The Diablo III Thread

[Wizard]

And you would know, huh? And if you think I'm the pickiest it sounds like you've never been to boards on any Diablo site. Or the Battle.net forums either.

Yes I have, I've complained tons before, but I don't bother it, I just usually tell em to "stfu, your buying it anyways".

[ken_cinder]

Why do I keep hearing "No necromancer" or "They've replaced Necromancer with Witch Doctor"?

 

Where is your proof, when only 2 classes have been shown, and there are to be five like in the previous game? Maybe that stupid Amazon will bite it? Ya think of that? There are no MALE Amazon's, but there can be females in all the other classes.

[BlackKnight]

It's by process of elimination. There are only 5 classes, so there isn't really room to overlap anything, especially when 1 Bow user (most likely an Amazon / Assassin hybrid) and 1 Healer class (Paladin / Monk) are almost obligatory. And then if they go and include a Mage / Sorcerer for pure a pure magic class they've already made up the 5.

 

It just seems very unlikely that when there are so many types of classes available they would double up on the Witch Doctor. He practically has the Necromancer's Summoning and Curses trees already, and has just traded Poison & Bone for Fire Magic. A Druid / Necromancer hybrid, if you wanna think about it that way.

 

Where is your proof, when only 2 classes have been shown, and there are to be five like in the previous game? Maybe that stupid Amazon will bite it? Ya think of that? There are no MALE Amazon's, but there can be females in all the other classes.

 

This came up in Warcraft where WoW let you make Male Night Elf Hunters and Rogues and Female Druids. Those were, lore-wise, single sex only classes. It didn't stop them then though.

 

So yeh, there is no saying Necs won't be in D3 or an expansion, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Lucandrake]

Witch Doc pretty much replaced Necro with the few skills it showed there, unless necro does the same exact crap except with fury creatures now it turns out to be skeletons and bones.

 

I just still can't get the last few seconds of the cinematic out of my head, when that witch doctor gets owned so fuking disgusting, it's just, cool .

[BlackKnight]

Summary of that Q&A video since the site is taking a beating right now;

 

# “I don’t think we’ve broken a hundred on screen at a time, but we’ve flirted with it,” says Jay of monsters.

# The core ideals for the game have stayed consistent over the dev period. Jay says the style and look of the game is the thing that’s changed the most.

# They’re talking about voice comms. Want to improve on it.

# Blah de blah. Sounds like it’s running out of steam a bit. Five minutes, says Mr PR.

# “We’re in hardcore production,” says Jay. They’re working mainly on content at the moment.

# “Diabllo is not that is very mod-friendly game because of the random nature,” says Jay. Mods haven’t been a big focus. It’s difficult with this title, he says.

# They’re talking a lot about co-op. “We really see the single-player and co-operative play as the same thing,” says Jay.

# “The biggest thing we have to help us protect against piracy” is the community, says Frank. People want to be a part of Battle.Net.

# Seasonal stuff - a la WoW - is a “cool idea”.

# They’re going to “discuss” a beta, but nothing confirmed yet.

# “It’s always our goal to run on a broad range of systems,” says Jay. They won’t confirm system specs.

# They use Zelda and WoW as inspiration for boss design. Jay says the bosses are going to be much more complex than Diablo II.

# You can pick character gender, but you can’t customise. They want you to kill monsters as soon as possible.

# They don’t have the boss frequency yet. Jay says the boss in the stage demo wasn’t a boss at all, just a creature.

# The characters in the game will have their own plotlines and stories.

# “Our goal is to sim-ship in as many languages as possible”: Frank. He says it’ll be very hard to do, though.

# “We haven’t made a decision about our financial model,” says Jay. All regions are different.

# The game has real physics, but it’s not a “pure, physics reactionary system.”

# The blue teaser image was supposed to be the face of Diablo. Jay “doesn’t know” what the purple penguin was.

# A lot of different locations. Dur.

# It’s going to mix random and static maps. They’ve been experimenting with random exits, entrances, monster placement, items, and so on.

