If you aren't looking to be the biggest baddest Witch Doctor on the block there isn't any reason for you to invest cash on items if you don't want to.
Does anyone know how many people will be allowed into the beta (the one for the public)?
Also, how are people to be invited: only directly by Blizzard, or will other beta players get to invite friends?
It all depends on what you want out of it. I don't play D3 (well, using D2 as a reference) for PvP or ladders. I played D2 to chillax with my friends or un-wind after a long day. Same with plenty of other players. If you aren't looking to be the biggest baddest Witch Doctor on the block there isn't any reason for you to invest cash on items if you don't want to.
You'll probably be able to play well enough without, but if you want a good shot at items good enough that people will buy them with money you're probably going to need to be towards the top of the game, which means you'll need to pay money. The person I was replying to implied he'd beable to just sell for real money the items he didn't want. No one is going to pay for your normal mode junk that you found when the people who paid to win are getting items from hell mode.
Are characters and AHs even linked like that? I would assume there would be a division between difficulties if the gear is vastly different.
I would suspect they are, but it's really neither here or there in regards to that. People aren't going to bother to pay except for things that are exceptional at the time. I probably exaggerated a bit with what I was saying, but if you look at where Blizzard's marketing have been going the last couple of years and you look at the set up of Diablo III it'd be irrational to assume it won't be rigged to perpetuate in the way that I previously said (akin to a very complicated slot machine). I could be wrong though.
The reason why I brought up segmenting players based on difficulty is that higher difficulties are supposed to have a chance to drop better gear. The problem arises when a player in a lesser difficulty is simply able to buy gear that is not normally attainable to them (i.e. only drops on a higher difficulty), which gives him an edge. As much as having an auction house may ruin the spirit of a gear grinding game, the players are still acquiring gear that they could technically farm themselves.
Although, honestly... given how the game is much more single player or co-op (with friends) oriented, the fact that Joe Schmoe bought the Sword of a Thousand Truths from some hardcore player doesn't really mean much at all to anyone else (except maybe his co-op buddies).
Ok so... how do I know if I have been chosen?
Do they:
1) Send a confirmation e-mail to the address I used for my Battle.net account?
2) Send a confirmation e-mail to the address I used to link my PayPal account to my Battle.net account for digital purchases?
3) Send some form of confirmation directly on my Battle.net account without sending any e-mail?
4) Combination(s) of the above?
The reason why I brought up segmenting players based on difficulty is that higher difficulties are supposed to have a chance to drop better gear. The problem arises when a player in a lesser difficulty is simply able to buy gear that is not normally attainable to them (i.e. only drops on a higher difficulty), which gives him an edge. As much as having an auction house may ruin the spirit of a gear grinding game, the players are still acquiring gear that they could technically farm themselves.
The nature of the shared stash makes me think that players may not be segregated. If they were, then the shared stash would provide little benefit to someone that wants to play on different difficulties, which is a natural progression for some games (i.e. beat it on normal and go to hard mode). But if they tried to segregate players from trading between difficulties, but still had a completely open shared stash, players would just trade down difficulties via the shared stash, and sell stuff on a normal mode mule.
Although, honestly... given how the game is much more single player or co-op (with friends) oriented, the fact that Joe Schmoe bought the Sword of a Thousand Truths from some hardcore player doesn't really mean much at all to anyone else (except maybe his co-op buddies).
So was there any confirmation that we need starcraft 2 or WoW to even have a chance? Because I don't, and that would be a pretty bummer reason to be left out. It's an older bnet account that had D2 on it.
I have every blizzard game in my battle.net ... no beta invite for me.
I have the opinion that invites are given random...and that sucks tbh
Btw, D3 beta client has been semi-hacked to the point where you can make a character and then walk around town.
However, still no NPC dialogue, stash, mosnters, map generation, etc etc etc, since that is all server side.