DiabloFans

"Diablo III was announced last year; it's been playable twice at Blizzcon now. Mike Morhaime suggested it probably won't be out until 2011. Does it feel like the development time has been extended to a surprising degree? Do you ever think, "Oh God, this really will be a while longer now?"

Kevin Martens: Here's the secret to Blizzard games, and this is a secret that won't help any of our competitors: endless iteration. We'll take something, we'll put it in the game. Maybe we'll like it when we put it in, maybe we won't. We'll leave it in there for a while, we'll let it percolate. We'll play it and play it and play it, and then we'll come back. We might throw it all out, or we'll throw half of that out and redo it.

It can be a long time, but it is fun to work on as well. That's the thing that keeps you going. Multiplayer always works, and the builds are always playable. We've played them constantly, and it's fun. You actually look forward to the weekly play session even though the game is still in progress. That's what keeps us going, and that's also why it takes so long. We'll do it over and over again until it's just right.

With Diablo, and StarCraft moreso, it will have been a decade since there's been a game in the series out. Blizzard North as an entity no longer exists. How do you determine what needs to be retained from something a decade old, and what needs to be modernized?

Julian Love: Well, as an ex-Blizzard North employee, I never got the sense that we were a standalone entity. We were always in contact with Blizzard South folks. They were always coming up. I think I saw it as we were one big company.

That said, [as far as] the real question in terms of how much we're going to take forward, we want to bring back all of the stuff that was great, that was fun. We certainly want to tap into what was great in the first two games and make sure all of that stuff is coming back, and pile in all the cool stuff we can to bring it over the top and make it the definitive version of the series.

On the topic of Blizzard North and Blizzard Entertainment though, I do feel there was a difference in style between the Blizzard North and South games. The Diablo titles had a more baroque, intricate look, more tilework and stonework "along the grid." Diablo III is more of a blend of that style with the current Blizzard South style. How long did it take you to settle on the look for Diablo III?

Julian Love: Well, it took a while for us to settle on the actual style, but I don't think it was due any kind of difference between Blizzard North and Blizzard South philosophy. It had more to do with the fact that we were moving the game from a two-dimensional technology platform to a three-dimensional technology platform.

Issues like lighting and separation between the characters and the backgrounds are handled in entirely different ways -- ironing out how to get what we felt was a Diablo vibe while still managing to get the characters to pop.

Looking at D2,for instance, those characters are super bright, super colorful. They pop out of the backgrounds. So, we had to try to bring that forward, but at the same time we don't want to just rest on that art style and do the exact same game.

We want to elevate that. We've got to look at the other games that Blizzard does, learn from the things that they've done that make those games better, and really progress. I think what you're seeing in the art style is our idea of the actual progression of the Diablo universe.

I loaded up Diablo II last night, because I realized I still had it on my laptop and I figured, "Why not?" One thing that struck me was the character select screen -- all those characters arrayed there are proportioned in a very straightforward way. They basically just look like normal humans with crazy armor and weapons.

And I was at Blizzard office recently, and there's a plaque on the wall with the official artistic principles of Blizzard: "Bigger is always better. Less if never more," which evokes the WarCraft look with its much more heroically exaggerated characters. It does strike me as two different philosophies, at least to some extent. How much of that do you think about?

Julian Love: Well, obviously, there were two very largely different groups of artists. Some of the artists from D2 are still working on the game today.

I think what you're seeing there is a Blizzard philosophy that may have been there but may have not been disseminated across the entire company, which is, "You find the line by crossing it."

I think we've gotten really good at that now, allowing ourselves to push things to a point where they go too far, and then you look at them and you say, "Oh, okay. Now we know where the line is." But if you're trying to just edge up to the line, you might never find it.

That's the goal here, to push things as far as they can possibly go. So you're seeing things that are progressing maybe a little bit beyond where D2 was.

But definitely, I would say that our proportional sense for Diablo III is far, far less than let's say what happens in a game like WoW, where armor doesn't even look like it could function. We still put a lot of effort in to try and make sure the armor looks a lot more functional, that it doesn't look like it's just insane and total high fantasy.

