

Diablo III open beta this weekend - pgambling
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963739/Diablo%C2%AE_III_Open_Beta_Weekend-4_19_2012#blog

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sctechie
While not still in college myself, I was enjoying the tide of students crying
because Blizz is having open beta weekend the week before a lot of people take
finals. Made my morning. =)

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pilif
Seeing a beta test with such a potentially big audience (I'd say that a game
as anticipated as D3 would get quite a seizable amount of people participating
in an open beta), I would be willing to bet my hat(…) on the fact that we'll
see D3 go free to play very, very soon.

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justjimmy
This will not happen.

Not before Starcraft 2 or World of Warcraft anyway. (And WoW is a six year old
game that requires subscription, and Blizz still require you to purchased all
previous expansions in order to enjoy the latest xpac, albeit at a lower
price)

Why give it for free when people are willing to pay for it?

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huckfinnaafb
The difference being that Diablo 3 has an in-game real-money market, and more
people playing the game means more people putting money into that market. The
same strategy has been applied (successfully) with Team Fortress 2.

This is not a new idea, either. Free to play but in-game real-money purchases
have been going strong with casual games since it became easy to send money
over the net.

I'm not saying it will happen, but it's not an impossibility.

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justjimmy
"Free to play but in-game real-money purchases have been going strong with
casual games since it became easy to send money over the net."

Casual game examples cannot be applied to Diablo's model. They are between the
game makers and the users (which is more similar to Blizzard selling their
items for WoW).

Diablo 3 is unique because it's facilitating transactions between _players_ ,
while taking a cut. Hold up, it's not the same as TF2 either. TF2 items are
pure cosmetic, novelty. Items in Diablo will effect the avatars and in turn,
effect other people as well in terms of game play. One can truely buy their
way up, legally.

Another aspect is consider people owning multiple accounts. How many of your
WoW friends/guildies own multiple accounts? Because of the nature of the game,
there are obvious benefits to have multiple characters online at the same
time. How many accounts does a TF2 player has? There's no reason to have more
than 1 account because there's no unique player avatars, there's no
attachment, no profession limits, no character limits. Giving away free TF2
accounts is different from giving away free D3 or even WoW accounts.

Each D3 account also have a limit on how much real money balance (Bnet
dollars) it can carry. So if a person wants to deal in more money or more
character slots (and there will be alot of them), they need to get another
account – more money in Blizz's pockets.

The point is different game mechanics, different target audience have
different approaches. What works in one may not work as well as in another.

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scottjad
With the game due out in three weeks, my guess is there's very little "beta"
about this. Anyone have an educated guess when the game is sent to publishers
for production? A day after beta ends? Already?

I think this is more like a demo or a way to get the game installed on
millions of computers so that buying it is as easy as possible (a click away).
I don't know about their publishing relationship but perhaps they get a better
cut on electronic sales and this definitely helps increase those.

That said I'm downloading it now :)

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Quarrelsome
the key word being "open". IIRC its been in closed beta for a few months now.

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justjimmy
This timing coincides with another open beta – TERA. An 'action' MMORPG that
requires active dodging from the player and cursor targeting (instead of tab
targeting like most traditional MMOs).

Diablo 3 beta will be easily completed in a day, all 5 classes, so TERA is a
good second game to play around if you find yourself gobbling up the D3 beta
too fast.

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tylerritchie
A link to TERA for the lazy [1]

[1] <http://tera.enmasse.com/>

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jhuckestein
They recently released a few developer diaries that are worth watching:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYe_eNG5Cz0>

It's impressive how much effort is put into a game like that compared to the
web/mobile apps I usually build. Tempting, really

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sirclueless
And to think I was prepared to go to class today.

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maratd
And to think I was prepared to go to work today.

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zschallz
Does a "valid battle.net account" mean you have to be paying for a battle.net
service? I've got one, but not paying for WoW.

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winthrowe
Fairly certain that you don't need to be paying, just be able to log into the
battle.net site. This was the case for the signup and download for the closed
beta.

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DrStalker
I can confirm that a Battle.net account that has inactive WoW subsciptions and
no Diablo pre-order is able to access the Open Beta.

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nextparadigms
I still can't get over the fact that Diablo 3 will require an Internet
connection to play it in *single player".

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DrStalker
From what I can tell there is no single player, just games that don't let
other people join.

Even solo there is noticeable lag on every achievement and when moving/selling
items, presumably as it updates the server. (Being in Australia we get screwed
on both a higher price for the game and playing on a much higher latency that
USA based players)

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eyeface
Is this really HN material?

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dsl
When not building iPhone apps or scaling MySQL, most of us play WoW or Diablo.
Didn't you get the battle chest with your welcome to the valley gift bag?

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jasonlotito
And this on a weekend filled with Ludum Dare 23 and the Philly Startup
Weekend. Oh, such evil timing.

