I got access to the Diablo 3 beta!!!  Enjoy a play-through of it with the Barbarian character class and some of my commentary on the differences with previous games.

Download the Podcast!

Now, on the off chance anyone from Blizzard reads my little site here.  A few suggestions, mostly minor user interface changes.

First, the main login screen does not seem to show a blinking text cursor until you start typing, that’s kind of annoying as you may end up typing in the wrong area.

Second, unless I missed a setting that accommodates this.  I do not like it when I change or select a new spell and it replaces my “Left Mouse” spell in an instance where it should not.  This is hard to explain…  I’ll just say I would prefer an option to not have the game change my action bar, short of removing/replacing “disabled or switched” spells.  (This is different than what I describe above)

Third, I think the red highlighting of my “target” is a bit too overstated/bright/something, and it detracts from the artwork in my opinion.  When there is already an information block at the top of the screen for whatever enemy I highlight, a bright red border around my enemy is not really needed.  I think an option to set a transparency level of the enemy targeting highlight could work great.

Other than that minor stuff, this looks like it’s going to be a fun game!

Tags: Diablo III Beta