theneurotoxin Posted June 28, 2011 Report Share Posted June 28, 2011 If you can run WoL you will most likely be able to run D3. I doubt there will be a demo; a closed beta perhaps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saumil Posted June 29, 2011 Report Share Posted June 29, 2011 If your system can run Titan Quest, it'll be able to run D3. TQ has better graphics than D3 and is also somewhat badly optimized. So it's a good systems test . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liquid ocelot Posted July 7, 2011 Report Share Posted July 7, 2011 (edited) Diablo 3 media event on the 27th: 1)First look at D3 Beta, and hands on. 2)Reveal of unannounced D3 stuff and Bnet features (more facebook integration...fail.net 0.2 *yawn*) 3)Embargo till the 1st of august. Beta mostly around mid august! Edited July 7, 2011 by Liquid ocelot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shekdown Posted July 7, 2011 Report Share Posted July 7, 2011 Finally! Must be 40 years since the last Diablo! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theneurotoxin Posted July 28, 2011 Report Share Posted July 28, 2011 It lives! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_rock098 Posted July 29, 2011 Report Share Posted July 29, 2011 It lives! the beta has started? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theneurotoxin Posted July 29, 2011 Report Share Posted July 29, 2011 (edited) No. One more pic suggesting an imminent beta program: Edited July 29, 2011 by Art Vandelay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saumil Posted July 30, 2011 Report Share Posted July 30, 2011 That camshot looks like it's just Baal's throneroom but flipped left-right. Zero for effort . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_rock098 Posted July 30, 2011 Report Share Posted July 30, 2011 the inventory looks new. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyler Posted July 30, 2011 Report Share Posted July 30, 2011 Yeah the UI looks different. But the large text / font looks shopped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liquid ocelot Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 (edited) The NDA has lifted...quite a big change for the story: The wanderer is back, but not in the way you think. TLDR: D1 Warrior (the Dark Wanderer) was retconned, he is now King Leoric's eldest son. Fire reigns from the sky, dead arise from graves, bring heroes to Tristram. Book of Cain fills the 20-year gap between LoD and D3. Leah is Adria's daughter and Cain's adopted niece. 6 active skills instead of 7. Traits revamped into "passive skills," only 3 active at a time. Cauldron of Jordan: Allows you to sell items from battle. Nephalem Cube: Salvages items. Stone of Recall: D3's version of a hearthstone. Stash is huge! Larger than LoD's and has 5 pages, that you can purchase for gold. DH has 2 separate resources, Hatred and Discipline, both regenerate at a certain rate. Beta will only be a portion of Act 1 and will be relatively small. Real money auction house as well as a gold auction house and direct trading. Banner system to represent each person individually. Source: http://www.diablofans.com/ Presentation As we all sat there waiting anxiously for what was about to happen, a microphone clicked on and we were told that we were going to catch a glimpse of the introduction cinematic to the game, which was absolutely beautiful might I add. It began similar to how the Marvel comic movies begin, with a comic-looking type thingy, which then comes to real life. Imagine that, but with those eagles from the Diablo 1 intro cinematic, as well as Diablo, and some Angels, set in a desert-looking environment. From there, it depicted angels dropping from the skies and demons stampeding along the ground, until the two forces clashed, and then ... the screen went black. The rest we will have to wait for until we actually get our hands on the game. Shortly thereafter, Chris Metzen came in to fill us in on the past lore of the Diablo Series (if you need a refresher, I highly recommend listening to DiabloCast Episode 12) and set the stage for where we would begin in Diablo 3. Though, it is worth mentioning, that some of the previous lore has recently been changed; the Dark Wanderer, who was also the Diablo 1 Warrior is now King Leoric's eldest son, making the original game revolve somewhat around Leoric's family. It was also said that the Book of Cain would fill in the 20-year gap between Lord of Destruction and D3, from Deckard Cain's perspective. Diablo 3 then begins with apocalyptic-type events, with fire falling from the sky, and the dead rising from the graves in Tristram (which explains how we fight King Leoric again). These mysterious events lead our hero classes to Tristram, where they meet Leah, who is also looking to seek answers to these events, which were prophesied so very long ago (the "End of Days" and the "Fallen Star"). Leah, who is Cain's adopted neice (since the age of 8), is also the real daughter of Adria the Witch, from D1. In fact, throughout the gameplay, Leah takes you to Adria's Hut. Following Metzen's detailed run-through of the lore, Jay Wilson stood up ready to introduce us to some epic gameplay demos of each of the characters, as well as some cool character cinematics (such as the Male DH). Jay showed off some pretty sweet skills from each class, as well as some major features/changes we needed to be aware of. The first of which, is that the talisman was removed (yes, we knew this) and replaced with 3 Quest-item slots, all of which we get in Act 1. These three slots are for the Cauldron of Jordan, the Nephalem Cube, and the Stone of Recall. The CoJ (cwuttheydidthar?) is used for selling items directly from the battlefields of Sanctuary, allowing us to not have to travel back to town to unload (the Scroll of Wealth, in turn, was removed). The Cube is used for salvaging goods, as we have previously heard at the last BlizzCon, and the SoR is basically a hearthstone. Bashiok had mentioned that there would be some form of Town Portal returning to the game, and this is how it is being done. We can "recall" ourselves into town as we need to, which creates a personal portal from the location you just left. This allows you to return to your previous location with ease and allows you to continue fighting. It's also worth noting that there is currently no cooldown on the SoR. I would also like to mention that the new stash (it's only account-wide, there are no personal stashes) is HUGE! It's larger than the LoD stash and then has 5 different pages (that we have to purchase with gold to access) expanding it even more. In addition to the three new items and stash information, we were told that the Skill system has gotten a complete revamp. Instead of 7 active skills, we now only have 6. In addition, the traits system was removed and turned into a "passive skills" section on the skill window, cleaning up the UI quite a lot, and allowing us to choose Skills and "traits" (passive skills) all in one window. That in mind, we can also only have up to 3 passive skills at one time. However, we begin the game with only 2 active skills and no passives. The last four active skill slots can be unlocked at levels 6, 12, 18, and 24, and the three passive skill slots are unlocked at levels 10, 20, and 30. So by the time we complete Normal, you should have unlocked all of the possible skill slots. Now, skill and trait points were also removed. Once you reach a certain level, you unlock X skill and/or X passive that you can swap in and out as you see fit. Again though, you can only have 6 actives and 3 passives at any given time. The reasoning behind this is to remove the Diablo 2 style of thinking, where we save all of our points and dump them into better skills, once we hit the end game. Jay said that they found employees (in the alpha) dumping all their points into say, Magic Missiles, until they unlocked Arcane Orb. They would then respec, and dump all their points into Arcane Orb, until they unlocked the next tier skill. This system didn't really make much sense and allowing us to hot-swap skills/passives whenever we want gives us the ability to "test" the skills without worrying about wasting any points. With skill points gone, skills/traits will scale with your level/gear. For example, a skill like Bash will scale with your weapon damage, whereas something like Disintegrate will scale with level. Yes, big changes! I'm actually a really big fan of the revamping of the skill/trait system. As I said earlier, it really cleans up the UI by consolidating the system into just one window, and the ability to hotswap skills is awesome. It means that I will never have to respec, which in turn means I will never have to have more than one character for the class (unless I want a male/female). This system will allow me to play and test each skill in my build without punishment, which is fine by me. They also revealed the Demon Hunter resource, which was previously unknown, save for small tidbits. Essentially, the Demon Hunter uses two resource systems, neither of which affect each other. They are two completely separate resources: Hatred and Discipline. You can think of Hatred as being similar to the Wizard's resource, Arcane Power, because it regenerates rather quickly. On the other hand, while the Discipline resource regenerates, it does so at a slower rate. Some interesting skills worth mentioning that Jay showed off were the Wizard's Archon skill, where she turns into a being made of energy, which completely changes her skills for X amount of time. The Barbarian also had a similar skill, called Wrath of the Berzerker, which... turned him Super Saiyan. They also showed off one of the Witch Doctor's new pets, the Gargantuan (which reminded me of the Humble Bumble from Rudolph), and a few of the Monk's Mantra's (auras). Below is the B-roll video that we were given in the press kit for all of you to check out. After Jay's presentation of the new gameplay features and skills, Rob Pardo stood up and flipped on his power point presentation about Battle.net. He began by reminiscing about the old Bnet 1.0 days, when the service was first launched with