Friday, May 18, 2012

And So There Was Diablo 3



 I wanted to write this post three days ago. Unfortunately, my PC wasn't cooperating with me. After trying to troubleshoot it (I can't even get it to restart at this point, lmao) I decided to download the D3 client on my Macbook. And it works!!

I played nonstop yesterday. Well, mostly nonstop. I had to eat and pick the kids up from school. That sort of nonessential nonsense that interrupts game play during the day. Ya know.

I have no complaints about D3. Getting back into the Diablo world was like...putting on a comfortable pair of shoes that had been lost at the back of the closet for years, but only a thousand times better.

I noticed a few differences from the beta but overall, I can't think of anything worth mentioning.

So far I've rolled a wizard, monk, and witch doctor. Fun times all around. I'm playing the monk solo, but the wizard and witch doctor I'm playing with Zorish, the husband. I don't have a favorite as yet. I do like the look of the witch doctor's gear the best though. So far.

What I like about Diablo III:

  • Point and click walking. After getting my fingers off of the A, S, & D keys, I have found that I prefer this method of moving. Why? When I try to play WoW on my MacBook, my biggest frustration is moving my toon through the world. I have a magic mouse and it can make flying and swimming and being able to see where I'm going hard at times. I love being able to point and click and hold down the mouse button to walk. So much simpler.
  • Interacting with the world. I love being able to search for barrels, buckets of decapitated heads, dead bodies, and loose stones to find gold. I also really like being able to release chandeliers on mobs and watching bodies fly through the air. Holy cow is that fun. It's also fun releasing braziers of fire and walls of stone on unsuspecting demons. Eat that!!
  • I like that when you die, you don't lose all your gear where your body bought it. That was such a pain in the old Diablo. You used to have to keep an extra set of stuff in your chest back in town for those occasions when you rezzed mostly nekkid and had to make your way back to your body to get your crap. 
  • I totally enjoy the simplified fighting mechanics. You actually have to think and decide what skills you want to have in your action bar. It's simplified in that you just have a few skills in your action bar at your disposal which makes the mechanics of a fight simpler. The thinking and strategy comes in when you're deciding which skills you want to pick out. 
  • Not needing scrolls. You used to need scrolls to teleport to town and to identify gear. It wasn't that big a deal except for having to buy them and then having to keep them in your pack. They took up room.
  • Diablo III still creeps me out. I wish I could remember her name, but in the old Diablo, there used to be this witch or demon or something. She used to give me chills every time I had to fight her. D3 still has that effect but a bit different. I play waiting for that surprise demon to pop out or an evil voice to give me shivers. It keeps me tense all the time, lol, and then I scare myself. I still have a bit of a hard time with the magic mouse and sometimes I right click when I'm trying to talk to a merchant in town or whatever. This drops whatever skill is bound to the right click. For instance, on my monk, it's the bell thing. I scare the living daylights out of myself when I drop that when all I'm trying to do is sell some trash to a merchant, hehehehe.
  • The Diablo III world itself. It's a nice change of pace from the fantasy land of the MMOs that I play. 
I should probably pick out something I don't like about the game, right? Alright. One thing: I don't like that you have to have an Internet connection to play no matter what. If you don't want to play cooperative, you shouldn't have to be online to launch the game. It's essentially a single player game. Blizzard should make it optional.

I've been lucky so far. I haven't had any problems running the game (aside from my PC issues which have nothing to do with D3 specifically), no error messages, no random disconnects. ::knock on wood:: I've seen lots of Twitterings about technical problems with the game. So sorry for you. ;)

I'm off to play (Shhhh! I'll clean the house in a minute.). This took way too long to type up.

4 comments:

  1. say what? D3 works on macbooks? I thought for sure it was pc only..or are you running bootcamp.

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    1. I have a MacBook Pro. Blizzard has a D3 client for both Mac and PC. It runs on my Mac but in graphics heavy areas (places with running water most often) it lags pretty bad. My PC crashes like every 20-30 minutes though. At least I can play reasonably well on my Mac even with the lag.

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  2. It's nice that you can play on your mac!

    Being more of a Windows/Linux user I don't really get a lot of use out of mine, but one thing I did do was buy a regular Logitech mouse for it. These work fine and you can easily map context menus, AKA 'right-click' to one of the buttons, and everything else functions in a perfectly normal way for a multi-button mouse. Also it is inexpensive and as ergonomic as you want it to be. :D

    Have fun! :D

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    1. Thanks for the heads up. I definitely need a more ergonomic mouse. I only use my magic mouse when I play games, which isn't that often because that's not what my laptop is for. I play games on my PC, well, when it decides to let me play, lol. But I noticed when playing D3 for an extended amount oof time on my Mac that my hand gets achy with the magic mouse because it isn't curved high like my PC mouse is.

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