thanks for clearing this up MissforsenCD
Maybe 31 August lol, they dint say when i august.
I just wanted to say, I know not everyone on the forum has seen eye to eye on every issue concerning this remaster, but when we start playing and hearā¦
"Greetings stranger"
None of it will matter.
Bring on the beta.
6 Likes
give it time, they are busy with all the lawsuits like multishot coming at em.
i hoping for monday, but prolly end of next week?
Im more worried for the lack of working force, due to their internal problems, attached to fixing bugs after the beta than for the beta release date.
Iām not sure if Iām willing to see this as a ādifferent iteration of the gameā, considering, that the balance is supposed to be the same, and that new graphics and a shared stash wont change things dramatically.
As to the bots and dupes, we donāt know what amount of the economy is based on thoseā¦
and also these will be a thing on the D2R servers as well. Iām not naive to think, that bots and dupes will magically disappear.
If weāre talking about clean start, both the old progress and progress from the beta would be fundamentally unfair.
But that suggests, that the beta is meant for actual testingā¦ and I donāt think it is. A bit of hype and thatās it.
If Blizzard were truly interested in us testing, they would have made it, so that single player save conversion works properly for all during the alpha (and they didnāt, you had to hack a char in order to be able to test higher difficulties).
If they were interested in testing, all the acts would have been unlocked (although without the new graphics).
So stress test and thatās itā¦
Hahā¦ you havenāt paid attention to the last 3 or so wow expansions then 
Different games, same company, same experience.
Donāt tell me, that there havenāt been plenty of times where people report nonsense on the D3 PTR, and then it ends up on live.
phhhhhhhhā¦
Iāve seen this thing on many occasions.
One can express a criticism in regards to something, and the answer is ādonāt buy itā, ādonāt watch itā, ādonāt do itā.
Only, itās usually utter nonsense.
In regards to the current approach to betas, Iāve seen the trend, that often nothing of substance changes based on feedback, even if the feedback is widespreadā¦ feedback can date to like months before release, and the broken crap does not get fixed.
āDonāt do it, donāt testā in no way addresses what I said.
Whether or not Iāll spend the time to test anyways is irrelevant in regards to what I said.
I agree completely. Sadly, I started approaching games this way after D3.
Only, in this particular case, the game was gifted to me, so I have it regardless of my approach.
Hell, even if I didnāt end up getting it as a gift, Iād probably still pre-purchase, as there are currently no other titles Iām interested it, and the money would be a good investment in terms of entertainment.
But again, this has little or nothing to do with my critique of modern Blizzard betas, that are little more than hype rather than testing (or so is my impression, Iām not a developer).
I can tell you of a different approach. Some people donāt buy the game on release, but wait a year or two for several patches, hell, even an expansion pack to smooth things, in order for the player to spare himself all the negative emotions surrounding broken things with the game.
Only, if everyone was taking that approach, the companies would suffer and the game might never reach a smooth point.
If I were to set up a criteria for testing D2R, it would be as to whether or not The World Event (Diablo clone) will be available for testing. If it isnāt, Iād probably see this as a fake test.
I bet 1 month of beta, start at 15 or 22 august finish 15/22 September.
4 Likes
It has a different name, a different development team and is being released roughly 20 years later. Yes, they both have the name Diablo in the title. And yeah, they share a few game rules. Still it is a new release.
Anything to be taken over would be just a bonus. And certainly a longer shot than taking something over from within a different development phase (alpha, beta, final) of the same game.
Currently there are no bots and dupes. So there will not be any botted or duped items upon release. That is obvious. The mere fact that there will be botted or duped items later on (which you claim, but we can not know for sure) does not justify having botted and duped items from a 20 year old game on day 1.
Well, i argued that above. You seem to have missed it. I will just quote it again:
I did not even argue for either of the two. I simply said, it could go either way.
The only thing that is clearly unfair is giving all the people from 20 years ago an unfair edge.
Anybody can prepurchase now. The question is when the game persistence officially starts, at early access or release. Both would be a clean start, it is a design decision which one you pick. In any case it certainly does not start 20 years ago.
I meant that beta is mainly for testing the multiplayer services and how they behave under stress (many users).
I am not aware of the single player problems you are talking about. To my knowledge they fixed the import of savegames (even from classic d2), so i am guessing that point of yours is already moot. There is no need to fix bugs immediately during a test phase, some you fix, others you track and fix later.
You also seem to confuse alpha and beta. Alpha was meant to give some broader user experiences, identify gamebreaking bugs while still being more or less early in the developing process (as in: enough time until release to address issues). To do that, you did not need to test all difficulties.