In the case of StarCraft, there are plenty of RTS games each year. With World of Warcraft, there are a million MMOs every year. There aren't actually that top-down action RPGs. Torchlight is coming out, for one, but there are not as many examples. What's it like working in a genre like that where there aren't a lot of yardsticks?

Kevin Martens: Well, frankly, Diablo II is still on the PC sales charts every week. Over and over again, you have a big Christmas rush, and it bumps off, but then it's back on in early January again.

I think Diablo II is the standard for this kind of game, so largely what we're thinking about is making sure that we do the series justice -- which we feel that we are -- and making sure we're trying to expand the market. Personally speaking, I hunger for a game like this, one that's going to last for a long time -- something we can play for ten years, like Diablo II.

I think there's a massive market for it, but I also know the games are kind of hard to make and, really, it's hard to beat Diablo II. So that's the tricky part, and that's one of the reasons that there are not that many games out there. There's still a definitive one that's on the charts every week. That's the one that we have to beat. Luckily, we know a lot about it.

And more broadly than that genre, there is of course always widely-publicized pessimism about the PC platform, and has been for a long time. Does that concern you ever, either in a long-term sense for Blizzard as a company that is so devoted to the PC, or otherwise?

Kevin Martens: It has never affected us yet. The death knell of PC has risen and fallen over the years, and we keep releasing PC games, and they keep doing incredibly well. I think that there is a market out there for PC games. The latest consoles are great; it's easy to get the game running and all that. They're useful.

But everyone has a PC, and we try to keep our system requirements down as low as possible. That's one of the ways that we can make sure to appeal to enough people. Some of the really cutting edge games that come out for PC require a brand new video card and probably more RAM at least, if not a new CPU as well. That's really rare with Blizzard games. I think that's one of the reasons we still keep doing well.

Kevin Martens: If I could add to that -- the best evidence that the PC market is not actually dying is the 20,000 people that showed up this year at Blizzcon, and the fact that those tickets sold out in one minute flat. That doesn't seem to me that it's really good evidence of a platform with a problem.

We're heard a lot about some of what Battle.net is doing for StarCraft II -- a deeper league system, a mod community, and so on. Can you speak at all about how Diablo III will take advantage of the new Battle.net in gameplay terms?

Kevin Martens: We're definitely using it. A lot of the things that StarCraft is doing, we're paying really close attention to. We've got coders from the Diablo development team working on Battle.net to make sure that they're laying the groundwork for the things we want to do.

Primarily at this point, we're interested in trying to make the co-op game as fast and as easy for players to get into as we can.

More co-op support is our primary interest, and the rest of the Battle.net stuff, we'll develop as StarCraft II develops it. We're watching that process, and we definitely like what we see.

I notice you significantly redesigned parts of the Barbarian again after his previous unveiling. It's interesting to see the character undergo those changes from outside the studio. As far as that general iterative process you described earlier, does it feel in practical terms that you essentially have an indefinite amount of time to spend on any particular game? At what point do you say, "Well, we do need to ship this game"?

Kevin Martens: I would say when all of the elements are at an equal level of not just quality -- not just how polished and balanced it is -- but also an equal level of awesome. One of the reasons we keep retooling the Barbarian stuff -- some of the Barbarian skills were done a long time ago -- is because as we added a new class or added higher level skills in, we did something else that was more awesome. And part of the Blizzard design is that if something is too awesome, we generally try to make everything else as awesome as opposed to pulling that one back.

That's one of the reasons that the iteration takes a while, but it's also one of the reasons why everything is over the top. The example about art -- you find the line by crossing it -- applies to the design as well. You make things way cool, smashy, explodey -- everything. Then you pull it back a little bit, for balance reasons more than anything.

Julian Love: There is another thing I could mention to round that out. There is kind of a sign we look for internally, which is when we can't get any more work done on the game because everybody's busy playing it. That's when we know it's ready to go. I've had that experience within the company. It's just like, "Okay, nobody's working. Everybody's playing. Maybe it's time to go."

