Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[photek]

"Nobody ever listens to me!" -- Deckard Cain

 

Yeah noticed the same, quite funny and at the same time awesome that the Barbarian acts like one 

[Shrike]

Geezus palomino. I can't wait. After seeing the trailers I can't even begin to concentrate on WoW. Or PSU.

Dammit, Blizzard, it'll be 18 months to two years waiting and it's already driving me crazy!

Ahhh, hell, just have to fire up D2 on this box (even though it does look like ass scaled to 1920x1200) and maybe even fire up my old Playstation Diablo disk. Prison of Bone...yeah...

[Engels]

hmm, odd, the barbarian game play trailer from gamer's hell comes out all corrupted on my media player.

[Falwell]

Found a couple things digging around this evening...

1) http://youtube.com/watch?v=MlcQotL3wjk Audio version of the D3 development panel. Jay Wilson (lead dev) discusses what they are changing and why, what they aren't changing and why and more...

2) Jay Wilson appears to have been the lead dev on Dawn of War. Most thought he was brought in by Blizzard to work on SCII. Obviously not the case.

[Ozzu]

My pants are going crazy. Diablo 3 at last! 

[Trouble]

In terms of release date:

We kind of have this rule of, ideally, we announce a game a year to a year and a half before the game comes out. That's our theory, and then three years later [trails off].

Basically what that says is it's a year at absolute minimum, and you'll be lucky to see it by Christmas 2009. Put it back in your pants folks.

[WindupAtheist]

I was hoping for a subscription and regular content update.  I loved Diablo II but the patches and xpac took forever.  There's so much potential for a content patch every 3-4 months.  With out them the game become repetitive too fast - for me at least.

No.  I, for one, am glad that Blizzard has resisted the Hellgate urge to go "Oh fuck, look at all the money WoW makes!  Quick, slap a subscription fee onto everything!"  I mean anyone who's thinking ought to know that SC2 and D3 are going to lead into StarCraft Galaxies and World of Diablo anyway.

[Velorath]

I will buy this game and will likely love it.  The cynic in me though is a little underwhelmed that after all this time, it doesn't look as epic as I would think, given that it's been 8 years since the last game.  The beginning of that barbarian gameplay video damn near put me to sleep.

[Trippy]

Also by rendering things at the angle and distance they are it saves them some artwork headaches. It sounded like they said each class will have their own armor looks - lot's of work. But if you render from that angle the armor only has to look good from fairly far away and doesn't need to be too detailed. Same with the enemies. In an FPS game you could get right up in their face so they have to look good from all angles and up close.

The gameplay video shows him zooming in at various points and there's that mini in-game cutscene with Cain that's zoomed in as well.

[UnSub]

Or maybe Australians don't like fun? It's a crazy world, who knows!

I played a lot of Diablo with a friend via a 33.6k dial-up modem.

I played a bit of Diablo II solo with a Necro, got to 4 acts in, found out that I'd put too many points in my basic Skeletons to actually have a workable character going forward. Since there was no repec, I quit.

Diablo III? We'll see. I'd be a lot more likely to multiplayer it, which adds a lot more fun.

Besides, this is f13, where we only like games that haven't come out yet or are less than a month old. 

[Venkman]

I will buy this game and will likely love it.  The cynic in me though is a little underwhelmed that after all this time, it doesn't look as epic as I would think, given that it's been 8 years since the last game.  The beginning of that barbarian gameplay video damn near put me to sleep.

Same. And I was particularly entertained by this quote from the lead designer (reported on Gamasutra):

Diablo 3’s lead designer Jay Wilson explained the much-awaited title would be “one of the first games to… have a lot of replayability through randomness.”

Really? And D2 didn't have randomized zones either 8 years ago?!

[WindupAtheist]

WTF?  Is he forgetting that Diablo is basically just a gussied-up Roguelike?

[Trippy]

That "..." seems important.

[lamaros]

Also it kinda depends who he was talking to. People say stupid shit all the time when trying to explain things to the ignorant.

[NiX]

We're already at the point where people start nitpicking what the developer says?

[Shrike]

D2 wasn't all that random. There were a series of possbilities for each map area, but if you played enough (and you should have) you saw them all pretty quickly and knew what to expect about 1 minute after zoning in. Now what mob pack modifiers you might run into...that could be a really nasty surprise. Fanatism aura death knights? Oooh, yeah. MSLEBs? Good thing I like ranged and the panzer-valk can take a real whuppin'.

