I went to the midnight launch for D3 amidst a tumultuous time in my life. The last midnight launch I went to was for the Wrath of the Lich King event and I decided the only one I’d go to again would be D3. It has come and gone. I’ve played the game. Let me share some thoughts.

The midnight launch was something I was on the fence about, actually. I wasn’t too excited for the game given the hype it had, how long it took to release, and the many betas I’ve played at Blizzcons. I ended up going because it was something to do and the collector’s edition was sold out on Amazon. I went with a friend and my roommate, spent about 6+ hours there.

My friend was not sure if they would still have it in stock at the launch event so we were skeptical about staying. Usually the midnight launches are at Fry’s where they have space for all the stock, but they relocated this time to the Gamestop at the local outdoor mall. Turns out it wasn’t at the Gamestop persay, but in the ferris wheel courtyard that can hold a ton of people. Everything worked out though and I had a good time, all things considered. The only thing I wasn’t too keen about was having two lines to get our boxes signed. I only went through one, knowing I’d regret not going through the second one, but I was too tired/sleepy to push through it. My roommate also had to work the next morning so I didn’t want to keep her up.

With all the events going on in my work life, I didn’t unbox until later in the morning. I didn’t start playing until the afternoon, missing the server crashes and lag. The season finale for NCIS was on and that also helped curb my game time. A lot of my play has been in small chunks – an hour here, an hour there. I did clock in a good amount of hours over the weekend though to de-stress. I hit a low point on Thursday and I’ve been fluctuating above and below a fine line. D3 is helping, but at the same time I haven’t felt the desire to play countless hours.

It took me a week to finish normal mode. I spent a lot of time exploring the maps, several hours playing a second character with a friend or jumping in other friends’ games for social play. I can see the draw of playing games immediately on launch – there is a certain energy that is not present the longer the game has been out, especially for a game like D3 when after a certain amount of time has passed, people start losing interest. I’m not sure how Blizzard plans on keeping players around to keep farming bosses.

Let me wrap up with some thoughts. I was originally planning on playing a witch doctor as my primary, but it has become my secondary as the friend I am playing with has been more interested in playing his demon hunter rather than wizard. My primary ended up being a barbarian, ironic since the first time I played D2, I also played a barb until I got my own copy and started playing a necromancer and druid on expansion. I plan on going through the game with all five classes.

I think one of the draws of the game is the integration of the achievement system to the banner – in other words, the achievements feel more tied into the game aesthetics. In WoW, the achievements were points that didn’t really do anything and you got a mount for doing some really hard one, but otherwise they were silly. In D3, a good number of the achievements unlock different banner customization options (shape, sigil, pattern, accent) and the banners have a use in co-op games for teleporting friends to your location. Also, achievements are account-bound so you don’t have to re-do them on each character. Neat!

I still don’t like the amount of “WoW” in the game, though. Between Massacres (kill multiple enemies in a row), Mighty Blows (kill multiple enemies in one strike), and Destructions (destroy multiple props), I see they are trying to go for a Bulletstorm-esque dynamic text system, but they add too much graphic to make it stand out. I’ve gotten used to it, but I feel it is too much pat-on-the-back from the game.

On my first play through, I spent time listening to the conversations and talking to NPCs. I noticed during Act 3 that there was a disconnect that really brought me out of the immersion of the experience. I forget exactly when it occurred, but I was going through the game, reached a certain point, then was told to go to find the Larders (or some room to do with food). The only issue was, I knew where to go because of the short quest text ala WoW, but there wasn’t any context – how did my character know to go to the Larders? I read the quest log and it was as if he were omniscient and it was very vague, “He is in the Larders. I need to go there.” (paraphrased, of course) The thing about D3 is the sheer amount of voice acting they’ve done, but there was a clear disconnect here that I felt would have been better if there was some conversation to help tie in the two quests together.

Last reflective thought for now. I wasn’t sure how they’d manage the co-op games and I’m kind of disappointed in the 4-player cap (vs. 8 in D2). It means I can’t play with more of my friends and the chaoticness is not quite there. Joining co-op games is also a little confusing. I think anyone can join a normal-level game regardless of how far you are. This has the unfortunate effect of spoiling parts of the game for players who are not as far as one of my and my roommate’s friend found out last night when he joined an Act 2 game, he got to watch the Act 1 ending cinematic and hasn’t gotten that far yet. Another friend had accidentally jumped ahead when he joined my game, but when he went back, he had to repeat the progress he had lost. The nice thing about the quest system is the ability to choose which quest you want to play and repeating certain ones for achievements is kind of nice but a drawback to the whole achievement system as the game becomes fractured in a personal quest to get various achievements.

What’s next? I am thinking instead of starting Nightmare mode, I will go back and try to fill out some of the easier achievements, like listening to the NPCs conversations I missed and finding books like Leah’s Journals. I find that the longer I play a game, the shorter my attention is for lore, so now is a good time to do it.