That sounds like Blizzard is fairly flat-structured from a design standpoint in many ways, where someone can just decide, "This thing needs to be improved, let's improve it."

Kevin Martens: Yeah. It definitely is. It doesn't even have to be within your area of expertise. If I have an idea for a spell effect, I can go right to Julian and say, "Hey, what if the guy did this and ice went out his spine and blah blah blah?" and vice versa. Anyone. QA guys come in and offer brand new class ideas. It's very open-ended. It's the good ideas that come to the top. It doesn't really matter where they come from.

Julian Love: Even in QA, we have a core value that says every voice matters. Literally, every voice. Anybody, even sometimes outside the company -- you listen to what they've got to say and consider it, which is exactly how we got to a new form of [the Barbarian's skill] Whirlwind. Even though it wasn't the message we wanted to hear, there's something to it.

Kevin Martens: We feel privileged that our other games are popular enough that we can take the time to do it. We know not every developer gets the chance to do that. So, we want to make sure that we use that wisely and make better games as a result"

"Blizzard?s annual BlizzCon expo celebrating all things Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo isn?t as profitable as one might think. Despite selling 20,000 tickets at $125 a pop, a ton of merchandising at the con and the DirecTV deal, Blizzard didn't see any profits from the show.

Executive Vice President, Frank Pearce, spoke at Austin GDC yesterday where he opened up on the cost of the convention:

"BlizzCon is operated at a substantial loss for the company. It's a huge marketing opportunity, so that's the benefit we get out of that. But in terms of any kind of financial gain, it actually is a loss for us."

Frank wouldn?t go into details on how much is lost, but it?s got to be a pretty penny. GameSpot points out that Blizzard has to rent out the Anaheim Convention Center, provide around 2,000 PCs for demos and there?s all those cash prizes too. Plus, there?s the celebrity factor with Kerrigan's voice actress Tricia Helfer making an appearance along with Ozzy Osbourne?s concert.

It may have cost them a ton, but I?m sure the 11 million World of Warcraft players help Blizzard sleep at night.

FUN FACT TIME! Frank also gave an insight on some interesting numbers in relation to WoW:

"Put together, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game and its two expansions have 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code, and requires 4,000 employees, 13,250 server blades, and 75,000 CPU cores."
Holy sh*t!"

After confirming it was working on a new massively multiplayer game in 2007, Blizzard Entertainment has divulged only a few details on the project. Today at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick offered another breadcrumb of information about the unnamed title--which won't be a competitor to World of Warcraft.

When asked about the efforts behind the new Battle.net online gaming service, Kotick listed Blizzard's upcoming slate. "What we've announced at Blizzard is that we have Starcraft [II] coming, Diablo has been in production?and a new, unannounced MMO that has a little more broad appeal," said the executive.

Kotick's talk of a more accessible MMORPG ads a bit more detail to the still very sketchy picture of Blizzard's mystery-shrouded project. Before officially acknowledging it was in development in 2007, Blizzard said that any new massively multiplayer game it may would not be a World of Warcraft clone. This February, now-ex-World of Warcraft game director Jeff Kaplan began working full-time on the unnamed title, which will be a brand-new property.

Besides mentioning the Blizzard MMORPG and Activision's plans to begin bypassing consoles, Kotick dropped hints of what features the new Battle.net might have. "As we start to add cash play and prize play and better rewards and recognition systems that come through the Internet, you will start to see audiences expand even further," said Kotick, showing a slide of a BlizzCon StarCraft II tournament.

When asked if Kotick's comments meant that cash prizes would be awarded directly over Battle.net, a Blizzard rep pointed out his company's longstanding tradition of having contests that begin online and end at BlizzCon with large cash prizes. "Tournament play and e-sports have been part of the Battle.net experience for years," said the rep, who declined to comment further.

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Official Blizzard Quote:

"Well I think it's kind of easy to look at changes and advancements in the RPG genre as a whole and narrow them down to any number of sources to fit each use.

