Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Shrike]

Apparently at the end of Diablo 3, you join GWAR.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Of course, now we have to know if the witch doctor gets a cuttlefish of cthulhu...

[Paelos]

I have the distinct feeling my barbarian is going to look like a walking trash can with pointy bits.

[Sjofn]

So will mine. Neither will have pants, though, so there's that?

[MuffinMan]

Well then their pointy bits will sure be on display.

[Lantyssa]

The heels and dual crossbows on the demon hunter don't seem so out of place now.  She was just flaunting her silly early.

[Amaron]

Diablo 4 will be topping this by adding triple wield and the teeth slot.   You heard it here first.

[Furiously]

Diablo 4 will be topping this by adding triple wield and the teeth slot.   You heard it here first.

Not spike slots on each armor slot?

[Amaron]

They need to appeal to the asian markets and spike slots aren't as big as teeth slots over there.

Source:

[rattran]

Maybe we'll get lucky, and that 3rd armor will be late hell, then back to the middle for early inferno, and the 1st one for late inferno.

[LK]

Blizzard needs to learn Conservation of Epic.

[Sand]

Yowza.  Is it too early to start asking for an appearance tab?

Also re: Leveling.  I am a bit sad also that max level seems easily attainable.  Not because I think its neat to lord level 99 over people, but because I think its neat that a relatively wide variety of character levels could actually participate in the "end game" of Diablo II.  Maybe you couldn't farm Hell Meph super easy, but you could certainly farm NM Meph, get some decent stuff, a bit of exp, and maybe get lucky with something great like a Shaftstop.   Seems like here the "real" game will simply start at level 60.  I suppose in the long run it doesn't matter THAT much, but it was something I did like about the old one that I guess has been "updated" for the new one.

Getting levels in D2 was always easy. I could max out a new toon in a couple of casual hours  of cow levels if I remember correctly.

[Malakili]

Yowza.  Is it too early to start asking for an appearance tab?

Also re: Leveling.  I am a bit sad also that max level seems easily attainable.  Not because I think its neat to lord level 99 over people, but because I think its neat that a relatively wide variety of character levels could actually participate in the "end game" of Diablo II.  Maybe you couldn't farm Hell Meph super easy, but you could certainly farm NM Meph, get some decent stuff, a bit of exp, and maybe get lucky with something great like a Shaftstop.   Seems like here the "real" game will simply start at level 60.  I suppose in the long run it doesn't matter THAT much, but it was something I did like about the old one that I guess has been "updated" for the new one.

Getting levels in D2 was always easy. I could max out a new toon in a couple of casual hours  of cow levels if I remember correctly.

This seems unlikely to me.  You could certainly get to a point where you were fine for the end game in a single evening if you had friends to rush you, but hitting level 99 was not a trivial task to do in a couple hours.

[Sand]

Yowza.  Is it too early to start asking for an appearance tab?

Also re: Leveling.  I am a bit sad also that max level seems easily attainable.  Not because I think its neat to lord level 99 over people, but because I think its neat that a relatively wide variety of character levels could actually participate in the "end game" of Diablo II.  Maybe you couldn't farm Hell Meph super easy, but you could certainly farm NM Meph, get some decent stuff, a bit of exp, and maybe get lucky with something great like a Shaftstop.   Seems like here the "real" game will simply start at level 60.  I suppose in the long run it doesn't matter THAT much, but it was something I did like about the old one that I guess has been "updated" for the new one.

Getting levels in D2 was always easy. I could max out a new toon in a couple of casual hours  of cow levels if I remember correctly.

This seems unlikely to me.  You could certainly get to a point where you were fine for the end game in a single evening if you had friends to rush you, but hitting level 99 was not a trivial task to do in a couple hours.

I honestly dont know. Its been years and years since Ive played D2. I just remember that leveling was always easy, especially with the cow levels.

[Amaron]

I honestly dont know. Its been years and years since Ive played D2. I just remember that leveling was always easy, especially with the cow levels.

Yea getting to mid 70 was easy if you had people twinking you and power leveling you in cow levels.   After that the level curve became very extreme though.   Nobody really cared because you only used a couple skills in D2 so 70 levels was plenty of points.    D2 at release was actually fairly moderate leveling though.   Most of the "easy" leveling stuff came from the expansion and the fact that at least a couple people in your game would by then have amazing gear and just mow through mobs.

[Sand]

Well you might be thinking about post 1.10 patch. They nerfed the shit out of cow level exp and drops with that patch so leveling became much tougher. Prior to that the hard part was simply running through the various difficulty completion levels in order to get in to hell cow games.

By that point I had been one of the top barbs on bnet for awhile and quit playing.

[Amaron]

Well you might be thinking about post 1.10 patch.

I think it was 1.06 or something when I played?   Are you sure your friends weren't exploiting something?   I mean 1-99 in even a week of 24/7 would of been impossible and you said a couple hours.

[Mosesandstick]

Getting to 99 in classic took an unbelievable amount of time (<1.08). After LOD it was a lot quicker, but still took a lot of time. Getting to 80+ in one day was possible, but things really slowed down after that. 1.10+ was when they put in level requirements for you to progress difficulties and certain quests.

