First thoughts on Diablo III

Diablo, one of the best action RPG's in existence. I've spend many a hour trying to get just one more level, or finish one more Baal run. I even failed out of a few classes because of it. Third only to muds and Eve-online, the Diablo series has sucked more of my time than any other game. I even dabbled in the black market for Diablo 2.

This past week was the open beta. Available to anyone with a battle.net account. I eagerly downloaded the game and dived right in to the game. My first instinct was to play the wizard. I've always played magic users in the past, and this seemed a natural choice.

The story line quickly grabs you with an introduction of "the hordes at the gate" scenario, pitting you and the city guard against a large group of corrupted people. Reminded me a lot of zombies movies. The first chapter of the story didn't really engage me after the first point. The voice actors seemed disinterested, and the character's lines too jaded and snarky. Felt like "yet another dungeon I can loot and conquer" style to the game.  Honestly, I don't even remember the story outside of find and save Deckard Cain and kill the Skeleton king (again, didn't we kill him in the first game?)

After attaining level 6 and realizing I had 0 choice in character customization, I noticed It was taking me quite a bit of time and tactics to kill even the smallest of enemies. So I switched to the Witch Doctor.

Zombie, fucking Dogs. Yes, Zombie Dogs. Such an awesome summon creature to do my bidding. I'm hooked on the witch doctor now, even if he looks like a scrawny malnourished redneck with a beer belly. I quickly ran through the entire first act, and easily figured out the best way to kill enemies. After about an hour I was greeted with the "You won the beta! Congratulations!" screen. Humm, that was easy. ooo gold item. (Note, I had to google how to identify items, it was buried in the fourms. FYI. Hover over the item for a few seconds. Yeah thats it. Why even have to identify it then...)

I then tried my hand at multiplayer. My first instinct was to grab every item I could find. After a while I was feeling like a douche for picking up everything when the loading screen tip popped up: "Item drops are your own in multiplayer. Everyone has separate drops." At least I don't feel so bad now. Glad to see one of the better ideas from Guild Wars/Muds was incorporated. I'd really love to see the stats on how drops work now. Do we all get the same item? Is it a normal drop (ala D2) that's randomly split? or do we just get the same roll of loot level and items are randomly generated at that level?

After the third multiplayer game I started notice there was zero, ZERO randomization. Every dungeon was identical. The one large outdoor area only had a few randomizations with the major landmarks. (Tree, Crater, or Dungeon entrance, slightly randomized, thats it) Also chests would move around slightly. In otherwords, the game is NOT random generated like D2/D1. Its a static world with slight decoration differences. (Ok ok, D1 wasn't truely random, every dungeon level had 99 maps, but it was close enough) This is going to bore me to death, or make writing a bot easier. One or the other.

The concept of crafting is interesting, and I see myself spending a lot of time gathering normal magical items this game for crafting. I forsee the majority of runs purely for craft ingredients. Good way to keep us playing I suppose.

I read on the forums the stash is shared this time around. This is good I suppose, but maybe bad. I tend to horde my items, (Even those stupid low-end set items). I suppose i'll have to get over having everything.

The real money market was disabled during the stress test, so I was unable to see how it functioned. But I fully support this. The black market on Diablo 2 was HUGE, still is to some extent. Making it accessible and taking a cut is the best thing Blizzard has done since the removal of LAN play. To the nay sayers: Get a job, or if you have one, don't partake. No ones forcing you to use it. For those of us who want to buy/sell for real money, (seriously, $10 isn't a lot of money) this is a huge boon. Even allows for power gamers to make a bit of money on the side. Perhaps not much down the line when the slaves in third world countries get into the business and undercut everyone, but for a while it'll be great.

Blizzard did a poor job balancing the classes. By this I mean It takes longer to do the same things with class A than B. For example, the Wizard kills at a 10th of the speed of my Witch Doctor, and the Barbarian just slaughters everything in it's path. I suspect they haven't done balancing yet, but this needs to be addressed, or everyone will be the same class in multiplayer games.

On multiplayer, I was deeply annoyed there was no real benefit to playing with other people. No additional experience, Monster HP and PC damage bonus scaled 1:1, and the drops even felt lighter. Sure it was slightly faster, but if you wern't able to keep up with the fast people, you missed out of a lot of loot. This needs to be addressed, otherwise I'll be spending a lot of time on Skype/Vent and never joining a game. Sure I understand the need to not make XP 4x like Diablo 2, but ffs give us something.

Achievements. I like this. Please don't make them impossible.

That's about it. I preordered my copy and will undoubtly play quite a bit when its released. (Also since I'll be  losing my job at the same time, Its a perfect start to my vacation!) But I don't see myself playing as vigorously 5 years later like I did Diablo 2. The rest of the game better be kick ass for that to happen.

Converting a U3 drive back to normal

I have a couple of old U3 drives. Since U3 is pretty much dead, I wanted to make use of these drives. (Some of which are 16gb) It took me a few extra minutes more than it should of to find this information around the web. Many older links (like u3.com) are now dead. So here it is.

http://u3.sandisk.com/launchpadremoval.htm

Run application, easy conversion back to normal. Good bye U3. Simple as that.