver and... There, the install screen. Click install... Doh, I have to wait for the launch date.
Fine! I'll wait

T minus 9 hours.... It'll be 3 AM for me when it all goes to hell. I should go to bed now and wake around 2 AM and prep for the long journey.

T minus 7 hours.... I could not sleep anymore. made a evening breakfast and decided to click that install button. and something is happening. It scare me asking for a product key which I don't have from the electronic download. As I was scurrying trying to figure it out on the Diablo forum. the install changed screen. now it's updating and it looks like it's updating the whole thing. 5% in 30 minutes... Looks like I'll be able to play in 10 hours.... Arrrgh. Looks like my monthly internet cap is going to be blown too. Inconsiderate bunch of....

T minus 6 hours... The Downloading part seem to have concluded. the text related to the progress bar changed to Installing (Unless I never read it right...), 60% complete ATM


I have the strange feeling the game will take more time to install than the amount of time I will play it

30 seconds later... Oh, done and Now I am presented with a play button. I wonder... Click. It complains about my video driver. Ignore. Yes, Intro movie.... Login screen, servers are dow... I'm ready to go... ready to go...


Yep. 3:01 on the button... server too busy... tried for 5 minutes. Sucks. And the forum is down. Probably from the influx of people *****ing about it.

I can say that the way they did it it somewhat mediocre at this point. They should have released the game time zone by time zone. Right now millions of people are probably trying to get in at the same time. A topic on the server busy made 1 minute ago has 600 view. it sort of tells you the influx of people wanting in

We have cameras on the site:
http://postimage.org/image/3vvvlzh11/

3:21 I almost got in. long enough to accept the user agreement. but then it timed out.

If only the dumb thing would be smart enough to retry for me. I have to retype and retype and retype and retype my password.... Did a 5 year old design the logging system!?


3:40 I wonder if someone looked at the sales and figured out they could not handle the traffic...
Anyway, battle.net crashed.
http://twitter.com/#!/BlizzardCS/status/202299212128456704

Well, I guess that's it for tonight. too bad I was planning on a D3 Marathon.


I was able to play for 45 minutes minutes today, alone... and it kicked me out of my own game. now I get error 3003, whatever the heck that means. I dont get how it is possible people can design a game that require 7.6 GB of client data yet cant works offline....

Oh and the graphics are horrible on my PC...

http://www.host-a.ne...iabloblocky.png

Edited by icuurd12b42, 17 May 2012 - 12:25 AM.

[Swifty]

That really sucks, although it's hardly blizzards fault.

I bought the diablo battlechest a few years back and got into number 2 a few times but never really finished it.. I'm considering buying Diablo3 soon to pre-download however I'm tethering from my phone as my internet hasn't been set up yet.. so that's not going to happen. May miss the launch on this one.

When does your ISP reset your allowance? You'd hate to be capped for the launch..

Swifty

[icuurd12b42]

That really sucks, although it's hardly blizzards fault.

I know, I'm just documenting the experience. It's all ready to go now. So I'll update the first post and retract my statement.

I bought the diablo battlechest a few years back and got into number 2 a few times but never really finished it.. I'm considering buying Diablo3 soon to pre-download however I'm tethering from my phone as my internet hasn't been set up yet.. so that's not going to happen. May miss the launch on this one.

You can pre order at the store, so their site says. I just followed there saying it is best to be ready by launch. The important bit is to setup your account on blizzard to set your Online name. They think that part of their system may jam from too many people creating accounts at the same time. Setting the account is free to do.

When does your ISP reset your allowance? You'd hate to be capped for the launch..

Swifty

Yes, exactly. My account is reset every month. I will have enough to get by, but it is scary to have such a huge download these days.

[Swifty]

You can pre order at the store, so their site says. I just followed there saying it is best to be ready by launch. The important bit is to setup your account on blizzard to set your Online name. They think that part of their system may jam from too many people creating accounts at the same time. Setting the account is free to do.

Ahh right, cheers!

So how big was the total download size? I'm going to try and get this pre-downloaded before launch however I need to find a way to download it without any net! (My phone only has 3gb of data on it a month) This should be fun!

