Diablo III has been a long time coming, and it is now mere weeks away from launching. If you can’t wait until May 15th though, you can get a taste of what Blizzard has been cooking up for free this weekend.
The beta of the game has been running for some months, but has been invite only. This weekend’s event, however, is open to anyone with a Battle.net account – if you own Starcraft II or World of Warcraft this will likely mean you will. If you don’t, you can sign up for an account by going to the Battle.net site.
For Aussies, the beta will open up at 5:01am AEST Saturday morning and be available until 3:00am AEST on Tuesday.
While you will be able to play for free, you’ll need to download the beta client, which isn’t tiny. It involves grabbing a 44MB launcher file that will then proceed to download the rest of the beta from Blizzard’s server (the actual size isn’t shown, but it was well over 2GB when we last downloaded it). You can start downloading now in preparation for tomorrow morning’s kickoff.
You’ll be able to play all the classes up to level 13, and the beta itself contains about half of Act 1 of the game. It is a few hours worth of gameplay, and will give a decent enough taste of what is in store. You can also co-op with friends, but remember that even the single player part of the game requires an active internet connection to play.
There is a bit more information to be found in the FAQ on Blizzard’s website, have fun in hell!
