DiabloFans

Anyone else understand him something like this?
Incoming pro paint skills.


I think this is the best news I've heard in a long time. Even if it's not like I think it is, with a flat difficulty curve the whole of inferno would be Too easy, just right or too hard. This way you can at least find your sweet spot. Personally I often play for hours just running around doing stupid stuff without much thought and then I go do something stupid hard to challenge myself. I'd like the option of running around in act 1 while still getting decent loot. Then later hitting Act 4 for some serious play with serious loot.

Think it's pretty selfish to demand all of inferno suit you when a lot of people would find it either unplayably hard or worst of all, the entire inferno difficulty being too easy.

I'll definitely be going for a similar look as far as video options allow. I like the sharpness and I'm one of those people that are nostalgic for the creepiness of the original game. I suppose quite a bit of that were system limitations or design faults. Like your character being hidden behind walls and such but it did give the game a certain horror movie quality where that which you can't see is often scarier.

Remember hearing the twang of a bow and frantically looking with the mouse for the red outline of an archer.

Wonder how the soundtrack is. Fucking screaming baby in the catacombs of the original used to scare the hell out of me.

Ok, I got Diablo with my first computer. Shortly there after I found the need to get a list of what the shrines did.

Since then I've been lurking. 15 years, dozens of games, hundreds of sites through the years, never so much as made an account to post. I'm not really the social type.

But this! This can not stand! Two pages and no Billy Connolly!?

I realise a lot of you are American and it took him like 20 years to gain favor with you folks but really, he should be up there with Carlin and the greats.

So brush up on your Scottish accent and give Billy a listen. I can not conceive of a person that likes stand-up that wouldn't appreciate his ramblings.

- Wolfson.

I got into the beta back in patch 13, and the first thing I did was sit my girlfriend down to play while I quietly watched and took notes. As a bit of background, she has played a bit of D2 with me, but has never made it past act 3 on normal difficulty. She does play a few other games on her iPad, but mostly of the take-care-of-a-pretty-horse variety. Also, she is not a native English speaker.

She chose the female monk and went to it. The first thing she mentioned was how much easier it was to know where she was going, and what she was supposed to do. She liked having the map on the screen and having the quest prompts ticking off as she completed them.

As soon as she got a few skills going (especially Lashing Tail Kick) she started loving smashing monsters. I was interested to find her saying phrases that were exactly in line with Jay Wilson's statements early on in development. At one point she said, "Ooooh, I'm strong!" She also mentioned at one point that she would play the game even if I wasn't there. My favorite quote though was when she encountered the little demon imps and in her sweet little voice said, "Come here babies so I can kill you."

Afterwards, I talked to her about how it felt and especially how it compared to Diablo 2. One of the first things she said was that she felt "powerful" in game. She also expressed that in D2, she never really knew what was going on, why she was doing what she was doing, and where she was supposed to go, but that in D3, she always understood what she was doing. We also talked about stat and skill allocation differences, and that really helped me to understand many of the D3 development decisions. She was able to pick up the game and play it without spending a lot of time reading or feeling confused.
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Now a few notes from my perspective.

After I played the game for myself, I became considerably less concerned about some of the things that I found annoying while watching her play. As a spectator, I found the on-screen quest information to be a bit obtrusive, and I was very distracted by the pop-up "massive blow" kill counters. However, as a player, I found both of these to be far less problematic, though I would still very much like to be able to turn the latter off.

Due to a surprising (and somewhat disheartening) number of technical hurdles and bugs (who wrote that launcher, yikes!), and to my pretty busy schedule, I haven't played as much as I would like. I can say though that both melee characters a lot of fun to play. I expected the Barbarian to be fun to play, and he did not disappoint. I was hopeful about the Monk beforehand, and after having played him, I would say that he will definitely be one of my favorite characters to play. I found his pacing, style and skills to be very entertaining. I don't think that either my girlfriend or I will ever get tired of Lashing Tail Kicking our enemies faces off.
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tldr:
-the developers were spot on in achieving their goals for bringing in new players, even to the point of getting my girlfriend to use the same phrases to describe the game that the devs have previously used
-barbs and monks are sweet

I got this over the holiday weekend to celebrate 15 years of slaying demons and fighting against the forces of evil with some of the best people I've ever known. Lets see 15 more great years!

And here you go! A Brand new Diabolesques strip!

Feturing: FIZZ, the barbarian and ARIA, the wizard.

Today's episode, Aria of effect -Part 1-



See you guys next week with "Aria of effect, -Part Two-"

Art By: Ismael Bergara