Here is the conclusion of our in-depth look at Diablo III!

Those who have been following the game for any length of time know that the art style has been the subject of unending controversy. The designers went for a ‘painterly’ style, and a vociferous group of fans claimed that it was too cartoony and colorful. While it is true that Diablo III looks different from its predecessors, the new style works. The scenery in this game is some of the best I have ever seen. It is true that there is a lot of color, but you need color to make the areas distinct and interesting. Wandering through four acts of darkness and gloom would get old very quickly. The autumnal areas of Act I and the luminous halls of Act IV deserve special mention for their superior execution.

Diablo III also features a stunning array of monsters. Each act has a diverse bestiary, with few overlaps. The monsters also deploy an equally diverse arsenal of attacks. The Dune Dervishes of Act II spin wildly, deflecting projectiles in the process, while the Morlu Casters of Act II can call down meteors from the sky to cause your character a world of pain. Champion and Elite monsters also receive special modifiers, such as ‘Vortex’ (which allows them to pull you into melee range) and ‘Waller’ (where they cause walls of stone to rise up and block your path). In Normal mode, Champions and Elites get one modifier, but in subsequent difficulty levels they get an additional one, which means they can have up to four in Inferno. Running into a pack of foes that are Wallers/Jailers/Arcane Enchanted/Invulnerable Minions is enough to give even the hardiest adventurer pause.

One area where the game fell flat was the story. For the past four years, the developers have been bragging that Diablo III would have the best story of all the games. But while it had some really cool moments, it also had some glaring plot holes. The random lore books that you find scattered throughout the world are really well done though. One also has to wonder why they felt the need to bring back no fewer than three minibosses from earlier games. Nostalgia is all well and good, but in this case it felt a bit forced. Blizzard also needs to realize that having villains explain their plans in a gloating fashion is the worst kind of cliché.

There are also times when the game feels… incomplete. Acts III and IV feel rushed, though the designers have maintained that this was a deliberate design decision to heighten the feeling of suspense by rushing the player toward the climax. But it is not just a question of pacing: those two acts seem to have fewer random areas and events than the two previous acts. It is also regrettable that the final act does not feature its own ‘town’ like the other three acts did. Given the final act’s spectacular setting, it would have been cool if we had had the chance to interact with more NPCs. In Act IV, you encounter a hostile NPC and it looks like you are going to have to fight him, but then he suddenly falls over (well, it is a bit more complicated than that, but I do not want to spoil it for those of you who have not seen it yet). It seems obvious that Blizzard had to cut the fight for some reason (perhaps to save it for an expansion pack?), but the change seems quite bizarre.

But do not let these quibbles dissuade you: Diablo III is still a fantastic game and a worthy addition to the series. It is every bit as addictive as its predecessors, and chances are you will find yourself staying up until all hours of the night as you try to clear out one more area or get one more skill. The little pockets of randomness that are sprinkled throughout the world make the game seem fresh, even on the tenth playthrough. All in all, it is an excellent piece of game design, and it is well worth the insanely long wait.

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After nearly twelve years of development, Diablo fans can finally return to Sanctuary to fight the forces of the Burning Hells once more. Diablo III hit store shelves with a great deal of fanfare, and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it was one of the most eagerly anticipated titles of the decade. But does the game live up to its hype? In a word: yes.

Diablo III follows the same basic formula as its predecessors. Players choose one of five classes (Barbarian, Witch Doctor, Monk, Demon Hunter, and Wizard), each of which has its own unique set of skills. You must then journey through four different acts, ridding the world of Sanctuary of monsters as you go. As you gain more experience, your character gains access to different abilities. He or she also finds progressively greater loot, and the hunt for better items can become a game-within-a-game. Although the default mode is single-player, fans can also team up with up to three other people to fight demons cooperatively. There are four difficulty levels, ranging from Normal to Inferno. Inferno is meant to be brutal, and only characters who have reached the highest level will have a chance of surviving. But it is also where the best loot will be found.

Each of the five classes plays very differently. As you might expect, the Barbarian is a tank who specializes in dealing (and taking) huge amounts of damage. The Wizard, on the other hand, has been described by the design team as a ‘glass cannon’ who can dish out quite a bit of punishment, but cannot take much in return. The Monk is a martial arts master who strikes quickly and deploys special auras to heal himself and his teammates. The Witch Doctor is the spiritual successor to Diablo II’s Necromancer, and he makes use of poison, curses, and pets to kill his foes. The Demon Hunter is a ranged class who plays like a cross between the Amazon and the Assassin from Diablo II. Her primary attacks use bows and crossbows, but she is also capable of laying down deadly traps.