Swifty

[icuurd12b42]

You can pre order at the store, so their site says. I just followed there saying it is best to be ready by launch. The important bit is to setup your account on blizzard to set your Online name. They think that part of their system may jam from too many people creating accounts at the same time. Setting the account is free to do.

Ahh right, cheers!

So how big was the total download size? I'm going to try and get this pre-downloaded before launch however I need to find a way to download it without any net! (My phone only has 3gb of data on it a month) This should be fun!

Swifty

Better go through a real store and get a physical copy. It's 7.6 GB, 2 months worth of data for you.

[icuurd12b42]

T minus 9 hours.... It'll be 3 AM for me when it all goes to hell. I should go to bed now and wake around 2 AM and prep for the long journey.

[Nocturne]

I just got my email from Amazon today telling me that my copy has been dispatched... should be here wednesday! Until then I await your thoughts on the game and hope it lives up to the expectations that many many people have for it...

[icuurd12b42]

I just got my email from Amazon today telling me that my copy has been dispatched... should be here wednesday! Until then I await your thoughts on the game and hope it lives up to the expectations that many many people have for it...

I think you should have gone for the electronic download because I'm getting a massive update right now. I'm sure everyone will have to download it. It sort of negates what I said in post 6.... physical copy or not, everyone will suffer the download hell that Diablo is announcing itself to be.


T minus 7 hours.... I could not sleep anymore. made a evening breakfast and decided to click that install button. and something is happening. It scare me asking for a product key which I don't have from the electronic download. As I was scurrying trying to figure it out on the Diablo forum. the install changed screen. now it's updating and it looks like it's updating the whole thing. 5% in 30 minutes... Looks like I'll be able to play in 10 hours.... Arrrgh. Looks like my monthly internet cap is going to be blown too. Inconsiderate bunch of....




T minus 6 hours... The Downloading part seem to have concluded. the text related to the progress bar changed to Installing (Unless I never read it right...), 60% complete ATM


I have the strange feeling the game will take more time to install than the amount of time I will play it

30 seconds later... Oh, done and Now I am presented with a play button. I wonder... Click. It complains about my video driver. Ignore. Yes, Intro movie.... Login screen, servers are dow... I'm ready to go... ready to go...

Edited by icuurd12b42, 15 May 2012 - 02:22 AM.

[icuurd12b42]

Yep. 3:01 on the button... server too busy... tried for 5 minutes. Sucks. And the forum is down. Probably from the influx of people *****ing about it.

I can say that the way they did it it somewhat mediocre at this point. They should have released the game time zone by time zone. Right now millions of people are probably trying to get in at the same time. A topic on the server busy made 1 minute ago has 600 view. it sort of tells you the influx of people wanting in

We have cameras on the site:
http://postimage.org/image/3vvvlzh11/

3:21 I almost got in. long enough to accept the user agreement. but then it timed out.

If only the dumb thing would be smart enough to retry for me. I have to retype and retype and retype and retype my password.... Did a 5 year old design the logging system!?


3:40 I wonder if someone looked at the sales and figured out they could not handle the traffic...
Anyway, battle.net crashed.
http://twitter.com/#!/BlizzardCS/status/202299212128456704

Well, I guess that's it for tonight. too bad I was planning on a D3 Marathon.

[Robert3DG+]

Not a Diablo player myself, but I feel really bad for you guys

[Nocturne]

[icuurd12b42]

I was able to play for 45 minutes minutes today, alone... and it kicked me out of my own game. now I get error 3003, whatever the heck that means. I dont get how it is possible people can design a game that require 7.6 GB of client data yet cant works offline....

Oh and the graphics are horrible on my PC...

http://www.host-a.ne...iabloblocky.png


Meet Francis... Francis went through some hoops to get Diablo Special edition from the store

Video1

and the next day, he finally got it but...



Please note Francis is a Fictional Character and uses foul language when ANGRY.

[icuurd12b42]

So, here is a quick review/guide on the game itself... not the whole error 37 thing...


I must say I am very pleased with the game.

