First instinct is DOWNLOADFASTGOGOGOG. Then common sense kicked in and I'm not touching this one with a 10-foot pole. I'll never support or play a game that requires one to be online and connected to someone else's "service" to play even the single player aspect. Will wait for Torchlight2, Borderlands2 and Guild Wars2.

I'll see you in HELL! Oh wait... nevermind

A bit different than bf3 as you could do the (albeit useless yet still entertaining) SP without a origin connection. I know what you're saying, though.

Just with this.... you HAVE to be connected to battlenet. No ifs, ands or buts. With steam, you can do offline mode and still fully enjoy any single player game to it's full potential. Either way, enjoy! I really wanted to play this, but I have my cutoff point and blizz crossed it by a country mile.

Ok so im trying to connect to battlenet and i keep getting an error about it being temporarily down.

Yeah the servers are taking a beating. There are times where I cant even get in game. I don't think they planned out this whole open beta thing too well, I know they're stress testing the servers but they should have done a better job anticipating how many people were actually going to play this game.

Well, I played through the beta on the barbarian and monk. Not sure if it was the classes I played, but it was ridiculously easy. I don't think I used a single health potion the entire time. I hope the hardcore mode is more difficult. I liked the beta. Good story, love the graphics and altered game mechanics from the original. So I'll probably buy it eventually.

Beta is just a taste, check these out...

Diablo III -- You Will Die. We Promise.

Diablo 3 - Inferno Difficulty - Announcement

I played through the Beta as a Barbarian and a Witch Doctor and went through part as a monk.  The game isn't bad.  I like it.  I don't see myself playing it as much as Diablo 2 though.  Simply because once you get one of each of the characters you are done.  With Diablo 2 you could essentially make 2 or 3 different necromancers by changing what skills you took through the game.

I think you hit the nail on the head, but I don't want to believe it :(

For those who didn't play the public beta this past weekend, the way d3 approaches skills feels very promising, at least to me. Every active skill for every class has FIVE skill "runes" that are unlocked as you progress throughout the game; each rune with a different (usually more powerful) effect.

For example, the Wizard's Shock Pulse is unlocked at lvl 3 then skill rune Explosive Bolts is unlocked at lvl 9 which adds/changes the skill, then Fire Bolts is unlocked at lvl 18 which adds/changes the skill, and so on... This concept is so refreshing because it promotes going back to skills that you normally would NEVER use again in the later stages, unless of course you just want to have fun :P

On the other side, I'd assume that a maxed level 60 Wizard will probably have a sweet spot combination of spells that are very popular, but even then, hopefully the game will do a great job of making you adapt to certain situations and/or work as a team to take down tough elites/bosses.

EDIT: the catch is you can only have ONE skill rune assigned to a skill at one time, so you must choose... choose wisely!

Huge number +1.