The skill system has been one of the most controversial aspects of the game. In Diablo II, players had to invest skill points to access skills and improve their performance. Now, skills simply unlock based on character level, and players eventually have access to all of their characters’ skills. However, you can only have six skills active at any one time (by default, they are bound to the left and right mouse buttons and the 1-4 keys), and while you can switch skills at any time, there is a 15-second cooldown if you do so outside of town. Because a skill’s damage is now tied to the character’s weapon damage, there is no need to put points into a skill since skills now ‘level up’ as the character gains better gear. This also means that you can continue to use your first skill throughout the game, if you choose.

Skills are divided into categories, and each category is bound to a mouse button or key unless you go into the game options and enable Elective Mode, which gives you the freedom to bind your skills to whichever button/key you please. Unless you are brand new to the action-role-playing genre, you will probably want to go ahead and enable Elective Mode. The default settings are way too restrictive, and can actually make the game more difficult in higher levels.

Each skill also has five runes, which are also unlocked as you progress. Activating a rune modifies the skill in some way. Sometimes, it is as basic as adding more damage, but it can also change the nature of the skill entirely. For instance, the Sleet Storm rune changes the Wizard’s Ray of Frost skill from a beam of cold energy to a swirling vortex that freezes enemies in her vicinity. Runes are an exciting addition to the game, and they help keep the leveling process interesting after you reach level 30 and have unlocked all your basic skills.

Some fans have complained that the skill system does not allow for sufficient customization. They argue that, since everyone has access to everything, players will eventually resort to cookie cutter builds. In actuality, this does not seem to be the case. Because Blizzard has made a concerted effort to ensure that all skills remain viable to some extent throughout the entire game, players have a lot more freedom to tailor their builds to their own particular play style. In my own experience, my friends and I end up using completely different skills, yet our builds still manage to work. In Inferno difficulty, your skill choices become a bit more limited, but Blizzard has said that they plan on rectifying this in a forthcoming patch.

Combat also feels a lot more tactical. In Diablo II, players often focused on spamming a couple of high-level skills, but now you have to be much more careful when deploying your skills. Cooldowns and resource restrictions force you to deploy your skills carefully instead of just mashing buttons. You have to balance offense, defense, and ‘crowd control’ in a way that was largely absent from earlier games. Finding the right combination of skills to defeat a particularly difficult pack of elite monsters is much more rewarding than just blitzing them with one or two skills.

Followers have also received a big upgrade in Diablo III. You can choose either the Templar (a melee character), the Scoundrel (a ranged character), or the Enchantress (a mage). As in the previous game, you can give them weapons and armor, but now you can also choose the skills they use as they gain experience. For example, the Templar can heal you, while the Scoundrel can spray his foes with poisoned arrows. Followers also have distinct personalities, and they will converse with your character throughout the game. Some of their lines are quite amusing, though they can get repetitive after a while.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our in-depth look at Diablo III!

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Diablo fans around the world can finally rejoice! Blizzard Entertainment announced on March 15 that Diablo III will hit stores exactly two months later on May 15.

“After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, in a statement uploaded to the company’s website. “We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15.”

Diablo III will be released for both Windows PCs and Macs. The standard edition will cost $59.99, while the collector’s edition will be $99.99. The collector’s edition includes a range of goodies, including the game’s soundtrack, an art book, a behind-the-scenes DVD/Blu-Ray two-disk set, and 4 GB flashdrive in the form of an in-game artifact called a soulstone. It will also feature bonus content for other Blizzard games, such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft II.

Diablo III’s development cycle has been unusually protracted, even by Blizzard’s notoriously slow standards. Although it was first revealed to the public at the Blizzard World Wide Invitational in Paris on June 28, 2008, most observers believe that the game had already been in development for eight years by that point.

Blizzard North, the division that produced the first two Diablo games, is said to have started on Diablo III shortly after the completion of Diablo II in 2000. But in May 2003, Blizzard North was rocked by the departure of four of its top executives, which set in train a chain of events that ultimately led to the division’s closure in 2005. Blizzard Irvine ultimately decided to scrap all of the previous work on Diablo III and start from scratch. For the next few years, there were occasional rumors about the game’s development. While Blizzard maintained that the Diablo franchise was not dead, it was not until 2008 that the game’s existence was publicly confirmed.

