Open Beta weekend - everyone can play D3 this weekend!

We're pleased to announce the Diablo III open beta weekend, which offers open access to all players with a valid Battle.net account! Beginning this Friday everyone is invited to log in and help us put the game and servers through their paces in this three day stress test as we march toward the game's release on May 15. You can begin downloading the Diablo III client right now!

From Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT you'll be able to log in, team up with friends, and play each of the five heroic classes to level 13 as you fight to save the world from the impending demonic invasion.

FAQ

What steps do I need to take?

Log in or create a Battle.net account at http://www.battle.net

Create your BattleTag™, which is required to play Diablo III

Download the game client, install, and play between 12:01 p.m. PDT April 20 and 10:00 a.m. PDT April 23

I know some readers haven't got a Beta key so here's your chance to play the game and get a feel for it. It's a very exciting experience, the first impression the game makes is an absolultely wonderful one.

I think some beta testers have got a bit bored as the beta is so short so it's just the same content over and over again. But if you've been on the outside looking in I'm sure you'll love every moment.

12.01 pm PDT is 8.01 pm British Summer Time so the servers are open now!

275 000 Diablo 3 Beta invites

 Some great news from Blizzard for people still wishing they could try D3 Beta. Go check your BNet account, you'll see the game there if you got in:

We’re in the process of sending out 275,000 Diablo III beta invites to our opt-in testers. As it’ll take us a while to notify all the lucky invitees, we recommend heading to your Battle.net Account Management and seeing if you’ve received a Diablo III beta license. If you have, you’re good to go! Download the beta client and use your Battle.net account and password to log in once it’s installed. While you’re logged into your Account Management page though, don’t forget to create your BattleTag. You can choose this permanent account-wide nickname by clicking on the BattleTag “Create one now” link on the left side of your main Battle.net Account page. Choose wisely as there’s no current ability to change it. A BattleTag is required to play Diablo III, and so whether you get into beta or not you should pick one while you’re there.
 
Keep in mind that with such a large amount of invites for our test hardware we fully expect a strong possibility of stress test issues, such as an inability to log in, disconnections, and potential lag/latency. We’ll also be testing our queuing system ,which you may see when attempting to enter a game.
 
Thank you for your continued help, feedback, and patience as we approach the May 15 release.
                               

Beta patch 16

Full patch notes here. Unofficial changes listed here.

It's a very light patch which is healthy, the game is almost done.

For the Witch Doctor Haunt got reduced duration which is a very nice buff (it does its damage quicker), Locust Swarm got higher damage and Sacrifice got higher damage. Generally a good patch for us. Haunt - Resentful Spirit is now really useful doing 287% weapon damage over 2 seconds (then presumably jumping to another target if it kills).

Dots are rather redundant in Beta but will be useful for the harder difficulties.

Beta Patch 16 and character wipe

The Diablo III beta is currently undergoing maintenance as we prepare to deploy the next beta patch. We anticipate that downtime will last for about 8 to 9 hours, until approximately 8:00 p.m./9:00 p.m. PDT.

Please note that Beta Patch 16 will include a character wipe. As with previous character wipes, this wipe will also affect gold, achievements, items, followers, and artisans.

Thank you for your patience!


                                No patch notes yet. I'd guess they'll change the skill trees around to show off some different skills (it seems as much marketing as game design at this point) and they'll do some fixes to the auction house UI.

Glorious new Demon Hunter video

Via Eurogamer. Enjoy!

What are you playing till May 15th?

After exploring the Diablo 3 beta I found myself casting around for something to do.

I usually spend a little time in Eve Online each day as I find that game fascinating. However at the moment I'm mostly generating income passively, storing it up for the next surge of pvping. I won't do so now because Eve is a game where everything takes absolutely ages. By the time I find an outfit I like, get my ships to their combat hub and fly a few fleets with them it would be almost Diablo 3 time. No point joining someone to go perma-afk after a few weeks.

Eve Online

I decided to go back to Everquest 2 and asked a friend if he wanted to give it another go with me. We got to about level 10, he swapped his new guy for an old character and mentored down and then pushed on a few more levels. I really like EQ2 and I'm very happy that I can casually drop in for free whenever I feel and have tons to do. There's a bewildering amount of content. I joined the dungeon finder tool and it popped up pretty quickly. It wasn't like that when they first introduced it because I think people were basically conservative. However it's gained considerable traction since I last played.

