DiabloFans

The game world is not like WoW where it's completely filled out. If you could zoom out, you might see the edge of the world with blank nothingness beyond. And 3D games can be at any resolution really. Whatever your video card supports will be in the list.

Quote from Tarplicious

Personally I liked the control scheme of Darkspore a lot which runs on a similar engine. I just don't like ranged attackers like bows/crossbows with that control scheme since you spend 50% of your time holding down the shift key. I do like the new hotkey setup however. I believe the info is already on the wiki.

If you have really good mouse accuracy, you don't need to use shift. It takes a lot of practice to get to that point though.

Quote from Ophion

Your regular melee attack might be used depending on your build, but you will probably often replace it by another skill. It shouldn't be that different from what we did in D2.

I wonder if a melee skill attached to the left mouse will default to basic attacks if you lack the resource though, or if it will do nothing.

I don't see why they would let us bind skills to the F keys when we can't have more than 7 skills anyway. 8 hotkeys means that there is room for all of those + the basic attack, so why would we need more hotkeys?

7 hotkeys for skills, 1 for melee attack, 1 for potion. That's 9 hotkeys.

Anyways, in Torchlight the right-click abilities can be assigned to F keys. So you have your normal skill bar hotkeys plus you can bind, say, Whirlwind to F1, and Battle Orders to F2. F1 sets Whirlwind as your right-click ability, F2 sets Battle Orders to right-click ability. This is how it was in Diablo 2. So Torchlight basically has both Diablo 2 controls plus Diablo 3 skill bar. Maybe that's what Blizzard is doing as well. Otherwise it seems like we will need another hotkey.

Quote from Polrayne

Don't forget - at the bottom of most of our grubby souls is someone who wants to amass money.

That's me right there. =) I'm definitely going to play around with the AH and stockpile lots of gold. I never got max gold in WoW, but I almost always had thousands more than I needed just because I found it fun to build up more. On my main, I bought all the mounts, pets, and "special" items I could find. I never had enough consistent time to raid (I'm always on call with my job), so farming gold and buying stuff was like my "endgame" in WoW.

Quote from ScyberDragon

Skills are macro'd through 1-5, left mouse, two right mouse (toggles by tab key). This creates 8 hotkeys. The extra one is likely used (as seen in most vids) for potions still.

There are no passive skills. All passive skills are now done through the trait system.


Hopes this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Does this mean that there is no need for regular melee attack anymore? Assuming left-click is melee attack, you only have 5 hotkeys plus right-click and tab right-click. So most likely one of your skills can't be hotkeyed, but I'm guessing there will also be the F keys available (like Torchlight).

Yes it was true. For Starcraft 2 they gave every attendee a beta key, so people were angry when Blizzard announced only a small portion of attendees would get a D3 beta key. A lot of people previously bought tickets largely because of the guaranteed beta key.

Quote from SFJake

I thought the trees were no more, and now its just one big tree?

Yes as far as we know, the basic skill tree system is gone. All skills have certain required levels to learn. You can only learn 7 of the skills. Each skill has a cap of 15 or 20. You only get 60 skill points total, but you can distribute your skill points however you want in your 7 skills. Blizzard also said there is some way to respect, but we don't know if it's a full reset or just one skill at a time.

Quote from Polrayne

I'm confident (whether I've read it or I'm clairvoyant) that the epic gear/weapon system will be BOP or BOE for most pieces. This forces a player to wear the best crafted gear possible and be alright. But to be great, they are going to have to go farm for epic drops. And you can't farm for epic drops, until you have the best crafted gear. And to get that, you need materials and skilled Artisans. And you guessed it - to get skilled Artisans you can either farm the materials yourself to build them up, or get some sort of help with that long process by selling items for gold, to purchase materials on the......AH.

At Blizzcon, Jay Wilson said there are no BoP items in Diablo 3. So I think AH will be fine as long as there are certain ultra hard to find items that no one will post on AH because of that high value. People will want to trade those items directly for another ultra hard to find item that they can use.