Back when the game was announced, few people expected that it would take four more years before it would hit store shelves. Almost from the get-go, the game was controversial. Everything from the art style to the in-game chat functions have been criticized by fans. Of course the seemingly glacial pace of the development process did not do much to calm fan anger, either. Through it all, Blizzard clung tenaciously to their vision for the game, promising fans that the finished product would be phenomenal. In two months, we shall see whether they are right.

Image Courtesy of  Blizzard

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Diablo fans got a nasty surprise on March 9 when lead game designer Jay Wilson announced that Diablo III’s PvP content will not be available until after the game is released.

“After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete,” Wilson said in an official statement on the official Diablo 3 website.

Although the Diablo series focuses on Player vs. Monster combat, there have always been fans who would rather slaughter each other instead of the minions of hell. Diablo II featured a ‘go hostile’ button that allowed a player to attack other players.

In many cases, this was used for consensual dueling, but there were also people who would unilaterally declare hostility (a practice known as Player Killing or PKing). Players who suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of a declaration of hostility often died because their characters were not properly configured for PvP play.

Diablo III was supposed to offer a more advanced PvP experience. Instead of fighting each other within the main game, PvP fans would be able to duel in special Arenas. Non-consensual PvP would also be a thing of the past. Players would only be able to fight each other within the confines of the Arena.

But instead of shipping with the game, PvP content will be patched in at some point after the game is released. Wilson attempted to placate disappointed fans by touting the awesomeness that is to come.

“When the PvP patch is ultimately ready, it will add multiple Arena maps with themed locations and layouts, PvP-centric achievements, and a matchmaking system that will help you and your team get into fairly matched games quickly and easily. We’ll also be adding a personal progression system that will reward you for successfully bashing in the other team’s skulls.”

Sadly, this is just the latest feature that has had to be jettisoned because of time constraints. Special fatality animations, the Mystic artisan, and now PvP have all been sacrificed or postponed in order to get the game out. But considering the game has been in development for over a decade, fans could be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at Blizzard’s sudden need for speed.

Ironically, back in May 2010, a fan suggested that PvP content be delayed until after launch in order to speed things up. At the time, a Blizzard community manager rubbished the notion, assuring fans that implementing the PvP content would not delay the game’s release (!). But with any luck, this is one of the last hurdles, and we will soon be counting down the days until the Lord of Terror is released on the world once more.

Image Courtesy of   http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/

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Welcome back to our coverage of Patch 13! In the last installment, I talked a bit about the new rune system that Blizzard unveiled. That was by far the biggest single change, but Patch 13 made a host of smaller changes to the game as well.

Every character has had the order of their skills adjusted. Few of the changes were terribly dramatic. In most cases, it is just a matter of getting a skill a little bit sooner or a little bit later than you did before. But a few skills (such as the Wizard’s Disintegrate) have been taken out of the beta entirely since they are now beyond the level 13 cap. Similarly, a few skills that used to be above that cap have now been moved down into beta territory.

The Wizard continues to be my favorite character. This time around, instead of relying on my tried-and-true combo of Spectral Blade and Arcane Orb, I experimented with using Shock Pulse as my main attack. Shock Pulse is a lot like Charged Bolt from Diablo II, in that it sends out bolts of energy that move randomly. It can be difficult to hit specific targets, even if you are standing right in front of them. But it does have two redeeming features.

First, because it is a Signature Spell, you do not have to use Arcane Power to cast it; this is even more important now that the Wizard’s Arcane Power regeneration has been reduced. Second, when you use the Explosive Bolts rune, enemies killed with Shock Pulse will explode, doing lightning damage to nearby monsters.

But the stars of the show were undoubtedly Electrocute and Arcane Torrent. Electrocute is not new, but it now unlocks at level 11 instead of level 13, which makes it much easier to reach without a bunch of grinding. It is sort of like a combination of Lightning and Chain Lightning from Diablo II.

You cast it by holding down the mouse button, and it will leap from monster to monster. It will even leap to destructible pieces of the environment, such as urns and tree stumps. In its un-runed state, it only does 70% of  weapon damage as lightning damage, but since it is a Signature Spell, you can spam it all you want. When you add Arcane Orb and Wave of Force, you can handle almost anything in the beta.