Leveling
First Off, lets talk about the leveling... You don't control it at all aside from killing to get level points. It's taken care of. You might think it's a bad thing that you don't assign points to magic or vitality or whatever... It's not. Personally, I always found the feature somewhat distracting... Staring at the screen, not really sure where to apply your points, aside when when you got a piece of equipment you really want to use but required 56 strength and you are ad 50, so you dedicate 3 level up to assign points to that.... That was BS, I realize now.

They set up the equipment to be Level base ONLY. so Level 10 armor, you can wear it when you are at level 10. The benefit is you can give good armor to your friend. I remember in Diablo1 when to follow my friend, he had to give me a bunch of rings, amulets, and so on to make me strong enough to wear armor to protect me from where we we going and to yield weapons strong enough to be effe3ctive. When I'd die, I would find myself scurrying to find them little rings to dress up...

Are you still a pack rat?
If you are a player that grabs everything, I mean everything to then sell it for profit? Don't bother. Regular items are worth about 2$ when sold and the special items are in the double digits (30-60$)

Only special Items can be used to grind to generic material by your Smith, and why would you do that, smith is useless at making stuff better than the stuff you find as it has always been the case. So don't pick anything up that ain't blue or golden, even armor that is twice as strong as what you have on can be left there if you want, usually magic or unique armor is more effecting at surviving a fight.

Repair your stuff
When you die, portal home and repair your stuff right away, hit that repair all equipped items.

What to buy and when and KEEP YOUR MONEY
Only buy health from the local vendor, perhaps rings and amulet as these are hard to find.

Keep your money for the spots where you find remote vendors, these vendor will have strong weapons and equipment that you will rarely find dropped. You don't want to have 700$ in you pockets when you find a vendor that has a wand that has triple the damage of what you have. If that happens, you can always return after you went gold mining... searching corpses and killing monsters

Remote vendors are usually in caves looking for treasure or got caught by enemies.


What to wear
You MUST equip items that refill your health when you hit enemies. there are 2 kinds, point for hits, point for killing. Favor the points per hit over the points per kills. 10 point for a kill is not worth as much as 3 points per hit when in most cases it take 5 hits to kill

Equip items that increase magic and gold drop, you need the money and better magical equipment.

Keep the items that give you heath and chances of better drops for yourself. give items that increase intelligence and damage to your companions


Health system and surviving
Survival is difficult about 3 hours in, you were casually playing along, now you need to be careful. This is where the games just starts to be interesting, gems are introduced at that point and you will find now that the old Drink Vial when about to die is very ineffective unlike the other Diablo games.

There are 3 ways to replenish you health.
Drinking from a vial (Tap Q, don't hold it down or you will die).
Drinking from a fountain of health
picking up health orbs. These replenishes you and your companions as you pick it up (automatically), do not confuse with vial that you stash and drink later.

What changed? Drinking a vial is limited with a time feature so you cannot drink 2 vials, you may not have noticed this prior (I did not). you may drink a vial and die 3 seconds later because you are still in the fray and can't drink again. So run away and drink it as you do and make sure the strongest vial is in you active Q slot. Make sure the Q slot is not empty (cause you drank all the lesser health vial and you have 36 other vials of other type in the stash but forgot to set it as your drink slot)

If you can see a fountain, remember where it is and drink from it when in trouble, it will replenish later on, try to bring the fight to the fountain. That way you can choose to drink from a vial or a fountain, that way the fountain is available when you cannot drink from a vial and the vial is available when the fountain is replenishing itself.

Health Orbs are dropped by enemies. DO NOT PICK THEM UP unless you are at 50% or less. and ONLY PICK ONE, leave them on the ground, Remember where some were dropped and again, bring the fight to the orbs dropped from previous fights.


The skill set
The skill set is rather different, you earn new skill slots every now and then, and new skills or skill modifiers when you level up. It's about the only characters modification you have access to, aside from what you wear and wield. The way they have it set up is you choose what skill the character will have and later on the skill will have optional modifiers that you can turn on or off via hard coded ruin stone. I wont say more on the subject aside that it looks different than before but it's much easier to manage and "go with it" than scratching your head for 5 minutes when you level up and hope you made the right move.


