While it will be a bit longer before Diablo IV releases they had an early access beta that ran from March 17-20 2023 which has ended. I ended up having quite an amazing time. I will be sharing some things from the beta as I ended up trying out the three classes available, lots of quests, dungeons, and a world event.

Trying To Get Into Early Access Beta

First, we must address the beginning. The year was 2017 and I ended up selling loads of World of Warcraft (WoW) gold for WoW Tokens. I went on a bit of a spending spree buying up WoW time, DLCs, and other Blizzard games and DLCs for those games.

I however made sure not to spend all of it. I had a dream. One day that ended up feeling like an Eternity I would be able to buy Diablo IV with my WoW gold converted into tokens then converted into a balance to spend on the Blizzard store.

What I had not planned for was inflation. I was not expecting the standard edition to cost $69.99. While I was no longer going to get a free game as I had planned all those years ago. Ffor less than $5 I could still pick it up and spend the rest of my balance.

They however don’t just let you apply a Blizzard balance first and then pay the remainder of less than $5. So I had to top off the remaining amount onto the account. That is when they decided to put a payment hold on yes less than a $5 credit added to my account—dang it!

A few hours went by and they still had not processed it. It was starting to look like I was not going to get into Beta till the very end if even then. Who knows when they were going to remove the hold from it?

A few hours later I noticed there was a contest going on Twitter for early access beta keys. I thought why not write up a poem and enter it? I expected it to be a long shot but most people were just writing things like “give mmmeeeeeee key. ”

The next day roles around and early access beta was now live. Still not enough money in the account to buy the game since it was still pending. I checked Twitter and while I was not expecting a beta invite key so no shock I did not get contacted by them for one.

Quite a few hours later and I double-check Twitter just to make sure they have not announced any winners or anything like that. As I had just noticed finally my less than $5 was processed I could buy the game and start downloading it.

So I bought the game which I was going to do anyways when it’s planned to release on 6/6/23. I’ve been craving playing Diablo IV for far too long. I’ve also attempted to avoid as many spoilers as I could. I just hope it’s not going to be like Diablo Immortal. Don’t even get me started on that game.

About halfway through the 85 GB download which I believe I could have started playing by then since Blizzard games are like that. I jump back onto Twitter and what do I see? A DM from Diablo with an invite. SOB!

At least by that point I was no longer sweating that I was not going to get into closed beta. I just had to finish downloading the game and go and enjoy it. At least that is what I thought. I should however have known better as things just are never that simple for me-- EVER.

I go to launch the game and what happens? Sorry game won’t launch outdated graphic card drivers. I double-check and there is no new update for my older graphics card. I do know for a fact I at least meet the minimum requirements which this year has not always been the case for games.

I decided to go manually check to see if for some reason there was an update. Turns out yep I had to manually download a new program for my graphics card that would update it to the newest driver. A few screen flashes and a reboot later. I was done.

I was also not bothered by it at all. I had a lot of work to get done. I took advantage of all the extra time I was expecting to be playing the game instead writing. I would once in a while check in and see if the timer had updated and if I was in the game yet.

This would not be the last time either I’d be waiting in that line. I ended up every so often on the first night running out of memory and the game crashing. When I was not having that issue I was getting disconnected.

I must have spent 6 to 8 hours sitting in the queue after quite a few crashes for one reason or another. Thankfully after the first night, they sorted out a bunch of stuff. I rarely saw that queue again unless it was for 1-2 minutes max. I also had almost no crashes as well after that first night.

It was great seeing them get that resolved on the first night. I forget how many games I’ve played where such issues might last for weeks. Things went from this is how I expected early access betas to go to this is amazing I’m enjoying testing this out and writing a bug report or two on occasion.

Character Selection And Customization

Early access beta has quite a few limits on what the player can do. We only get to see what they are calling the first “zone.” We also can only play three of the five classes as well. I ended up playing all three that were available.

The three classes available were Barbarian, Sorcerer, and rogue. Since I use to main for quite some time in Diablo III a barbarian I decided to go with that first. I also miss quite dearly spin to win whirlwind how it use to be. So I told myself if whirlwind was an option I’d be going max into that as soon as I could. Hoping that it would not be a total dumpster fire (press F now for the epic foreshadowing of another post coming soon).

The other two classes the druid and necromancer were not available for the early access beta. I’m quite excited to play the necromancer at some point. I have no idea if that will be an option during the open beta next week.

I also liked you got to select how much of a “tutorial” you wanted. AKA more or less guidance regarding different things. Since this would be my first play of the game I just went with more guidance. As I progressed through the game once in a while I noticed I’d get a new quest that was introducing me to quite a few different things in the game like using the blacksmith.

This early beta itself would only have a maxim level of 25. It also felt like they upped the experience gained from killing by quite a lot in the first area. As levels went by rather quickly even more so once I got the hang of the game.

First Hours Of Playing

It was then finally time to play the game. After another cutscene. For my first playthrough of a game, I love to take my time. I don’t skip anything. I watched every single cutscene for the first time and plan to do so when I get to see the rest of the game as well.

On later characters I made. I ended up skipping over as many cutscenes as I could unless I liked one of them. Thankfully it seems almost all of them are skippable. There is voice acting in this game (for early access beta they only had them in English).

The game starts you off right away almost alone in the forest. I won’t spoil that part but you end up going and finding a small village and they send you off to clear a dungeon. The game shows you quite early on just how dark and bloody Diablo IV is. I’m loving the fact they are not holding back as they did in Diablo III.

Since this is just the early access beta there were quite a lot of restrictions in place. This is as much of the map as I could explore in the game. Going anywhere beyond the sections I uncovered would teleport you back.

While there is a mount vendor in Kyovashad it requires a quest to get a horse. I never found the quest and I can only assume we did not have access to it. As I did not see any other players riding a horse either.

Speaking of players. There was no option to just start my little world and be all alone. While people had to be grouped with you to get into the same dungeon as you. I did often see a few other players running quests, hanging out in the different towns, and doing events.

Final Thoughts

I ended up having quite a blast. I’ll be having a couple more posts about Diablo IV coming out this week. Diablo IV is having an open beta from March 24-26. I can only hope the game opens up a little bit more and everyone gets to join in.

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Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV. This was during the early access beta. Things are subject to change.