Regardless of randomness or instanceness or whatever, it's Diablo. That's the big thing. If done right it'll be lots of fun, some depth, some frustration with Blizzard's flailing about (and failing) at class balance, and a whole lot of smiles from Diablo fans like me. I'm hoping like hell the amazon makes the cut again (remember in the D2 manual, the males of the society were mentioned...) with missile and melee weapons.

I had to pull my bowazons out of retirement last night (they were down to about 50 days again) and make some CS runs to walk the dog. Easy stuff even on hell diff and it really does fire up the anticipation of D3, though I"m sure that will fade over the next year or two, damnit. After the TK run tonight in WoW, my strikazon is coming out of her retirement and going after Baal in hell--in her magic find gear. Good times still. 

[WindupAtheist]

D2 wasn't totally random in that roguelike "Oh shit why is an ancient dragon on level 9?!" sort of way, but it mixed things up enough to keep it from becoming totally robotic.  You know the Arcane Sanctuary will be shaped like a cross with the waypoint in the middle, but you don't know which arm of the cross has the Summoner at the end.  When you're looking for Lam Esen's Tome in one of the six mini-dungeons scattered around Kurast, you can't immediately skip to the right one just because you've done it before.  And so forth.

And yeah, all the D3 talk has me playing D2 again as well.  Offline, because Battlenet never seemed to add anything to the experience besides lag and retarded people.  My new zeal pally just killed Mephisto in normal.  Is it me, or are there a LOT more better-than-blue drops than there used to be?

[schild]

It's hard to say better than "blue" when you just went through Travincal. That's the first great place for loot on your first run through on normal.

Also, I think I'm only going to play Hardcore characters in Diablo 3. TRIAL BY FIRE.

[WindupAtheist]

I mean in general.  I found an awful lot of yellows in act 1.

[Tannhauser]

Allow me to predict Blizz's long-term strategery now.

Since SC2 is a RTS one may assume Blizz doesn't want another MMO to 'suck away the WoW playerbase' and compete with itself.
So this means D3 will also NOT be a MMO and will be another, shinier version of D2 with more bells and even a whistle or two.

I would kill my family and burn down their houses for a Mass Effect type MMO.

My smugness knows no bounds.  I'm in your head Blizzard!

Seriously though, I am pumped for D3.  Looks amazing. 

[Shrike]

There was an update on b.net when I logged in last night. Ladder reset, I suppose, but there might have been some tweaking in the drop tables. Ladder games always did have much better drop rates. Still, these characters haven't been on the ladder in a long, long time.

I was in hell diff, but I noticed a lot of yellow drops and also got 3 gold uniques in two runs of the Chaos Sanctuary. Neither of my bowazons has dedicated magic find gear, but they do have some magic find, especially on charms. Still, random chance or slightly tweaked drop rates? Hard to say, but anything is possible.

I was going to hit AV in WoW, but now I"ll think I'll take my strikazon to Travincal and then settle Mephisto's hash in hell diff and see what pops in a full magic find set of gear (i.e. 300 magic find in equipment).

[Ratman_tf]

There was something on the D3 FAQ about randomized quests, and class specific quests.

What will questing be like in Diablo III? Will it be similar to Diablo II?
Our plans for the story and quest mechanics are still under wraps. We'll go into detail on those elements of the game at a later date. We can say, however, that we expect to have class-based quests in addition to the main story-line quests.

Also, Diablo III builds on the random environments of the previous Diablo games by introducing a host of new ways to create random scripted events throughout the game. This creates a dense and exciting world alive with quests, NPCs, dynamic encounters, and viciously challenging new monsters and bosses. Diablo III's environments add a great deal of interactivity to the game, including destructible elements and environmental obstacles that can be turned against your enemies.

I love random game stuff. That's why I give Hellgate London such a pass on it's failings. (Buggy as the poor beastie is)
One of the things that was a bit of a disappointment re Diablo 2 for me was that it was more scripted and less random stuff.

I'd be perfectly fine if Diablo 3 took us back to Tristram and just rehashed the old Diablo storyline with updated graphics and gameplay. (Although looking at the concept art and stuff shows this is probably not the case...)

[Shrike]

From what is up on Blizzard's site, I think we'll be finding ourselves spending a fair amount of time in Tristram--and the cathedral and it's catacombs, which is way cool.