Apart from uber quests, there is nothing to be tested in hell that you cannot test in normal. You are not testing balance, you are testing mechanics. A spell that is cast in normal, will also work if cast in hell.
What you seem to be annoyed by - which i understand to a certain extend - is that you did not get the full game yet. But that was not the goal of the alpha and never is of any alpha.
Not really. If the acts are not done yet and there would only be bug reports about unfinished features, then surely it would only create unnecessary noise. It would also annoy some players.
I do not see why they did not include act 5, necro and assassin, but the best guess is that they simply were not finished. Maybe they also wanted to save some candy for the beta or release, who knows.
It is not that they dont have internal testers to get at least some coverage on these areas.
Did you see the state of the unlocked-by-hack content? I did not follow too much of that, but i saw necro, assassin and uber-tristram. Uber-tristram seemed to be playable but quite confusing (incorrect models and probably also missing spells?). Were necro and assassin complete?
Not āonlyā a stress test, but yeah, a significant part of it.
Correct. And if i did, i probably would have stopped after #1 or #2.
I am still placing my coins in the corner of ādifferent team, different rulesā and give VV the benefit of doubt.
D3 is also a different team.
Activision Blizzard has ~9.200 employees.
Blizzard has ~4.700 employees.
Vicarious Visions has ~218 employees.
The games served by these companies range from call of duty, over candy crush, over wow, over overwatch, over heartstone, over d3, over thps to D2R.
The last two are served by VV and its ~218 employees. Anything from the other ~9.000 employees is certainly not happening on a different planet, but same as your nightshift might do things differently than your dayshift, they might also have different ways to deal with feedback.
Yes, you can provide criticism. But claiming āthey do not want to testā is not criticism. It is slander at best.
So far they have reacted to plenty of feedback already. They have on many occasions shown that they want to provide a better product. That does not mean to blindly follow all criticism, but it also means not to be tone-deaf.
So putting them into the same bag as 2 completely unrelated development teams and hitting away, is not really what criticism is. Criticize them from what they did, not for what you think others did.
And if things really are as unbearable that you do not even want to be swayed by what they are doing, then you need to take the consequence and not test and wait for the finished product. I did not want to shut you out, by all means, stay and discuss. But if you just want to vent frustration, then maybe the better way is just to wait and decide based on the finished product.
Not sure what you are referring to, but i sense that it is again a reference to different games, right?
Surely, things like that happen. But having widespread feedback does not make feedback more correct. Devs still have the final call. Changing something might be:
- factual the wrong move
- too much work
- have side-effects on other aspects
- be in conflict with future plans
Or something completely different. What counts to me is the overall impression. If the team listens to feedback in general and only does not implement some, then i will give them the benefit of doubt to sometimes make hard, maybe even flawed decisions against (parts of) the community. That is why they are designers and not just programmers. They design the gameplay experience.
So if that overall impression tips over to them being tone-deaf, then the decision would be to stop supporting that product in the long run. That is ultimately your choice to take. But making that choice because of one aspect, seems a bit harsh, especially if you switch the game, move over to a different team and start hitting away based on prior grudges.
Note though that the overall impression might also be changed by one huge blunder. If for example it were to happen that on a public panel one community member was trying to address a panel with legitimate concerns about certain aspects of the game. And in the process would be mocked, belittled and effectively ignored, then maybe it would have been time to decide based on that one decision already.
Afterall, all the designers on that board would have clearly shown being unable to respectfully handle that feedback and instead stomp down a defenseless person who was clearly wrestling with tears as a result of the pushback.
Were you by any chance talking about a scenario like that?
Well, saying āthey do not want to testā is also not the constructive feedback that i was hoping for from your side. Give them the chance to do right and then decide based on what they are doing.
Easy solution: unfriend 
In that case i will recommend some early access games to you. Not any early access game for that matter, but if you pick the right one, you will certainly get exactly what you hope for.
Maybe betas back in the days had some aspects of it, but i would not expect core aspects of the game changing during beta. The risk of introducing new issues is high and you will need to follow a long pipe of quality tests before you can show it to the public again (if following a proper QA process).
If you are interested, i can try to give you some EA (early access) recommendations. But do not just buy anything with EA on it, they more often than not are not what you want to put your money behind.
I did that with several games. It has its advantages and certainly would have been the right call in many cases (e.g. D3, Gothic 3). But to many players the first-day-experience is also something they want to partake in. It is not the fact of having a polished bug-free product, but instead seeing everything for the first time along with the other members of the community.
