Blizzard is Letting Everyone Play Diablo III All Weekend
Happy Friday, everyone!
With the May 15 launch of Diablo III nearly upon us, the excitement levels are reaching new heights. After 12 years, the newest Diablo title is almost within reach. However, the game is still three weeks away from launch, and there's not a whole lot you can do to make that time go faster, is there? Well, perhaps there is. Blizzard is looking to put the servers through its paces ahead of the launch and last night announced that the company would eb for this weekend only, there'll be a free open beta for all PC and Mac users with a Battle.net account.
Starting today, at 3:00 p.m. PDT, Battle.net account holders can log in, team up with friends, and play each of the five heroic classes to level 13. The open beta will officially close at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Monday morning (just in time for you to go back to work).
To get started you'll need to log in or create your Battle.net account. Then you'll need to create your BattleTag and download and install the game client. Blizzard said that stress test participants will not have access to post in the beta forums and will not be provided Beta Bucks for use in testing the currency-based auction house.
The beta is open to everyone except those in Korea. Blizzard said it will be conducting a separate invitation-only closed beta test that will give players in Korea a chance to try out the game, along with players in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. This is expected to happen sometime next week.

Jane, your last sentence is deceptive - there is no link!
This is a great point. We should be able to customize the characters in every way, including skill sets and such. I've always been thinking that the gamer world has moved on since the first Diablo with it's top-down approach to dungeon crawling.
I assume there will be a wipe afteward..
I am not impressed by this download speed though, you would think the battle.net servers would be better prepared for a digital download. Steam and Origin are both flawless in that regard.
This is misleading and makes it sound like only existing Battle.net account owners (or those who buy WoW, SCII etc.) can use this, when in fact (at least according to diablofans) it is possible to make a Battle.net account for free.
I read that the beta client is about 2GB, which may not be worth the download for 2.5 days of playing, unless of course you have a pretty hefty cap or even an uncapped line.
@halls - there is a link. Look again.
1) requires a constant internet connection even for single player
2) mods are not allowed
3) real money" can be used in auction house for items
It's been flawless for me so far. I've played through all the available content (about half to a third of the first level) with 4 classes, on two platforms (2600k with GTX680 and i7-920 with dual GTX470s) and haven't run into any problems or errors at all. I'd say it's pretty much done at this point, as long as they have the content done.
1) requires a constant internet connection even for single player
2) mods are not allowed
3) real money" can be used in auction house for items
Blizzard always sucking money from users, "oh so you have bought the game and you can't buy the best armor in it?"
Also what if i wan't to just play the singleplayer campaign ALONE or with only one lan friend, in the desert or somethig like that, NO INTERNET CONNECTION...
this really is a deal breaker.
I'm getting about 15 Mbps download on this myself. I guess Comcast doesn't throttle Battle net, because they throttle the hell out of Steam for me.
If this was released for tablets then we'd have something interesting...