*rolls eyes* You really ought to stop being companies' lapdog.

First of all, I do love me some Phantasy Star (III was a bit of a dud, imo, though). I agree the half measures in this regard usually don't work out. Either let the player do it all or do it like Crimson Alliance (where what shield and armor you have equipped determine how hard you can Slash or Shield Bash). In CA this was really fun, since it's skill based how much gold you have really is dependent on just how well play. It's extremely fast paced and once you get that multiplier up you have to keep it up and not get hit:)

Good good, keep the insults coming, it really adds to your arguments.

It's Diablo 2 with a auction house and achievements, it's not any more "social/multiplayer" than Diablo1 or 2 were (Or Starcraft 2 for that matter), that's just Blizzard BS excuse.

Actually, it's designed to be *JUST* that. There's no half measures or compromises here. The game is designed only with multiplayer in mind and with an eye to trying to push people in that direction. This isn't a case of "we wish they had spent more time polishing single player instead of implementing multiplayer that we don't care about." This is only multiplayer and just about every mechanic and quirk the game has will remind you about that fact.

Well I found it very single player friendly, with really nothing forcing you into interaction with other people or functions of the game.

So the online only stings even more as DRM and a hope that they'll hook you on the Auction House to generate more income even form the single player crowd.

But even with all complaints counted, it's fun as ever hacking and slashing your way through it. Little snippets of lore thrown around the place are a nice touch and the grim dark setting is still there.

One question: How random is the world, I can't get a second game going and most of the map looks static?

No you can't.
Now you can play SOLO, but you can't play single player as people can always sharing the world with you. WOW is a MMO.
If WOW had private servers and allowed people to have a server just for themselves, then you might have a good comparison.

The map as a whole isn't much random, but randomized are the dungeons, people, quests you meet / see / get.

For example, on your first playthrough, a dungeon may occupy some space, but on your second, a small fishing village might be there.

... at least, that's what they said at BlizzCon.

Managed to connect a second time, it does a good job at creating a new world.
There is a lot of stuff around the game I don't like, but the game itself is really good.
Might even get it if I come across a cheap key.

Ah well, jumped into a multi-game for the Leoric quest. Spent most of my time lagging far behind them. Game really does run like a bag of bricks on my PC...

"Congratulations! You have beaten the Beta version!" Level 7 of 13 possible....


O_o

No, the beta is NOT that big. It used exactly 4,76GB on my HD.



About the beta itself, i enjoyed it a lot. It was a great hack and slash experience. The graphics are ok, the art style is pretty good, the music was well done, i loved the new interface, the skills are really fun to play with. The only downside is the always-on requirement, which is annoying, expecially with beta servers getting hammered due to the huge stream of players. I actually just got disconnected out of nowhere from a single player game, a quite stupid thing. They definately have to improve their servers, and i believe they will when they finally release the game.

I cant wait for D3. I hope they release the collectors edition here in Brazil, if they do i will buy it for sure.

Lol, well said. I think i know where you stand on the game. Thanks for the free laugh, that was very witty. I truely love these forums, on some forums the post above would be instant ban.

Yeah, that's a wonderful response to what looks to be a well thought out reply. Good grief.

I wouldn't put this solely on the desire to DRM the user. It's also marketing. Making sure you can use the single player characters for multiplayer makes the step-in that much smaller and makes sure a higher percentage of players participates in that part of the game. It also helps create social bonds, peer pressure, viral marketing and all those things to a small extent which is one of the main reasons WOW has been around so long. Steam's also partly successful because of the social part of their client. If you use it, you broadcast your games to your friends, which in turn makes them interested and possibly ups the sales rate.

Focusing on the social part of it is a smart move (from a business perspective)