Well I'm back. I've been MIA mainly do to work. 12 hours for the past week or so. Anyway onto the good stuff.

On release night like the rest of the world I waited eagerly for the Diablo III  servers to open. I watched the live streams, cracked open my Red Bull packages and was counting down the seconds. As soon as midnight struck, I typed in my password and BAM! Error 1, 2, 3, 4, 8093098238. I tried to login for a full two hours and never got past the character screen. In solemn defeat, I went to bed.

The next day I finally got to play, chose a wizard and went to town. Overall the game feels good. I didn't play Diablo II so I don't have the hangups about not being to spec my character down to the last detail and then if I screwed up having to have to re-roll.

Noobin' it up!

Both of my buddies were either working or otherwise pre-occupied so I ran solo. In fact I still run solo for the most part. All in all I enjoy the game. At the moment the auction house is down and I can't buy level appropriate gear. Actually, come to think about it, it's been down quite a bit today. For hours actually... but the auction house itself works pretty well. There have been suggestions for improvements such as a notification in-game when an item is sold, when you lose a bid, etc. Why we can't sort items by time left confounds me to no end.

I'm currently on nightmare and I just hit 51.The problem is I was planning to run the famous Force Armor build which limits any hit you receive to 35% of your total health. So if you don't wear any vitality gear you can't get hit for much, and because Diamond Skin absorbs so much you can basically tank anything as long as your crit rate is high enough. TODAY.... it got nerfed. Was it an exploit? No I don't believe it meets that definition. The skill worked as intended, I just don't think they foresaw the effects of maximizing it. Did it need to be nerfed? Probably. Fortunately I didn't invest in that gear yet. I'm still trying to work out alternative builds through the forums. With the upcoming weekend I hope to start Hell and change up everything I know again.

If you're on the fence about this game all I can say is that it's a solid hack-n-slash affair. Despite the always on "DRM", the game is similar to everything you expect about the Diablo series. I personally enjoy playing with my friends, arguing about whether or not I should sell this rare or give it to my barbarian tank and just being silly over Skype in general. Guildwars 2 will probably still be my main game and this will tide me over until and in-between sessions. But hey... maybe I'll actually be able to make some real money off this game in the months to come!