Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ve simply got no idea. Do you know? Or you, Steve? Perhaps I’ll ask John. “I’ve no answer for you,” says John. “It should remain a mystery, like magnets.” See, no one actually knows. It’s convenient then, that Blizzard should have put out an “introduction to Diablo III” video (via VG247) for me to post below. That explains it. That explains it right up.

Related news: Diablo III will be playable – via mandatory internet! – tonight from midnight Imperial London time. So that might answer some more questions.
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Remember back when Diablo III was first announced and all those people panicked because they thought Blizzard’s angstiest Big Bad had gone all My Little Lord of the Damned on them? Well, they were right. Someone has drawn pictures of Diablo characters and made them move. All hope is lost. OK, OK, fine. Maybe this animated short wouldn’t quite be at home on, say, the Disney Channel. It’s a wee bit stabby. There are also cryptic mentions of traps being sprung and angels angering at each other angrily, but mostly, it’s an excuse for seven minutes of ludicrously high-budget demon decapitation, bifurcation, and probably some other “-cations” I don’t know about. Check out the full thing after the break.

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On paper, Diablo III’s newly announced Global Play Internet voodoo sounds like a heavenly buff to my wanderings through Blizzard’s hell-born hack ‘n’ slash. In a nutshell, it allows players to hop into a game with anyone in any region (though, admittedly, with some soon-to-be-discussed caveats). I am, after all, on the other side of the pond from the RPS stratospheric sky mansion’s continent-shaped docking bay, so having full access to every region’s servers lets me bond with everyone else through mutual dislike/punching of The Devil. That said, you can only interact with your home region’s real money auction house, which may come as a disappointment to the rather sizeable portion of our readerbase composed of multi-national gold-farming tycoons. So those are the upsides. Now for the rather head-scratching bits.

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Heroes are generally, you know, heroic. They ride gleaming stallions while flashing their gleaming smiles and riding off into the gleaming sunset. They gleam a lot, I guess, is what I’m saying. Diablo III‘s wizard, on the other hand, is kind of terrifying. She takes a certain sadistic glee in blowing her enemies to bloody ice chunks, which is something well-adjusted human beings only do on very special occasions. Fortunately, she also looks wicked fun to play, what with all her time-slowing and teleportation razzle-dazzle. Kind of takes the edge off potentially dooming the whole of human civilization by potentially going mad with power, don’t you think? Descend into this post’s nightmarish depths for a trailer. Go on now. It’ll be fun!

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Twi weejd! That’s what happens when I try to write ‘two weeks’ without checking my fingers are in the right place on my keyboard. And I was trying to write ‘two weeks’ because that’s how long (roughly) it is until I go on holiday to Greece for a week. Which means…

Oh no. Oh god. Oh god no. Oh no no no no no no no no no.

Which means I’m OUT OF THE COCKING COUNTRY AND WITHOUT A COMPUTER WHEN DIABLO III IS RELEASED.
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Yes, it’s actually happening. Blizzard explains:

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.

Sound the trumpets! (Compare and contrast you experiences this weekend with our own impressions of the game.)

UPDATE: Nah, looks like false alarm. Sorry!

A thread on the D3 forums seems to suggest that the Diablo 3 beta is appearing on a lot more Battlenet accounts. No official word from Blizzard yet, but there’s a lot of people confirming it now. (It was already on my Battlenet, so I can’t say!)

It doesn’t seem to available for everyone. Anyone else seeing this?

Who’d be a monk, eh? Years of silent contemplation, the occasional bit of herb gardening, no hanky-panky whatsoever and when a demonic invasion comes along, you’re expected to punch the blighters in the face. Thankfully those years of silent contemplation provide all kinds of uncanny abilities and make a monk’s fists and feet deadlier than the most bastardly of bastard swords. Or maybe it’s not the contemplation at all; maybe they’ve been growing ‘supplements’ in those herb gardens. Whatever the case, I reckon this is my class of choice when Diablo III arrives next month, holy warrior that I am. This video shows me in action.

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Diablo III’s Barbarian is quite the nuanced character. His culture is… well, and then there was this exploding mountain that… OK, he kills stuff with axes big enough to be chopped down by normal axes. Also, he leaps onto his squishy loot pinata enemies like Mario if he’d been the victim of an oh-so-trendy gritty reboot. Honestly, though, Diablo isn’t really the place to live out my fantasy of Reginald Spleenfury, the exceedingly well-read and business-like barbarian who struggles to push back against a society that refuses to understand his ways – and is also largely illiterate and has yet to invent business. So I’ll probably just roll his underachieving, overkilling slacker cousin Powthwack Kabiffzott and check my brain at the door.

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In much the same, incredibly depressing way we’re all destined to become our parents, I tend to believe gaming’s spiritual successors slowly but surely inherit oddly specific qualities of their forefathers. For instance, Serious Sam riffed on Duke Nukem, only for Serious Sam: BFE to spend years in uncharacteristic silence with nary a peep as to its development progress. As time passed, I began to worry that Torchlight II would suffer the same fate, ultimately following in Diablo’s languid footsteps. But then I felt an odd fluttering sensation in my Anger Regions. Is this… optimism?

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