Hello fellow Diablo friends! I was pretty nervous after a lot of off-putting stuff in the release notes, but I’m actually really surprised to have enjoyed it this much! June is so far away though 
Behold, more words for feedback than probably went to some of my university assignments!
Pros:
- Art-style: it looks incredible! The ‘vibe’ of the world captures the right mood and is much less cute (woo!) than D3. I love the grit and gloom!
- Events: despite disliking the forced MMOlite aspect, big weekly boss events are a cool challenge. Other events around the map are also pretty cool - very like Fates in FFXIV.
- Skills: the “enchantment” slot for an additional, unique ability is interesting!
- Content: SO much to do. I worried the acts would be short as hell, and that the whole base game would be done in 20 hours or less. Holy cow, if the other acts have the same amount as the first, I’m buzzing.
- Narrative: world-building is great - I actually want to know what happens to other characters. It really feels alive, and that NPCs are actually something than just filler.
- Crossplay: I can play with any friends / family regardless of platform!
- Dungeons: having heard others’ opinions, I expected these to be awful. I’m enjoying the variety and length between cellar / stronghold / dungeon. My face when there was a ladder to climb down as well - I was so shocked! (in a good way)
- Transmogs: no idea what everyone else is wearing but I am LIVING for the bog-standard transmogs.
- Scaleability: this seems handled really really well across different levels / monsters, and I like that ‘noob’ areas are not just inconsequential.
- Music: by and large, I love the orchestration for the music
Cons:
- MMOlite - forced socialisation sucks, please let this be an opt-in! It feels really jarring seeing people while running around after hundreds of hours in previous games solo. I left Nevesk to get the woodhunter’s axe and the ‘boss’ was dead by the time I got there (quest item dropped, but still!). I feel like I’m constantly being followed or following other players to kill monsters, or finding swathes of gold / items on the floor and then having major FOMO about missing stuff. I would rather opt-in to the people, and have a relaxed solo / just friends experience outside of that. If I can toggle console players out of my world, I should be able to toggle everyone else too.
- Transitions: rubber-banding as you enter / leave a hub into an instanced area is awful. This urgently needs optimising / fixing ahead of June as it’s unacceptable in its current state. Transitions in dungeons are handled much better, so it’s clear that it can happen.
- Stash: located in a communal bedroom is a bit weird.
- Inventory: Gems are not kept elsewhere off and this, combined with the much reduced inventory space, is a squeeze. Please either put gems separately or have two pages of inventory space / a chance to expand that.
- Clans: membership seems to be account-wide, and clan options and opportunities seem to be underdeveloped. Simplicity is not a bad idea, but it could be a bit better than a permanent party.
- Movement: WASD movement please, I’m really prone to RSI across my right arm due to my job / gaming as it is, so this would be much more helpful.
- Dodge: the cooldown feels painfully long - maybe 3ish seconds instead of 5 if you must put it on a timer? I find I actively won’t use it now in case I need it within the next five seconds (a long time!) and that feels counterintuitive.
- Disconnect / Loss: I opened a chest, picked up an item, started sorting my inventory, and DC’d - came back on, and I was a few minutes out on my progress. Perpetually online, but somehow able to rollback?
- HUD / UI: please make this scaleable, it’s too big.
- Mini-map: having it stuck in the corner sucks a bit - zoom option would be nice, or the translucent overlay toggle?
- NPC Shops: feels insanely overpriced, but maybe that’s because I’m salvaging everything instead of selling. Feels very poor though!
- Music: my irl job works with music so maybe I’m biased, but the strings music in the Cathedral is too heavy for too long, legitimately I think this could do with some balancing as it stops being poignant and becomes fatiguing.
- Subtitles: these often lag behind voices by 1-2 seconds and is very jarring; needs to be more anticipatory than reactive.
- BattleNet Tag: what’s the point of having character names when my battlenet tag is in chat for everyone to see? Bit annoying (especially if streaming - why would I want the world to know my username?).
- Offhand Comparison: speaking as someone playing sorcereress - doesn’t compare offhand with offhand, but instead with main weapon I think.
A few side notes:
- Greetings / hello emotes are basically the same, why have them separate?
- It would be nice to have a ‘test emote’ feature while assigning them from the customise menu.
- Cathedral of Light and a few other areas - wind sounds cut out abruptly.
- Dogs all around town but I can’t have one? That seems cruel
- Love that I am part of the cutscenes but cry slightly at the textures filling in as my outdated GPU (1080) pushes to render them mid-scene.
- Houses are actually house shaped! Love not having to change map for that, and that they’re not secret Tardis-sized entities.
- Probably a BETA-specific thing but achievements are listed as completed 1st Jan. 1970. I found that funny more than anything. That said - “Challenges” progress bar on Collections tab does not match up to summary % when you click through.
Takeaway: I’m really enjoying things on balance, and will probably purchase near / just after launch assuming things continue on the up and up. I’m a long-term fan of Diablo, here since early 2000s! Some twenty years on, I still play this game series with my mum (she stole my ear in D2 as a 7 year old noob must steal it back!) , and we’ve been hammering out the beta together this weekend.
Thanks for coming to my unintentional TED talk, would love to know other peoples’ thoughts on the less-commonly-mentioned stuff I poked at above.