Diablo 1, and later updated with Diablo 2. He then went on to explain to us that Battle.net 2.0 will include public games, a PvP matchmaking system, a quick-join system, and co-op option to play with our party members. He also introduced to us what is called the "Banner System," and that is simply what it sounds like: a banner that is used to represent our characters. This banner can be completely customized, based on whatever achievements we've gained, level we are, PvP matches we've won, difficulties completed, among a number of other things. In addition, while in-game, players may also click on our banner from town to teleport directly to us and join us in the action. Here comes the bombshell: he also introduced to us the auction house. The real money auction house. Yes, an auction house that you pay/sell items for real cash and vice versa. As soon as this dropped, it was silent, though I couldn't stop myself from spitting out "Bwhat?!" to break the silence permeating throughout the room. He went on to tell us that it would be a regional AH, based completely on money. On the AH, there will also be an autobidding system, with a smart search, and secure item transfers. It seemed to me like he waited a few slides before he actually let us know that there would also be a gold-based auction house, as well as in-game trading... Maybe just to see our reactions or something, but do not fret! You will not be forced to use real money. In addition, we'll be able to pull items from our shared stash to place into the AH. Their reasoning behind doing this is simply because the players want it. If the players didn't want it, they would not have been using shady third party sites, like d2jsp in the D2 era of the series. Essentially, all Blizzard did was make something that was previously unofficial and sketchy, official and supported. Though, I should also mention that they are planning on selling/buying characters at some point in time as well, not at launch. For more information, read the AH overview and FAQ in the sections below. Play testing After that 30 minute interview, we were given a good 4.5 hours to get some game time in for ourselves. Force and I were Battle.net Buddies and played together for the entirety of our demo time. We were able to play through the game a few times, the content is relatively short (only about an hour of actual gameplay), and you finish at King Leoric, as most of you have already seen, unfortunately. The gameplay hasn't changed much since BlizzCon and there is no PvP in the Beta, so it's essentially just the first third of Act 1, up to King Leoric. I have to say though, I didn't think I'd enjoy playing the Monk as much as I did this time around. I still disliked playing the Witch Doctor, and of course, really enjoyed the Wizard/DH as I assumed I would. As far as the Barbarian goes, he's just not really for me. I made sure to try all classes just to see, which is why I was surprised about the Monk. Something I did think that I should mention was the in-depth character details page, which included: Damage Increase, Attack per second, Casting speed, Crit hit chance, Crit hit damage, Block amount, block chance, dodge chance, damage reduction, max life, life per second, life steal, life per kill, life per hit, max resource, move speed, gold find, and magic find... All of that information will be readily available to us in-game, without the use of any calculators, which should make gearing our characters up a lot easier to do. We also got a chance to play around with the three new quest items I mentioned above, the Nephalem Cube, Stone of Recall, and Cauldron of Jordan. They are all very simple to get the hang of, and it's great that I can salvage/sell items while in the wilderness. I like how they designed the Stone of Recall, because it allows us to not have to worry about carrying scrolls of TP and then restocking, we basically have our own hearthstone. Something I did notice though, was that you could use that and the Banner system to be rushed. I can create a new character, join my friend in Act 5, and start playing. I asked about this in the interview below, but Jay basically said that it's fine. They restricted experience you could potentially earn from higher level monsters, so I won't level uber quickly and I end up missing the entire story. So really, all you do is ruin the story, though if playing with your friends is that important, you may do so. Pics Interview with Jay wilson, Lead designer So this is primarily to talk about the Auction House, the Battle.net features that you heard about earlier today… Q: How do you feel about the obvious separation between the gold and the real-world AH? They’re both the exact same in terms of features and functionality and everything? In terms of use from the player base, clearly as a player, I would prefer to sell, for real money, any item, but as a buyer, I’d prefer to buy with gold. Do you feel it’s going to swing heavily to one side or the other? I feel it’s going to favor heavily the real-world one overall because, obviously again, I would prefer real money for selling an in-game item. A: I think people are going to lean more towards the real money AH and I think there is an answer for the person who says “I don’t want to trade in real money, I’d rather trade in gold…I mean, the gold AH is one of them and I think the gold AH will be viable to find a good amount of items, but one of the reasons we’re doing the free listings every week is to allow people to sell items to generate an e-balance so they never have to put real money into the system if they don’t want to. That allows someone to circumnavigate that option if they don’t want to buy with real money. And yeah, the e-balance is technically real money, but I earned it from items I sold and not from putting in a credit card. Q: I guess the biggest thing would be if everyone prefers to sell with real money on the AH then there won’t be nearly as many items in the gold AH, but I guess you kind of answered that. A: Yeah, and if the vast majority of people prefer the real money AH – or if the vast majority of people prefer the gold AH – that’s what the vast majority of people prefer. Q: Will there be some kind of mechanisms to balance out the need for gold so maybe there would be a way to counteract that? Like to actually need gold, let’s say I have $100 in my e-account, but I actually need some gold for whatever, maybe I would feel more inclined to sell it for gold if there was actually a need for gold. Like with D2 I never really felt it was important…once I had a million I didn’t really feel like I needed more. A: So the Artisan system we put in the game is really designed to be a constant gold recycling element, so crafting items has a lot of similarities to gambling; it’s just gambling with a little better understanding of what’s coming out the other side and every time you craft an item, there’s a material cost and the material cost pulls items out of the world, items equal money, also there’s a gold cost, so you have a big gold sink there. Enhancing items, combining gems, pulling gems out of things, socketing things, all of these have gold costs that increase as you get further into the game. So those are our primary elements of gold sinking. Q: What’s the party size gonna be for multiplayer? A: 4. That was easy! Q: Will gold be a sellable item? Because I think that the balances could become the currency exchange rate between gold to the dollar… A: Gold is a tradable item, and I make the distinction because Blizzard doesn’t sell gold. We will not create any items or commodities. Players are able to sell gold. Q: Will that be regulated then? X gold sells for… A: Nope, it’s a player-driven market, so one of the things that we’re really focused on is making sure that we have as few inputs and incentives into the market as possible. We want it to be really a player-driven market and a player-driven service. So it’s one of the reasons we talk about having flat fees instead of a percentage. If we have a percentage, there would be an incentive for us to drive up the value of items to get bigger percentages. It’s one of the things we considered: let’s do a flat fee because we don’t need more of a perception that there’s an incentive there for us. We want it to be a very player-driven trading economy and that’s what the core of Diablo is, is a trading game. Q: As far as keeping the economy not stagnant and still exciting, one thing I notice about D2 is once I had my items, they never degraded, I was pretty much good to go; I never really needed to upgrade. I see that in a player-driven economy as kind of a big problem, because eventually prices will taper off and at some point, it’s not worth even putting my item on the AH because everyone has one. That leads to a lot of pressure, I think, on you guys having to create a lot of items and expansion sort of content so there’s new stuff. What is the plan for that? A: So the plan at release really comes back to the crafting system again. A lot of the crafting system is focused on pulling items out of the economy, so certainly the most highly-valued items people aren’t going to salvage, but everything slightly below that they are, which is going to drive a lot of items out of the economy. The enhancing system is actually one of the…basically our enhancing system kind of works like enchanting from WoW, but it has a random value to what you’re getting. So you input the enchantment, and let’s say it’s somewhere between 80-100 attack that it’s gonna give you. So if you roll 83, you could roll that again and you have a chance of getting a better number. You won’t get a lower one, and it might say “aww, you didn’t get any better.” But you can try over and over again and you need to essentially recycle items to do that. Eventually you’ll get to perfect, but you’ll really have to pull out a lot of items. And at that level, you’re really talking about rares and legendaries that you’re actually going to have to be melting to be able to do this. So we do have some systems in. Even so, there is going to hit a saturation point and what will we do about that? We have a bunch of ideas on how to deal with