Diablo 3 Resources for WOW players

So, the EU region is already sinking their teeth into the Diablo 3 content. For US players, we have to wait until later tonight for our Midnight launch (or 3 AM for me as an Eastern Time player).

I thought I would take some time today to go over resources that you may want to have on hand as you jump into Diablo 3. With so many WOW players on the annual pass, I expect a large chunk of WOW players to hop over and give D3 a try. This post is going to be a giant list of links, since other people know a lot more about the game than I do, and sending you to where to find info makes more sense than me trying to duplicate their guides anyway.

Getting Started:

• A couple months ago, I wrote about Diablo 3 for WOW players, talking about some differences between WOW and D3.
• Blizzard has a ton of info on their Diablo 3 website, of course, including a launch day preparation guide.
• If you have problems installing the game, WoW Insider posted some installation trouble shooting steps. You can also try the tech support forums for PC, or the Mac Tech Support forums, on the D3 forums. More advanced users can also bypass the downloader using manual links (with a guide written by another Blizzard MVP).
• SET YOUR REGION (US vs EU)!!! You will want to follow the instructions from this blue post to make sure you choose the correct region (US or EU, etc). Having the wrong region will cause errors with trying to log into the game.
• You need a battle tag set up for playing D3. You can add your friends’ battle tags from D3 but not WOW or SC2 yet.  You can still see people logged into D3 on your WOW friends’ list if you previously added them while playing D3.
• If you didn’t play the first two Diablo installments, WoW Insider also has a D3 lore recap to get you caught up. I checked, and they don’t appear to spoil D3′s storyline in the post as far as I can tell. They also posted a basic intro to the game’s systems for WOW players.

D3 Trusted Gameplay Resources:

• Diablo Fans is a Curse gaming website, similar to mmo-champion for D3 players. They have a massive information recap post that covers a lot of the class and system information. In particular, make sure you read their guide about the skill & rune system. As a WoW player hitting the D3 universe, also make sure you read about the difficulty levels, and the hardcore mode so that you aren’t surprised when your hardcore character suffers perma-death. Be careful with things labeled spoilers if you want to stay away from info about the storyline. You can read basic system & class info without too much fear of spoilers otherwise.
• Not to be outdone, the Zam network is also building a site called Diablo 3 Database , which is a wowhead-like site for D3. It contains information on items, abilities, etc. It has a character builder for building what kind of gear sets you are looking for, and an ability calculator for playing with your spells and runes. There is also information on quests, as well.

If you  have other favorite D3 resources, please feel free to add them to comments on the post and I’ll do my best to update this resource list. Happy D3 day!

Also, if you have an annual pass and aren’t sure whether you should play or not, I really recommend that you give it a try. The game is pretty friendly to WOW players, and I had a lot of fun playing the beta!