Diablo IV Beta Exit Opinions

[Voza-1724]

So I’ve played in both of these last two weekends. I got every class except Druid to level 17-25.

There are some bugs, some major, some minor, but overall I have been VERY impressed. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I know it was more towards Diablo 3, and I was worried having the same old classes was going to be a detriment. But thankfully, this is almost nothing like DIII since that is by far my least favorite of the series. And the classes are great. The Rogue is an interesting combination of Assassin and Amazon. I think the increasing familiarity with the base classes like Barbarian have shown in the refinement of their skills and the evolution of their class perks and such. I hate to say it, but I think the Necromancer Summoner (my favorite class) might be a little OP, with that build having the least instances of panic of all of them.
The graphics are top notch even in “Low” mode, and I love the customization options both in character creation and in gearing appearance.
One of my biggest complaints about these two weekends has been the major slow-downs in the towns/city and around other players. It seems whenever there is another player around, the game stutters and crawls along. This symptom also gets exponentially worse the longer I’m logged in. I don’t know if this is my GPU surrendering, or if it’s a memory leak, but it gets real bad. Also, the “Exit Diablo IV” button on the ESC screen just doesn’t work. It causes the application to hang every single time, and I have to kill the process. Those were the major bugs that annoyed me to the point of remembering them.
Some minor bugs included quest wording like in the Pilgrimage quest, every step says to bring the idol to the Altar of Penitence, but only the very last one is actually called that. The others are Martyrdom, etc. Kind of confusing even when you’re following the markers. There are a couple of other quests that aren’t 100% clear on what to do.
Something that could be filed in one of the categories above, but maybe not, is I couldn’t access the zone east of the northeast gate coming out of Kyosaved even at the appropriate level. Any other restricted zone (due to beta limits) had red lettering appear on-screen, but leaving through this gate would just push me back into town. It made going to Kor Valar(?) very long to go west then around. It’s especially troubling because there was a level 25 zone that I could enter at level 15, so I think it was just broken.
I heard a lot of “pre-game chatter” about RMT and monetization. I didn’t catch a whiff of it. I didn’t see any vendor that wanted RM currency, and no place in the UI to store it. This is a great thing! I hope it stays that way as well.

Overall, I felt this is the most “Diablo”-feeling game since Diablo 2, and I think the atmosphere has returned to the original in feeling. The sounds, lighting, and monsters all combine to give that same sense of dread. I will be putting a lot of time into this when it releases I’m sure.

[AirmidX-1393]

Chose your thread to reply in because it was in line with my overall take after playing open beta, so thank you.
As a former official community moderator for Warhammer Online with EA back in the day, I don’t often visit forums to offer feedback without getting an eye twitch and labored breathing. It was my first introduction to unraveling what DIACF meant but it was also a space full of die hard fans with a true passion for a game and lifestyle.

As a very casual gamer in my older gamer years, I’ve grown tired of battle royals, survival mmos and AAA game releases with more pomp than substance. I do enjoy watching some Hunt Showdown, more for its atmosphere, but that element of dark pve and pvp is perfectly combined.

I no longer pre-order anything because the risk vs reward rarely adds up so I was happy there was an open beta for everyone to see where their dollar is going. I went the fast necro route to be able to experience the most of the open beta. I leveled to 25 on both regular and hardcore without a death. I opened up the entire map, did multiple side quests, followed the entire storyline on hardcore (wipes brow), and unlocked all three bonus challenge rewards.

It’s been awhile since I have no life’d a weekend on a game and that’s what I based my overall feeling on by Monday. The downsides are already documented in repeated threads and most are valid. Latency was the real boss on hardcore mode.

I waited until Monday evening to look back at my time spent and asked myself only two things:
Was it worth it and would I do it again. Answering yes to both is what dictates my spending anymore.
I went ahead with a pre-order to lock in at a standard price without a need for bells and whistles and a bigger need to pay bills.

I am taking this version of Diablo as a stand alone. I don’t need D2 or D3, I have them and enjoyed them. I want to enter a new Lilith chapter on its own merits that has a familiar feel with a new outlook so I’m in.