that, most of them do revolve around extending the item database at some point. Whatever we do, we’ll try to make sure that the player base has a lot of forecasting, like they will know long before we do anything what we’re going to do so that they can prepare. We don’t want people to go on the AH and spend basically $100 and then us change the item database the next day. We want them to know, in 3 months we’re changing the database “OK, well that gives me time to plan and think about what I want to do.” So we may not…it’s still up in the air. But it’s one of those things where we really want to see what happens to the economy and to a certain degree, we don’t know because we’ve never done something like this before. Q: So you’re throwing out the idea of character resets like in D2? A: Umm…I would say that we are not that fond of the ladder reset. I kind of feel like the ladder resetting thing is like…”wow, I can’t believe people fell for that!” I kind of feel like that feels really simplistic. We can do better than that. If we really want to reset things, let’s reset them for real. And I’m not saying that’s what we’re going to do; we honestly don’t know at this point. But I think we can do a better job than ladder races, which…the other side of it is, how many people really get to participate in that? You’ve got your crazy guildies who essentially do run shifts to get a character up and once the first 100 or so hit the top, who gives a crap? I don’t want to be 150, who cares? Much less 150,000. So we think we can do better than that. Q: Are there any restrictions as to what items can be bought or sold on the AH? A: Right now, there are some, but they’re pretty light and most of the things that we don’t allow are things that don’t really have any business being there in the first place like quest items, elixirs (which are junk drops meant to fill out the database, not provide like super-compelling items), and there’s a bunch of little power-up kind of things like that. I don’t think we’ve actively gone through and restricted them yet, my guess is we probably will and not because we don’t want people to trade them, but because we just don’t think people probably will. So generally, no, we’re going to let people trade as much as possible. Q: Do you feel that since people are going to be able to buy items, and therefore essentially power, do you think that will polarize the community based on the top elite, especially in PvP, versus the casual player and what repercussions might there be if that is the case? A: I think if you look at a lot of games where power gets sold, you run into a lot of different types of games. Take a game like WoW: if we started selling items there, it would pretty much destroy the game. The core of the game is guild/raid progression; that is your top tier and that’s where everyone is focusing on. If you now give me the ability to circumvent that using money, you’ve kind of destroyed the need for having guilds in the first place. Microtransaction games tend to be very successful, but have very short lives because people tend to buy out everything. Essentially, it’s like “what if the government started printing money?” It’d be really awesome for a short time, and then we’d all be screwed. That’s kind of what a microtransaction game is; the key difference between them and this system is that it’s player-driven so we’re not generating items, players are. We’re not doing anything different than what D2 already did. Players could trade items in D2 and buy them using real money. All we’re doing is facilitating it so that it’s a good experience for everyone. We don’t expect that it’s going to feel very different from D2 at all, and to kind of separately address the PvP issue, will people buy power to be more successful in PvP? Yes they will, that’s why our PvP system is very casual and not an e-sport. It’s meant to be a “I wanna go in and see what this build can do against people who are of equivalent power.” The nice thing is with a really good match-making system, you’re going to have a good game regardless because you’re going to get matched with someone who’s roughly equivalent to you and gear’s a part of that. Q: In the past, you’ve mentioned that you might entertain the idea of some sort of competition or tournament, if you will. Maybe not on a regular basis, you said you kind of liked the idea. Have you guys put any thought into adding a replay or observation mode? Is that way too off-keel since it’s not an e-sport? Way too much investment, basically, to be worth it? A: I don’t remember specifically talking about competitions; we were probably in a different head space when I said that because really at this point we’re not focused on that at all. So features like replay, etc. are…it’s one of those things where it’s a cool feature and there’s no reason not to add it, but it’s not like in SC where it’s really necessary. As a result, it’s not high on the list of things we’d do. It is actually on a list, but it’s pretty low down on the list because there are a lot of things that would be cooler to do and without it being an e-sport…replay’s kind of an e-sport feature. Q: Did the attitude kind of change then since Blizzcon? Because when I played at Blizzcon, it seemed like it was definitely some PvP arena-style focus… A: Well, we definitely want a PvP mode, we want people to be able to play against and kill one another and that’s a big part of the game, it’s just how e-sport-oriented we want it to be. When people ask me “how balanced is this going to be? Is it going to be balanced for…is it going to be SC-level balanced and perfect?” No, it’s going to be horrifically imbalanced, and that’s part of the fun, to find crazy builds that are all over the place. So we have changed the arena mode a bit to feel more casual than the mode that was at Blizzcon, which was very last man standing, high-pressure, because if you died, you were done for that round. Now, granted, the rounds were fast, but still…we’ve actually switched to more of a team deathmatch. Still same arena environment, still kind of feels the same, but when you die, you stay out for a few seconds and then you come back. It bases more on time limit and kill count, which we actually found was a lot more approachable and a lot more fun. Q: If a lot of players want to turn it into a big, competitive e-sport kind of thing…you wouldn’t stop them, would you? A: No. But when people say “BARB IS TOTALLY OP!!!” we’re going to be like “yeah…he probably is.” (Talk about SC2 balance…) We’re not going to be looking at a lot of percentages or really even tracking it. If players want to turn it into an e-sport, more power to them, but we want to set their expectations about what level we’re going to support that. We never want PvP to drive PvE game balance, and that is the reason why in WoW (to a lesser degree than SC2) they both let the PvP game drive the PvE game and whenever we have a conflict…(moderator dude interrupts) Q: For the third-party, you g uys have said you don’t have anything solidified, is it looking to be something akin to the PayPal system? Without saying any names, is it sort of gonna be a system where people sign up, third-party money goes there, and then it’s transferred to their bank account? A: I can’t really say because we’re in negotiations. Q: Before he asked about the maximum party size, you said it’s going to be 4…If we can have a total of 3v3 in arena and PvP, why would max party size not be 6? A: Because the party size isn’t based on technical limits; our team would be quite happy if the numbers were higher because we could get more players per game and that’s actually good for our client server architecture. It’s based on what we feel is a fun experience. More than 4 is very chaotic. People will say “well in D2 you had 8 and it was fine” except, I can’t really remember the last time I was in an 8-player game in D2 where everybody was on screen. It’s not really very viable and their effects weren’t nearly as loud as ours (both monsters and players). We’ve tried 5-6 player games and we want to push the numbers up, but every time we do, it feels really chaotic. Q: In the actual battle.net interface, can you have up to 6 people in your party? A: No. Q: Because in a PvP game, the maximum is 6 players, correct? A: We’re actually playing around with the max being 4 per team, which is 8 players total, but that’s still 4 per party. By the way, that’s not confirmed, we’re just playing around with it. Ideally, we’d love for parties in PvP to be 4 players. Q: Well that makes a lot more sense because previously if it was a max of 3v3, then if I’m playing with 5 of my friends, 2 people kind of get shafted. A: It came down to…can we have a game where you can tell everything that’s going on with 8 players in the game? That’s what we’ve been playing around with. We’ve also been playing around with a lot of sliders on how the effects work and how we show one team vs. the other and 4v4 is looking very promising and if we can get it to work, that’s what we’ll do. Q: Are there different brackets or will it just be one static way of playing, like if (something…) A: Right now we’re just looking for one mode. Part of that is PvP isn’t our primary focus, so we want to keep it simple. Also, we don’t really want to segment the population…we know we are going to have some balance issues, and it’s a lot easier to control if we’re not balancing for different kinds of modes, so right now we’re just focused on the one. Q: Are there going to be chat channels at launch? A: If there’s not, I’m sure someone will set me on fire, so are we going to have chat channels at launch? Yes we are. Q: For the AH system, is it going to be accessed solely through the battle.net title screen? Can we access it through the game, or will we have to leave the game with our friends to sell something on the AH? A: Right now, it’s accessed completely through battle.net and not found in game. If there’s a demand for in-game, that’s a feature we can add down the road. Q: Also, if you’re in a party, you stay in the party regardless of whether you’re in the game or come out of the game, right? A: That’s in flux right now, so…. Right