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Damn, finishing Inferno with my remaining characters feels almost like a waste now, seeing what great gear RoS will bring. The items I find tend to usually be more frustrating than anything else at the moment. My WD hasn't found an upgrade since mid-Act II and finished Inferno almost with the same fucking stuff I had in Hell...and no I didn't have any godly gear, in fact most of what I had was pretty crap. Seeing this makes me want to get my hands on RoS like yesterday and play the game the way it was supposed to be from the get-go.

Listening to this makes me sad. Not because that's the atmosphere of the theme...but because once again, the soundtrack puts ambience over rythm and melody. Listen to for example the cave theme from Diablo 2 with the drums and the bells and tell me that's not a musical piece that makes you want to fight monsters. Listening to this, I'd rather be playing a tense horror game where I'm just waiting for the next moment of terror and gruesome death rather than be taking part in some blood pumping action of an ARPG game.

1) Will there be any changes to the storytelling mechanics of the game? I.e. make dialogue optional instead of forcing it upon the player through talkative followers and temporary followers, focus more on environment and interaction with enemies rather than background story text (too much tell, too little show - we never saw any evidence of Azmodan being a good battle commander despite being told so, Prime Evil was supposed to be the most powerful demonic being but mechanically was just like normal Diablo, the keep depths are supposedly colder than outside but dont look frozen etc.).
2) Will the musical score resemble more the ambience based score of D3 or will the style shift towards a more melodic or rythmical style of the previous games?
3) Will there be any steps made to differentiate the Wizard and Witch Doctor resource functionality more?
4) Are there any plans to introduce hero slot transfer between regions (if I don't need my character slots on SAE server can i transfer some to Europe instead) or increasing the amount of hero slots to allow for more than two characters of the same class?

"discarded trash stagnating in neglected gutters and potholes"

Oh great, they included plotholes in the expansion too. Might have just misread that though...

In all seriousness, this design feels like what D1 used to be in the upper 4 levels. Wish this type of architecture was more present in Act1 of D3 as well, this gives much more of a Diabloey wibe than what we've seen so far. Well done, you got me intrigued.

I'm sure as hell happy that it's not Karyna from Act I. That artificially high pitched, scared, trembling voice she has whenever you talk to her was even more annoying than the Enchantress' "oh look I'm so stereotypically sweet" persona. And that's saying something.

Holy shit! After a year and a half they finally figured out that Disintegrate:Entropy and Ray of Frost:Sleet Storm are balanced exactly the wrong way around. Great work guys, give yourselves a raise. All kidding aside, most of this makes it look like they are pretty content with the function and just want to nail the right number damage-wise. I'm still waiting for the day they finally figure out that the way they are balancing Zombie Charger is not working. At all. It doesn't take a scientist to figure that one out.

Cool! They will allow us to skip cinematics! Maybe in the next 2 years they might actually get to the issue of Act cinematics not playing at all during gameplay or even disappearing from the cinematics menu. But hey, at least the pointless 20 second cinematics that retell what you literally just played through in the last 10 minutes are working fine... Whoever thought that was a great idea missed the class where they tell them what the purpose of cinematics is.

I'm glad to know that they at least understand what the issue is in the game, even if they cannot exactly pinpoint what causes it or rather how to solve it at the time. It's still Blizzard. If they are aware of an issue in the game, they are not going to be content until they solve it, which gives me hope that this absoluteness of the combat (either alive or dead, there is no middle ground like "nearly dead") will be resolved.

I will be the first to admit it that I have bugger all when it comes to experience with Inferno. I have been taking my damn time with the game so I'm only just finishing Hell with my 10th build before I delve into Inferno. However from what I've played, using MP etc. it feels like a large portion of the problem is specific to Inferno only. I play Hell on MP5 right from the start with each character and the skill is very much there. You can take some damage as long as you have decent armor/resist/HP pool, it's not all instant death. Nightmare MP10 was similar, the monsters just took long to die.

But suddenly inferno hits and I'm getting 2-3 shot by regular mobs on MP1-2. At that point I feel I could take on MP5 just as easily since I die fast anyway, at least I get bigger rewards. IMO Inferno is simply blown out of proportion. It's no longer about fair difficulty, it's about you going against hordes of mobs that each do way more damage than you and have more HP. The only thing you have is the hope that with better loot maybe it will get better (loot which you can only get by actually playing through Inferno where you're getting two shot since Act I BTW). Thus people have to rely on such massive burst heals simply because any other regular damage mitigation or heal over time simply doesn't cut it anymore. And god help you if you're playing without AH, since you'll have to push through Inferno without the loot you need to actually play Inferno (which is just fucked up).

