Hi,
Some words on my D2R technical alpha experience.
PC configuration
Sadly, i could not make it work on my PC (as it runs on W7) : the game just close after a short flash (an error message would be welcome).
So i had to play on my wife’s computer (which runs on W10) : Ryzen 7-3700X, 16go RAM, 960GTX. The alpha was installed on a M2-SSD.
Recommended Specifications were met except for the video card (as she had to postpone this upgrade with the current GPU crisis).
Performances
I- ‘Widescreen round’ (3840x1080)
1st try : default options (everything on very high)
Result : unplayable (unless you want a big headache), fps range from 15-25 with laggy / choppy behavior (note : legacy display is very smooth, above 100fps)
2nd try : 3840x1080 with medium texture, ambient occlusion, shadow and transparency on « high » setting.
Result : barely playable, 20/25 fps (a little more in closed areas).
3rd try : 3840x1080, medium texture, settings on medium, anti-aliasing off.
Result : not much better than previous one, except for the frank visual’s degradation (lightning effects become terrible).
Conclusion : alpha is not playable at 3840x1080, probably due to the old graphic card (Legacy graphics
There is also a (very) frequent delay (0.5 to 1s) in textures display (squares far on left/right of the screen).
Nonetheless, the game is quite appealing in 32-9. I’m not used to wide screen so it’s quite disturbing, but beautiful and astounding.
II- ‘standard 1920x1080’ round
1st try : default options
Result : below expectations. The game is still shaky and not enjoyable (20-25 fps)
2nd try : medium texture, (ambient occlusion & shadow & transparency) on « high » setting, no AA.
Result : not very smooth but playable (30/35 fps on outside areas, up to 40/45 on closed ones, 25/30 at worse).
Apart from graphics, the loading times have greatly increased, specially during game.
Even on SSD, most loading screens will take some times (weird to see the light occurs quite instantly and then nothing ^^)…
And in some case it appears your characters seems in play while you’re on the loading screen (occurred only once, but seems to be quite common).
Of course it must be fixed on release … (reminds me of old vanilla Duriel instant kill ^^)
Alpha experience & motivations
I tried to enjoy the experience itself and not focusing on mechanism / calculations (others will do that better ^^)
As this 1st alpha is single-player only, i did play with /players8 most of the time.
Since i did have limited time to enjoy the alpha, i did mostly play the Sorceress, but did however some play with both others (barb & zon).
Nonetheless i will keep my chat on the sorc.
Visuals
I did play most of the time with (1920x1080 / medium texture, high settings, no AA) settings and the game is still quite gorgeous.
It’s not up to top recent games, but it’s still beautiful (and far far from the old graphics) and the zoom is very impressive.
As I’ve said, visuals are gorgeous, but still feels as D2.
The near 1 to 1 «areas conversion » is a reality (you get some little additions/changes from time to time, but only the fundamentalists would argue against those).
‘Good’
- Environments are beautiful and very detailed (Zoom zoom zoom) (++)
- Fire effects are gorgeous, Fire skills are great (++)
- Lights effects are nice (sometimes a little exaggerated) (+)
- Monster looks average to great : it’s quite disturbing at first (some looks very different) but overall it’s good (very subjective matter here) (+)
- The cold skills are good (even if blizzard seems a little thin/underwhelming) (+)
‘Average’
- Characters looks OK in game (and match your equipment closely than before)
- Animations seems OK (as the game was not perfectly smooth during my play, i did not focus too much on animation).
- Items looks from bad to good (again very subjective)
‘Improvable’
- The lightning skills are more on the sparks side than the lightning side : skills are good-looking but feels a little weak / thin (-)
- Act I outsides felt kind of faded (pastel) (-)
- UI is unequal, panels got a little blunt look sometimes and somehow some menu/boxes feel a little awkward/dissociated with the rest of the game (-)
- Some Level exits are not easy to catch at first sight : LG sewers exit stairs are surrounded by fog and can look like grates, Maggot’s lair exit is nice but quite concealed… Both are easier to glimpse on map (-)
- Main menu character’s rendering should (need to) be improved … (- -)
- Chipped & flawed gems are a mess (all looks alike for a colorblind like me … and sadly the colorblind option was not accessible during this alpha), normal, flawless seems better (- -)
Play
Overall, the experience seems very close to the D2 LOD :
- environments (as said before)
- movements (walking, running, jumping, teleport),
- combats (spells, ranged, melee),
- monsters (density, behavior, difficulty),
- items (items & drops),
- gems, jewels, runes and runeswords (tried only nadir, steel, stealth and leaf) did what they were supposed to .
- Cube upgrades (gems / runes) did work, but i did not try crafted items or re-roll (lack of time / mats).
Teleport was the only « issue » for me (barb’s jump with enough SP ?), as you can teleport as far as you can see, allowing much longer teleport than legacy’s ones. This becomes a problem on 32-9, as you can do insane teleport through the map with ultra-wide display. I think this will need fixing (especially for PvP), probably by capping max range.
Qol change
‘Good’
- Shared stash !!! (+++)
- 1 click item swap (cube / inventory, inventory / stash) (++)
- Refresh gambling (bug : you can gamble each object twice) (++)
- Increased stash size (10x10 against 6x8) (++)
- Advanced stats is appreciated (button should be more visible, my wife did not seen it) (+)
- Mercs information on skills (more stats ?) (+)
- Adjustable map opacity and mini map options (+)
- Custom control (+)
‘Average’
- Gold auto pick-up, not really interesting for me (maybe with a little pickup radius …)
- Item tool-tip comparison (why not)
- Loading previously saved custom control is not intuitive (need to click on default then choose custom)
- Hiring a merc by double clicking on its line (why not a dedicated button?)
Bugs
The alpha was very stable for me : I’ve had only one crash (while swapping to legacy mode just after activating a waypoint).
Two minors bugs did occurs :
- Twice a texture was not loaded (and stayed so),
- Upon arriving in Lut Gholeim, i was not able to remove objects on my rogue (permanent sticking Charm ?
)
Suggestions
Maybe we could have some stats (kills mob / elite) or even some achievement system (it’s not because it’s in D3 it cannot be made into D2 :p).
I may be an old D2 player, i am not opposed to these kind of change (as long as they don’t interfere with D2 gameplay).
A runewords help in game would be appreciated too (even if old players have old habits ^^)
D2 Ressurrect "collector"
We (my wife, most of my friends and myself) are qui disappointed that a “deluxe / collector” edition of the game is not on sale, D3 bundle is a joke.
We hope a nice “physical” edition will be released (fingers crossed on this one).
We did wait a re-edition/remaster for suuuuuch a long time.
Thank you 
