Diablo IV first impression

March is a gaming month? I guess every month is gaming month for true gamers, but Blizzard is giving free World of Warcraft: Dragonflight game time last weekend to all players, and this weekend and the coming weekend are early access and open beta for Diablo IV.

I was busy working overtime last weekend so totally missed the free WoW game time, bummer. Still had to work for a bit yesterday morning and night, but at least I got some Diablo IV game time in in between.

Never been a power gamer and as usual I am taking it slow, exploring where I can and a true sucker of the lore and storyline. There are already players with characters at the early access level cap, seriously, what's the rush?

Generally I am liking the game, graphics are good and game play is fun. Could just be because it's new so it's intriguing. Thank goodness none of the Diablo Immortal pay to win bullshit so far, hope never.

The game world is huge, and breaking from the Diablo I, II, and III mainly linear storyline and game progression (yes, I intentionally excluded Diablo Immortal as that rubbish P2W game model a disgrace to the series), Diablo IV feels more like a MMORPG, feels like World of Warcraft when it comes to world exploration. At least the way I have been playing WoW lately, primarily casual solo.

I can just go explore instead of working on the main quest line, there are so many places to go and things to do, there are side quests, dungeons small and big, and events that players can just work on without forming party first and still get bonus of being in proximity of other players, nice touch Blizzard!

I tried the world boss, and died many times to one shot. Well I am way under level, it says it's a level 25 encounter and I am far from it. Think if there were 30 to 40 level 25 players who knows what they are doing, the world boss is doable. Hmm, there is no healer class... but then this is not WoW, hope Blizzard designed the world boss encounter with that in mind. For now I reserve judgement on the world boss encounter because too few were there and many were under level like me in my one time experience.

I don't know how many players are in the early access, and how the server separation works, while I can encounter other players in cities and while exploring the open world, the number is not as high as I thought it would be. To me this is a good thing, I hope it stays like this, could do without the typical MMORPG grief of mob camping, ore node and herb stealing.

Anyway, that's my first impression thus far, still so much to do, places to explore, classes to try, and of course I just don't have the time. Hopefully at least I can get to the early access level cap, that's the goal.

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