now if you do it in game, it jumps you out of your party and I’m not sure why, but that could just be a bug (it’s a bug). We do everything we can to keep parties together, even if people go to different locations. Q: So while you’re playing, you’re just focused on the gameplay and trading is kind of a separate thing that you do after you’re done slaying? A: No, the idea is we want to ship the game. Why would we not have it in-game? No reason other than it was like…which way is going to be a little faster? It’s very likely that if people really ask for it, that’s a feature that we’d add down the road. Q: Will there be an avatar system or will it basically just be your character? A: That’s really what the banner does. The sigil that shows up on the center of the banner, that pattern, you’ll see it if you look at the SS’s and also in game, that turns into like a little icon for you. The banner plays into that. Q: So is it recognizable in a party? In SC2 I don’t even have to see my friends’ names, I just know that guy’s… A: Yeah, actually my feeling is that it’s more recognizable because you can customize the primary sigil and the accents and the pattern and colors, so there’s a lot more points of customization so there’s a lot more variation. Q: Will there be a level requirement on the AH so new players can’t just immediately start buying high-level items? A: There might be. The primary reason we’ve considered it is just because there’s not a lot of reason for a level 1 character to interact and it’s kind of better to introduce systems as people level up. If there is though, it’ll probably be fairly low, like level 10 or something like that. We haven’t made a determination on that yet. Q: How does character naming work? Will names be unique? Will there be an identifier like was tagged on in SC2? I wasn’t really a fan of that because I was just Sixen##### and any douche could be Sixen##### just with different digits and you couldn’t really tell if we were different people. A: We’re using the same system, so when you log in you’ll be displayed more at your battle.net level, so if you’re RealID, you’ll be displayed there and then your character names are not. They’re only unique on your account, so you can not have three guys named Sixen on your account, but you could always have your name relative to others. Q: I understand the cash AH being anonymous in terms of buyers and sellers, will the gold one be also? Why did you choose to do that as opposed to character names for ID? A: Yeah, ummm….primarily as a privacy kind of element. We wanted to make sure people felt secure interacting with the AH and there wasn’t a strong reason to show names. If you look at something like WoW, a lot of people post things that they made through crafting and there’s good reason for wanting to be able to contact that person to get them to craft something else for you, and generally they’re going to welcome that contact. Something like eBay, where there’s not actually an assurance of receiving the object, they need a sort of reputation system, but we guarantee the transactions, and all the itemization is random, so there’s not a lot of reason to know the name of the seller. All the reasons we came up with were most frequently some sort of griefing, so we decided not to put it in there. Part-2 of the Interview,after play testing Q: Random scenario: you have an axe enchanted with ice and an axe that’s enchanted with (lightning?), which one...does it stun it or does it freeze it? (I think he’s asking about enchantment effects when dual-wielding; in the original gameplay trailer, Jay says the axes are enchanted with frost and electricity, which gives them a chance to freeze and stun opponents.) A: It alternates between...it depends on which weapon hits it. It’s just like D2, the only difference being we give you an attack speed buff. I think its about a 15% attack speed buff. So, that’s not evidenced very well right now, but we’re trying to figure out where to put that so it’s obvious that’s what’s happening. The nice thing is that we added that basic attack DPS meter on the character page, so that lets you know at least whether dual-wielding vs. two-hander is the better one. That was actually one of the big pieces of feedback we got from internal alpha was that they didn’t understand how dual-wielding works. It works exactly like it looks! Q: And the only way to get elemental damage on a weapon is..?..or can you get an axe that has ice damage on it and enchant it with fire...? A: Actually, the only way you can get it is for it to appear natively on the item. Q: If you have a friend who just bought the game and you’ve been playing for 3 months, can you play with your character and kind of down-level your character to their level so that you have similar experience level? A: Kind of like sidekicking or reverse sidekicking? Q: Yeah. A: I really love sidekicking systems and reverse sidekicking systems, so we might consider adding something like that in the future, but not at release. Q: OK. I think powerleveling’s great an all, but it’s just a boring experience for the person who just got the game. A: Yeah, and you know, the thing is, it’s one of those things where when you weigh features, you know...we considered it, we’ve always talked about it, but we also said, well...if there’s ever a feature we didn’t have to have at ship, that seems like the feature. Because at ship, you don’t have that problem. You only have it later on. The older the game gets, the more prevalent that problem becomes, so...but definitely a kind of feature we’d be interested in. Q: That in mind, him and I were playing together in the co-op and I joined the game with a brand new character and it kind of bumped me to the quest that he was on. So wouldn’t that mean that you could theoretically rush people? A: You could, in theory, rush people. The difference between D3 and D2 is in D2, it was pretty beneficial to take a low-level character to a high-level area and just kill mobs with them just hanging around; for D3 we put in gates on XP gain to try to make that less prevalent. So yes, you could accelerate through the story, but all that is..?..ruining the story for you. On the other hand, we also felt really strongly felt that if that’s how you want to play...if it’s more important to you that you play with your friend than the integrity of the story, OK. That’s what’s important to you. You’re the player, your $50, you get to decide. Q: I’m sure there’s a lot that went into it, but could you just kind of give a cliff notes version of what brought about the decision to fully remove skill points? I know one of the great benefits of it is it’s very easy to interchange and you’re not dedicated to one set path. And obviously with that, I guess there’s no more skill reset with no skill points? A: When we put the game out into internal alpha, we had the system that we’ve shown previously at Blizzcon which is where you had 7 slots, you put skills in those slots and assigned skill points (mumble mumble). What we found was, the UI was essentially telling people “you should have 7 skills.” But the skill point system says to players, “if you really want to be optimum, you should dump everything into 1 skill or 2 skills.” We tried to fight that a little by having escalating caps on skills, but it didn’t really work. So the two things were fighting with one another and the result of what we were getting was not what we wanted, which was more skills than people generally had in D2. Our combat system is really based around having somewhere between 4-6 skills. The other side of it was, by popular demand, we put in respec. What we saw happening was players would get their starter attack skill and they’d put points into it, which was great because they didn’t do that in D2. Once they figured out the system, they said, “ooh, I shouldn’t put any points in these skills,” which is terrible. But what happened was that they’d level up and get to that next skill they want - they’d have Magic Missiles and they’d get to Arcane Orb and decide “I don’t want Magic Missiles anymore, I want Arcane Orb.” So they’d respec that early skill, take 5-6 points out of it, and mass dump them into Arcane Orb. And one, that’s a balancing nightmare, but more importantly, it felt really bad. It felt even moreso like the character was trivialized, because these points could be just massively pulled from one place to the other. So those things kind of warred against one another, so we thought, “what happens if we just take skill points out and just say, choose your skills, that’s what’s most important.” And that actually worked really well. What it revealed was kind of a further truth about how people play Diablo, and I kind of referenced it earlier, it’s not a game like WoW where you start with Fireball at level 1 and at level 85, you’re still using it. It’s possible to do that, to take a starter skill and make it viable end-game, especially with runes, but it’s not the instinct of what players do. Players want to level up to get to more powerful skills because they have that very finite window of skills, they want to respec and get into that big skill. A game like Borderlands actually has a great model, because their attacks are tied into items and you’re used to items cycling out all the time, so it feels really natural. But for Diablo, it felt really unnatural to be doing the activity that you wanted to do the most(??). So we altered the skill system to provide that to players: “you know what, you actually can switch out skills as much as you want. That’s the way you naturally want to play, so we’re going to let you do that.” However, a system still needs restrictions to make it compelling. The restrictions we put in was to cap that total number of skills, both as you level up, but also we even pulled the cap down a bit to six skills because 7 actually felt like people could kind of get everything they wanted, but at 6, they start having to make really hard choices about what to get. It seems like just a one skill difference, but it actually made a really big impact. So you combine that with having to choose from one of several different rune effects per