Arcane Torrent is a newcomer to the beta, however, and it allows you to bombard a location with a bunch of purple arcane projectiles. Its base damage is lower than Arcane Orb, but in some respects it is easier to use because it casts faster and, unlike Arcane Orb, you do not have to worry about it detonating prematurely, in case a monster comes between you and your target.

The biggest surprise was probably the Witch Doctor. I had played her a little bit in previous versions, but she just did not ‘click’ with me the way the Wizard or the Monk did. But I like her a lot more in Patch 13. As I mentioned in Part 1, her Poison Dart skill benefits greatly from the addition of runes.

Grasp of the Dead also seems improved, though the Patch Notes only mention an increase in the amount it reduces enemies’ movement speed. Of course it could be that Grasp of the Dead is just more noticeable now, because the new guided mode automatically binds it to your left mouse button when you unlock it at level 2. Before, I had to make a conscious effort to choose it.

Sadly, the Demon Hunter remains the runt of the litter. Not only do his initial skills lack the flashy pyrotechnics of the Monk or the Wizard, but he also has the hardest time killing monsters. Part of the problem is that he does not really have a good area of effect skill at first. Hungering Arrow can hit multiple enemies, but it is still too linear.

Bola Shot can damage nearby enemies when it explodes, but I have not found it to be terribly effective in dealing with groups. The closest thing he gets to a proper AOE skill is something called Caltrops, but all it does is slow enemies who walk over it. You would think that something named after sharp metal spikes would do some sort of physical damage to enemies! As much as I would like to see D3 released ASAP, I hope they will take some extra time and polish the Demon Hunter a bit more.

I had hoped that Patch 13 would do something to make crafting seem less overpowered, but in that respect I was sorely disappointed. The stuff the blacksmith makes for you is still much better than most of the magical loot you find. There is no real downside to crafting either. The average crafted item at this level costs around 150 gold pieces and requires three Subtle Essences, yet my five characters have around 15,000 gold pieces and 50 Subtle Essences between them.

Once my characters have leveled-up enough to wear crafted items, loot becomes little more than a source of raw materials. Crafting just feels cheap, both literally and figuratively. I hope that things balance out later on in the game, so that the blacksmith’s items end up being either more expensive or less powerful.

Patch 13 has been a lot of fun, and the game continues to shape up nicely. Even though I have run through the same areas dozens of times now, the gameplay still manages to be addicting, which definitely bodes well for game’s long-term prospects. Blizzard has said it is shooting for a second quarter release, so with any luck we are already in the home stretch!

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Last weekend, Blizzard released Patch 13 for the Diablo III beta. At long last, fans have a chance to try the new skill and rune system the developers have been working on over the past few months.

The introduction of runes is probably the biggest change in Patch 13. Like almost every aspect of the game, runes have had a rather convoluted history. Originally introduced as ‘runestones’, they were supposed to be loot items that could be socketed into skills in order to modify that skill in some way.

They came in five colors, and their effects ranged from the mundane (putting an Alabaster runestone into the Wizard’s Magic Missile increased its damage) to the bizarre (putting a Crimson runestone into the Witch Doctor’s Zombie Charger turned it into a zombie bear). Each stone had seven ranks, with the higher-level ones becoming progressively rarer. This system was never incorporated into the beta, and few people outside of Blizzard had the chance to experiment with it.

But Patch 13 unveiled a dramatically-revamped system. Runestones have become ‘skill runes,’ and they are no longer droppable items. Now, they are part of the redesigned skill interface and they automatically unlock based on your character level. The color-coding is gone too, as are the different ranks. Each skill still has five possible runes that can be applied to it, but you will not be able to level them up. But their base effects remain more or less unchanged.

Given the limited scope of the beta, players only get to experience a fraction of the total number of runes. Even though the sample is limited, I was impressed with how they radically altered the gameplay. Take the Witch Doctor’s Poison Dart skill, for example. It is the first skill a Witch Doctor receives, but there is nothing particularly special about it to begin with.

Before Patch 13, I usually switched to something else as soon as possible. But when you equip the Splinters rune, you shoot several darts in quick succession, sort of like a machine gun. It is a dramatic improvement, and I kept Poison Dart as my main attack throughout the beta.

Runes can also alter a skill’s basic properties. Adding the Bounding Light rune to the Monk’s Fists of Thunder skill removes the knockback and adds a chain of lightning that strikes nearby foes, so players have to decide if they would rather have added damage or knockback. In theory, runes will help keep skills viable throughout the entire game, unlike in Diablo II where most skills became obsolete at some point. They also add a welcome element of customization.

