That game will put an end to D2 in my game playing career.
What he said.
I've played through the demo 3 times each with a marksman and a blademaster. I wasn't disappointed at all. I see great potential in the full product, but only time will tell.
In comparison to D2, here's what I liked/disliked (solely based on the demo):
Likes:
- 3D. The fact that you can go first-person with a marksman makes for a weird half-life/D2 mixed-up situation. Like half-life with random items and levels. I like it. It's of course not as refined as a pure FPS, but I don't really care.
- The blademaster dual-wielding through enemy hordes looks plain cool. Sometimes that's all you need.
- Health/mana boosters stack in your inventory.
- You can dismantle crap gear and use the scraps to upgrade your items. Now there's no reason at all anymore to leave stuff on the ground.
- You can socket and unsocket upgrades swapping them around if you come across better gear. Imagine being able to unsocket jewels for reuse. That's good. Number crunching for the win.
- The level and loot randomization is just the kind of crack that made D2 so addictive.
- The skills: it seems that many skills are useful in different situations. I only got to see a very few skills in the demo, but I used all of them.
- Tactics: having to apply tactics to win a difficult battle is refreshing.
Dislikes:
- No more static maps. This is standard for BNet play, but my SP lewt hunter instincts will need some adjustment to this fact. On the plus side: the maps I encountered in the demo aren't that expansive, so this may not be a problem after all.
- No LCS. There's no intuitive way at all to see the damage you deal. There's a number listed in the upper-left corner of each item saying how 'good' it is, but the formula determining that is more like a black box. As a fan of micro-planning builds, the lack of info disturbs me.
- Hotkey overload. If all skills are useful in different situations I'll run out of keyboard shortcuts and fingers. Complex play confuzzles me.
- Tactics: having to apply tactics to win a difficult battle removes a bit of the mindless hackenslash mentality.
There's also the fact that in order to get access to cool content online, you'll have to shell out 10$ per month. I won't say I'm opposed to that because I have no clue if it will be worth the cash. If the paying customers will start looking down on the 'freeloading hobos' that would be, eehm. interesting.
(hella prompt indeed).