When it comes to the lack of reward for skillful play, that again comes from the way the game was designed. Look back at Diablo 2. Yes you could chug health potions like a maniac but the only thing there was to prevent you from having control over what you do was Cold damage, Decrepify curse and Knockback. Other than that it was all you who's in control. And the game was challenging. However, look at Diablo 3. Slows...present. Knockback...present. Slow curses...present. But what more do we have? Chainfreezes, Jails, Walls into a corner of death, Vortex, Nightmarish...and that's just the Elites. Tongue monsters who won't leave you alone, teleporting/vanishing Terror Demons which prevent you from healing EVER(!!!), stunning Armodons, teleporting Phase Beasts, vanishing Snake Demons, burrowing and leaping Scavengers, burrowing Cave Worms. The game is absolutely full of monsters that will do anything in their power to take things out of your hands.

If you want to kite and avoid damage, you just can't. There are skills that you just actively cannot avoid and if you do want to survive, there is usually one and only one skill per class that you HAVE to have otherwise you're done. Must have skills to counter unfair affixes/monster abilities are not the way to promote skill. Anyone can put a Smoke Screen on and push the button. That is not skill rewarding. Skill rewarding is removing such abilities (unfun abilities I should say...who wants to have a skill that makes you vanish for 1.5 seconds? whoop de doo that was a fun skill to use) and removing affixes that take control away from you because otherwise 90% of the stories you can be telling your friends about D3 will be: "I was kiting him, only a few slivers of health left, it was really tense. I knew that one more hit and I was dead but if I could just survive a few seconds I could make it to that Healing Shrine and kill him. Then I got Vortexed and Chainfrozen. There was nothing I could do." No wonder skill is not rewarded when there are affixes that make skill irrelevant. If there is one thing I've learned from playing games over the years, it's that it's never fun or fair to take away control from the player. Yet Diablo 3 does it consistently, in a game that is entirely focused on a single hero/player battling his way through hordes of demons. Back before release of Diablo 3 the team was talking about gameplay decisions and some attention was given to kiting. They designed the monsters in such a way that they linger, they don't always attack immediately, they pause, they slow down etc. so that the player is rewarded for kiting and playing with skill. Then they inexplicably introduced affixes which negate all of it. They have a lot to learn yet and it's fairly obvious that this is the first time this team made an ARPG.

Quote from Bodycount1

The way I see it is forums that trade items already.. like on here and on d2jsp..

THEY ARE GOING TO EXPLODE WITH ACTIVITY!

Think of the web traffic they are going to get once this change happens? Ad revenue is going to shoot through the roof.

Blizzard just let the website owners make a lot more money.

So what? If people are so greedy and impatient that they can't be content with the fact that they won't get everything they ever want (be it in game or IRL) then by all means, go buy stuff on third party sites for money and risk being scammed. But such behaviour should never have been supported in the first place and it's the right move for the health of the game. I don't care that some bloke will be chewing on add revenue money and another idiot will get scammed out of all his cash, each deserves what they get from that exchange. Meanwhile me and I dare say most of the people who play D3 will be enjoying a better, improved game where it is ok to have something that is ridiculously overpowered and wacky simply because you no longer need to care about what the price of the thing will be on the AH and whether it will invalidate all the purchases people have made. It will be development in favour of the enjoyment of the game and not development restricted by some virtual economy that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Yes? Yees? More yes. Oh god so much yes. YEEEEES!! There is hope for Blizzard after all!!

Now if only they used their AH money to hire a good script writing team I'd be as happy as can be. For now though, it will be nice for once to not be punished for playing the game the right way! I had my doubts about RoS before, but if the AH is out of the equation, then I'm really looking forward to how crazy they are going to go with all the new loot and other features. AH affected so many aspects of the game that I can only begin to imagine what the game is going to be like when it's gone.

And dare I say, now that there is no real money involved in the game, offline mode might make a surprise return? Get rid of that ridiculously annoying yellow/red bar on the side of my HUD and play lag-free. It's starting to feel like the good old days already.

Ok, the good, the bad and the ugly...

Barbarian
I have no clue why they would even think about removing Knockback from Bash... Way to make a generic resource generator.
Making Weapon Throw a generator seems way too cool to make it into the game. I get the feeling that I'm gonna need way more character slots...
The change to Ancient Spear is long overdue, that skill was crap in every possible way. Goes to show that this team never designed an ARPG.
Thank god they are getting rid of Thrive on Chaos. Though with that said I feel like they could have kept Into the Fray.
But they better not touch Overpower: Revel, Bloodthirsty and Ruthless.
Looking at the way they are redesigning Barbarian, they seem to want to remove as much on damage heal as they can and stick to Life per Fury spent instead. Sorry guys but that's a Monk mechanic, come up with something original. You know...something that's actually good. Healing 1650 life when I spend all my Fury is pathetic beyond explanation. Especially for a class that degenerates resource.