Because runes offer so many potential changes, you can eventually adjust every skill to fit your play style. Of course not everybody is happy with the new rune system. Some fans are up in arms, claiming that there is now less customization since everybody automatically gets the same runes instead of having to find them as loot. I disagree. Chances are, lower-level runes would have dropped quite frequently, so it would have been easy for players to get all five colors.

Higher level runes of each color would have been rarer, but they would only increase the skill’s power. The rune’s underlying mechanic would stay the same. So the difference between individual rune levels would probably not have been terribly dramatic, and I am not sure they constituted meaningful customization (“Your Wizard’s Magic Missile can do 126% weapon damage? Ha! Mine can do 128%!”). The rune system does allow players to adjust a skill to fit their preferred play style, and I think that is much more important than fussing over numbers.

The only real complaint I have about the system is the new skill interface. It is horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Part of the problem is that Blizzard has decided to implement a new ‘guided mode’ where certain skills are automatically mapped to certain buttons. Now, skills are divided into categories. There are three general categories that all characters share (primary, secondary, and defensive), plus three class-specific categories (in the Wizard’s case, they are arcane, conjuration, and mastery).

When you are in guided mode, primary skills are bound to your left mouse button, secondary skills to your right mouse button, defensive skills are bound to the ‘1’ key, and so on and so forth. But if you want to bind primary skills to both mouse buttons, or put a defensive spell on the mouse instead of the keyboard, you are out of luck unless you go into the game options and check the box for ‘Elective Mode.’ Even then, the process of switching skills from one button/key to another is terribly awkward.

I am not one to QQ about things, but this new skill interface needs to go. While they are at it, I think they could safely do away with guided mode too. I realize they are just doing it to make life easier for casual gamers and people who are brand new to action RPGs, but I think they are offering help where it is not really needed.

The game already assigns skills to certain keys by default. If you do not want to mess around with your keybindings, you do not have to. But forcing people to use the defaults unless they enable a different game mode is just stupid. Check back soon for the second part of our coverage of Patch 13, including a look at how each character’s skills have changed.

Image Courtesy of   http://eu.battle.net

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Here is Part 2 of our look at the Diablo III beta!

As longtime Diablo fans know, the game’s art style has attracted a fair bit of controversy over the years. Some of the earliest screenshots showed a bright, autumnal world that struck some fans as out of place in a dark and gritty series like Diablo. However, if the beta is anything to go by, fears of a shiny and cheerful Diablo are unfounded.

The outdoor environments are decidedly somber, featuring a dark color palette and macabre touches (such as hanging corpses swinging from nearby trees), and the dungeons are littered with the mutilated corpses of townsfolk. True, the art style is rather stylized: the game designers have repeatedly said that they were aiming for a ‘painterly’ aesthetic.

If you are looking for cutting-edge, photo-realistic graphics, you should probably look elsewhere. However, Diablo III’s graphics are stunning, and they have their own grim charm. Judging from the beta, this is going to be an incredibly atmospheric game. The designers have rendered the world with a loving attention to detail that was lacking in previous games.

For example, in Diablo II the outdoor areas were randomly generated, which usually meant that they were large rectangular areas adorned with random bits of scenery. While the map varied from playthrough to playthrough, the world did not really come alive. In Diablo III, the wilderness areas are static, which allows the designers to create a much more detailed landscape. In order to keep things from getting boring, the designers inserted dynamic areas within each map that change each time you visit.

A cellar that was boarded up tight on your first playthrough might be open the next, allowing access to a mini dungeon. I also found myself interacting with the world like never before. Much of the scenery can be destroyed: tables can be smashed to bits and wrought-iron chandeliers dropped on the heads of unsuspecting monsters.

Sometimes, the scenery will attack you. While walking through the catacombs, it is not uncommon for plaques on nearby vaults to spring off as cackling skeletons crawl forth to do battle, and if you stand too close to certain ravines, you may find yourself surrounded by zombies. On higher difficulty levels, moments like these could become quite perilous.

Speaking of peril, I have to admit that the  beta is actually quite easy. There were very few “oh, crap!” moments where I felt like I was in danger of dying. Patch 10 has increased the difficulty somewhat, as I have noticed more packs of ‘champion’ monsters that present more of a challenge (though that is offset by an increase in character hit points).

