Which is a thing that
a) Should not be required in the first place
b) Not available yet in all regions

and no, this was apparently not common knowledge. You are the ONLY person so far who seems to have known about this I've talked to yet.

So I did purchase this, but I dont feel captured. Yeah sure its fun, but I am favoring playing Dota 2 now over Diablo and I have been playing Dota for months now. Not sure what it is. Oh well im sure ill get into it at some point

It isn't required. If you aren't an idiot with your password the chance of you getting hacked is pretty small to begin with. I believe the mobile app is available pretty much everywhere.

WTF, case-insensitive passwords? Why the **** would anyone do that?

Yeah, there's no reason to have case-insensitive passwords. Indeed, it takes extra effort to program that bit of security away.

So I just beat the first play through. It plays like a good single player game. The story and how they present the story is great. The gameplay picks up and starts getting fun once you start getting more abilities. Still, I have zero connection for my character. I could care less if he got deleted this instant. I would care about the templar merc being deleted though. The mercs have great personalities and are overall a big part of why I like D3.

Also character progression. There is but one way to get better and that is to get bigger stats. A tad bit of hp and the rest damage related. It feels kind of terrible that you can't build a character to be unique. Compared to say Path of Exile which has amazing character creation with many unique possibilities.

I had a hard time figuring out if trying to focus on any of my weaker stats made any difference in D3. I figured having high resistances would be needed, but elements seem to be removed from their importance from this game. Leading to it just being better to have tons of hp compared to armor or resists.

Last thing that bothered me. It was nearly impossible to get out of a bad situation and little reason for you to think a situation is turning bad. For example, you are surrounded by a huge hoard of unknown enemies. If you are doing good your hp will fluctuate up and down and you'll eventually kill them all. If you are doing bad your hp will fluctuate up and down and then you'll suddenly die. It didn't feel like there was any middle ground between doing good and bad. With the random hp drops from enemies it encourages to keep fighting. With limited types of heals it means you must focus on those hp drops. If you step out of a fight to "recover" and heal, what you're really doing is absolutely nothing except removing yourself from a great position to kill everything and heal up, unless you die.

Still a fun and probably a great game. It is NOT however, what I thought this game was going to be.

In Normal, you can just spam DPS, the mobs don't do enough damage to genuinely care about health if you have a modicum of when to run away.

In Nightmare, you can stack health. The mobs don't tend to both Wall you and Molten you to death- or at least, if they do, Teleport can handle it.

But if you want to survive on Hell, you will need armour, dodge chance, and resists. There's less resistance going around in general in D3 compared to D2, but there's no giant minuses for being in Nightmare or Hell, so it balances out a bit better. Many of the toughest attacks by Hell mobs are Fire damage, like Fire Chains, Molten, and Mortar. And if you have low armour/resist, you'll take so much damage that stacking health will not save you in the slightest- especially against the properties like Jailer, Waller, and Frost.

Ultimately, the three difficulties actually play quite differently and I'd encourage completing Nightmare at least before making a decision. For example, Diablo on Normal was a walkover but on Nightmare, me and my two IRL friends had a fairly significant struggle, and Hell is going to be a bitch. Butcher a joke as always though.

played through on normal, went rather quickly, played through on nightmare with a friend(and solo) had a tough time of it(hes wizard im Monk) playing through on Hell mode, tough as hell, lot of dying. its a slight bitch and can be frustrating at times.

already banned from the battlenet forums haha. apparently bypassing the swear filter is a no-no. user error. who reads TOS though?

i hate swear filters simply because they can make posts ambiguous. yeah yeah, don't swear, i get it. but sh1t, they're only words.

i did abuse a few idiots too i guess. should see the aussie forums. blood on the floor (that said, US peak ping times are unacceptable). aussies are talking about legal and media action haha.

So, just how bad is it? I'm getting peer pressured to buy this game, so I need excuses to not get it :P

It's a fun little time waster (And that's really all it is, a time waster).

It's a blast to start it up, pick your hero, and join a public game for 30 minutes to an hour at a time. Blast away at hordes of enemies with some great visuals and amazing audio, kill some elite monsters or a boss, and grab a cool item or two before logging off to go about the rest of your day.

That's how I've been playing it at least, and honestly I think that's the way Blizzard designed it to play. If you read around on the internet a bit, there are quite a few people outraged that the game doesn't reward you as much as Diablo 2 did for doing 12 hour benders searching for loot. And if that's what you're looking for in Diablo 3, then I suppose it would disappoint.
It seems to me that it's been built from the ground up to favor small bursts of play and not huge sessions. So if that piques your interest, then it's great. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, though, see if you can get a guest pass and just try it out.

I meant the lag and stuff when in Australia.

when the ping is fine its a really well-crafted romp, for short or long sessions. i like how they did the skill system this time around. i dont wanna have to play thru from normal a million times to play with every skill of each character.

maps dont seem to be as random as i was expecting though?

very polished experienced (networking notwithstanding), and is easily my fave game of its type (note i never played the originals, just watched mates play a lot).

i wont play during US peak times. but its great during evening aussie time. check out all servers and find which one does better during the times you're free to play.

during good times im 200-250 and dont notice any latency at all. (very) occasional rubber banding, but that's about it.