skill and you start getting a lot of diversity in builds. And building those characters becomes really compelling, and that’s what we were going for. A system that has a really compelling build process to it. I realize this is not the cliff notes. The last thing I would throw out about this, and this is something that we always kind of had a pipe dream about that I think this last revision of the system actually might be the first skill system that we’ve ever done where the player’s first instinct is not going to be to go to a website and check out what their build is, and that’s wonderful. That’s what we want. We want players to discover within the playspace, make choices based on information, not just based on “well, this sounds good, I hope it works, but I never got a chance to try it out.” So that’s one of the advantages of the system. Q: So everything is scalable; is it just by level or is it by your attack, or...? A: So there’s several ways your abilities will scale. One is, as you level up, abilities naturally scale. So it depends upon the ability. An ability like Bash is based on weapon damage, so it doesn’t need to scale because your weapon damage is going to scale it so it automatically gets better. An ability like Magic Missile which has a set damage amount scales as you level up automatically. There are several attributes on items, some that you get leveling up - you don’t get many attributes leveling up, but you get a little bit - that affect abilities. Primarily Attack, which increases your damage, but Precision, which is a side-effect of crit; some abilities key off of crits, there’s even some abilities that key off of your defense value, so those can affect it. Runes are probably one of the biggest ways to extend the power of skills. There’s 7 kind of power levels of runes, each better than the last. And those continue well beyond Normal difficulty up into Nightmare and Hell. Q: What can you tell us about how monsters scale with difficulty? A: Essentially, monsters get tougher in a very similar way to D2: we primarily raise their level. We have this big, cool spreadsheet that is the Monster Spreadsheet, and what it does is it has all these different stats and down the side it has levels. So it says, “this is a level 5 monster,” and we go through it and set: level 5 monster damage is this, level 5 monster average health is this, resistances, attack speed, armor, defence, etc. is all in there. So we set those all globally for the monsters. And then we go into the monster and when we set the health of the monster, we don’t just put a number in there, we put in a percentage. So we say, this is an average monster, so it gets 100% health. If it’s kind of a weak monster, it gets maybe 50-80%. If it’s a really tough monster, it can get 200-500%. We can also alter the experience gain that they give, chance for dropping treasure, all those things. All done as a percentage. So if we want to move that creature around, say “this is Nightmare difficulty, this creature needs to be tougher now,” we just change its level. It might be a different answer than you want, but it’s a really easy process for us and it works really well. Q: Since it’s all online, can that be changed with hotfixes? Like if the difficulty is a little too hard...? A: I’m probably not the right person to ask about that, but probably yes. Q: Is AI and group composition in NM/Hell going to change? A: No. Well, some of the inputs change, because things like attack rate; we have a lot of little inputs that control AI, like for example, how quickly I choose to pursue you; that actually does get altered and we have some global variables, so we’ll just say, “this thing we want to globally go down across all creatures.” So we do have some elements like that, but our AI has a lot of script inputs into it, so we alter a lot of those, but the core of what drives it doesn’t really change. Q: I’m curious as to why you guys did away with the ability to set your own stats. A: Well, the main reason we didn’t do attribute point spending was that as a customization system, it wasn’t very good. What you found was, my favorite example is, if you want to know how to build pretty much any character in D2, you take enough strength to use the armor that you’re targeting. That’s usually around 120-220, depending on what type of armor you take. 75 Dexterity, because that’s generally the number you need for a good block percentage, you take no Energy at all (unless you’re making a Sorceress build using Energy Shield) and then everything else in Vitality. That’s a shitty customization system. That’s just not a good system. And the thing is, once you get into just pure, mathematical attribute spending, there’s a mathematically correct answer. And we are not so smart as to outsmart all the incredibly intelligent people in our community who will find that correct answer. So we focus on customization systems that literally are that, that feel like customization systems, that are catering to playstyle, as opposed to just being able to move around these attribute points and knowing that there’s an optimum way to do that. So that’s the primary reason. Q: For some of the classes where the resource is actually split, like the DH, if I were to choose to be heavy on abilities that only use one of the resources, and not the other, I kind of screw myself. I’m wondering if there’s any way a player can have more control over that at some point other than just speccing your items. A: Well part of how you build and play a character is how you interact with all the systems in there. So if you’re making a character that’s interacting completely with one resource, well one: you’re probably running out of resource a lot and not taking full advantage of that other one. That’s probably not an optimum build. Anytime you have a customization system that allows player interaction, to have good builds, you have to have bad ones. So if you’re not utilizing that second resource, maybe you’ve built a bad build. Or, maybe you’ve figured out how to use runes to recycle your common resource so well that you don’t need the secondary resource, in which case, that’s your Uber Hatred build. And you can post online “I figured out how to make a build that doesn’t even use Discipline..and it’s awesome!” Most likely, what you’ll figure out is that, even with your Hatred build, there’s something in that second resource that’s going to make you better. At the very least, you take Shadow Power because you can fire it off all the time if you’re not using Discipline and it gives you a really good attack damage buff. Everybody loves attack damage. So I think there’s always a way to build a character, but I don’t think it’s invalid to, say, build a character...you could build a Wizard that barely uses her resource at all. And that’s fine if you can figure out how to do it. That’s kind of how we’ve built the system. But we’ve also tried to make sure that if you do that, you’re probably not optimal, but that’s OK too. A lot about how you build characters in Diablo is about not having to be optimal. I actually showed off the Battlemage builds specifically because I think the Battlemage is a great example of how people build characters in Diablo, which is if you’re trying to make an optimal character, a melee mage is not the thing you should be building. And yet, in D2, I don’t know of a Battlemage build that I would call optimal, but they’re incredibly popular. And they are viable, and that’s what’s actually important. Diablo is a game of viable builds, not optimal builds. Q: So runes...we saw the demo for them and they look fantastic. When are we actually going to get to play with them, because if they’re not in the beta, at what point will they come in? A: The beta likely won’t be more than the first act. They show up in Act 2. There is some interesting stuff about the rune system that I would like to talk to you about, but no one’s asked me a question about it... Q: Well do it! What would you like to tell us about the runes? A: So one of the things that...the rune system is probably the only significant system that still has a significant amount of revision coming to it. So all the content isn’t changing: the different types of runes and the way you alter the skills and everything, that’s all basically staying the same. One of the things we’ve found...and you guys haven’t gotten a chance to play with it unfortunately, but...one of the things we’ve found is when you take a rune and look at it, you get “this is what it can do in all six skills.” It’s a nightmare point of comparison. It feels really bad after a while and that’s one of the things in the internal alpha that we got feedback on that we tried to address. So we also kind of like the idea of...runes are not items in the true Diablo sense of what an “item” is. And by the way, this is all theory; we haven’t put this in yet, so this is the way we think we’re going to go, but it’s not solidified. So keep that in mind when you report on it, make sure you say “this is theory,” but I feel like it’s theory worth sharing, especially with the fan community. What I mean by “they’re not items in the traditional sense” is they dont have randomness to them. A rank 7 Indigo rune is a rank 7 Indigo rune. It doesn’t have a better or worse version of it. Runes are also this awesome way for us to add a little more investment into the skills that you’ve chosen. So what we’re thinking about doing is essentially having runes dropped Unattuned, which means they’re kind of grey and generic, they don’t actually have a type. And then you pop them into a skill, and when you do that, the rune attunes to that skill; you can still remove the rune freely whenever you want, but now that rune is not an Indigo rune, it is a Magic Missile splitting rune. And on top of the Magic Missile splitting effect, it might give you a couple other affixes, like +10 Attack or something like that. And the reason we’re talking about doing that is, one, it...with the ability to kind of switch skills out, it would be nice to kind of have a soft mechanism that does make you want to focus on the skills that you want to focus on. When you have a rune that only