I will only do PvP if I feel like I've finished PvE. Between the 5 classes I will be busy for a long time leveling them up, playing around with different skills, getting artisans maxed out, and gearing them up. If I ever get to the point where I feel pretty good about my characters, I might do a little PvE. I kind of doubt I will have enough time to get to that point. I don't have nearly as much time these days as I did when D2 came out.

Another thing I was thinking about, with Starcraft 2 one of the blues said beta was coming Summer 2009. The months went by and no new information was given out until right before Blizzcon when they said it was delayed because of Battle.net 2.0. A lot of people hated Blizzard for announcing a summer beta so early and then saying nothing about it for months until they finally found out it was delayed for a year. I think Blizzard has learned from this and will not say a thing about a possible D3 beta launch until they know for sure "it's in two weeks" or whatever.

Baskiok said "very specifically", but any planned dates they have are still tentative. They could change at any time if something comes up. Beta will probably not be announced until the date is set in stone, which can only happen right before beta.

I don't think the resources will be changing much. Well maybe if the game is delayed until 2012. Scyberdragon has a good summary there. The only one I could see changing is the Demon Hunter since it hasn't really been revealed yet. I think it was just Mana at Blizzcon.

For a better idea on the mechanics:
Fury - same as Rage in WoW: http://www.wowpedia.org/Rage
Mana - same as Mana in WoW: http://www.wowpedia.org/Mana
Arcane Power - same as Energy in WoW: http://www.wowpedia.org/Energy
Spirit - combined Rogue Combo points and Death Knight Runic Power in WoW: http://www.wowpedia.org/Combo_point, http://www.wowpedia.org/Rune_system#Runic_Power
Hatred/Discipline - similar to Druid Eclipse system in WoW: http://www.wowpedia.org/Eclipse

Quote from Meera

I really hate how Starcraft 2 manages the names. You see people doing MADmynick and it doesn't feel quite well, at least to me. I would take this option something like Name <Clan-name>.

That's because Blizzard hasn't added proper clan support yet. I doubt Diablo 3 will have clan support at launch either. Clan support is not estimated to come out until the first SC2 expansion. Battle.net features are on separate release schedules from the games.

Quote from zerg4hire

Quote from Thander

I'm leaning towards the possibility that the remaining systems are announced as the final reward for the Facebook million "likes". That still leaves time for a beta starting in the summer.

You can't get 250k likes in 1 ~ 2 months, and I gurantee thats not the going to be the way they release the rest of the system since Bashiok said he has "Specific" idea of when and how to release them.
Facebook is definetly not going to be the case since you don't know when they'll get 1 million likes.
Perhaps releasing 2~3 Youtube videos or on their main website like they did for most of their work.

So far it's an average of 25k Likes every 7 days. It's been very predictable within a day or so when each milestone would be reached. With this current rate, 1 million would be around the first week of June. More than enough time for beta to start in summer.

Quote from Chaotik

I am all for a structured loot table because I like to know where to farm for gear I want for my build.. rather than having some 0.00035% chance it could drop anywhere in the world and I may never see it for months if Ever.. and the only way I may ever see it is through trades.

This is precisely what I like about Diablo games, that even in your entire playing time, there are some items you may never find yourself. It's what makes the legendary (unique) items so good. WoW does the same by having some items only available to high end raiders. I don't want to get to level 60 in Diablo 3, farm items for a week, and be done with my character. I want it to be a long term thing.

Quote from Umpa

I'm fairly optimistic about their revealing of "systems" fairly randomly with no warning. They've revealed stuff on several occasions that were not linked to Blizzcon or any specific event. Therefore, I see no reason why we couldn't see an "systems" announcement soon that would get the Beta rolling.

but then again, they could very well not do that. But I hope they do. :unsure:

I'm leaning towards the possibility that the remaining systems are announced as the final reward for the Facebook million "likes". That still leaves time for a beta starting in the summer.