To make a car analogy (my favorite!) it would be like having issues with the newest version of the mustang because its body styling takes into account things like passenger safety and aerodynamics, and being upset by this because these are features also found in the ford focus. A clearly inferior car in the eyes of the mustang enthusiast.

These types of ideas could never have been thought of or would ever be included in the mustang, of course, had not both cars been manufactured by ford.

It's just all a bit silly. What I do think is interesting is the differentiation between the hardcore Diablo II players (most of y'all) and the majority of the rest of the game buying public. From our showing at BlizzCon and PAX a lot of the articles and off-site (non fansite) discussions are saying that Diablo III may not be doing enough to change itself from Diablo II.
If those people read some of the posts here you'd think we were putting a Diablo sticker on a WoW box and calling it a day. So it's just an interesting difference between the audiences and how level of dedication changes perceptions and expectation.

And I don't mean to lump everyone together, I'd say aside from the trolls the majority of posters here are actually level headed and logical. At least able to take multiple things into consideration. Reasonable thought process and understanding that the game is a work in progress, and not someone that sees a character with a slight hunch and makes a leap of logic that we must be using model/animation assets from a different game.

That's still my favorite. Cause of it bein' so stupid 'n all.

But anyway I guess what I'm getting at is... I'd really like to read something new and original. These posts are getting tired."

"In the computer gaming world, Blizzard Entertainment is a juggernaut. The division of Activision Blizzard is responsible for some of the world's bestselling PC games, including World of Warcraft and StarCraft. But the company hasn't released a game for home consoles in more than a decade.

That could change any day.

Blizzard has nothing against controllers, joysticks or living rooms, said Paul Sams, Blizzard's chief operating officer, at last month's annual BlizzCon event in Anaheim. Financial details are what's holding up the company's long-overdue return to the console market.

To release an Xbox, Playstation or Wii game, game producers are required to pay a licensing fee to system manufacturers. It's a big reason why Microsoft and Sony can sell their hardware at a loss.

The simple economics goes: The manufacturers profit on game sales, even if they lose money on the hardware needed to play the games. They might lose money on each console, but the longer term prospect of selling more and more games should make back that loss (and then some).

"The value is the game," Sams agrees. But he doesn't like the business model. "I don't like the idea of paying a console manufacturer a fee. That concept pisses me off."

But the community aspect of consoles is compelling Blizzard to go beyond the all-too-familiar flicker of the bedroom computer monitor. "Because the living room is a place where more people can be around, there's a lot of reasons why it's appealing," Sams said.

In order to get there, however, Blizzard appears to be holding out for a console maker to cut a deal. "They do it all the time," Sams said. True, manufacturers will ...

... sometimes give bags of money in exchange for exclusive rights to high-profile game franchises.

Where might Blizzard go? As it prepares to launch its revamped online gaming network, called Battle.net, the company doesn't have much need for Microsoft's Xbox Live infrastructure or Nintendo's WiFi Connection.

Blizzard has a cozy history with Nintendo, having made games for the Super Nintendo and StarCraft 64 for the successor to the SNES. The Wii's remote control would be well-suited to the developer's flagship real-time strategy games.

Blizzard is shopping around Diablo III to consoles. "We are in ongoing talks with Microsoft and Sony," Sams said. "I think they desire to see us on their platforms."

A near-finished game called StarCraft: Ghost was the closest Blizzard has come to releasing a console game in years. Due to the loss of a key person on the outsourced development team, "it wasn't turning out the way we wanted," Sams said. So, Blizzard scrapped the project. That crucial developer, Ray Gresko, now leads work on Diablo III.

"I think that a lot of other companies would not have hesitated in publishing it," Sams said about the game based on its sci-fi franchise. "We weren't willing to put out a game that was not at the level of Blizzard polish quality that customers have come to expect."