# We definitely want to add web functionality, says Frank.

# Around 50 people working on the game.

# Story for the game starts 20 years after the events of Lord of Destruction.

# Targeting a length “similar” to Diablo II.

# They’re going to improve trading, apparently, but are still working on how it’s going to happen.

# They won’t talk about the skill tree format. Sounds like it’s not nailed down.

# We’ve got so many monsters to reveal, says Frank.

# “We’re very interested in the consoles but we don’t have any plans at this time to become a console developer”: Frank.

# They’ve just confirmed Diablo III for Mac. “Absolutely,” said Jay when asked if it was happening.

# “The Diablo III team is definitely thinking about e-sports and whether or not it makes sense for the game”: Frank.

# Frank just said they’re planning PvP features but they’re not saying anything about it right now.

# “We have a new version of Battle.Net that will appear in the coming months,” says Jay. Frank says the new features for Battle.Net will be seen in conjunction with StarCraft II’s release.

# When it’s done. “It’s far too early in development for us to put a release date for it,” says Frank. It’s been in development for four years.

# “Brand new 3D engine that we developed in-house.” Jay says they don’t have a name for the engine.

 

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/06/28/l...ess-conference/

[Lucandrake]

Man, this game is going to be released in 2015, the world ends sooner then that .

[Wizard]

Needs come out December 21, 2012.

[Chaotica]

It's far too early to poke criticism, and there's no doubt that I am excited about the release, but I must say, from the blossoming Diablo 3 website that I just looked at last night, I was left feeling unimpressed. Black Knight articulated my shortcomings with what I saw, but I will reiterate what I felt in my own way, in order of what annoys me most;

 

1. It...um...well...doesn't look very dark or gothic at all. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but the dark, brooding and bloody nature of the first two Diablo games were the key to its main aesthetic. In fact, the dark fantasy world, perpetually containing bloodstained walls, sealed chambers strewn with corpses and the frequent appearance of random pike-mounted heads, was Diablo's main, almost sadistic, aesthetic. Where has that gone?

 

2. The game seems to have shifted from a traditional Anglo medieval landscape to a more Eastern or Oriental setting, and if this is so then it is a move that I dislike. Not to sound racist, but I have always felt that Eastern influences in games with a medieval setting usually don't fit in well. I felt this way when Dungeons and Dragons amalgamated the Oriental into their game world, and also in Baldur's Gate II, where I thought that such influences (such as the katana blades, and, I believe, the fighting monks) were out of their place. Diablo has always found its home in a traditional Anglo medieval setting, but the website makes Diablo III look distinctly Eastern, Oriental or, by the looks of the helmets that the soldiers are wearing as the gaze into the fire, even Mongolian-esque.

 

3. The Witch Doctor looks interesting, but if he is indeed the Necromancer's replacement then that is a dumb move.

 

4. The graphics look too World of Warcraft. I don't understand why Blizzard is using the same (or a similar) graphics engine to release sequels to cherished Blizzard series. Surely Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 deserved their own engines, and if not both of these games, then at least one of them. All the games that Blizzard are going to release from, say 2003 to XXXX (insert date of Diablo 3 release) are going to look the same, with their squeaky clean, overly luminous and brightly coloured comic-book like graphics, which might look lovely for the colourful surrounds of the Warcraft universe, but feel foreign in the realm of Diablo. However, it's early days yet so that's why this point is the lowest on my list.

Edited June 29, 2008 by Chaotica

[Wizard]

It's just art assests that make the game look like WoW. Something they've done since WC3 and after wards was the cartoony asthetic that appears in WoW and the ill fated SC:Ghost. Remember when SCG was more Splinter Cell then the cartoon look? Think of it like that.

 

I miss Grimdark Diablo, they're adding more High Fantasy elements, but still making it dark, which would be Dark High Fantasy :V

[OverlordMondo]

Am I the only one who liked Diablo because of the gameplay, rather than the art and lore?

[BlackKnight]

Am I the only one who liked Diablo because of the gameplay, rather than the art and lore?

Yes, the 10 or so million others must just not be as sensible as you are.