Note: all screenshots open in a new window.  While there are minor "spoilers" inside, they only regard the very first quest of the game and therefore aren't that big of a deal.

Sure.  I tried to play it cool.  I tried not to look excited at seeing the FedEx package with the shipping label "From: Blizzard Entertainment" on it.  Inside, I was jumping for joy.

Fervently ripping open the package, I pulled out the beta CD, the Beta Quick Reference sheet, and the Beta License.  A quick once-over telling me what I already knew and the CD was in the drive to stay for the next few weeks.

A few short minutes later, Boltricia was born.  A young Sorceress with a headstrong attitude but a rather pathetic Firebolt, brought about by her Short Staff she started out with that raised her Firebolt skill by one.

I spent a few minutes trying to A) calm down, B) get used to the interface, and C) calm down.  I have to admit, it was very fun.  The graphics, which have been getting a bad rap by other beta testers, were extremely fluid.  In fact, it's hard to describe without seeing it.  In Diablo I, everything is so tile based and rigid.  Characters face one of 8 cardinal directions, and flip between them.  I always wondered how they could turn around without ever twisting their torso.  :)  But the screenshots of the game don't do it justice.  One really has to see it in MOTION.  That's where the engine shines.  Everything seems very alive, from the atmospheric weather (and night and day) to the random critters running around (bats, mice, etc).

I spent time walking around town and seeing the sights, such as the Rogue Encampment Waypoint.  Some of you who have read up on Diablo II a little know that the Rogue Encampment, where you start the game, is a run down place as the Rogue Monastery where the Rogue hero of Diablo I comes from has been taken over by Andariel.  Akara, a magician leader of the rogues, wanted me to clear out the Den of Evil to win her trust.  And thus starts the first quest.  It's very reminiscent of the Murky Pool quest of the original Diablo.

As with the town, I gleefully ran all over the Moor, the "battle" area outside the rogue encampment.  Naturally, this is where one of the huge differences between Diablo 1 and 2 really drives its point home, in the wide open ranges of the Moor.  No cramped dungeons.  No set tile-based pieces of land.  Just wide open run-free range land.  And running is what I did, just for the thrill of it.  Of course, characters have stamina, so there's a limit to how much you can heave your rear all over the Moor, but it doesn't take all that long to recharge.

I eventually found the entrance to the Den of Evil, and warily entered...to meet some BIG guys who looked tough, but fell rather easily to my mighty Firebolt.  The legendary Fallen Ones were there in force, with the new guys, the Fallen Shamans, the "boss" types who resurrect any Fallens you kill.  I dangerously ran into packs of Fallens in order to take out the Shamans each time.  Thankfully, it's not as difficult as it may seem since all the Fallens scatter when you kill anything, including the Shamans.  On the down side, those Shamans were pretty skilled at getting as far away from me as possible.

Deep inside the Den of Evil I met Corpsefire, the apparent first boss of the game.  Note the gold text of his name, and the bar showing his hit points under his name.  It took me quite some time to finish him off, since I was a magic user who ran out of mana.  In Diablo II, mana recharges slowly and mana potions are scarce.  So, I found myself running around like a deranged chicken while my mana regenerated enough to get off another Firebolt.  You can see screenshots of this "epic" battle in chronological order here, here, and here.  He dropped a rather nice item (well, to me at least) called a Short Staff of Blight.  Note the Level Requirement on the item!  No more handing down awesome items to lower level characters, it seems.

Here's a shot showing off the "search" feature in Diablo II.  Holding down the Alt key highlights everything dropped on the ground, an idea obviously refined from Hellfire's Search spell.  Very handy.  In fact, I can't go into enough detail about all the "little things" that make this game so much more polished than Diablo.  There's so many.  From holding down the left mouse button to continuously attack, to assigning mouse buttons to anything you want, to using the mouse wheel, the whole interface is very slick and intuitive.  Diablo I players will feel instantly at home.

While fighting in the Den I heard a very satisfying and VERY familiar sound..."DING!"  Using an Identify scroll (I started out with one, and found others off of dead Rogues (the equivalent of Decapitated Bodies) and monster kills) on it, I saw it was a Triumphant Ring.  Oh, can you say, great Sorceress item?  Where was Murphy's Law on that one?  Note some of the other things in Boltricia's inventory, such as the two gems, which can be "socketed" into future items to give them powers.

Wasting my foes with wild abandon, a Quest Log button popped up.  Clicking on it told me that I had only 4 monsters to go.  Neat little update.  Satisfied that nothing could oppose me, I trudged on...

...and devastated the horrible evil monsters, cleaning out the Den of Evil.  The color of the whole cave changed, and I got a sound effect that signified the purging of evil.  Boltricia even told me something about the presence of evil being cleansed, although I don't remember the specific words.  I returned to the Rogue Encampment and talked to Akara, who gave me my reward.

There were cows in the encampment, but I was disappointed with my inability to molest them.  Ah, well, some things just need to be sacred to the original game, I suppose, and it sure beats putting up with another few years of Cow Quest questions.

I stopped to get a shot of the Battle.Net interface from channel Open Tech Support.  You can see the list of D2 Beta channels there.  Music plays throughout being online, from the Intro screen, to character selection, to downloading patches, to chatting, and, of course, gaming.  Right now, the music is great, but I hope a feature to turn it off in chat comes along sometime, when it starts to get overplayed and old.

Many testers have spoken of lag issues.  Well, I can see why.  Lag's definitely an issue in the game at this point.  Those who know me know that I have a fast college connection, so I wasn't expecting too much in the way of lag.  Since the game runs on Blizzard's server, when you experience lag you experience jumping, kind of like in Diablo I.  However, not only do the monsters jump - so do you!  I can see it being a problem when you're in a pack of monsters.  It happened to be a few times during the game.  Plus, there were some other minor effects such as taking half a second to pick up items, killing a monster and yet having to wait for it to effectively "die," and hotkey spell switching not being instantaneous.

However, after playing the game for around one hour, it lost its connection to the Battle.Net server.  When the game does this, you can walk around but you'll be unable to interact with anything.  Monsters and characters are frozen, nothing can be picked up, etc.  I had to exit the game.  This is obviously an area Blizzard's been working on a lot lately, and I'm sure they'll make things much more stable as the beta progresses.  You know I'm not complaining!  :)

Well, I don't know what else to add right now.  It's an awesome game.  No, it's not Quake3-style graphics, but it has excellent sound effects.  It's difficult to comment any more on it, as I've only been at it for about an hour at the time of this writing.  I'll be following up this report with more in a day or two, after I've played some co-op and generally seen more of the game.  Then I can comment on depth of gameplay, the D2 world, co-op interaction, etc.  As you can imagine, there's so much to tell in just one hour of gameplay that I could write 10 times this much.  But I need to get back at it...

I'm a newbie again, and it's FANTASTIC.