Q. Can you talk a little bit more about the Halls of the Dead?
JW: The idea is when you lose a hardcore character, you don't really want that character to go away forever and you don't want it to take up a character slot. Well, it'll probably be optional where you can choose to free up the slot by archiving the dead character into the Halls of the Dead. You'll see the name, the gear on death, and maybe some other stuff.
Q. Is it actually part of the ui?
JW: It's part of your profile, so you just need to right click on your character to open up your profile and it tells you all about your character, your achievements and your progression.
Q. When you say Halls of the Dead I just imagined a hall where you walk around with statues of your characters.
JW: That would be awesome, but it's probably just going to be in the UI. Maybe someday it'll be a big awesome hall!
Q. Now that all spells are dependent on weapon speed and damage, are you getting rid of spell damage and increased cast rate?
JW: We are getting rid of increased cast rate, and increased weapon rate will replace it. Spell damage was a stat that only really appeared to the Witch Doctors and Wizards, we probably made this change for 2 reasons. The major one was we found casters were not valuing their weapons, that was a big problem with Diablo 2. The second one was Witch Doctor and Wizard randomly generated affixes were very confusing, our testers were coming back with questions like "What’s the math on this, when you say 20% increased damage does it apply to base damage, to spell damage?” If you can't understand it and can't understand which one is better than the other than that's a bad thing.
Q. What did you have to change in order to make followers viable in the end-game?
JW: The big one is we have to do a multiplier on your base stats, because you don't have the same item options as your character.
Q. So, do we still have to sacrifice passives to buff our followers? I remember back in the press event you said that.
JW: Oh, that what just an idea I had at the time, you won't have to sacrifice passives.
Q. What about the unattuned runestones on the homepage?
JW: Where is that system at? It's... interesting. It's not great, as one of our people said to us "It's kind of a new kind of horrible" because it just had different problems. It's really the last big system we have, the last big problem to solve.
Q. What's the biggest thing you've learned since the beta was released?
JW: Most of the beta has been useful to us from a technical standpoint, so there's not a lot of tuning stuff that the beta tells us about. The vast majority of feedback we've received has been "it's too easy". We really wanted the beta to test our hardware.
JAB: In the industry, it's really hard to test load and infrastructure without the players. Players play differently and are smart, our testing bots are not.
Q. Do you have to play through softcore to unlock hardcore?
JW: Oooh, good question, yes, you will have to play through to a certain point to unlock hardcore mode, I think it's through normal difficulty after you kill the end boss. I'm like 90% sure, so we could change our minds.
Q. We had a discussion on our forums about the color of resource systems, specifically the Demon Hunter and Monk, everyone got new resource systems other than the Witch Doctor who is stuck with mana. The same old blue orb, what are your thoughts on changing that to something more Witch Doctery like green?
JW: We like the Witch Doctor one the most, the biggest problem with green is its poison. So, if we put it in there that's going to be the reaction people have, like is that my poison vial... have I been poisoned? Some people have suggested we make the Monk orb Yellow, like the urine ball as opposed to the jizz ball. One of the suggestions we got for the Demon Hunter was to make it black... but that won't work since you just won't see it, and white is a massive contrast. If you do that you'll suddenly have a resource that you just can't see. So we were comfortable with the red and blue, they work better.
Q. Surely you have the resources to just add a new color to the spectrum.
JW: Umm, we have the power, but we don't have the will. (looks to JAB) You know it's true.
JAB: I don't know that.
Q. Are we going to be forced to use Real ID to add friends?
JW: No, and that's all I can say. We do have some plans; we aren't going to force you to be Real ID friends.
Q. With the banner system in Diablo III, are we going to start out with everything we see in the beta unlocked, or will we have to gain achievements to unlock them.
JW: It's just there for you to see, you'll have to gain achievements to unlock those.
Q. Do you have a number of achievements yet?
JW: Umm, no.
JAB: 12?
JW: No.
JAB: 13?
JW: More than 13.
JAB: 15?
JW: More than 15, would you like to take another shot?
JAB: 16.
JW: You're getting closer, very slowly. It'll be in the hundreds.
JAB: That was my next guess.
Q. How many hours do you anticipate the average player will have to invest to hit level 60 in Diablo III?
JW: This is a really hard question to answer, people ask me this all the time. The answer depends on how insane you are... I'm gonna say... I'm not even gonna guess, because if I do I know that's going to come back and haunt me. We're not really concerned about making 1-60 some ridiculously long grind. We're not douchebags, it'll be based upon what feels good.
Q. Compared to Diablo 2?
JW: Again, it's speculation that will come back to haunt me. It'll probably be shorter than Diablo II, but D2 also didn't have an end-game.
Q. With the rich lore and races of World of Warcraft, have you thought of incorporating some of that into Diablo III such as Dwarves?
JW: No, one of the things that is driving the Diablo universe is that it's a very human-centric place. Anything that isn't human is pretty much bad.
Q. Why isn't Diablo III supporting mods?
JW: There's a variety of reasons for that, one of the things people say a lot is "Oh, mods are such a hallmark of the previous games!" and I say... really?. There are mods, and there has been some developer support for those efforts, but that's not the same as us directly support it. To do that, we release tool sets and treat it like a product. We decided that the effort it would take to make mod tools would be a monumental effort. I know it seems like we're Blizzard and we have unlimited resources but we don't - we had to figure out our priorities to get the game out.
5
Q. Can you talk a little bit more about the Halls of the Dead?
JW: The idea is when you lose a hardcore character, you don't really want that character to go away forever and you don't want it to take up a character slot. Well, it'll probably be optional where you can choose to free up the slot by archiving the dead character into the Halls of the Dead. You'll see the name, the gear on death, and maybe some other stuff.
