There seems to have been many changes in Patch 8 that did not make it into the notes.
GeneralUI
- Gold for quest rewards changed. (total from main quests now 503g, up from 285g; hidden event quests now give a total of 205g, up from 0g)
- New type of chest called "Bloody Chest" (found in Den of Fallen - seems to drop same stuff as regular chest. [Picture])
- Grotesques no longer contribute to XP bonuses such as Mighty Blow and Massacre
- Reduced the number of items that pop out of Haedrigs' apprentice's body
- Ghastly Gravediggers apply a Chilled debuff in addition to knockback on their attacks
- Cast time on Stone of Recall shortened to 5 seconds down from 10.
- The gold collection speed of companions is noticeably faster
- Jar of Souls quest wording changed to "Survive the skeletons raised by the Jar of Souls"
- Nephalem Altar moved again, to the SE of the Waypoint in New Tristram
- New "Recommended Items" tab in the AH [Picture]
- Stone of Recall and Nephalem Cube now rewarded at the end of 3rd quest (was end of 2nd and mid 3rd respectively)
Sounds
- Different font is now used for various UI parts: floating combat text, quest tracker text, tooltips.
- Floating combat text used to truncate decimals. Life regen ticked as +0 if below 1.0. Now only skips ticks, and displays +1 when it hits that
- Nephalem Cube slot and Cauldron of Jordan slot in inventory UI switched places
Art
- New sound for Checkpoint (changed from same sound that was used for completing a quest objective)
- New sound for yes/no dialog prompts (like when canceling cinematics or using the Portal Stones)
Blue Posts
Official Blizzard Quote:
Real Money Auction House
The reason for the RMAH being implemented is not because we want to force you all to use it, this is because we want to give you a safe, secure and Blizzard supported way of selling and buying Diablo items using real currency. If you choose not to use it because you feel it would have an ill-effect on your gameplay or for any other reason, then you do not need to. I do not feel that there is a requirement to segregate players who choose to and do not choose to use this service as it might diminish player experience or cause other problems. For example, if your friend wants to use the RMAH and you don’t, then you cannot play with them
It is our goal with all of our games to ensure that players have a highly enjoyable experience when playing. Due to this, we will not remove the gold Auction House, so that people can play the way they want to. One of the most important parts of the Diablo series is to obtain the best possible gear. In the past, some players would use external and potentially dangerous methods to perform real-money transactions for gear and gold in Diablo such as third-party real-money-trading organizations.
The transactions between these third-party organisations and players generally went awry, and led to a poor player experience as well as a large number of customer-service issues such as scams and item or account theft. Because we feel that it would be best to offer players an in-game and Blizzard certified way to perform these transactions in a safe and secure manner, we decided to implement the RMAH.
So just to re-iterate, even in Diablo 1 and 2, players were buying gear and gold with real-world currency, it's just more visible and safe now. It will be no different than in the past, in that you do not have to use real money at all to improve your character, however if you do decide to, it will now be much more safe and secure.
I hope this explains why we don’t want to remove one Auction house or the other, nor segregate the player bases.
Whats to stop spam bots shouting "X item in RMAH £14 now"
It's not really possible for people to spam players easily, to do so they will need to either have your Battle.Net as a friend or BattleTag ID and personally contact you. They can also go into your game if its public and talk there, or in a public channel you are in. If they do any of those though, you can simply ignore them and they will miss out in becoming friends or communicating with fine people such as yourselves.
The question I was trying to ask was how are you going to keep the two in balance?
Well, glad you asked
Inflation in a particular currency is fine, and for things to increase on price depending on demand is good, however as you are asking about; we do not want worthless currency.
Take for example (excuse the comparison) WoW, gold is heavily inflated but people still use it for everything, just more of it. We have many tools to ensure gold remains a worthy currency in comparison to the RMAH and vice versa. Do not worry, we will be very carefully keeping an eye out for problems with inflation and one AH becoming less valuable ^^ We have many knobs and controls at our disposal to ensure that everything works out fine! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Bashiok on Release
Official Blizzard Quote:
Thank you for voicing your concerns, Starbird. I realize you and many other people are excited to play the game, and are probably feeling a bit let down that we haven’t yet announced a release date. While you bring up a number of points of speculation, I just want to cut right to it and state that the reason we don’t have a release date yet is because the game isn’t yet where we want it to be in terms of our quality standards. We aren’t holding it back on account of any one piece of the game, or for any other outside factors. While it is indeed playable from beginning to end, we’re still actively working on many individual game elements and the ways that they interact with one another, with a great deal of iterative tweaking, balancing, polishing, adjusting, redesigning, and retesting going on. We’re going to continue beta testing, and before too long that’s going to include a large influx of new invites.