Everquest 2

We discovered that the virtual card game that is packaged with EQ2 had been quietly accumulating cards. On one of my accounts I had 102 boosters! I had been aware previously that EQ2 players got free boosters for this game but it had never worked before. Naturally since we had all these cards we had to try it.

Legends of Norrath is a very good collectible card game. It has significant twists on the basic framework that Magic: The Gathering created and the artwork is beautiful. It also has the somewhat quirky Everquest sense of humour. I always find their plotlines reminiscent of Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

Legends of Norrath

I'd certainly recommend anyone who likes card games and has ever played EQ or EQ2 to log in and see if there's boosters waiting for you. Even if you don't play for long it's great fun opening boosters and seeing all your cards. (They're locked so you can't trade them, at least the free ones are).

Now there's another free to play card game of course that SOE do (several actually but another that interests me). They have Magic The Gathering Tactics.

Magic the Gathering: Tactics

Magic The Gathering: Tactics is a delightful blend of Heroes Of Might & Magic 3 and Magic The Gathering. Your forces move across a board much like HOMM3 but the cards are all Magic cards. It has a lot of critics, particularly on the Wizards of the Coast board so whatever you do don't read that forum. This is because Tactics rewrites a lot of the classic MTG gameplay.

Heroes of Might and Magic 3

It is very attractive to me because I loved Magic I loved HOMM3 and I like to finesse free to play games. I had some Station Cash anyway so I spent some of it unlocking the 6 paid campaigns (1500 SC, about £12). I've built up a deck made of commons that is just starting to get some results. I beat a level 52 player (out of 55 max level) twice this morning so I must be close. I've also started flipping rares on the auction house, following Marcko's advice of Buy Low, Sell Normal. Unfortunately sales are slow. I'll probably sell a few at the weekend.

Magic The Gathering is a more interesting game for me because the cards were part of my gaming history. I am a former UK national champion and when I had my Magic phase I reckon I spent about £5000 on cards in that year.

There's a lot to recommend it for Diablo 3 fans. It's fast and furious. Tournament matches have a 15 minute chess clock that means you have to build a deck to win and win fast. I've already lost one game to the clock - that will teach me to play Blue! There's an interesting auction house and trading element to the game. And, because it's free to play, you can dip in and play it for 6 weeks then drop it to play Diablo 3 without losing the value of the time you spend progressing.

My character is Stabsey, say Hi if you give it a try.

Inferno difficulty ramped up in the later stages

via Bashiok: This is may be a good a time as any to REVEAL TEH SEKRITS! that Inferno monster levels aren't linear any longer. They get progressively more difficult. This was really a reaction to Inferno playtesting. Our original intent was to have a flat difficulty level where you could go wherever you want, farm for items, and it'd be no more or less difficult than any other area in Inferno. This caused a few inherent issues for us, though:

It just felt wrong. It didn't feel right to be progressing through the game and have it stay pretty much the same difficulty the whole time. It felt like a letdown to get to the final boss of the game and it be no more difficult than the first.There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into. We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60.  But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people.  For the crazy people they need a HUGE ramp in difficulty, for a more “casual but still hardcore” audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty.  So for the crazy people who play non-stop they’ll hit Act I and get a challenge, but 1 month later they’ll still have something to work on (Acts II, III and IV).  For the “hardcore-casual” they will reach level 60 later and not get brick walled when they reach Inferno.  They can experience some “small victories” working on Act I with the dream of maybe someday reaching the later acts.Longevity.  We know people really want goals to work towards and challenges to overcome.  We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only.  It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.

Now, you may be saying “I thought you wanted us to be able to farm anywhere we wanted.  Now we only have half as much area in the game to farm in? What gives?” Our goal is to make the loot mathematically better in the later acts without making the earlier gear completely obsolete. We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.

Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, Mephisto runs, Pindleskin runs, Pit runs, Baal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random. Even though the theoretical best items might come from the later Acts, well-rolled items from earlier acts will still be better. Internally we find sometimes after an intense session of brutally hard Inferno it can be really fun to cruise through Hell Act III or IV and it’s not too uncommon surprise when an upgrade drops. We expect this to carry through to Inferno difficulty where somebody who can theoretically farm Act IV will likely still enjoy romping through Act I simply because the drop potential is still there. It’s all because of the highly random items having lots of overlap in their power distribution curves.
                               


Sounds fantastic! I tend to be quite a hardcore player anyway so I'm delighted to have more to get my teeth into. Eceonomically I think this move pushes more earning power into the hands of the most successful. See you in Inferno Act 4!