If you join in 1 year later, there will already be guides and guilds and what-not. certainly easier to follow, but maybe not as exciting as discovering it by yourself.
Disclaimer: To many D2R might not hold too many new discoveries compared to D2. 
I do not get that point.
Testing the world even is something that could be tested in an inhouse-test by blizzard. It is quite an isolated event. And even if you were to test it with players, you would certainly not look at their feedback (unless there is a bug in the fight), but more likely look at server-logs to check where the clone actually spawned.
In my diablo time, i have seen the diablo clone around 1-2 times. Maybe slightly more. Not sure about you, but even if you saw him 100 times, then it was just a fraction of your D2 experience. Not really the main thing that needs to be tested during beta.
I wouldnt even mind if theyād add it 1 month after release. Afterall, nobody will be able to kill Uberdiablo on the first days (2-3), let alone sell jordans (if that is still the case). So the damage of not having the feature ready on day 1 is close to 0.
1 Like
Because the game is not playable. Thatās not to say there wont be on release.
Jesus Christ. Thereās that bad faith arguing, intellectual dishonesty again.
There will likely be bots on day freaking one, and that is obvious to anyone with brainsā¦
Iām sorry, weāre done. I should have done a long time ago.
Bye, forever.
Duping methods need to be found. Finding them takes time. So far we are not aware of any duping methods. So it is legitimate to assume that there will not be any dupes until a duping method is found. And once there is one, it is hopefully also the case that it will be prevented soon after.
Bots need to to be implemented and configured. So far there are not D2R bots yet. Surely some are already in development, but there is no publically known release yet. The last attempts of third-party tools for D2R have been met with a seize-and-desist order. It would be reasonable to expect the same to happen to the first bots. Again, it makes sense to assume that there will not be any bots in the first days, weeks, months after release.
So yes, there will be no such things on release. Simply by taking the effort that is required to set these things up into account. And if there are, there surely will be some backfire against them. All of which does not apply to D2 dupes and bots for the past ~10-15 years.
It is intellectually dishonest to say, āwe should import a billion of botted and duped items, because there will be a bot at some pointā. One issue of not yet decided scope does not justify running the entire economy into the ground from day one.
Even if there was a bot, it would still not be able to produce that many items on day one. Even that process would take a while. But you invite all the old items in and skip even that little timewindow of ānormal-playā. For talking about intellectual dishonesty you really chose the wrong post to do it in.
Before you said you are not a developer. Now you suddenly know how to make a bot. I think you are underestimating what it takes to develop a piece of software. Even if there was a bot, it would surely not be able to do any runs as you are used to.
1 Like
Blizzard: The D2R beta will be available in August
Me: OK, that means the beta will start sometime between August 1 and August 31.
My speculation was in the first half of August, the D2R beta would start. The odds of it starting on August 1 was slim to none and slim has left the building.
1 Like
think it will be stupid for blizzard a make the beta come out august 20 and 31 if they want to release it fully then 23 setemper they will not get much feed back in so after some people want to find bugs and other things on the game then they play the game so think if it not come out today so maybe in the days in the week we come to
If we donāt get any news till fraiday then maybe next week, or a week after that. I think it should be 6,13 or 20 because they have to start some day this month.
Iām impatiently waiting to play some betaā¦ Iāve been temp banned for nearly a month on the original. Thanks VPN 
1 Like
i could have sworn the install button was lit up when i just logged in 
maybe iām just losing my eyesight. 
2 Likes
Hopefully they give us a beta date this Tuesday. Iām fine if we have to wait a few weeks, but know a date a while beforehand. Itās the not knowing that sucks.
2 Likes
I donāt need to keep my progress, I need this beta to remember how to play a game I havenāt touched since 2003. This way I will know wtf I am doing when the retail launches in Sep.
Haha same thing happened to me too. But i think they perma banned me i duno why, all my gateways are closed for me lol and i donāt know the reason.Thanks VPN
The old Bnet system has an automated set of rules to help deter bots and cheats. They also impact real players, unfortunately.
You can find a list of the temp restrictions here
D2R will be on Modern Bnet with the rest of the Blizzard games and should not be subject to most of those restrictions - such as VPN play. While modern Bnet does not support VPNs (they wonāt help you set them up or anything), they donāt specifically penalize for them. Just beware that the security systems can think your account is being hacked and lock it if you appear to be jumping around the planet faster than modern transport allows. To prevent that just put an Authenticator on the account. Even if it does lock, you can just unlock it with a password change yourself. It just wants to force you to pay attention to your login pattern to protect you.