Fansite Press Conference for Diablo 3 and WoW (Saturday)

Well, even though the Fansite Press Conference was for both Diablo III and WoW, since this is a Diablo fansite I will only cover the Diablo portions. Admittedly, information from this was sadly scant, but let's try to make the best of what we got of it, especially in light of how much we've gotten this whole weekend.

The last reported-on event of the BlizzCon took place today as the day began to set over in California at the Anaheim Convention Center. The Press Conference was limited only to fansite representatives, of which ours for this whole event have been Silversurfnstud and Mockery.

The first bit of news might come as a bit of a turn-off. It has been confirmed that player-made mods will "not be in Diablo III". What this means is somewhat nebulous, since obviously player-made mods will not be an integrated part of the game when you buy it, but I would venture to guess that this means that it will be harder for such mods to be made. This is mostly a let down, I feel, since mods were a big part of Diablo II after players played the game to death over it's decade-long lifespan.

In Diablo II, we saw the return of the three Diablo I heroes, the Warrior, Sorcerer, and Rogue, as the Lord of Terror, the False Summoner, and Blood Raven, respectively. It would appear that the same can be said of the relation of Diablo II to Diablo III, as it has been promised that we will be seeing Diablo II characters returning as NPC's in the coming game:

Quote from "Silversurfnstud" »
Blizzard says Diablo 2 characters will make a NPC return in Diablo 3

In Diablo II, fans and players traveled around the world of Sanctuary to various areas, some large cities and some isolated retreats against the forces of Hell. In this areas, some more than others, we saw that there were many NPC's in the cities, but the vast majority of them were not interactive or speaking. However, in Diablo III it would appear that we will be seeing more dynamic NPC's in-game:

Quote from "Mockery" »
Lots of NPCs though, some of whom send you on mini-quests

When asked about the number of mini quests in the area of the demo alone (a short area in the Borderlands), it can be discerned that we will be seeing plenty more quests, as previously stated by Blizzard, than in either of the two older installments:

Quote from "Mockery »
Hard to say how many [quests'] overall, I wouldn't be surprised if they had anywhere from 15-20 mini-quests in the demo depending when you played

If you would like an idea of how some of these quests played out, well, they seem to be action-packed:

Quote from "Mockery" »
my favorite was killing all the occultists and freeing their slaves though. very gory and nonstop action ... Escaping the collapsing dungeon (a timed 3-minute quest) was challenging too, especially if you tried fighting enemies and opening chests. Most people agreed the best strategy was to just RUN :P ... There's also a cool quest, which i mentioned before, where you have to kill a giant Dune Thrasher (basically, a sand shark creature) that ate some poor guy's son for lunch. You then return the son's jewels to the grieving father for a bunch of experience. Usually levels you up

Another change from previous games in the series with the new game is that quests will be failable, some even with dire consequences if you cannot complete them within a specified timeframe:

Quote from "Mockery" »
it tells you that you failed, or you die depending on the situation. If your time expires in that collapsing dungeon, you die

If anyone would like more on the fright-factor of the playable demo, in addition to more-than-necessary gore, we can bve expecting anything from impaled corpses to hanging bodies:

Quote from "Mockery" »
I saw dead people hanging, I saw dead people impaled on spears, I saw dead people on torture racks, I saw splatters 'n guts where I'm sure somebody died a horribly painful death... the works. They're not holding anything back when it comes to splattertastic gore in this game

Silversurfnstud then asked about the female Monk when he could get a question in, and Blizzard replied saying that information on the female Monk will be released soon in a small announcement. Hopefully that will be following shortly after the BlizzCon has come to a close. And for any of you still questioning the implementation of female Monks, which obviously do not exist in our world:

Quote from "Mockery" »
people were askin Blizzard how there can be female monks in Diablo 3 when they don't exist in the real world. So that's why Blizzard was saying Diablo is "their world" and they can have female monks if they want to :)

On the death mechanic, which may or may not be concrete at this point, so far there are no penalties for death (like in previous games, where experience and/or gold paid for your decease), although we may be seeing an interesting new type of potion that could add a new element of cooperative play:

Quote from "Mockery" »
If a ally used a potion of revival you would spawn where you died. If no ally revived you you respawned 5 seconds later at your last checkpoint

Some other things of note were a new modifier which would add a percentage to your magic damage (Silversurfnstud reported a percentage as high as 49% on an amulet), Quest Items are as of now the color previously kept for Sets- green, and it would seem that Town Portals have been officially cut from the game:

Quote from "Mockery" »
Town Portals Have officially been Cut out of d3, They stated they thought they took away from the action. They also stated a waypoint like system would be returning

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