Highly Impressed

So, I make no secret that I expect a lot out of Blizzard.  They have been in the business long enough to put out nothing but Grade A games.  They have always had great games in my experience, so I cut them no slack in presentation, story, performance, etc.

Diablo 3 had been on the table for 4 years now.  The last Diablo expansion came out 9 years ago.  They are popular games.  Blizzard has dealt with the particular form of DRM that they market before, with SC2, they stress tested ahead of time, so they could get an idea of the load they would be dealing with when the game went live this morning.

So I was highly disappointed when I spent 30 minutes trying to log in before I gave up this morning.  They have dealt with releases of this scale and bigger before, there is no excuse for the crap that went on this morning with everyone trying to log in.  While no, you would never need the scale of log in servers a week from now that you needed to handle last nights volume, they did last night.  They should have had extra servers set up to handle the loads until everything died back down and they could scale back down to normal operating loads.  Because not everyone is going to be trying to log in at the same time after this.  A lot of people are just trying the game, since they got it for free with the Annual Pass, others, well, everyone will log in when they want to play, not all at the same time to experience what they have been waiting so long for.

But, that is behind us.  It is over and done with.  On to the game.

Granted, I haven't had time to get as far into the game as others yet.  I'm just after Leoric on Act 1 yet.  But so far the game has been spectacular.  The biggest improvement for me is just the control system.  Away from the clunky controls of Diablo 1 and 2, now everything that you are going to use already has a key-binding, appears on your screen, easy to use at a moments whim.

The story so far is engaging.  Instead of the random quest like in Diablo 2, they constantly have an objective you are moving towards, always throwing rewards your way.  It isn't over blown with story, where you spend more time talking than fighting, but you always know what your doing and why.

Over all the game so far is amazing, more to come I am sure as I get farther into the game.