Just signed up, and now we play the waiting game. This thread had me at Diablo 2 :)

I dont know if I like it yet, I have only played it a few times. I'll have to sit down and play for awhile.

You have to get past the first bit where you start collecting some good gear and see how linked sockets work with gems. The fact that the warrior can cast Ice Spear if he has a high enough Int just by socketing the gem is pretty cool. Linked gems will allow you to do things with support gems that change the effects of the gem in the linked socket. If you get a great item with really good linked sockets you can do some really cool stuff.

Oh yeah, get a really good socket set up on a white item? Use one of your rare drop items to make it magic, or even unique. Even your potion flasks can have enchantments on them!

So, I played yesterday with the newest updates, a couple of cool new things:
1) The skill trees are way more fleshed out, there's almost no "temp" skills anymore. There's also way more awesome-sauce skills that you can pick up for working your way through one of the "whirls" in the tree.

2) The final class has been revealed and is in game. He's the Int/Dex class and is what all those dagger and claw weapons was meant for all along. In practice he plays kind of weird and I'm not sure I personally like him, but it's a new class to try.

3) New monster types, quests, and areas have been fleshed out. The game looks way prettier and has way more tools in the interface, for your convenience.

4) Buying and selling with vendors has been fully implemented and it's nice to see how they managed to do it without gold.

5) The cash shop is in, basically you can pre-purchase points and get a non-combat pet for doing so. They've promised all along that there will be no Pay2Win items in the shop (at best you'd get a small leveling boost).

6) More difficulty levels, by what people are saying the hardest ones are extremely hard.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch of details, but if you haven't logged in in awhile, you should hop in and make a new character (old characters are in the Legacy League).

Wish I could, but I'm reasonably sure I need to receive one of them 'codes' before I can.
Good to hear they're keeping up the development though.

I supposed I could actually buy D3 and compare, but has anything played both? I'd be interested in hearing their thoughts. Predictably you can't be logged into PoE very long without hearing about 1000 different comments on how it kicks D3's ass. Said comments generally aren't rooted in much more than fanboyism, in general (some actually have merit). I'd be curious of a blow by blow by anyone who's spent time in both, though.

I'm not anything, but I was in both beta's (the open ones).
Short story, D3 has way more polish but POE looks more interesting in the long run.
D3 is really just D2 with slightly better graphics and a simplified skill tree.
If you liked D2, you'll like D3 basically. There are some minor improvements such as improved character intertwinement (not a word probably).
And certain things that depend on the person whether it's an improvement or not, such as the fact that loot is generated for each member of the party instead of having to discuss who gets what.
POE is very rough around the edges of course, but it's probably easier for them to add new skills and classes than for Blizzard. They basically have all the advantages and disadvantages of an 'indie' studio.
I have to admit though that the click-a-lot-for-loot game is not my favorite genre, so I might not be the best person to comment.

Anyone else playing this weekend? I'm very impressed by it so far, and I'm not even that big of an ARPG fan. In particular, scrapping the traditional ARPG economy system is a bold but wise move. It took me some time to get used to the barter trade system, but it's great, makes sense, and really balances the equipment.

Combat is solid and satisfying. I've clocked around 10 hours into the game, and I haven't felt that sense of repetition that I get from ARPGs like Titan Quest.

Too bad right now minion AI sucks. Playing as a necromancer build is tough. Still, I'm having a lot of fun. I may donate to GGG. It's not fair that a game this good is free.

I never played the beta of Diablo 3 and bought it right before launch. Clocked about 160 hours before quitting, I have somewhere between 30-40 hours in Path of Exile. Here is my comparison of things I noticed:

Leveling: Diablo 3 had poor leveling because skill + rune unlocks were tied to levels. There was a sense of advancement but it was 'just another number' since there was no stat placement.

Path of Exile has the skill giant skill tree which makes every level feel unique and in general a better feeling. Path of Exile wins here.

Bartering: Diablo 3 has the real money auction house. Path of Exile has the item bartering. I prefer the centralized feeling of an auction in itself, but I don't like buying power. It can go either way here.

Gameplay: Diablo 3 feels smooth, there isn't any other way to really describe it. Path of Exile has combat that is nice, but feels clunky compared to the smoothness of Diablo 3. So Diablo 3 wins that.

Items: Diablo 3 has no 'unique' items like Enigma from Diablo 2. Instead everything is focused on minor stat improvements.Past a certain point it feels like you are just trying to improve stats which killed it for me. Then there is the point that every profession is forced down a certain path.

Path of Exile has an amazing amount of item diversity. At one point I had a melee based witch that I thought would suck, but ended up working because of some clever item use. Path of Exile wins no question.

Character diversity: Diablo 3's idea of character diversity is dying your cloths and getting a banner that has no practical use. At end game there is going to be no real difference between classes.

Path of Exile obviously lets you play whatever the hell you want. Path of Exile wins no question.

Really Diablo 3 has amazing combat and the flawed auction house going for it, but other then that Path of Exile completely smashes it in my opinion.

Been playing PoE on and off now for a bit, I was going to buy Torchlight 2, but this seems more appealing to me, but it's free, so I guess thats a major plus.

The microtransactions seem a bit pointless, but I guess thats the point, so they dont enhance gameplay, but I cant see why anyone would bother buying them, so I would wonder about the games financial viability and its future.

If it was a single player, I would buy it right now, but as it's (appears to be anyway), online only, I'll be disappointed with a loss of time invested in my character if the game fails.

I would suggest anyone interested in the game give it a try if possible (I think theres about a day left in the current test), I would love this game to be a success. Last night there were only 5K players on, which doesnt seem like alot to me.

I dropped the devs $10 to support them. $10 for 10 hours of gameplay clocked so far is good value for money, if you ask me. Shame there's no singleplayer option. I'm not making use of their multiplayer-specific features so far. The only time when the online part matters to me is when I'm playing with my brother, and even so, I prefer to solo the game.

Dunno how the 5k was spread, one of the devs came on chat and said there was 5 k last night, the previous high was (I think) 7.5k.

I'm sure alot of people tried it and said it wasnt for them and alot would say...yeah, I like this and I'll buy it, but no point in playing a character that will be wiped after beta...

Also, I'm sure the official release will bring alot of D3 and TL players out of the woodwork for curiosity's sake, personally I think its the best game of its kind available at the moment, but thats just a personal thing, but I would actually pay €50 for a single player version.

I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually sell one, but probably not out of the gate. Hmm, well I would have been hoping for far more players, but maybe 5k right after the Steam summer sale and in the middle of vacation time for North America, etc. isn't too bad, dunno.

I just hit level 23, and here are my thoughts on necromancy so far: despite the awful minion AI, once you get Minion Instability, wow. Seriously, I don't see how it's possible to die. You just need to stand a safe distance away, and spam skeletons and zombies until the room is clear. Without Minion Instability, it could get a bit rough, especially with NPC necromancers in the same room, but with Minion Instability, you're basically unstoppable. I mean, 4 zombies with 410hp each - if all of them die in the vicinity of the enemy, that's a whopping 1630hp, not counting the skeletons that are exploding everywhere too.

Wow.
Yup I'm in the closed beta too. Thanks for offering anyway :)