has one effect on one skill, the point of comparison becomes a lot easier. And it really adds in the item game. It means that there’s really valuable rank 7 runes and meh OK rank 7 runes. And that’s something that we’d really like to see because it plays into how we want the item game in Diablo to play. Q: So you’re saying that any rank 7 rune would fit any class’s specific skills, or you’re saying it would just fit one specific skill? A: Well, when it drops it fits nothing. It could be put anywhere. But once you put it, it (SCHWING!) and at that point it transforms into Magic Missile rune or whatever skill you put it into. And at that point, it’s locked forever. So that kind of a lock choice we like because it’s one that you can make over and over again. And it’s one that, yeah, if you didn’t get something you want, that’s not that dissimilar to getting any other item drop that you don’t want. So that feels a lot better than making a permanent choice that I can never unmake. We felt like it was a really kind of different idea. We haven’t tried it out yet. So it might suck. I’m gonna put that caveat out there, but that’s the one thing we still want to try with that system, and if it works, we’ll keep it. If it doesn’t, then the system works pretty well as it is. Q: This morning, and it’s hard to understand exactly what we’re seeing, but the Arcane Orb, you used a rune that made it swirl around and protect your character. My understanding is that the runes have different effects based upon the type. A: Well that was one of the things that didn’t...well, the reason we created the different classifications of runes was actually to solve the inventory issue. If we had a rune for every effect on every skill plus every rank, that’s 3500 different items - too many items to dump on the player. So we said “we need to come up with a solution to that” so let’s do classifications. But the classifications need to be loose, because we need to be able to look at every skill and decide at the skill what we want to change. We don’t want to create these hard-locked classifications, like, for example, this rune always turns everything into an armor/protective ability. That’d be the kind of hard classification that could be understood, but how do you use that with every single skill? We’d get into these situations where, well, what would we do with Electrocute? Well, we’d probably turn it into Storm Armor. But we already have Storm Armor. And hey, we actually want to do something completely different with Electrocute. So you create these really loose classifications, say like Crimson is damage. But what does a Crimson rune do when you put it in a buff? Well, sometimes we figure out how to make it increase damage, and sometimes you go, we don’t have a good damage idea for this, so we’re going to have it do something different. The problem is that that created a lot of confusion. People wanted to know what’s a Crimson rune, because they had this Crimson rune and they had to figure out what skills to put it in, and it did something different in every skill, and wow, that’s really overwhelming. Can’t you guys just make it so it always does the same thing? Well, if we did, we actually think the system would kind of suck because you get these wildly variant effects in different skills. That’s what we want. So our inventory solution didn’t really match with our goal for the system. And that’s why we’re considering this change. Q: How would making the runes random solve that problem? I’m sitting here thinking, OK, if you still go with the 5 potential random sets of effects, how would that make it so people would always know what that is? If I’m a new player and I get this rune and pop it in and think, cool, now it just made my Magic Missiles hit different enemies, how would I know what I can potentially get with each new rune and what if I get the same thing twice...? A: Well, so part of it is to some degree, you don’t know. That could be a potential downside to this system. It could be an upside; that it’s fun to experiment. We do expect rune drops to be frequent enough, especially in the early game, that you don’t mind experimenting. In the later game, rune drops become more precious, but at that point you kind of already understand the system and that’s like higher rank runes. The reason why we feel it would solve a lot of inventory issues is, one, quality of the rune will have a big effect. If you get a rune that’s lower quality than one you already have, you’ll tend to toss it out like you would an item. The other factor is that because runes are more of a resource now, you’re not going to generally pop them into skills you don’t want to use. So you’re going to tend to focus on your core set of abilites. Q: How would you know you don’t want to use it if you don’t know what it does? If it’s random as soon as you put it in, how do you know you don’t want to use it? A: Well, I’d say you more know ahead of time, if you’re playing a Wizard and you don’t like electricity, you’re probably not going to waste your runes on Electrocute. So..you could make the argument that “if I knew what Electrocute could really do, maybe I would!” I think there’s a small percentage of players who would feel that way, and unfortunately, that’s what the internet’s for. And I know I said earlier that it’s awesome that the system doesn’t need to use the internet, now we’re going to make this other system that makes you use the internet. But, I think it’s a very small percentage of players that will want to obsessively know what every rune does ahead of time before they ever make a decision. Q: Well, I mean, if I can possibly make a build without screwing up...like you say, in D2 I usually just wait until I hit level 80 and then just dump all my points in because I know that’s what I can do. So if I have to be careful on where I spend my runes, I’m not going to spend them as much. A: But the thing is, you’re not going to need to be careful with rank 1 runes. And rank 1 runes will give you an idea of what a rank 7 rune will do. Q: That actually leads me to my next question: what is the difference between the level rankings? Is it like damage or is it maybe an increase in effect or what...? A: So the basic effect doesn’t change, the effect will scale or the math within it will scale. So Magic Missile: I put a rank 1 Indigo rune in it and it splits into 2 missiles, with a rank 7, it fires 8 missiles. Take the Obsidian rune and put it in Energy Twister, if two tornadoes collide, they’ll combine into one bigger, higher damage tornado. So that one, the dork(?) tornado does even more damage. So every rune effect has some element of it that scales. But, the basic idea of what it does doesn’t change with ranks, it just gets more powerful. So you can experiment; rank 1 runes are like candy, you can throw ‘em out and experiment all you want to figure out exactly what you like before you sort of invest in it, if that makes sense. Micah: Just want to make a point with runes about recycling them in various ways, blah blah. A: Yeah. The AH and we are actually talking about rune recycling mechanics. We may allow you to...and because we haven’t implemented this system yet, we don’t know what supports we need for it yet, but, for example, one of the things we might need is take it to the Mystic and pay her a cost and wipe the effect off the rune. In which case you can get it back. So if the system feels like it needs things like that... Q: Well that kind of solves the problem that I was talking about before, how do I know if I want to use that... A: And the thing is, that might be a real problem, and it might not. So we kind of want to get it in the game and see if it is, and if it is, then we kind of already have some backup solutions like that’s one, we’ve also talked about runes maybe producing really useful crafting materials so that when you’re done with it, “oh, I didn’t really get what I wanted from it, but I still got something out of it.” The notion that you just take runes and after you attune them, they have no value, that’s probably not going to be cool. But sometimes it’s really important not to pre-solve a problem. We don’t know exactly how new ideas are going to work. Sometimes they work exactly how we think, and sometimes they don’t. So we try not to spend too much time...if we’ve got 2 or 3 ideas on how to solve the problem, good enough. We move forward, put it in, see if the problem is real, and then we solve it. Q: So, once they’re attuned, then you can swap them out and you can sell them? So in theory you could make a perfect build if you do use the internet and just buy the runes that you want. A: Yep, you could make a really awesome build if you invest a lot of money in the trading process. Q: And you’re also saying that there’s a possibility that once you attune it, it can get unique affixes that might further change... A: Well, not change the rune, but it would almost act a little like charms in a way. When they’re socketed, then you get a little stat boost of some kind. So they work very much like wearable items. If it works. Fingers crossed. The nice thing is, the system is already cool so if it doesn’t work, eh, we’ll probably just leave it like it is. Q: I know you mentioned that in the PvP arena there will be a matchmaking system that will pit you against players of your equal skill or gear level and that there will not be a number one team. Does that mean there is no ranking what so ever, there are no points attached to you PvP teams? And with the said, if there are points attached to PvP teams, can we have multiple teams so I can play with my friends who are terrible but I can have my hardcore team, I can do both? A: There is no ranking. There is an invisible ranking that we use for matchmaking but it’s a per player basis. When you are on a team, we kind combine the rank together in a super smart way. The guy who does that is wicked smart. He works all of that out. But we don’t have a “I’m a 2200 rated player and therefore I am better than you as a 2100 rated player”. What we are focusing on is a more of a progression based system which is “I am a level 20 PvPer” which means I have played a