Give your mouse a workout
From now until Monday,Diablo 4is free to play. The trial is available viaBattle.netand includes the entire game. If you want to keep playing past Monday, it’s currently 25% off, too.
Depending on your temperament, a free dose of Diablo is either a “first hit’s free” trap, or an invitation to click your mouse and dissociate, which frankly you could do while running Notepad.exe. For me, a lapsed Diablo player who was never convinced the latest sequel offered something worth returning for, it’s a pretty tempting method of satisfying my curiosity.
AlthoughDiablo 4launchedon Steama few weeks ago, the free weekend is limited to Blizzard’s own store, Battle.net. The discounted price is on Steam, however.
Alice B was firmly in the “dissociate” camp in herDiablo 4 review, damning hell with faint praise as a “beautiful, frictionless grey toybox that puts nothing in the way of you playing it for hours and wondering what you’ve done with your life.”
Since then, Blizzard have cocked things up withpatches that nerfed players' fun, then apologised and graduallyreversed them. Responses from its dedicated communityremain mixed. Running free weekends usually suggests a certain confidence that a game is good enough to sell itself to players - although perhaps keeping the free weekend off Steam conversely speaks to its “Mixed” user review rating on that storefront.