Well, a friend has a guest pass so I'll try it and see. When you say "check out all servers", is this a choice I have to make before creating my character, or can you choose any server at any time?

your character is bound to the server you made it on.

They have more semirandom maps than D2 did. But then, in D2, it was basically just like, five huge fields in a row for every act, it was way too much. Each map in D3 is more unique and more interesting. It's not common to get just "Explore entirety of MASSIVE ******* FIELD" to find what you want. Unlike D2 where they pulled that **** all the time.

Ok, played through trial edition with a Wizard and Barbarian. Had fun, although it's more of the mindless-dazed sort of fun rather than awesome or exciting.

My wrists hurt. Control scheme sucked a bit less after I mapped move to a key. I wish I could map the mouse buttons to "attack but not move", rather than needing to hold shift.

Lag wasnt too bad, so I will probably buy it.

i'll have to take your word for it. all i know is the exact same parts have been used through out my various act 1 romps, whereas i was expecting it to be completely different each time.

AFAIK, there's only a couple of randomized maps in Act 1- Dahlgur Oasis (except the entrance and exit), and the Cathedral levels, and the Fields and the Khazra..something and the spider cavern place. Which is fortunate, IMO, because I consider them by far the most arduous parts of the Act.

The dungeons tend to be more randomized. Can even be annoying at times, freaking Zoltan Kulles endless dungeon running.

So yeah, mapped one of my keys to Shift+Left Mouse click, and the game works somewhat better now. Autohotkey saves the day again.

Inferno is practically impossible for non-tank melee. If you are a monk or barb and trying to solo your way through inferno you can basically forget about it, unless you have a 1000+ dps weapon and over 30k dmg.

As of right now i feel that barbs and monks(more so monks) are slight UP, especially when you end up with a 50 mob clusterfuck, basically surround you and box you in making it impossible to escape, Barbs are least have the charge which lets them escape but Monks don't. In fact i think monks are the only class that don't have some kind of escape ability, Barbs- charge, Mages-Teleport, DH- Tumble, WD- the stealth thingy. Monks- a charge that puts you right behind the enemy so they can surround you again, which btw on inferno you can't even use because it isn't worth it.

So far i can basically farm Skele king and thats it, my dmg is crap right now because any good gear is no less than 3 mil on the AH, in order to live i have to use every dodge buff i can possibly have(never mind that one ability that gives a 20% dodge buff PULLS enemies towards you) which in turn lowers your damage so you can't kill anything.

Anyone else feel that Demon Hunters are a tad OP?

Im fairly certain that Inferno wasn't meant to be solo'd, or at least i get that impression. My friends and I run a group with me as Monk tank, DH, Mage glass cannon, and either a Barb or a WD(whoever is on basically) and we do pretty well, basically have act 1 on farm. I am able to live for a fairly long time, the only thing that gives me trouble are the Elites with Fire chains, Desecrator, Plague and sometimes Molten, in the event we feel we can't kill a group i basically pull the group and try to kite them to some corner of the map, after which i die.


also, Invulnerable Minions- STUPIDEST ******* **** EVER

All glass cannon builds are unviable in Inferno without some fairly good gear. I'm a Wizard pushing 24k DPS and glass cannoning is tough. In addition, the Barb seriously lacks a group role apart from tank.

I don't have much experience with Monk, but the one I've grouped with was tougher than the Barb of a higher level I grouped with.

You don't need to spend 3 mil on the AH to get good gear. Cap all gear at like, 50k or so until you're high. Sometimes even a 20k cap. The most expensive pieces in the game are intended for either super-late Inferno, or, just dramatically overpriced. There are plenty of cheap bargains on the AH if you know where to look.

Invulnerable Minions is really ******* annoying, I feel you there.

yea my bud is pushing about roughly the same dps as you for his Wiz but he gets shotted by anything, and i mean ANYTHING. Its great when there are choke points we can use because then i can just pop my dodge buffs and constantly pull the enemies/elities to keep em from running, he then pops Archon and everything just DIES, unless it is reflect dmg, then he dies XD.

and yes Monks are very tough, they are basically evasion tanks. Use of 1h+shield, then using FoT+Dodge rune, Dodge mantra+armor rune, Cyclone Strike+20% dodge rune, Serenity for the OFUCK moments, Sweeping Winds for Spirit generation and then Blinding Flash for a bit of CC. i would like to use my Dash+20% dodge rune however i think it is broken, with all my other dodge procs i see a buff get placed on me and watch my dodge% go up however it doesn't seem to(spose to give me like 20% dodge after using it like the Cyclone strike) so i think it is broke.

Essentially when everything is being used your dodge should be around a donstant 70% maybe higher, can easily get the Like Water Achievment. I just feel that on inferno we HAVE to go into a tank-like spec in order to live at all.

edit: i honestly didn't think about capping the price when searching the AH, should do that.