Diablo III / 3

Haven't pre-ordered because I'm not going to be around on May 15th, but I'm building a new computer and getting the game as soon as I get back. I'm pretty excited although the lukewarm reviews of the beta and the horrible decision to transition to WoW-style graphics has tempered my enthusiasm somewhat.

Haven't preordered yet but definitely will.

I sunk a pretty substantial amount of time into the beta and am looking forward to the full release.

Care to give us your thoughts? I'd love to hear about the new classes, general gameplay, the AH (even though no real $ being used yet), and whatever else you can think of.

Have you played the beta? You really don't need much graphics firepower to play D3 at recommended settings.
I use one 6750 to run 3 monitors in eyefinity and play D3 on one of them in 1080p with max textures and physics.

I haven't used the AH, but I imagine it'll be just like the secondary markets that were all over the web for d2x. The AH gives Blizz the revenue and reduces the propensity of getting scammed.

If you have any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them, but here are some rambling thoughts:

General gameplay feels a lot like d2x. You can pick up health globes that instantly generate health in addition to carrying pots in your inventory. Different character classes have different "types" of mana which regenerate in different ways, which feels appropriate. You get portals as a quest reward and you don't have to buy scrolls. Same with ID scrolls--you just click the item and wait a second. No need to carry around tomes.

One of my favorite things about d3 is the blacksmith. You train him (it costs a few grand in gold per level) and he can make decent items for you out of crafting material. You gain crafting material by salvaging items at the blacksmith. This makes blues and junky yellows reasonably valuable since you can get crafting materials out of them (with blues, you get a 1/20 chance to get rare crafting material and with rares, you get rare crafting materials). You have to spend gold and crafting materials to craft items and, once you train your blacksmith, it looks like you can actually get some decent stuff if you don't have access to a bunch of sweet uniques.

Stash and blacksmith are tied to your account, so you don't have to mule in pubby games if your friends aren't online or xfer items to use the maxed blacksmith on your main. You can spend $$ to expand the size of your stash.

The one thing I haven't quite figured out is how the damage is calculated. I think everything is based off weapon damage, which is quite different from the d2x system, which was dramatically more complicated. I think the game developers are still figuring out balance issues for damage spells, so the actual damage dealt may be easier to figure out later.

It's nice that you can change your skills, though. Gone are the days of making ten million different sorces because you wanted to try chain light/blizzard/meteorb/firewall/chargedbolt/enchantress/etc.

Also, hirelings are a lot better. You can pick their spells and their AI is actually good (unlike those damn Act 3 mercs from d2x)

Last summer, I built an AMD 555 powered eyefinity rig with 3 monitors (one was an old one, but two were brand new) for ~800 total. If you go intel, you'll be spending a little more, but $1500 will definitely buy you a hell of a machine.

Your overall price is going to depend pretty heavily on whether you're okay with some of the older AMD processors like I was or if you want the newest intel gear. I'm not an expert--just a garden-variety nerd--and I think the AMD 555 and AMD 975 processors represent a great value. The 975 is a great processor and is only $140 and the i5-2500K is closer to $225. I went with the 555 which was only 80 bucks.

RAM is dirt cheap. I'm pretty sure you can get 8gb for $20 if you wait around. I didn't worry too much about RAM latency but ended up with some reasonably fast RAM anyways.

Re: noise, you'll probably want to set up a watercooling rig if silence is importance. I have a fan setup and it's not silent (but it doesn't bother me at all).

edit: Also, I didn't buy an SSD but I'm regretting that. They were too expensive and too unreliable when I did my build but I'm thinking about picking one up in the next year if I come across any more cash that I decide to throw at my machine.

D3 is going to own. I spent a lot of time playing the beta, and though I wasn't impressed initially, I've come around on it.

The game is very strongly built around loot, which is pretty much what the series has always been about. By changing the skill/stat point system and implementing a progressive crafting method, they've really taken "the grind" out of D3. That is, no more endless MFing and grinding .5% of the game over and over again; with the crafting system you'll be able to craft good gear that scales with your character.

It's very tactile. The hack and slash is very satisfying, and the mana system means you aren't constantly TPing back and forth to keep it going. People who are hating on the skill/stat point system are forgetting that Diablo has always been an action game with RPG elements; by streamlining the character build process you can have very flexible setups and focus on kicking ass instead of restarting your character at level 78 because you messed up a skill point. The fact that you can have one character of each class fulfilling whatever build you like means there's not going to be a hell cow/baal/whatever run to constantly grind up; I think questing will become more the norm.

Yeah, I agree with this. In the beta, when you start a new game, you have to select which quest you want to complete. Then you work through the quest as if you haven't done it before--even if you've already completed it. The drop system will probably be different (just like boss superdrops the first time you kill bosses--except Andarial--in d2x) but people will be replaying quests.

I think the developers really learned their lesson after they realized that people had all the Durance 2 maps memorized and were completing Mephy runs in 30-40 seconds with their teleport/meteor sorces.

edit: Also achievements. People are going to be trying to do ridiculous things like kill 50 monsters with one spell, etc. A robust achievement system will make that game super addictive.

I hope I get into the beta. I'm not sure if I will enjoy it.

Think about getting an Alienware. The cases are very nice, and the customer service is stellar. When I got mine, my graphics card kept on getting error messages. I called, gave them my Alien ID code and I was talking to a competent American customer service rep who did not read from a script. After 10-15 mins he put in an order to send me an a new card. Not the same one, but an upgrade. I was very impressed.

I'm sure you can build one yourself and save money, but that's a lot of time getting up to speed on hardware, pouring over product reviews, and tinkering around.