I think we'll find ourselves traveling quite a bit too, similar to D2. More of both, build on both, and maybe add in something totally new. That outdoor fight in the trailer reminded me an awful lot of Dungeon Siege. The good part of it.

I'm there. I'm so there.

[Murgos]

That outdoor fight in the trailer reminded me an awful lot of Dungeon Siege.

You are extremely confused.

[dusematic]

This is the most excited about gaming I've been since I first started hearing about this nutty game called Ultima Online.  I went out and bought D2 and the xpac again.  I haven't played in about 6 years.  I'm going to get more hardcore with Diablo than I ever have.  All in anticipation for Diablo 3.


If anyone wants to get real with me let me know.  Until then I'll be playing single player.

[Moaner]

Also, I think I'm only going to play Hardcore characters in Diablo 3. TRIAL BY FIRE.

I know I am.  In fact, I think I'm going to play some Diablo 2 hardcore mode.  I don't think I ever have before.

[Jobu]

I never played Diablo, and I probably won't play or buy Diablo 3.

But seeing the screens, I had to say I love Blizzard for being one of the only PC studios anywhere to actually use all our computers and hardware to render art, instead of just trying to re-create life. I hope it's a practice more studios start trying to rip off.

[WindupAtheist]

Funny how everyone everywhere, me included, went "DIABLO 3!  ME WANT!  CAN'T HAVE... SHIT...  I'LL PLAY DIABLO 2 INSTEAD!"  I'm gonna have to laugh when it shoots up 12000 places on the sales charts from wherever a game that old was last week.

[schild]

or Titan Quest. Like the sane ones with widescreen monitors.

[Venkman]

Maybe I'm the minority, but I just don't get why I should care about D3 right now. I loved D2 back in the day, but I'd rather have something I didn't play then nor a few times since. This seems like an obvious setup for D3 MMO even going so far as using the SC3 engine which itself is doing the same thing for SC MMO. I'd rather have seen something more than what amounts to a UI improvement.

Yea, I'll buy it and enjoy it. It's just not on the list of waiting-in-line-for titles. But then, little has lately so whatevs.

[stu]

Funny how everyone everywhere, me included, went "DIABLO 3!  ME WANT!  CAN'T HAVE... SHIT...  I'LL PLAY DIABLO 2 INSTEAD!"  I'm gonna have to laugh when it shoots up 12000 places on the sales charts from wherever a game that old was last week.

lol. The Diablo Battle Chest is now ranked #16 on Amazon. I think I'll just re-install Titan Quest for now.

[DeathInABottle]

I'd rather have seen something more than what amounts to a UI improvement.

I would much, much rather have a simple "UI improvement" than an attempt to significantly alter the core gameplay.  Diablo II was near-perfect; I'll take more of the same, please.

[Hutch]

Maybe I'm the minority, but I just don't get why I should care about D3 right now. I loved D2 back in the day, but I'd rather have something I didn't play then nor a few times since. This seems like an obvious setup for D3 MMO even going so far as using the SC3 engine which itself is doing the same thing for SC MMO. I'd rather have seen something more than what amounts to a UI improvement.

Yea, I'll buy it and enjoy it. It's just not on the list of waiting-in-line-for titles. But then, little has lately so whatevs.

You'll change your tune in 2011, when D3 launches.

[Azazel]

Maybe I'm the minority, but I just don't get why I should care about D3 right now. I loved D2 back in the day, but I'd rather have something I didn't play then nor a few times since. This seems like an obvious setup for D3 MMO even going so far as using the SC3 engine which itself is doing the same thing for SC MMO. I'd rather have seen something more than what amounts to a UI improvement.

Yea, I'll buy it and enjoy it. It's just not on the list of waiting-in-line-for titles. But then, little has lately so whatevs.

You'll change your tune in 2011, when D3 launches.

I think that's his point...

[Calantus]

I never get the "it's just like the old game with some improvements" complaints. What's the point of making a sequal that is far removed from its predicessors? The Diablo formula works, and fans of Diablo want more Diablo. I'd rather they deliver Diablo 3 than some other game set in the Diablo universe and labeled Diablo 3. If they want to make a wholly different game type they can make a new franchise or create a spinoff game. Diablo 3 should be like Diablo and Diablo 2, only better.