05-15-2012, 07:09 PM
Sirian's Day One of Diablo 3
So my day began at 1AM Eastern. (Why? Long story. Coincidence regarding Diablo, though, not planned.) Launch is set for 3 AM. I showered, ate breakfast (leftovers), then toyed around with some other stuff until 3:15. I then spent a half-hour typing and retyping my password endlessly, because Blizz said, "If you get error 37, you really should keep trying. It's just busy." Oh yeah? Well after 20 mins of patient retyping, I started to get a little miffed. At 30 mins I stopped for half an hour and played WoW, running archaeology on a minor toon. During that 30 minutes, I actually got logged in three times. But every interaction with the server was an opportunity to time out and have to start over. 1. Login. 2. Receiving your (non existant) Heroes List. 3. Creating your first Hero. 4. Launching a game. At least four chances in the process to time out, and every step along the way, you had to win the Login Lottery to proceed. I got to step 2 three times. My next try, at 4:15, I never got past step 1. Three minutes of that and I got up and took a stretch break. Finally at 4:30 Eastern, I got logged in.
From there it's not so bad. I created Ember first... but then timed out. I tried again, and got timed out and got the boot off the server. I log back in and there are-- two Embers. Identical name, multiple wizards. I deleted one and moved on to making my Monk, which I played for the next three hours.
Starting with the two melee classes. Monk solo, Barbarian coop with my wife's Wizard. She was still sleeping, so the Monk first.
I am quite fond of the Monk's second main ability, which is a medium range mental punch of some kind, which can hit multiple targets and you don't have to be in their melee range. This is a fun ability, at least to me. I also like the roundhouse kick secondary ability. However, I only got to play to and through the Skeleton King by the time my wife woke up (at 7) and had her shower and breakfast, and was then ready to play. I get asked if we are doing coop or should she make her solo toon first. This was a trap. There was a wrong answer to this question. Nothing sinister or mischievous, just one answer makes wife glow and giggle, and the other makes her go all quiet and frowny. So... coop it is.
Now when we played together briefly during the beta, she was purposely dropping chandeliers on my head in the Cathedral. (This doesn't hurt your character). I remembered that, and I artfully dropped a couple on her today, in retaliation. This led to much giggling.
The prize moment came when we got past the Skeleton King to content that was new to us. The first oversize enemies in the game gave her quite a startle. They popped up when neither of us was expecting it and it was like someone jumped out of the shadows and shouted boo at her. I laughed so hard, and she was slightly embarassed by the whole thing, which led to me teasing her about it occasionally over the next couple of hours. I will have to stop before it gets too old, but I got a lot of mileage out of it already.
Oh and my first death came about in a strange way. My cat was rattling the door handle to the office, wanting in. I got up for about ten seconds to open the door, but apparently chose the worst possible timing. A boss mob from off screen charged at me. My wife is yelling to get back to the keyboard. "You're dying!" Then I was dead. ... THEN I got back to the keyboard. I think I ran in to one of the most lethal boss race/ability combos possible. It was so funny. Ten seconds of real life distraction when I looked perfectly safe in a quiet hallway. You wouldn't believe it if it weren't true, because it sounds pretty silly. (Most of Act 1 isn't terribly lethal.)
Things are pretty smooth for coop play.
I am going to try to limit my friends list for the moment. It seems that friends have pretty wide open permissions when it comes to joining your games. This seems like a good thing, assuming the people on your list are all pretty close to you. But it makes me wonder if it wouldn't be nice to have an Acquaintances List -- a middle ground between this and no contact. Just a thought. I don't know the full details on how everything works yet.
There is a lot more I could say, but I am making this a spoiler-free report, so I will stop here.
- Sirian
So my day began at 1AM Eastern. (Why? Long story. Coincidence regarding Diablo, though, not planned.) Launch is set for 3 AM. I showered, ate breakfast (leftovers), then toyed around with some other stuff until 3:15. I then spent a half-hour typing and retyping my password endlessly, because Blizz said, "If you get error 37, you really should keep trying. It's just busy." Oh yeah? Well after 20 mins of patient retyping, I started to get a little miffed. At 30 mins I stopped for half an hour and played WoW, running archaeology on a minor toon. During that 30 minutes, I actually got logged in three times. But every interaction with the server was an opportunity to time out and have to start over. 1. Login. 2. Receiving your (non existant) Heroes List. 3. Creating your first Hero. 4. Launching a game. At least four chances in the process to time out, and every step along the way, you had to win the Login Lottery to proceed. I got to step 2 three times. My next try, at 4:15, I never got past step 1. Three minutes of that and I got up and took a stretch break. Finally at 4:30 Eastern, I got logged in.
From there it's not so bad. I created Ember first... but then timed out. I tried again, and got timed out and got the boot off the server. I log back in and there are-- two Embers. Identical name, multiple wizards. I deleted one and moved on to making my Monk, which I played for the next three hours.
Starting with the two melee classes. Monk solo, Barbarian coop with my wife's Wizard. She was still sleeping, so the Monk first.
I am quite fond of the Monk's second main ability, which is a medium range mental punch of some kind, which can hit multiple targets and you don't have to be in their melee range. This is a fun ability, at least to me. I also like the roundhouse kick secondary ability. However, I only got to play to and through the Skeleton King by the time my wife woke up (at 7) and had her shower and breakfast, and was then ready to play. I get asked if we are doing coop or should she make her solo toon first. This was a trap. There was a wrong answer to this question. Nothing sinister or mischievous, just one answer makes wife glow and giggle, and the other makes her go all quiet and frowny. So... coop it is.
Now when we played together briefly during the beta, she was purposely dropping chandeliers on my head in the Cathedral. (This doesn't hurt your character). I remembered that, and I artfully dropped a couple on her today, in retaliation. This led to much giggling.
The prize moment came when we got past the Skeleton King to content that was new to us. The first oversize enemies in the game gave her quite a startle. They popped up when neither of us was expecting it and it was like someone jumped out of the shadows and shouted boo at her. I laughed so hard, and she was slightly embarassed by the whole thing, which led to me teasing her about it occasionally over the next couple of hours. I will have to stop before it gets too old, but I got a lot of mileage out of it already.
Oh and my first death came about in a strange way. My cat was rattling the door handle to the office, wanting in. I got up for about ten seconds to open the door, but apparently chose the worst possible timing. A boss mob from off screen charged at me. My wife is yelling to get back to the keyboard. "You're dying!" Then I was dead. ... THEN I got back to the keyboard. I think I ran in to one of the most lethal boss race/ability combos possible. It was so funny. Ten seconds of real life distraction when I looked perfectly safe in a quiet hallway. You wouldn't believe it if it weren't true, because it sounds pretty silly. (Most of Act 1 isn't terribly lethal.)
Things are pretty smooth for coop play.
I am going to try to limit my friends list for the moment. It seems that friends have pretty wide open permissions when it comes to joining your games. This seems like a good thing, assuming the people on your list are all pretty close to you. But it makes me wonder if it wouldn't be nice to have an Acquaintances List -- a middle ground between this and no contact. Just a thought. I don't know the full details on how everything works yet.
There is a lot more I could say, but I am making this a spoiler-free report, so I will stop here.
- Sirian
![[Image: ember-mini.gif]](http://sirian.warpcore.org/ember-mini.gif)