Much of this iteration obviously takes place behind closed doors, so I can sympathize with the concerns about the lack of visible progress, and the sentiment that we should just go ahead and ship the game. Until we’re able to reveal more of the results, I can only assure you that we are indeed working on critical game systems that directly impact the core of the experience.
I also realize a lot of people were hoping for a release date announcement at the VGAs. We’re simply not going to be able to dispel or comment on release date rumors and speculation every time someone expects an announcement. We’ll be announcing a release date when we determine the game is ready, and not holding it back just to line it up with any particular game-industry event.
The bottom line is that development of our games and preparations for release are long and complicated. We’re just as excited to get the final version into your hands as you are to play it, but making sure it lives up to our quality standards will always be the most important factor in that process.
Why not make the beta open now. Mayby all the hard fans can have a chance to ploay before release.?
The service currently available is a single test site, it just couldn't hold that many people. While we'd certainly like to make people happy, it wouldn't be a good experience, and frankly letting people try the game is not the purpose of the beta test.
Also why not tell us what your working on fixing and let the people in the beta help?
Well most everyone already knows we're working on runestones still, and we have some other changes that are going to shake up characters a little bit. We'll be letting you know as soon as we're sure they'll work out at all, and then we're going to be asking everyone for feedback.
We'll be continuing to add players to beta as we need. We recognize that there are many people that want to be a part of helping out and we appreciate that. We just aren't able to provide any particular schedule for additions.
The ongoing, concerns on timing of the release are understandable, but in some cases are a bit overblown or overly pessimistic. We recognize that it's mostly due to anxiousness and the desire to get in and stomp demons, but as Bashiok said in his post, we'll release it when we're ready. We believe it will be worth it.
We appreciate all of the constant support and enthusiasm for Diablo III and it is something that continues to inspire us to make sure we release a game we can all be happy with and have many great adventures in.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Cyclone Strike
New monk ability Cyclone Strike
Blizzard's gotten better at releasing now though I think. (Since they have unlimited WoW money to hire workers?)
SC2 went pretty smoothly from beta to release.
Since the beta came out in September I always figured it would be March, mostly because of what Jay Wilson said about the beta starting about 6 months before release.
I don't know why people think it will take 5 more months to over a year for them to complete the game and be satisfied with it. They are working on the game every day all day, it's not like it's something they pick up once a week and decide to put a few hours into it. It could all come together very fast and be out in a couple months. All they are saying right now is that they don't want to give us a release date because it's not up to their standards yet, but once that happens they could tell us the game is going to be released in a month. Like they're said, the game is playable from start to finish, they are just messing around with a few things and once it's figured out they'll be good. They aren't going to make us wait another year.
agreed, they are changing alot of stuff that doesnt need to be changed, or stuff that is PATCH type things they could easily add after release. considering it was said months ago it was fully playable start to finish i dont think any game polishing is holding it up. like you said they are just polishing it while they have extra time for some other reason.
They said early 2012. Nothing in the news story indicates another delay.
They have multiple teams working on different things, and they have said they are getting teams together to work on things that need to be done, but I'm sure they still have plenty of people to spare for working on these smaller things they are tweaking.
lol. THIS beta is NOT for bugs. they fix them as they arise but that is not their main focus. they said many times its for server stability testing. therefor the game already doesnt have a "million bugs". few AH glitches here and there to fix which wouldnt take long, WoW still even has glitches. there still testing the new bnet system for diablo thats the entire point of the beta.
yes i know the beta isnt for bugs... everyone does.. the point im making is stop worrying about the release, and atleast respect the little things they are doing, which will make a nice touch in game.. i understand your frustration, cuz i wish they would hurry up as well but what are you gunna do lmao, no sense in getting mad lmao
does it help putting 'lmao' 'lmao' at the end? you obviously didnt know it wasnt for bugs by what you said. also people are mad because it has already been delayed and there not giving us any good info. theres a good sense in getting mad at waiting for a game for 5 years and having it pushed back and getting extremely vague "updates". just because your not as psyched about this game as other people doesnt mean you can put them down.
who am i exactly putting down, all i saying is i like the little things they are doing and i respect that, and i dont think you can assume whether im "psyched" for the game or not, i just dont feel the need to get mad over them taking forever cuz its not gunna change the fact that they are taking forever.. plus there is no need to get mad cuz im laughting over the fact that nothing we(whole diablo community) can do to make blizz release the game faster.. your argument is invalid because my points werent directed to you, it was in general that whether or not we like it or not, blizz IS in fact going to do what they feel best works for the game.. im ultimately on your side, im just not mad about it anymore, is that so wrong?
You people are so impatient "good things come to those who wait."