In which I explored Sanctuary May 16, 2012

Hooray for free video games! Well, free insofar as I’ve committed to keep playing WoW for a year (which I was likely going to do anyway). The perk of free access to Diablo III was the biggest motivation for me in signing up for the Annual Pass. I was excited to be a beta tester, but that was content I’d get anyway, but this was AN ENTIRE GAME FOR FREE!

Unless you live under a rock, you know that D3 launched yesterday. I had enjoyed reading “Blog of the Treant’s” series of posts about D3 for WoW players, but other than that I was completely new to the Diablo franchise.

I chose to start my adventure in Sanctuary as a Monk. I was super impressed.

I was a little leary at first of the idea of combining a “click-to-move” system with mouse button attacks after years of WoW where I keybind everything. But my fears were quickly assuaged as I found the entire system to feel incredibly natural. (Except when I’d try to hold both mouth buttons to move for some reason and waste spirit attacking the air.)

The story carried me along at a steady pace, and I enjoyed the voice-overs in substitution for just reading quest dialogue, although I imagine when both Suz and I are playing simultaneously that might be less than ideal.

Mostly I loved exploring. More than once I stumbled upon the door to the next part of the dungeon long before I’d explored the entire area, and went wandering off in search of more xp and gold. And smashing endless numbers of barrels and pots had a little bit of Zelda nostalgia to it.

I’m level 11 now in the Normal difficulty, and I can’t wait for my next opportunity to play. This game is definitely going to fill the gap between now and MoP.