As promised, here's my Diablo III Beta Preview, based on some hands-on time with the closed beta of Blizzard's upcoming action/RPG sequel. I had fun playing the beta and writing the piece, and again marvel at how people can write comprehensive reviews of full games when it took me so long to get this out based on a beta that can be completed in three hours. Thanks to my friends MrKawfy and Overthecledge for playing with me and to MrsBlue for her invaluable proofreading. Here's a sample:

There is less fear of making mistakes that will go on your permanent record and follow you around for the rest of your life, as my elementary school principal used to say. There are no choices for characteristics—this is all automatic. As you level up, you earn active and passive skills but you can change them any time you want. Skills are no longer tree-based, so you don't have to pick a crappy one to get the better one that follows. The death penalty is now almost non-existent: You respawn at the last checkpoint with a ten-percent loss of durability to your equipment, which seems fairly trivial and removes the fear of venturing too far past your current abilities. I find this regrettable: One of the most memorable experiences of my gaming life was a late night when my party got killed in the depths of a Diablo dungeon: We literally spent hours working out how to retrieve our items from where they dropped. I prefer it much more where you dread dying, but I don't know how realistic it is to expect this to be changed.