As the battle between Microsoft and Sony becomes more aggressive, with both companies recently slashing the prices of their systems in advance of the holiday season, it may not be long before one plops the right deal down on Blizzard's table. -Mark Milian"

"Let's just get this out of the way. The people worried about the look of "Diablo III" being too colorful are idiots. They're straight-up wrong. The last thing we need is Blizzard taking these people seriously. Because if there's a problem at all with "Diablo III" (and I'm not sure that there is), it's that the game isn't straying far enough from the grim geek aesthetics of the '90s.

At BlizzCon this year, I had the opportunity to hack-and-slash my way through buzzing Sand Wasps and maddened cultists. I painted the desert with their blood. And the frequent red flash of arterial spray was the brightest color to meet my squinting eyes.

We've seen the offending screenshots, depicting cavernous dungeons lit by the pale glow of ancient magicks and forests painted an autumnal ochre. Fans went crazy over those early images; infuriated, apparently, by Blizzard's use of the entire color palette -- especially the rainbow that shone in the misty reaches below a broken bridge. To most gamers, that arcing band of color was like Kryptonite. I found all those screenshots to be quite beautiful.

What we saw at BlizzCon wasn't quite so lovely. The Sundered Pass was a wind-blown path snaking between jutting black rock. Our party fought its way between the tilting stone spires, slashing bugs, cutting down Dune Threshers -- bigger, fiercer critters that crawl on their bellies. Rotting corpses of creatures alien and unknown curled in corners. Alcoves hid treasures and ambushes in nearly equal share. But always there was death -- delivered by the hands of Barbarian, Monk and Witch Doctor.

All of these moments are accentuated by the game's art style. One that isn't stylized or cartoony, as some critics would claim. True, "Diablo III" doesn't look like a game from the '90s anymore ---it looks like the box art of a game from the '90s. Recall the aesthetic: the future gore of "DOOM," the disarming orange and yellow of "Planescape: Torment" and the gothic lettering of :"Diablo." These were a culmination of male teen fantasy -- an amalgamation of the mature comic book, Nine Inch Nails angst and cyberpunk style, like the now-cliched leather trenchcoats donned by Neo in "The Matrix." And so, while you won't see the Monk wearing William Gibson-inspired mirrorshades, the aesthetic soul of the '90s is preserved in "Diablo III", for better or for worse. I'm going to say for better.

Play the levels we were exposed to at BlizzCon and you'll feel transported not only to the fantastic world of "Diablo III", but back to the '90s. Because despite the gorgeous visuals dancing across the monitor, images that feel torn straight from the cover of a "Dragonlance" novel, "Diablo III" is a total throwback. Blizzard's devotion to the past is understandable. Millions still play the games it created way back when. A hard left turn would be folly. "Diablo III," like "StarCraft II," stays the course. And the destination is the same as it's always been: 3 a.m., bleary and buzzed with a bag full of loot and an alarm clock looming.

Apart from the detailed visuals, "Diablo III" futzes very little with the formula. And that's a good thing. Players roam overworlds and dungeons, cutting through enemies and looting their still-warm corpses. "Diablo III" is a return to Sanctuary, some 20 years after the characters in "Diablo II" saved the world. But the veterans of the last war against Hell have gone mad from the horrors they've seen. And new blood is needed to pick up the fight. Familiar faces, like Deckard Cain, are set to return. And familiar places, like Tristram, will be revisited.

But more interesting, at least to me, are the moments of deja vu I felt during the demo. Played with friends, the same multiplayer moments arise. Groups split up, players nosing their way toward different corners of the map. One player finds himself outnumbered and the rest come running (sometimes failing) to save the day. Pockets fill to the brim with loot, forcing friends to stop momentarily and trade by chucking useful weapons and whatnot into the dirt.

I'm glad Blizzard didn't cook up new ways to handle these moments, because they're part of what made the original games fun to play with friends. And I'm looking forward to seeing how the new Battle.net accentuates rather than transforms these moments. Being able to hear your friend's voice while playing "Diablo III" certainly isn't something I remember from the '90s -- but it's a touch that I'll find useful. Because who wants to type when you could be clicking and killing?"