lot of PvP. Q: Can we expect a win/loss ratio? A: Currently, we don’t even do a win/loss ratio. We might do a number of wins but not a number of losses. Even in SC, we found that the number of wins actually feels a lot better than showing a win/loss ratio. That’s why people recycle accounts because people don’t want those losses shown. So, the solution was to not show them. We want to keep it more casual. With the leveling system, you’re always winning slightly faster than losing. Even if you go on and lose it up for a hundred hours, you will be able to get just as far as someone who always wins. Q: Is there anything you can reveal as far as rewards for the system like vanity items? A: Right now it is focused primarily on achievements. Right now there is a whole array of PvP oriented achievements and titles and part of the banner is dedicated just for PvP. So as you get to higher and higher ranks, it levels that up. Q: Hardcore, you had mentioned that you changed it to a death match where you respawn and do total kills. Is this still when you die that first time you are dead forever? A: That’s what I want to do. There is a lot of pushback on the team. I announced that at Blizzcon and the community were all for it. We have gotten a bit of mixed results outside of Blizzcon. It’s easy for me to get a crowd worked up so… The PvP strike team that focuses on that area, they are pretty nervous about it. Their basic feeling is that if that is what happens, then hardcore characters just won’t PvP. But then there was hardcore dueling in D2 so we may change that. We may allow hardcore PvP players to play without dying. That being said, I still want a way for hardcore players to duel even if not at ship. I am going to push for a way. Even if its basically just a place where you can go in the world where you are flagged for PvP. Even if it is that simple, there is a community, even if it’s a small community that I want to support. Those f**kers are crazy. Part of me it like aww you crazy bastards. Q: In team death match, you can spawn as many time and then the winning team gets their characters. A: Yeah, we’ve talked about that too. We’ll see. Feel free to hold polls and see how the community feels. Q: With the AH, I was really excited because to me it is some way you guys can have some consistent income. So, there is some justification for more development and on-going things that will make Diablo 3 more than just a game I play for 2 months and then forget about for four years. Are there any plans for daily quests or community events, things that will keep the community engaged? A: We have talked a lot about for what we want to do with end game and continuing content. We do have some ideas and some of which will make it into the shipping product. We would talk about if we have played them a little more but we haven’t locked them down enough yet to talk about. But a lot of which at ship, it will be the tip of the iceberg. In terms of exactly what we are going to do, we don’t know because we haven’t seen how the community interacts with the game. I would really like to build out that future based on how players like to play the game and what would be most fun. Diablo is not really a game about questing so a daily quest is not the exact right thing. We are not even sure if we want to encourage people to have to come and play every day. I’m not sure we want to do that, maybe a weekly quest. I think the idea of WoW is that it is a very community oriented game so you want people playing at least once a day so they can check in with their guild because everything changes so much. Where with Diablo, it is really our intent that you are able to play it more casual so any systems that we enter like that feel that way, they feel more casual. Q: Is there a cow level? A: Is there a super secret cow level? You want my standard answer? It’s a secret. Q: Has any community suggestions made it into the game. A: Yeah, a lot of stuff has made it into the game. Q: Can you give us any examples. A: My favorite example goes back… well, yeah I’ll still use that example but I’ll give you another but it actually hasn’t made it into the game if ever. Back when we first announced, we had all of the art style controversy. Most of the feedback we got was positive but we really reviewed all of the criticism to see what we agree with and what we don’t agree with. One of them was “art style is fine but when the battle is over everything gets faded out and it doesn’t look like we just had a battle. I understand it’s for performance reasons but instead of fading everything out, why don’t you just fade out the oldest models and keep a certain amount in there. So, keep 10 or 20 models but never more”. We thought that was a great idea and we had never thought about that before. So, we put it in and it worked great. I think that is an example of an idea we got from the community that made the game a lot better. One of the ones we have gotten recently was when we announced, and this is one we haven’t done anything with yet and I am not sure we are, but when we announced followers, one of the things we talked about was that it was really more of a normal difficulty feature. Our concern was that there were some players that said that if they give them more power, I am going to take it even if I hate it. There was about a third of the players who hate followers and didn’t want them. They didn’t like hirelings in D2 but they took them but they took them because they felt they had to get the extra power boost. And a third loved followers and always wanted to take them and the other third didn’t care either way. We felt a third is pretty big and it’s even but we don’t like forcing choices on the player. So we sided with the people who didn’t want them and catered to them. We still kept them but we consider them more of a story component anyway. But then the community really responded strongly to that. The third who liked followers were like “come on, please, we love followers”. So, we thought about it and we haven’t exactly found a solution but we are looking into a way the player can trade a portion of power equivalent to what the follower would be because they like followers, that gives players the choice who doesn’t want them to not trade that power. For example, a passive skill that enhances the follower that basically brings him up to the level he needs to be for the higher difficulties. But now you have dropped a passive skill and the players who don’t want them can keep their passive skill. We are considering things like that. Those are some examples, we really try to listen to what people are saying. My favorite was “So, you say followers can’t be used past normal difficulty. Challenge accepted”. So, we’ll see. Q: Do we currently have any systems in place beside a death match for the PvP arena. Like a horde mode with constant streams of enemies or enemies in the arena with the players. A: We have definitely talked about some other modes. Not at ship but who knows about the future. I really like the idea of a mode that involves monsters and players of some kind. We have played around with modes like that but the biggest issue was that they didn’t feel like Diablo. I think that was just the design we had but there is a way to do it that feels like Diablo. As long as we are talking about PvP, it’s worth noting how we have changed the PvP a little bit. We went away from the last man standing approach. As we have said frequently, the point of the pvp system is that it is supposed to be casual and fun. We felt that the “I died and I have to wait for the next round now” was much more of an e-sport feel to it. And now, the team death match model where you die but then you respwan within a few seconds and you are back in the battle is what we have. We found that it is much more approachable so we get people in who don’t even like pvp or who are not very good and they have a great time. They feel like they have a chance to stay in a fight, that death isn’t as big of a penalty, and they can learn what the other team is doing and what they are using and see how they can figure them out. We have these big swings in the fight where one side will start off really strong but then the other side will figure them out and come back and then the other side will come back. It feels very similar because it is still an arena and team placed game but it feels more casual. Q: What’s the average timer on that? A: I think it is 10 mins. We are hoping that this Blizzcon that we will be able to have people play that again to see how it’s different. I think ultimately that the reaction will be pretty positive. One of the things we also noticed is that you don’t get quite the shut outs you did in the arena version. You can still get them and that’s something we are talking about. Do we want to do any kind of rubberbanding for that? Mostly for starter players because once you get good skill matching, it’s not needed. But with this big diversity, ehh… rubberbanding can be awesome because it can make the match more fair but it can make the winners feel like they didn’t earn it. But hopefully we will be able to show pvp again this year at Blizzcon so people can try it out. Q: Any thoughts about a wagering system for PvP? Micah: (Side stage)Yes A: Apparently Micah is all for it. If there was ever a way we could make it into an e-sport, which is exactly what we don’t want to do, no not really. And that is the reason why. We know people are going to want to turn it into an e-sport but it won’t be from any encouragement from us. The big reason being is that we are never going to allow, or at least over my dead body, the PvP game to wag the tail on game balance. We want the PvE game to rule it. Even the amount that PvP can alter the PvE game in WoW is unacceptable to us. Whenever we run into a case where “this would be really awesome for PvE” and the PvP guys says “ that kind of screw PvP” the answer is always “shut up PvP guy, it’s awesome in PvE”. Q: Why can’t you just add features that are cool and if it helps e-sports, then it helps e-sport? Why would you go out of your way to not make the game an e-sport? A: Because when you make the game an