Note: all screenshots open in a new window.  Every attempt has been made to keep the report plot-spoiler free.  I am aware the screenshots are dark; apparently, it doesn't save my gamma rating with the shot, because it's not THAT dark as I'm playing.

As the beta progresses, more talk is surfacing on character balance/imbalance issues.  I pity Blizzard for trying to wade through all the talk and attempting to decide if the characters need tweaking.  I find myself reticent on making my own suggestions, as I feel myself only seeing the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  I know certain skills are grossly over powerful in the beta, such as Static Field.  But I wonder if it will balance out in the long run.  It's so difficult to make an intelligent suggestion without all the facts.

Diablo II Loves and Hates
I'll try to list all the "little things" that make Diablo II so much more polished than Diablo I.

• Eight hotkeys
• Skill trees, making characters all different and not "carbon copies"
• Assigning skills to left and right mouse buttons
• Being able to rejoin a game you lagged/crashed out of, even if you were playing solo
• Fully customizable keyboard
• Fantastic co-op play between different character classes
• Lack of level or stat caps
• Multiplayer quests
• Audio quick-messages like "Help," "Follow me," or my favorite, "Time to die!"
• Massive levels
• Instantaneous level loading (it's always a shock that first time you take a town portal and find yourself back in town without waiting)
• Level requirements on items (although I admit it's weird how a level 1 character can find an item which requires clevel 9 to wear)

Now, a list of all the things that are somewhat annoying in the beta.

• Lag
• Low frame rate even on a Pentium II 350, Voodoo3, 128 megs of RAM :)
• Necromancer's summoned skeletons, which get in the way of everyone and look exactly the same as enemy skeletons
• Crashes, both on my computer and the occasional Blizzard server downage
• Nasty looking, annoying font (Blizzard has received hundreds of complaints, will fix it)
• Dark screenshots!  :-)
• Stupid AI of NPC or summoned creatures, which have a lot of trouble following you around in labyrinth levels

All of those annoying points (except for one) are things that Blizzard's working on and the reason they have a beta.  I hope they do something about the Necromancer, though.  It's just very, very annoying to co-op with a Necro who has an army of skeletons.

Items
How many items are in this beta, anyway?  I never seem to stop finding new ones!  Check out uniques like Razortine and Greyform, rares like Imp Stinger and Dread Branch, and set items like Arcanna's Head and Infernal Cranium.  The variety in the beta alone is amazing.  Just like in the original game, I don't envision us finding all the rares, sets, and uniques in the game for some time.

Blood, Violence, and Skills, oh my!
See a Barbarian of mine give a good Shout, doubling his defense rating.  Or Jarulf's Barbarian having a little too much fun showing off his Leap skill by jumping over my head.  But nothing beats the sheer violence of large multiplayer games.  Check out the gore in two different games here and here - warning, these shots are R rated!  :)

For wacky, offbeat shots, you can't beat the End of the World - what happens when you're either very lagged, or in my case, the Blizzard server went down during the game.  Or a Barbarian of mine deciding he wants to be just like the Amazons.  Mmm, dual javelin action.  I wonder if having two weapons will offset the use of shields later on in the game, when shields might start having high blocking percentages (no, blocking in D2 is not determined by dexterity, but by the actual shield you're wearing).  The Barbarian can deal vicious amounts of damage, but like the Warrior of Diablo I, he may have trouble without a shield later on...

You might get a kick out of the boss that , Diablo I rogue expert, sent to me in this shot.  Apparently she's back with a vengeance.  Where's Lazarus?  Also, in Beta Report 6 I had stated incorrectly that the maximum number of bonuses on a unique or rare item looked to be six as in Diablo 1.  Lissa proves this wrong with a shot of the Loath Brand.  Although the item has 5 bonuses, it can have an additional 2 more as bonuses to skill levels are handled separately (I'm not counting +150% damage to undead as a bonus, that's an attribute of Scepters).

Random Tidbits
Don't look for the Stress Test any time soon.  Blizzard still doesn't have a beta patch 1.08 out, and bugs keep getting discovered.

Blizzard still has sent no news on what that blasted gem in the chat interface is for.

Someone on the Hardcore Ladder reached the #1 spot (not sure if that's still there at this point) and stayed there for a few days with exactly 1 million experience points.  Talk about style.

I enjoyed playing a Barbarian for a while last night, as I discovered the joy of roleplaying a stupid person.  An astute partner in my game noted that it seemed to come naturally to me.  :)  Ok, Barbarians are still pretty boring to me, but it can be fun to type in a 10 word vocabulary.

It's interesting how much more thought goes into stat allocation when there's no stat cap.  In the original game, you didn't need TOO much consideration about stat allocation, since eventually you'd max them all anyway.  But if you throw five wasted points into dexterity as a Sorceress, those are 5 points you'll never get back.  Ever.  You'll always have less energy than the other Sorceresses of your level.  It's the same with skills, each skill point is beyond precious as you'll never get it back again.  My suggestion when you first get the game: don't worry too much about it, and accept that fact that your first characters aren't going to be the best.  Spread yourself out, have fun with the skills, and make your own decisions on what you'll want to go for the next time around.

This should be the last of the reports for a good while, at least until Blizzard starts patching out bugs and/or balances the characters.  I'll keep you abreast of any changes at that point.  I can say with my (biased) opinion that Diablo II is destined for Game of the Year.  It keeps all the good points of the original game which made it a huge success while adding a great variety of gameplay elements you couldn't get in Diablo 1.