Want a sneak peak at three previously unseen areas in Diablo 3? A "harmless" bug in the current beta reportedly allowed testers to explore three areas of Act 1 that were locked away for the full-blown retail version: Festering Woods, the Fields of Misery and the Drowned Temple.
For a while, all three were mostly playable and possibly not fully stocked, featuring larger, more diverse beasts than the official beta levels including goatmen, violent trees, carrion bats, ghouls, ghostly spirits and more. Unfortunately, Blizzard caught wind of the trespassers and pulled the beta servers to fix the issue.
"It’s a few levels higher than any previous beta content, and while my Wizard wasn’t in any real danger of dying, I was constantly out of Arcane Power, as the monsters had more hitpoints, plus I was playing a three-player game," writes IncGamers. "I could instantly see why using at least one Signature Skill will be necessary for Wizards long term."
The new territories were discovered by moving past the fence in the cemetery. No one actually knows how it happened, but it's speculated to be an unrepeatable event having to do with a partial disconnect. The original player who came across the Festering Woods merely shared the waypoint, thus granting others access to the new areas.
"You don’t see any plot or story info in those areas (the quests aren’t working; just some of the events), and it’s almost like an end game for beta characters, since the monsters are a few levels higher than anything in the Cathedral or the Leoric fight and with their different/new tactics they’re nasty," the site writes.
IncGamers and others managed to capture screens before Blizzard kicked them all out, but someone managed to capture the whole process of accessing the Fields of Misery in a nearly 24-minute video, as seen below.