I think the game is well made and the changes in character leveling system will make it more re-playable and casual. Especially for over thinkers like me
Right now I'm at level 19 or 20

[paul23]

Hmm so far I'm greatly unimpressed with Diablo 3.. And then I mean really unimpressed.

I used to play diablo 2 back in the day a lot, really a lot. I loved trying to skill builds & calculating about what bonus works best with what skill distribution. And after creating a dozen characters & owning more than 1000 special items (unique, set, some very strong rares which can beat unique items), I started longing for diablo 3.

However now when they release, and I spotted a friend of mine playing it, I'm actually quite doubting I'll buy it. As there are few changing, and even those few are for the worse for me...

• online play, while this is a minor problem for me at first thinking about it poses quite a few troublesome things: I play diablo 2 still, but then like a full year (or more) I leave it at my computer before opening it again. - Would blizzard keep my account that long? Diablo is for me a collector-game where I try to collect everything, so having to restart is a game breaker.
• No mods. This follows from previous, but I run like 5 small mods at any time for diablo 2. Including external stashes so I can keep collecting (which as said is why I play this game). Sometimes I like to even install one of the bigger complete game overhauls to check those out. Really no modding removes the longitivity of a game.
• The skill-tree (&stat distribution) was actually FUN. Thinking about what skill to level for 5 minutes was fun. I agree the no-reset was harsh and annoying, but I love the way they solved that in 1.13b. (You collect tokens for a reset by defeating all bosses). Deciding if that 3 levels is worth item XY better's stats. Or maybe you could use a less strong defensive armour & place stats more in vitality. Those decisions, and trying both builds is what for me keeps the game to this day fun.
• Gameplay wise I couldn't really see improvements either...

What DID actually improve? Graphics I guess? Seems only reason I'd buy it at summer is to play with friends.. hmm how to get them to buy diablo 2...

[icuurd12b42]

Me I liked playing with friends more than fiddling with the stats and skills tree. It may be a little too simplified for the hard core guys. But still enjoyable.

But never fear. Torchlight 2 is coming. I played torchlight and is almost a clone of diablo 2 (except it's 3d instead of pixel art) but single player only. Torchlight 2 is multi-player. And IMO Diablo3 is 97% like Torchlight for looks except for the 3-5 extra effects which cause me pain to figure out how to fix my drivers. I think Torchlight 2 will be a true Diablo fan hit.

[icuurd12b42]

After about 24 hours of playing, I have complete the game. I am now level 31 mage. I sweated at a few places. Nightmare mode is next. Diablo was real easy to beat but long. It's an hour's worth of fighting with the skill I had/used. The hardest boss was the first one I must say.

[paul23]

After about 24 hours of playing, I have complete the game. I am now level 31 mage. I sweated at a few places. Nightmare mode is next. Diablo was real easy to beat but long. It's an hour's worth of fighting with the skill I had/used. The hardest boss was the first one I must say.

You know, there real game only starts at hell mode.. With the reduction in resistance & the fact that most monsters are immune to at least 2 types of damage, including physical.. At least that was the case in D2 .

Good luck in the next few months beating those modes.

[icuurd12b42]

Diablo 1, the prestige was from getting your 3 dots (You got a dot above your head every time you killed diablo... one dot per mode)... Normal mode was good for getting the concept down.

And god I hate immuned characters.... Especially when the only thing you can hit them with is your weakest skill.

[Futhark]

After about 24 hours of playing, I have complete the game...

This is exactly what I don't like about "modern" games...

I'll just stick to Jet Set Willy or Monty Mole, they've kept me entertained for nearly thirty years.

[paul23]

Diablo 1, the prestige was from getting your 3 dots (You got a dot above your head every time you killed diablo... one dot per mode)... Normal mode was good for getting the concept down.

And god I hate immuned characters.... Especially when the only thing you can hit them with is your weakest skill.

Always get some good weaponry in nightmare with some extra elemental dmg.. believe there were only 2-3 miniboss types in d2 that were capable of having both physical & electric immunity for example.

The immunities gave it for me an extra depth, couldn't just pubstomp everything anymore . (You might really notice it, but I really like it when a game forces me to think about alternative methods to do things, and I can't just blindly continue without planning).