Diablo III Preview

The folks at Techgoondu have put together a “beta review“, which is essentially a preview for the title, for Blizzard’s highly anticipated Diablo III, and they seem to come back with mixed feelings of their experience with it, being more positive about its multiplayer than single player. Here’s a snippet:

Blizzard also added tweaks that streamline play.

For one, there is no more forgetting to load up on town portal scrolls. There is now one permanent summoning hearth stone (WoW fans will recognize this reference!) that you can use at all times.

Gone is also the need to load up on identify scrolls. Most items come identified, except for the rarest of them all.

Then there is the Cauldron of Jordan, a permanent item in your inventory that allows you to transmute any item into gold at any time, which saves you trips back to town to divest yourself of the lots of loot that you get.

Diablo 2’²s Horadric Cube gets replaced by the Nephalem Cube, which, instead of combining items, breaks them down instead into basic parts like leather scraps and iron bits. These can be used to craft items back in town.

Pets can be acquired for short durations, which will automatically pick up items and gold instead of you having to click on them.

The interface and quest logs are very clearly labeled, with good automapping functions, so in this essentially linear game at least for the first Act of Diablo 3’²s beta it is impossible to get lost.