Q. Is it actually part of the ui?
JW: It's part of your profile, so you just need to right click on your character to open up your profile and it tells you all about your character, your achievements and your progression.
Q. When you say Halls of the Dead I just imagined a hall where you walk around with statues of your characters.
JW: That would be awesome, but it's probably just going to be in the UI. Maybe someday it'll be a big awesome hall!
Q. Now that all spells are dependent on weapon speed and damage, are you getting rid of spell damage and increased cast rate?
JW: We are getting rid of increased cast rate, and increased weapon rate will replace it. Spell damage was a stat that only really appeared to the Witch Doctors and Wizards, we probably made this change for 2 reasons. The major one was we found casters were not valuing their weapons, that was a big problem with Diablo 2. The second one was Witch Doctor and Wizard randomly generated affixes were very confusing, our testers were coming back with questions like "What’s the math on this, when you say 20% increased damage does it apply to base damage, to spell damage?” If you can't understand it and can't understand which one is better than the other than that's a bad thing.
Q. What did you have to change in order to make followers viable in the end-game?
JW: The big one is we have to do a multiplier on your base stats, because you don't have the same item options as your character.
Q. So, do we still have to sacrifice passives to buff our followers? I remember back in the press event you said that.
JW: Oh, that what just an idea I had at the time, you won't have to sacrifice passives.
Q. What about the unattuned runestones on the homepage?
JW: Where is that system at? It's... interesting. It's not great, as one of our people said to us "It's kind of a new kind of horrible" because it just had different problems. It's really the last big system we have, the last big problem to solve.
Q. What's the biggest thing you've learned since the beta was released?
JW: Most of the beta has been useful to us from a technical standpoint, so there's not a lot of tuning stuff that the beta tells us about. The vast majority of feedback we've received has been "it's too easy". We really wanted the beta to test our hardware.
JAB: In the industry, it's really hard to test load and infrastructure without the players. Players play differently and are smart, our testing bots are not.
Q. Do you have to play through softcore to unlock hardcore?
JW: Oooh, good question, yes, you will have to play through to a certain point to unlock hardcore mode, I think it's through normal difficulty after you kill the end boss. I'm like 90% sure, so we could change our minds.
Q. We had a discussion on our forums about the color of resource systems, specifically the Demon Hunter and Monk, everyone got new resource systems other than the Witch Doctor who is stuck with mana. The same old blue orb, what are your thoughts on changing that to something more Witch Doctery like green?
JW: We like the Witch Doctor one the most, the biggest problem with green is its poison. So, if we put it in there that's going to be the reaction people have, like is that my poison vial... have I been poisoned? Some people have suggested we make the Monk orb Yellow, like the urine ball as opposed to the jizz ball. One of the suggestions we got for the Demon Hunter was to make it black... but that won't work since you just won't see it, and white is a massive contrast. If you do that you'll suddenly have a resource that you just can't see. So we were comfortable with the red and blue, they work better.
Q. Surely you have the resources to just add a new color to the spectrum.
JW: Umm, we have the power, but we don't have the will. (looks to JAB) You know it's true.
JAB: I don't know that.
Q. Are we going to be forced to use Real ID to add friends?
JW: No, and that's all I can say. We do have some plans; we aren't going to force you to be Real ID friends.
Q. With the banner system in Diablo III, are we going to start out with everything we see in the beta unlocked, or will we have to gain achievements to unlock them.
JW: It's just there for you to see, you'll have to gain achievements to unlock those.
Q. Do you have a number of achievements yet?
JW: Umm, no.
JAB: 12?
JW: No.
JAB: 13?
JW: More than 13.
JAB: 15?
JW: More than 15, would you like to take another shot?
JAB: 16.
JW: You're getting closer, very slowly. It'll be in the hundreds.
JAB: That was my next guess.
Q. How many hours do you anticipate the average player will have to invest to hit level 60 in Diablo III?
JW: This is a really hard question to answer, people ask me this all the time. The answer depends on how insane you are... I'm gonna say... I'm not even gonna guess, because if I do I know that's going to come back and haunt me. We're not really concerned about making 1-60 some ridiculously long grind. We're not douchebags, it'll be based upon what feels good.
Q. Compared to Diablo 2?
JW: Again, it's speculation that will come back to haunt me. It'll probably be shorter than Diablo II, but D2 also didn't have an end-game.
Q. With the rich lore and races of World of Warcraft, have you thought of incorporating some of that into Diablo III such as Dwarves?
JW: No, one of the things that is driving the Diablo universe is that it's a very human-centric place. Anything that isn't human is pretty much bad.
Q. Why isn't Diablo III supporting mods?
JW: There's a variety of reasons for that, one of the things people say a lot is "Oh, mods are such a hallmark of the previous games!" and I say... really?. There are mods, and there has been some developer support for those efforts, but that's not the same as us directly support it. To do that, we release tool sets and treat it like a product. We decided that the effort it would take to make mod tools would be a monumental effort. I know it seems like we're Blizzard and we have unlimited resources but we don't - we had to figure out our priorities to get the game out.
DTOID
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbGG46plgQ&feature=player_embedded
GamerLiveTV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LCHPoUnx7s&feature=player_embedded
Force
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk8M8xOnLdI&feature=feedu
1
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DITAv9r89Yk
3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63yEdfuG-Z8
4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STC58YipyLo
5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8B1ZEjzxmg
6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A1892-Y6wo
3
1
1
http://d3db.com/contest/beta
Seems like a very cool tool as well. Wish they had crit chance as a stat though.