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Diablo 4 open beta is this weekend. I played the preorder beta last weekend and it's looking solid. The atmosphere is far more Diablo 1 and 2-like. It's dark, it's bleak, and it doesn't have the corny companions repeating dumb lines.
You can play act 1, which obviously isn't going to give you a picture of how the end game will look, but the first act's combat is slower and more tactical than most ARPG/Diablo Clones are now.
The skill trees don't have the overwhelming depth of POE, but they're still much deeper than D3. Kind of like a happy middle ground there in terms of depth.
The open world aspect of game feels well done and the pseudo-MMO nature of the game isn't as bad as I thought it may be. World bosses can spawn that require as large group to kill and there are zone events that are kind of like the open world events from Guild Wars 2 or Warhammer online where the event is there and anyone can jump in, help out, and get rewards when the event's boss is killed. Outside of that you rarely see people outside of towns.
Where blizzard really shines is their combat engines feel great. POE took a long time to get combat to feel good and most ARPGs just can't match Blizzard in terms of making attacks feel weighty, smooth, and like you're actually hitting something and doing damage. Diablo 4 is there on day 1.
There are queues since it's a stress test weekend. They range from shitty (1 hour plus) to not a big deal (10 minutes or less). Overall it's a big step in the right direction and I'm interested to see the rest of the game when it launches.
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