Demon Hunter
Gotta love all the attention they are finally giving my Engineer. Rockets and Grenades all day please.
Also Companion is finally getting some attention. The mechanics of that skill were way too opaque. They should still think about allowing the player to see his pet's stats (especially HP).
Also guaranteed crits on Vault seem kinda fun.
Don't like the change to Preparation and Supression Fire though, it's not like that combo is that great anyway, not much need to nerf it.

Monk
So they finally realized how terrible Dashing Strike was? About a year too late but at least it's something. I have no clue what they were thinking when designing that skill...
I seem to be noticing a lot of Knockback removal. And I don't like it. Kick needs it.
They still should make some changes to the Pillar of the Ancients. For the difficulty in setting it up, it sure doesn't do much more than the base skill.

Witch Doctor
This is obviously unfinished. For one they are removing Mana costs from Physical realm skills yet they leave Frog Affinity alone (a terrible skill to begin with).
Also conspicuous by its absence is any kind of change to Zombie Charger. Bears are by FAR the best rune no contest when it comes to both damage and aoe and yet no changes have been made. I'm thiking Witch Doctor will receive a lot more attention later on, possibly with some serious resouce redesign.

Wizard
I love love love the way they are changing up the elements. By far the biggest weakness I saw in the Wizard skills was that e.g. Conflagration cared about fire skills and there were barely any fire skills to begin with. Though now they are fixing that I'd like it more if they left Conflagration the way it was.
I do think however that they may have gone a bit overboard. Some skills now have so many elemental effects that if you for example are making a Temporal Flux/Disruption Arcanist many of the skills you'd like to use don't actually have a good Arcane based rune anymore. Though I applaud the return of Glacial Spike and Frozen Orb, Fire Walls and all that stuff, I feel like they might want to dial back on the elements a little bit.
Don't get the Blazing Hydra concept though. It's basically a smaller Mammoth Hydra the way I see it.


All in all about 70% of this seem promising but there are still problems and I don't think they are making as much progress as I would have hoped. One would think D3's release and the problems the game has would teach them a few things but it seems like they are still making the same mistakes. But hey, the release is still ways away so one can hope. I do think however, that even after the expansion the game will be a bit of a distance away from what it should have been on release.

Quote from pyeromaniac

all i'm reading in this response is "if people don't play the game like i do, they suck and should all be shot for making "MY" game sub standard", newsflash, thousands of people play diablo not only for the gameplay of melting demon faces, but to also play the AH to get the best gear they can afford, for as little gold investment as possible, i think the term would be "mini game", just because you don't personally like it, doesn't mean others don't, stop being such a whiny waste of space, with no concept of other players, if everybody was like you, the game would have died a long time ago.

Joined just to post this? Really, you shouldn't have bothered. If you read the post I was quoting properly, you'd probably notice that according to the poster I was referring to AH isn't a "mini game" as you call it. What he calls it is 90% of the game. Which is just fucking stupid and shows a completely warped point of view. The fact that I don't agree with the use of AH has nothing to do with that, Diablo 3 is NOT 90% AH. Period. And I dare you to prove me wrong on this. If people play the game only to spend 90% of the time in the AH then they have both way too much time on their hands and no clue how to spend it properly. And presenting such braindead posts on the official forums like that guy did does nothing for the devs neither the community. That's just non-constructive raging and I wish such people would just shut up and leave. If you agree with AH is down = 90% of the game is dead, then yes, that goes for you too. But I think all that happened here is you just misunderstood what I was referring to.

Without the AH, 90% of the game is down.
What are people going to do now, grind for garbage gear?

Sometimes, the idiocy of certain members of the playerbase leaves me speechless. This is not the case. If AH is the reason some people are playing the game, then they can fuck off and die of boredom for all I care. I thought games were played for fun, not for spending 90% of the time sitting in some menu obtaining virtual items without going through the fun of earning them. It's one of those (many) days when I wish the AH wasn't in existence at all. That way people like this wouldn't pollute the community and the forums with crap like this.

Maybe if they didn't waste time on some freaking dev blog that doesn't matter at all in relation to the game, they could be almost done with the actual patch by now.

Wow, awesome bugs. I especially like the one when Xfire will crash your game. Looks like I won't be recording for guides any time soon then.