[Sand]

Probably just a case of nostalgia plus my old age induced senility.

[Furiously]

I've thought some more on those armor models... I'm not nearly as excited about the game as I was before.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

What gets me is how dated/boring they look. Ridiculous, ugly armour, okay, but looking like a polygon-count-improved version of 1998... not so much.

[Shrike]

Armor looks varied a lot in D2. There were a lot of things my amazons wouldn't be caught dead in, but plenty more that looked just fine.

I'm assuming--and it might not be warranted--that the armor progression in D3 will be similar to D2. If that's the case, I'm not really seeing a problem, unless there's some individual piece you need for stats and it happens to look like hell. Woudn't be the first time (shaman T9...) that a character had to take one for the team visually to get a needed upgrade.

[Azuredream]

The top photo just boggles my mind, I'd love to find a single person who would take any of the other two vs the one on the far left. I'd rather a complete inferno armor set just turns me into a mushroom or something. At least that would be funny.

[Ingmar]

Reserving judgement til I see how they actually look in game while moving etc. rather than in a blurry PowerPoint slide.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hay guys!

This is made by the group that made Wow. Just FYI. 

[Hawkbit]

Which means one of the expansions will allow for some kind of a convoluted gear appearance void mindmeld merge, instead of a simple appearance tab.

[K9]

I find it strange how people can froth so hard about this in one thread, and then we jump to a warhammer thread and suddenly overly-stylised armour is the shit.

I realise that some people are solidly in one camp or the other, but there is definitely some overlap.

[Malakili]

Reserving judgement til I see how they actually look in game while moving etc. rather than in a blurry PowerPoint slide.

True, it looks worse given the medium, but the design is the design, no matter the fidelity.

For comparison I found this random screenshot on google:



The winged helm looks a little silly on the sorceress, but overall everything is a bit less....oversized and goofy.

[K9]

It did annoy me how they re-used models for higher-quality gear in D2; it was always annoying to have a bunch of quite awesome stuff, and then some hat that looked like it was made out of old paint tins.

[Malakili]

It did annoy me how they re-used models for higher-quality gear in D2; it was always annoying to have a bunch of quite awesome stuff, and then some hat that looked like it was made out of old paint tins.

Well, some of the art looked better than others, but I didn't have a problem with the fact that they reused the art per difficulty level.  I always liked how sorceresses looked in the "early" (cap ->shako, quilted -> ghost armor) items better than the late game items anyway.  I like the idea that there is a broad set art on viable items rather than endless "art escalation"

[Velorath]

Hay guys!

This is made by the group that made Wow. Just FYI. 

The lead designer is actually a former Relic guy who worked on Dawn of War and Company of Heroes.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hay guys!

This is made by the group that made Wow. Just FYI. 

The lead designer is actually a former Relic guy who worked on Dawn of War and Company of Heroes.

Its a requirement when applying that you can make shoulder pads larger than elephants.

[kildorn]

Hay guys!

This is made by the group that made Wow. Just FYI. 

The lead designer is actually a former Relic guy who worked on Dawn of War and Company of Heroes.

Its a requirement when applying that you can make shoulder pads larger than elephants.

He's from Dawn of War, he probably brought coveted Absurd Hat technology with him.

[Ingmar]

I can't think of *any* absurd shoulders in Warhammer, either. 

[Sjofn]

I find it strange how people can froth so hard about this in one thread, and then we jump to a warhammer thread and suddenly overly-stylised armour is the shit.

I realise that some people are solidly in one camp or the other, but there is definitely some overlap.

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but the stylized giant shoulders in Warhammer are ... done better. Especially if it's not, you know, orcs. They're big and stupid, yet still look vaguely functional enough that I can suspend my disbelief without a second thought. There are big spiky shoulderpads for the orcs, but that's just sort of the orc THING. Orcs SPECIFICALLY. In, say, WoW, they take the giant shoulder pads and then add giant spikes that would take your head clean off if you so much as shrug, and give them to BOTH SIDES instead of it being something you can just say "well, it's that one race's THING, and they are stupid as dirt, so of course they go for huge and spiky instead of settling for huge and adorned with something tasteful, like a picture of a skull baby."

I probably didn't explain that well enough. I guess a simpler way of putting it is Warhammer's art style is more coherent to me than WoW's. I prefer stylized graphics almost all of the time, but it still needs to make sense within the style, and sometimes Blizzard's art team loses its grip on that.


EDIT: AHA I JUST FIGURED OUT WHY I DON'T THINK BLIZZARD SUCCEEDED IN MAKING THE DUDE DEMON HUNTER HOT LIKE THEY PROMISED

His posture sucks. Stand up straight, you bastard! Someone on their team has a slouch fetish.

[K9]

Maybe blizzard don't get the looks right always, hell there are plenty of fucktastic armour sets in WoW. I just find it strange when I see people arguing about how realistic an outfit is one one hand then froth about something like this on the other. 



For the record, I'm fine with the over-styled stuff. It's all loony escapism anyway, right?