On the whole, the difficulty is not onerous. That might not necessarily be a bad thing, considering this is the very beginning of the game. While series veterans would undoubtedly appreciate a bigger challenge, the game also has to be accessible for people who are completely new to the series, or even the action-RPG genre as a whole. I imagine that later parts of the game, and the three additional difficulty levels, will present players with the challenges they seek.

Despite its limitations, the Diablo III beta has been an enjoyable experience. Blizzard has put together a solid game that shows signs of being just as addictive as its predecessors. Now if only they would finally release the $^@! thing!

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It is no exaggeration to say that Diablo III is one of the most-anticipated games around. First announced in 2008, it has been mired in a lengthy development cycle that has seen Blizzard’s obsession with iteration reach new heights.

Last September, the game finally entered the beta testing phase, and thanks to the generosity of a friend, I have been able to spend some quality time with the Wizard, Monk, Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, and Barbarian as they take the first few steps on the road to defeating the Lord of Terror.

The Diablo III beta test consists of the very beginning of the game (roughly one third of the first act). Not only that, but Blizzard seems to have edited the game to remove as many potential spoilers as possible, so beta testers are only seeing a tiny sliver of the total content. Character progression is capped at level 13, so you can only experience a handful of the available skills.

Despite the limited scope, the beta sucks you in right from the get-go, and you will find yourself fighting monsters within the first few seconds of starting a new game. Unlike previous games in the series, each character starts with a skill, so you feel powerful from the outset.

Blizzard has gone out of their way to make sure that even first-tier skills are satisfying: the Barbarian’s Bash skill can literally knock a monster’s skeleton out of its body, while the Monk’s Fists of Thunder sizzles enemies with a satisfying display of lightning damage. RPG purists might object to this on the grounds that new characters should start the game weak and defenseless, but the Diablo III approach certainly livens up the first minutes of the game.

In terms of gameplay, Diablo III shares many similarities with its illustrious predecessors. At its heart, it is a point-and-click dungeon crawler. But character progression is handled much differently than it was in previous games. It used to be that, upon leveling up, you received a certain number of attribute points that you could allocate to traits such as vitality, dexterity, strength, etc.

Now, the game does the allocation for you. Some players have complained that this removes an important method of customization, but I cannot say that I missed manually assigning my attribute points. In practice, you had to adhere to fairly rigid guidelines if you wanted your character to be viable in Diablo II, so most characters ended up having similar attribute distributions.

The way in which you acquire new skills has also changed. Skills in Diablo III are linked to character level, and you no longer have to allocate skill points to make them more powerful. Now, their damage scales as your stats improve, and you acquire better weapons (even spells are tied to weapon damage).

However, you can only have a certain number of skills active at any one time. You start the game with one active skill slot, which soon increases to two. By the end of the beta, you can have three skills active, though that number will rise to seven when you are playing the full game.

It is possible to change your active skills, though the mechanism for doing so is up in the air. When the beta first started, you could change your skills at any time, but the designers decided that that was too much of an exploit. A patch changed things so that you had to use something called the Nephalem Altar to change skills.

Since the altar was only found in town and at the beginning of one dungeon, changing skills was something of a production. Now, with Patch 10, the Nephalem Altar is gone, and you can once again change skills whenever you want, though there is a 30-second cooldown period for newly-switched skills.

Blizzard has made it clear that this current system is a work-in-progress, which is good since it leaves something to be desired. I can understand why they do not want to allow unfettered skill switches; that would make a mockery of the whole idea of limiting the number of active skills.

However, the 30-second cooldown just seems arbitrary, and it is odd that you have the same cooldown whether you are in the field or in town. Surely skills switched in town should not have any cooldown at all.

Going into the beta, I was a little bit concerned that the current skill system will lead to cookie-cutter builds since players no longer have to worry about spending skill points or investing in prerequisites. Playing the beta has convinced me that those fears are probably baseless.

People are always going to have differing play styles, and that, in turn, is going to influence which skills they choose to activate. For example, when my friend plays the Wizard, he likes to use Disintegrate, a skill that causes a beam of red energy to shoot forth from the Wizard’s hand in a straight line of death and destruction.

I, on the other hand, would much rather use Arcane Orb, which lobs a large galaxy-like ball of arcane energy across the screen until it explodes on contact with a monster. Even within the limited confines of the beta, the two of us were able to take different approaches to the same character. When you add runes (which are not even available in the beta) into the mix, you will have even more opportunities for customization.

Be sure to stay tuned for the second part of our coverage of the Diablo III beta!

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