Diablo III open beta this weekend
us.battle.net
us.battle.net
Also, I'd be annoyed that I just preordered it for $80 AU :(
Not before Starcraft 2 or World of Warcraft anyway. (And WoW is a six year old game that requires subscription, and Blizz still require you to purchased all previous expansions in order to enjoy the latest xpac, albeit at a lower price)
Why give it for free when people are willing to pay for it?
This is not a new idea, either. Free to play but in-game real-money purchases have been going strong with casual games since it became easy to send money over the net.
I'm not saying it will happen, but it's not an impossibility.
Casual game examples cannot be applied to Diablo's model. They are between the game makers and the users (which is more similar to Blizzard selling their items for WoW).
Diablo 3 is unique because it's facilitating transactions between players, while taking a cut. Hold up, it's not the same as TF2 either. TF2 items are pure cosmetic, novelty. Items in Diablo will effect the avatars and in turn, effect other people as well in terms of game play. One can truely buy their way up, legally.
Another aspect is consider people owning multiple accounts. How many of your WoW friends/guildies own multiple accounts? Because of the nature of the game, there are obvious benefits to have multiple characters online at the same time. How many accounts does a TF2 player has? There's no reason to have more than 1 account because there's no unique player avatars, there's no attachment, no profession limits, no character limits. Giving away free TF2 accounts is different from giving away free D3 or even WoW accounts.
Each D3 account also have a limit on how much real money balance (Bnet dollars) it can carry. So if a person wants to deal in more money or more character slots (and there will be alot of them), they need to get another account – more money in Blizz's pockets.
The point is different game mechanics, different target audience have different approaches. What works in one may not work as well as in another.
Maybe in 2 or 3 years they'll be selling it cheap, but in the meantime they're going to try for every penny they can get.
I think this is more like a demo or a way to get the game installed on millions of computers so that buying it is as easy as possible (a click away). I don't know about their publishing relationship but perhaps they get a better cut on electronic sales and this definitely helps increase those.
That said I'm downloading it now :)
Diablo 3 beta will be easily completed in a day, all 5 classes, so TERA is a good second game to play around if you find yourself gobbling up the D3 beta too fast.
It's impressive how much effort is put into a game like that compared to the web/mobile apps I usually build. Tempting, really
Even solo there is noticeable lag on every achievement and when moving/selling items, presumably as it updates the server. (Being in Australia we get screwed on both a higher price for the game and playing on a much higher latency that USA based players)