e-sport, it has to be balanced like an e-sport. Q: Why can’t you just say “sorry, we’re not balancing it”? A: Because then you confuse the audience. You can’t give the people an e-sport set up and then say it’s not an e-sport. If you are going to commit to that, then you have to commit to it. It’s not an e-sport, we are not going to do that high of level of feature set. It’s also one of those things where, from the outside it looks like we have endless time and budget but the truth is we don’t. The truth is we work our butts off to get the game out and we make choices and adding features like that to make it an e-sport when it’s not a goal for us, when we could be spending those dollars making the PvP game better or the PvE game better, we are going to spend the money there. Q: Since we are on PvP, I know you guys had mentioned that some skills will be retooled for PvP, will that be like diminishing returns or will the skill look entirely different at all? A: What we have is within the data of the skill, we have these things called snows that are little containments of data. You can open up the magic missile snow and see everything that magic missile does. We have this other column that is PvP and it can take any of the attributes for the regular skill and change it. We primarily use it to change how long a stun lasts or… We don’t have any diminishing returns and we are hoping not to. Cooldowns, damage could change but we try not to mess with those because they are really tricky. Crowd control durations. Those are the big things that tend to change that are game breaking. Q: What can you tell us about your current plans for the talisman and charms system? A: The currently plan for the talisman and charms is that they are gone, primarily because they weren’t cool enough. So , we had the choice of trying to make the system cool enough with a complete overhaul or we can shave a little time off the estimated release date. So we decided to hold on. It sounds like a really cool expansion feature. We have so many systems and we felt it always got the short end of the stick and nobody paid it attention. So we decided to make it a major expansion feature. Then we can make sure it really gets the attention. The original talisman was much more elaborate and it was pretty cool but it got shaved down to where it was at now and we were not happy with it. Q: What did it do originally? A: I don’t want to say because I don’t want to promise how we handle it. We never got to try it out so I am not sure it will work. It was quite different and possibly over worked but we will see. Q: Do you see the auction house a good way to generate revenue for servers and stuff like that? Was that a deciding factor to switch to real world currency? A: It wasn’t a deciding or driving factor for us. We don’t know what the auction house is going to do for us monetarily. We have a lot of projections and they wildly vary. We are pretty sure we are not going to lose money. That was the most important thing. If we are going to do this, it’s a lot of server infrastructure, it’s a lot of hardware. We have to make sure we can at least cover this cost. The thing that drove our decision to do this was the same that drives us how we doing everything at Blizzard. We felt it was a really good service for players. It was something that we could do for players that we thought they would appreciate; that we felt would make the game experience better. As a company, that is kind of where we always start. I had someone earlier ask me if we are going to make mobile games. Well, we are going to make games and if a mobile platform is a good platform for the game we make, then we will make a mobile game. Most of the companies I worked for didn’t think that way. They figured out what platform do we want, what is our financial model, what IP would the community like. Ok, make a game out of that. WE go completely the other way. We say “ ahh, that would be cool to make this game”. So we make the game and then decided how we can make sure not to lose our shirt on this. That is kind of the start with the hopes it will make a lot of money. But we have never been too worried about that because if you making something good, the money will always follow. That is always the better way to approach it. What cool things can we do for the players, what cool games can we make? Q: Off the heels of that, console plans? A: We are exploring a console version of the game, nothing to announce this time. If we can get it to work, it is definitely something we would like to do. It’s a perfect example, I think more so than any other game we make, this is the best one to do that transfer and will make that transfer the easiest. A lot of this is going to be based around us being able to build a good R&D team that can actually build it. One of the things I encourage is that when you guys post this interview, if anyone in the game industry wants a job, we are really serious about it. We would really love it if they would apply. Q: When you say transformed version, do you mean like a port of the game or a spin-off title? A: We would want it to be Diablo 3. We wouldn’t want it to be a whole different game. But I think port is a dirty word for a lot of people. Usually because when people port games, they don’t really design the game for that system. Our feeling is, we don’t ever want to do a port like that again. If we transfer Diablo 3 to another platform, we want it to be the best game it can be on that platform. We want to approach it the same way we make it for PC and Mac. Q: So it would still be Diablo 3? A: Yeah, we would focus on making Diablo 3 but we would make it feel like it had been built from the ground up for that console. If we can’t do that, that would be the only reason we wouldn’t do it. Thanks a lot guys, these are always the most fun for me. Edited August 1, 2011 by Liquid ocelot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theneurotoxin Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 (edited) Boobisoft DRM. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! How long before we have people taking up Diablo 3 as a job? Edited August 1, 2011 by Art Vandelay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liquid ocelot Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 (edited) ^^ there already guys who made a living of diablo item brokerage. Top level players would give their items to him, and he would sell it and take a percentage, hence blizzard extends that, possibly for their own profit. While watching the video, I still cannot shake off the slight WoW feeling. Online play only...hmm..lets see how long the crackers take to crack it. Diablo has never been an online experience for me (as oopposed to bw and sc2) but maybe if I find a bunch of friends who want to play it who knows. Edited August 1, 2011 by Liquid ocelot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saumil Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 Good thing they got rid of the teleport and identify scrolls. The entire thing was so archaic for an ARPG which doesn't require its items to be as much immersed into the game world as a D&D RPG. While 'learning' a spell might be fun in NWN, in Diablo I just want to hotkey it and forget about it. And that stash better be huge. I am a complete pack-rat and would hate having to juggle mules just so I can keep a certain item for a certain type of character that I may or may not play in the future. Mixed feelings about the skill hotswapping thing. On one hand it takes away any core identity you might have manufactured for your toon as a certain type of Barbarian or Monk or whatever, on the other it allows for a whole lot of freedom to experiment. And I guess now that they are employing the banner system to instill that sense of identity into your character anyway, you don't need your skill-set to do that anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liquid ocelot Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 (edited) http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/events/diablo3-announcement/index.html#beta:d3-overview The official announcement of the beta! *All five character classes available. *one third of the first act will be playable * The gold auction house will be tested. * Randomized diablo experiece, new and returning characters,fight in tristram! I wonder, how much would a D3 beta key sell for Edit: apparently it's only 10 characters per account now. I remember jay wilson at blizcon saying specifically to a lot of cheer that there will not be any limit on the number of characters,but I dont think i'd use more than ten characters in my whole life time, even if I did, as long as you could delete one after transferring items it should be okay lol. Edited August 1, 2011 by Liquid ocelot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aftrunner Posted August 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 Well f**k em. The fact that it wasnt releasing here means I probably wasnt getting it. The DRM means I am DEFINITELY not getting it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindoctor Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 this is great. we haven't had a good whinefest for a while now. eagerly waiting for online petitions to show up p.s. diablo 3 will be the highest selling pc game of whichever year it releases. no one gives a crap about any of this except crybabies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karooo Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 What are the chances of 4chan/anon ddosing the login server? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aftrunner Posted August 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 The "will bend over and take it while smiling" parade is here. Abandon ship. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindoctor Posted August 1, 2011 Report Share Posted August 1, 2011 What are the chances of 4chan/anon ddosing the login server? this is blizzard we're talking about, not sony. they've been running world of warcraft for the past 7 years, they know a thing or two about network security. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.