Finally, after a long hiatus from online gaming because A) Diablo 2 got old, and B) World of Warcraft makes you pay by the month, which is useless to me because I sometimes only play games once a month, a game that I knew would drag me back in was released: Diablo 3.

Normally, I’m never one to go out and get a game when it first comes out. I’d rather sit back, wait for everyone else to get their characters maxed out, and grab a copy when the price dropped, but something happened to me as I waited for Diablo 3, something that hasn’t happened since, well, Diablo 2: I got excited about video games again. I had a gift card to Best Buy, some articles to write, so I thought, “Hey, why not grab a copy and write about it?” So now you’re going to listen, as Diablo 3 meets The Gaming Diaries.

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Day 1:

4:15AM

Thanks to sweating my ass off while falling down over and over again at my first hot yoga class(hey, I thought it’d be a cool place to pick up women. I was wrong. Maybe it’ll be a better place when I can actually stand up straight for more than 5 seconds), I was up early. Really early. I guess being all healthy and whatnot helps keep your body balanced. Of course, the first thing I thought of in my new, healthy state was, “Golly! Maybe I can reserve a copy of Diablo 3 at Best Buy!” I sure as hell could! And did.

11:32AM

Picked up the game. I didn’t check to see if there were any other copies on the shelves, but by the look of the game boxes piled up behind the pick-up counter it seems I made a good choice.

12:00-1:00PM

Install time. Yeah, that long. No, I didn’t stare blankly at the progress bar all that time. I came back to check on it after about an hour and it was at 97%.

1:00-1:30PM

Took me a half hour to figure out how to log in. Yeah, it’s been that long. How was I supposed to know you had to use your email, and not your gamer tag? See? This is a FAQ Guide. For noobs like me.

1:30PM

Sat through the whole game introduction because, let’s face it, after 10 years, I want to suck in as many cinematic scenes as possible.

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I also get to make a banner. I don’t know where it’ll show up, so I chose the chicken, since owls aren’t available, or I have to unlock them somehow. Probably have to buy them. Yeah, I saw the auction house link, too, but I didn’t feel like shelling out money to get a 20dmg hand crossbow. I’m sure they’re there. It’s early enough. Gamers were probably trying to sell items from the BETA version on eBay. (update: oddly enough, this isn’t the case. Yes, I checked…but only for research, I swear.)

I choose to be a demon hunter, because I like rocking out the bow and arrow. Or maybe I’m just a wimp that wants to kill things from really far away. Unfortunately, Diablo 3 mistook my choice, and elected to make my character the lame emo kid who fronts My Chemical Romance. Please, rogues don’t need a damn scarf. They have the fires of hell to keep them warm.

1:40PM

After choosing the emo kid and starting the game, I take about 10 steps before three quests are unlocked and completed. I can understand how not allowing private games will help make sure there’s no shady business with items, but this is a little ridiculous. I had to walk around for twenty minutes to find things to kill because, no, I don’t play well with others, and I want to figure out what the hell I’m doing before I start running around with other people.

2:22PM

Americas server crashes, and I still haven’t even finished a quest myself, or even found a helmet. What I did find was some cloth pants, some crappy gloves, and a shield to go with my hand crossbow. Once this crash is fixed, we’ll see if I have any of that crap.

5:10PM

Servers are up again, which is awesome because now I can take a picture of my pussy demon hunter to warn the world.

5:15PM

Server is shut down for unknown reasons. Again.

More random updates as the fun continues.