Well this has absolutely nothing to do with the Blizzard service, I really don't know what you could otherwise expect?

I could expect them to make single player not require a constant internet connection, so really due to the way they set up the game it is partially their fault.

any thoughts on the classes from those who've gotten into beta??
Seems to be only 2 so far (silent remorse and hvalac)...
anyone else get in??

I have played it, but it was a friends key and not mine.

Played the monk because he is my favourite character and was generally fun.

I can't stress enough how good the sounds are it's probably what i noticed first to be honest (having watched and followed development so closely i was kinda immune to the ooh shiny aspect).

WD was also fun.

In fact all the classes were great except the Demon Hunter.

Whats wrong with the demon hunter ?

Animation Cancellation



Speed

When i played it (i.e i think they are currently changing it dramatically in terms of resource and skill levels) you had no real AoE skills early on which is very limiting in terms of what you can do, considering everything comes in mobs.

That and i was constantly running out of hatred which was lame.

They have changed it now though, so there are hatred spenders and hatred generators, i haven't played that version, or i'm uncertain if they have changed it in the beta. But the updated versions are on the battlenet website.

Shucks, was going to try demon hunter first but guess i'll try one of other classes then since the DH seems to be very underpowered atm.

The demon hunter is not underpowered. What people fail to realise is that the demon hunter has multi shot later on. Just like the zon in d2 multishot and guided arrow were staples for the entire game in terms of mass killing. While I agree the demon hunter needs some more aoe skills I think people are just not finding the correct items for the demon hunter yet. I have one at lvl 13 and i'm critting in for 120dps. And i can say thats easily enough (with multishot it will be amazing)

Well it was initially. You have to agree that it did have a huge resource problem, all the other classes could attack almost infitely and the DH would run out quite fast, and have no crowd control.

However they way it is now is very good and has rectified almost all the issues.

Its just fine tweaking that is going on. The DH will be a great class, i have no
doubt about it, however it was boring at lower levels.

Currently i think the Monk is a bit bland, even though he is my favourite class, mostly because there are only 5 spirit generators, and they aren't all that unique and are just melee attack variations. The whole idea of a combo/fighter build is amazingly cool, but with only 5 (lets face it they are kinda boring with a few exceptions) combo skills its a bit, meh.

I think what more compounds this is the fact that you are limited to 6 skills, meaning anything more than 4 spirit generators is a bit silly.

Itemization should change this though, as spirit generating items should exist.

What’s a good guess for the release date?

Im gonna go with March 2012

yeah 1st half of 2012 sounds like a good bet.

1st quarter. I will eat my hat if its 2Q 2012 (i don't have a hat)

We will know in 2 weeks at Blizzcon how they are going and i/the rest of the hardcore community will have a pretty good assessment of when it will be realised. Comments by Schaefer always help :P

They were gunning for December to hit the Christmas bonanza, but with overhauling the DH, significant client/server interaction problems and general bug fixing in the beta (lets not consider that its like 1/12 of the game at the most and they have patching quite a bit, so imagine the other 11/12's need) it was not to be.

The only considerable reason why the wont get it out in Q1 is because a core game mechanic needs an overhaul, which would be one the classes, or the skill runes. But also remember that loot is barely started, all they have is artworks and a small amount of affixes.

What you can expect in the short term is a major patch for Beta. Followed by a lot more invites, this will only happen after the next big patch for server management reasons but i think after Blizzcon beta will be significantly larger.

So we can maybe expect a few more invites after Blizzcon in two weeks?