This is the final blog in my series about the Diablo III: Reaper of Souls beta. I am happy that I was able to experience it. My only regret is that it took me so long to finish blogging about it. I’m trying to get quicker at blogging video game stuff.
In the previous blog, Joan the Crusader had hit Level 28. She never made it to Level 29. The RoS beta closed really abruptly. The screenshots you see in this blog were taken on February 24, 2014.
This time, Joan the Crusader and Kormac the Templar started out in The Forgotten Ruins. They were working on the Zoltun Kulle quests. Nothing incredibly exciting happened on what turned out to be the last time I got to play the Diablo III: RoS beta. Overall, though, I found the beta to be incredibly fun and I really enjoyed playing the Crusader class.
The most that I can offer in this blog are some random screenshots that turned out looking pretty cool. In this one, Joan the Crusader is fighting a pack of Bone Warriors (and using a skill that creates many shields).
I’m not entirely certain what happened to the Bone Warriors in this next screenshot. I think they found some sparklers to play with.
Joan the Crusader fights Dread, Unspeakable Terror. He has the Plagued affix, which makes him that much more dreadful.
The next interesting monster was Borgoz, the Cursed. He had three affixes: Poison, Enchanted, and Shielding.
Joan found, and picked up, Zoltun Kulle’s head. This turned out to be the very last quest she completed. Here she is fighting the Ancient Guardian that popped up immediately after Joan obtained Zoltun Kulle’s head. The Ancient Guardian is described as “Horadric Mage Construct”.
Joan the Crusader then returned to town. Her next quest was to talk to Adria at the Hidden Camp. There stands Adria, with a giant exclamation point floating over her head. I was too tired to keep playing, so I figured that I’d pick up next time by talking to Adria.
The Diablo III: RoS beta was different because there was never an official end date announced. Those of us who were playing it had no idea if it would be there for us to play around in the next day. Just to be on the safe side, I took the screenshot of Joan the Crusader that you see at the top of this blog. I also took a quick screenshot of the Achievements she had earned during the beta. She had 510 Achievement points, not bad for a character that had not hit Level 30 yet.
I did not know it at the time, but that turned out to be my very last adventure through the Diablo III: RoS beta. I was hoping to get back into it for at least a few more hours before it was over. I didn’t end up having that chance. The beta ended without any warning. One day, I learned from Twitter that the Diablo III: Reaper of Souls beta was no more. Joan the Crusader disappeared forever.
To my surprise, I actually felt a bit saddened when I heard the news. I wanted to play some more, and it felt like such an abrupt ending. Blizzard did not announce an end date before shutting down the RoS beta. One day, it was there. The next, it was gone. The beta for the Original Diablo III didn’t end like that. Blizzard announced a specific end date and time for it. I remember playing in that beta right up until the server went through its final countdown and then knocked everyone offline.
What did I learn from the Diablo III: RoS beta? I learned that I really enjoyed playing the Crusader class. I wasn’t sure that I would because I don’t typically lean towards “Paladin” type classes and wasn’t very clear about how the playing style was different from the Barbarian. I had a brief opportunity at Blizzcon 2013 to try out the male Crusader class, but wasn’t able to spend enough time to really figure out if the Crusader was the class for me. The RoS beta gave me the opportunity to discover that the Crusader is a lot of fun!
What would I have done differently? I think the best thing I could have done differently would have been to somehow find more time to play in the beta. Work gets in the way of fun sometimes.
I am unsure if I would have decided to port over one of my high level characters into the beta if I had to do it all over again. If I had done that, I could have quickly leveled her up to 70, checked out Act V, beaten Maltheal, and gone on to play around with Adventure Mode. Instead, the only new thing I got to test out in the beta was the Crusader class.
On the one hand, I felt somewhat disappointed that I didn’t end up spending enough time in the beta to get a character to 70 (for the purpose of trying out all the new stuff). On the other hand, missing out on the new stuff in the beta allowed me to go into the expansion with lots of things to look forward to. Looking back, I cannot help but wonder if I’d be bored with Bounties and Rifts now if I’d spent a ton of time playing through them in the RoS beta.
This concludes my series about my experiences in the Diablo III: RoS beta. I am considering bringing Joan back as a hardcore character eventually. There are some other in-game goals I want to achieve before I do that. I’ve been holding off on rolling a new Crusader in the expansion because I think I’ll end up spending all my time on that character and neglecting the rest!