Here’s a blue quote from Bashiok, you can research it yourself if you’re overly worried about the source.  Pay note to “but it’s feasible that the first Inferno clear will be through use of unintended means”

“Ok, not totally, but I think there’s some distinction to be made for ‘legitimate’ ability to beat Inferno, in that, we expect there could be ways, potentially exploits, potentially clever but cheesy mechanics, that could maybe allow a player to complete Inferno fairly quickly. The bet stands as-is, but I think if it could be revised it would be “X time before it becomes farmable”, meaning someone can legitimately kill the end boss over and over and over without needing to take advantage of an exploit, or loophole, or some other thing we don’t intend to be possible.
Of course we’ll try to address any such issue as quickly as possible, but it’s feasible that the first Inferno clear will be through use of unintended means. Technically still valid per the wording of the bet, but I think most can agree would go against the spirit of it.”

I never said the voice acting from Diablo II was good (but it is, although in comparison to Diablo 3’s we’ll just have to agree to disagree), but if you’d care to remember, there wasn’t a whole lot of it outside of town in the middle of the action to goofily tell you about some monster, the lore of which now cheapened by its splattered contents all over the floor, and such would have been more mysteriously explained by reading a tome or getting hinted at ominously rather than a jarring or over-embellished pop-up delivery from a disembodied voice.  That honestly doesn’t build any worthwhile atmosphere.

Anyhow, I kill things and smash shit because the gameplay makes me want to, not because of some metagaming element that encourages me with a paltry EXP bonus.  Finding loot from either was reward enough and it just seems to me like more tacked on arcade-style nonsense.  
I’m glad I’m not gonna play either.

>
The real difficulty will lie in inferno mode where the devs claim that they don’t expect people to complete it via even “legitimate gameplay” i.e. sans exploits.  Does that sound like “fun”?

Please show your work. From what I remember of the Inferno video, the Devs said you would probably need to play co-op to finish it which both makes sense and sounds fun to me. I had a ball with co-op in DII. Considering how much pain and effort Blizzard went through fixing and controlling exploits in Battlenet do you really think they’d encourage that sort of behavious in their brand new game?

>the comic voice acting really takes away from the experience.

“Stay a while, and listen!”

The voice acting is the same caliber as DII, IMO. Deckard may sound a little older and creakier, but that makes sense since it’s been a while (both IRL and in game) since DII. 

> Speaking of being distracting, the bonuses for “massacres” and “breakin’ shit” strikes me as being very, very un-Diablo.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Since when has the Diablo series been about killing hordes of monsters and breaking shit to look for lewt?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?! DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING!!!!!!11!11!1oneelevan!

Whatever, I’m glad you aren’t going to play. 

Easy mode? This has been addressed by Blizzard directly. Not only is there still Nightmare difficulty, but a new difficulty level called Inferno which Blizz have promised will be as hard as my arteries.

The dialogue? Frankly this has always been a bit over the top in all Blizzard games. And the dude was bitching out because The Skeleton King didn’t have a full unique title? It’s like the guy writing this article didn’t even play the beta. In my six hours of playing, I killed 50 elites, and they all had the cool DII style elite titles. Does he not remember The Butcher? 

http://egamer.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PennJillette.jpg <– Relevant image is relevant. Judging a whole game based on the easiest difficulty of the first act OF THE BETA is like listening to the overture of a piece of classical music and calling it crap. I've seen a couple of different LP's of the Diablo III beta and it has changed a lot. During the BETA. I would not be surprised if we get different stuff in Act 1 of the proper game. 

IMO this guy went into the beta expecting to hate it, rushed through it, and was only looking at stuff to back up his rather weak points. To me, this article has about as much weight as the GameSpy editor who wanted DIII to be an FPS.

The voice acting totally disappointed me as well.  With all of the lore and possible depth in play, the comic voice acting really takes away from the experience… though you don’t have to click on the lore dialogue box.  Speaking of being distracting, the bonuses for “massacres” and “breakin’ shit” strikes me as being very, very un-Diablo.

Oh well, it was still certainly “novel” to play after the wait and hype regardless if the beta experience reflected either.  I’m not even getting into skill points being non-existant.  The Real $ Bobby Kotick yacht fund auction house is what’s gonna drive this game considering you have about 300 item slots and it’s hard to see much further past that at this point.  I may play for fun after release, for a price far far below retail… but there’s a snowball’s chance.