Blizzard is expected to release a beta of Diablo 3 later this year, but a group of journalists were recently invited to the developer's California headquarters to get an early look at what the rest of us will be playing. According to reports, the game is as deep and polished as we've come to expect from Blizzard, though it doesn't come without a few hang-ups.

Chief among said hangups is the fact that the game can't be played offline. As Eurogamer reported, the game will save your characters in the cloud and utilizes a banner system to display your in-game exploits and experience. But the cost of these online features is that the game will always have to be online in order to be playable.

The beta itself covers the first eight levels of the game—which apparently can be completed in around an hour if you rush—and lets players use each of the game's five different classes. Kotaku has a great rundown of how the classes are shaping up. The barbarian class utilizes frenzy instead of mana and features abilities such as the power to transform into a giant, powerful beast; the witchdoctor can summon everything from firebats (described as a flamethrower with bats in it) to creatures that can turn enemies into chickens; the wizard can slow down time, coat its skin with protective diamonds, and even has an alternate form; the monk is powered by spirit and features a wide array of martial arts moves; and the long-range demon hunter gets its power from both hatred and discipline, which aid both offensive and defensive abilities.

In short, it looks like the five classes will offer up quite a few options to players.

A life without skill points

One of the biggest changes this time around is that there are no longer skill points. Each character has six skill slots, and both skills and slots upgrade automatically as you progress through the game. You can swap skills in and out of slots as you like. The idea behind the change is to make each decision have more impact.

"Would you rather make 20 small decisions or three big ones?" Blizzard's Wyatt Cheng told Joystiq. "What we find, especially when it comes to defining your character, is that three big ones is more interesting and compelling."

There is a rune system, however, to give players more customization options. Runes add effects to skills and can alter their strength, which should allow for a lot of freedom for higher-level players.

There's a story in Diablo?

Diablo 3 will put a larger focus on narrative when compared to the previous games in the series, but the developers are attempting to do so in a way that's as unobtrusive as possible. Instead of simply reading text-based quests to get story, there will also be lots of audio that lets you listen in to what's happening without interrupting all of the hacking and slashing.

The beta begins in a place called New Tristam, a town built upon the ruins of the town from the original Diablo. It's a mining town, but when it's struck by a meteor and beset by undead creatures, it ends up in need of some help. You end the beta by defeating the skeleton king, another nod to the first game, who just so happens to be the source of all the undead baddies. With regard to the first chapter, Eurogamer explains that "like everything else about Diablo 3, its narrative has an effortlessness about it that belies how carefully put together it is."

No mods here

In addition to the fact you'll always need to play the game online, one other detail popped up during the preview: according to PC Gamer, Diablo 3 won't support mods of any sort. Unlike StarCraft 2, which embraced mods, they will be prohibited in Diablo 3 duo to a "variety of gameplay and security reasons."

No date has been set for when the beta will be playable by the rest of us, but Blizzard has said to expect it at some point this year.