Diablo 3: A Look Back

Diablo 3: A Look Back
It has been a year since Diablo 3 came out! The Diablofans team would like to congratulate Blizzard on the event and for constantly updating the game with lots of interesting features that have kept us, and the millions of fans for which we toil, engaged since Day 1.

In order to celebrate the Anniversary we've creating this Timeline of every major event to happen to Diablo 3 over the course of the year.

Before we start it's only fair to mention the currently ongoing Anniversary Buff! It gives bonus Magic Find and Experience Gained for one full week!

Table of Contents



May 15, 2012
Exactly one year ago Diablo 3 was released and with it many different emotions burst out of the community. The start was difficult as many fans tried to access Sanctuary in the first hour of release, but eventually things normalized and the adventures began!



May 19, 2012: Inferno Has Been Cleared
Just 4 days after the game launched player Sygodoaden beat the game on Inferno mode, effectively clearing the entire content! He was closely followed by team Method.


May 24, 2012: Diablo 3 Becomes the Fastest Selling PC Game Ever
As the game launched it became the fastest selling PC game in the history of gaming. Quite an achievement and one that it still holds to this day!


June 15, 2012: RMAH is Live
The Real Money Auction House went live a month into the game's launch for the US and a few days later in the other parts of the world. It allows users to sell their gear and in-game gold for real currency.


June 19, 2012: Inferno Hardcore Cleared
Just over a month after launch Kripparrian and Krippi were the first to clear the game on Inferno on their Hardcore characters!


July 19, 2012: Message From Mike Morhaime
The president of Blizzard Entertainment Mike Morhaime sent a special and lengthy message to Diablo 3 players about the initial instability of the game. He also spoke of the future of the game, giving hints at the upcoming patches.


August 03, 2012: 10 Million Copies Sold
During the financial call in Q2 Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 has sold more than 10 million copies of the game! It took less than 4 months.


August 6, 2012: Character Profiles are Live
Players were finally able to view their characters online when the Character Profiler launched on August 6. Being an equivalent of the WoW Armory it offers quite a bit of information for the entire account being viewed.


August 20, 2012: The Paragon System & Chart
The Paragon System was added in Patch 1.0.4 to give the more dedicated players a long term goal. The awards for gaining Paragon levels are Magic Find, Gold Find, increased character stats and cosmetic portraits.

A few days later Diablofans member Vomica created a very visually pleasing chart that is now the standard for viewing your Paragon progress.

There is also another chart to consider though - this one! It displays the XP needed for the normal levels compared to the Paragon levels, plus some more interesting comparisons. It was calculated by WillNowHalt on Reddit



August 23, 2012: A Message From Jay
A memorable day for everyone that follows Diablo news is when Game Director Jay Wilson spoke harshly about one of the original creators of the Diablo universe David Brevik. The first later wrote a lengthy apology.

The post also hinted of the Monster Power feature and the problems of having an Auction House in the game.


September 6, 2012: First Paragon 100
Just two weeks after the Paragon system launched it already met its match. Alkaizer was the first player in the world to reach Paragon level 100. He used a personalized and efficient run that was later named after him - the Alkaizer run. Diablofans managed to track him down and do a quick and interesting interview with him!


October 13, 2012: World First Hardcore Paragon 100
A month after Alkaizer the world first Hardcore Paragon 100 was also a fact - Azimuth took the title with his Wizard Mage. He led the other competitors by days!


October 14, 2012: Monster Power, Infernal Machine and Hellfire Ring
Monster Power, the Infernal Machine and the Hellfire Ring were all added in Patch 1.0.5. You can check out our very detailed guide here or get the most important information below:
  • Monster Power is an option that allows players to increase the difficulty of enemies in the game, while also increasing their Magic Find, Gold Find and Experience Gained.
  • The Infernal Machine is a device combined from drops from special enemies, that, when combined, open a portal to one of three realms. The realms contain Uber Bosses - upgrades of normal bosses that have a higher difficulty and a chance to drop Hellfire Ring reagents.
  • The Hellfire Ring is created by the reagents mentioned above. It has 2 fixed stats - one main stat chosen by the player and a 35% Bonus Experience affix. The rest are 4 random rolls, plus a chance to launch a Hellfire ball on attack!


November 20, 2012: World First Naked MP10 Diablo Kill
Gamer celebrity and renowned YouTuber Athene took quite an achievement by defeating Diablo on Inferno difficulty while completely naked! Naked character that is. He posted the entire 2 and a half hour video too!


December 27, 2012: The PvP Blog
The much anticipated PvP Blog finally made its way onto Battle.net, bringing the sad news that major forms of PvP will be postponed, until better ways of implementing them are found. Meanwhile Dueling, now known as Brawling, will take its place. It launched with Patch 1.0.7





January 12, 2013: Brawling is Announced
Dueling, or as it is now known "Brawling", was announced as a short term PvP development goal, to quench the thirst of the combat loving crowd until a better alternative for Team Deathmatch was found.


January 17, 2013: Jay Wilson Quits
Shortly after the David Brevik event Game Director Jay Wilson announced that he will no longer be part of the Diablo 3 team. Instead he will move to another project within Blizzard. He took the chance to show his appreciation of the team he has worked with for the last 5 years. A new Game Director is yet to be announced.


February 8, 2013: 12 Million Copies Sold
Up to December 31 Diablo 3 was now at 12 million copies. Considering the 10 million achievement a few months back and the time that has passed since release the game appears to be selling at an excellent rate.


February 21, 2013: Diablo 3 Coming to PlayStation & Infernal Helm
Diablo 3 was announced for both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on February 21! There will be some big changes to how the game plays on those platforms. Here's a small list with some of them:
  • There will be no Auction Houses
  • The game can be played offline
  • Boss battles have been reworked to have a "console feel"
  • 4 players can play on a single split screen
  • The entire interface is reworked
  • A special Infernal Helm can be obtained by preordering the game


March 5, 2013: The Itemization Blog
The Itemization Blog was something a lot of players were eagerly awaiting. Travis Day showed the community that changes are in development behind scenes, but that there isn't currently an ETA on when we will see those changes.

It was revealed that Rare will become Rare again as in the future much less items should drop, but of much greater quality. This has been a long time concern of players, because as game development continued Elite enemies started dropping lots and lots of Rare items, partially ruining the feel of seeing the yellow text on the ground.

Legendary items will have a second revamp and will be remade to boost build diversity for the classes, while remaining quite unique compared to Rare gear.

Finally the Auction House was brought up and with it the intentions of the developers to distance themselves from it. There are a few ideas that they have when it comes to how to combat the issue exactly, but at least it's certain measures are being taken.


March 07, 2013: Co-op Improvement and Density Changes
In Patch 1.0.8 monster density across all acts was finally tweaked to get the different areas in the game closer in content to one another. With it also came a nice buff to cooperative play!


March 28, 2013: Jay Wilson: Auction Houses "Really Hurt" Game and 1 Million Daily Diablo 3 Players
In a GDC lecture ex-Game Director Jay Wilson admits that the Auction Houses implemented into the game have actually hurt it quite a bit. Surprisingly it was the Gold Auction House that did most of the damage. Sadly, the whole lecture, including a few more by Wyatt Cheng and other Blizzard developers, are all locked inside the GDC vault.

On the bright side it was announced that the game currently boasts 1 million unique players daily and 3 million monthly!


May 11, 2013: The Great Auction House Exploit
With patch 1.0.8 came an unforeseen bug where players could exploit the Real-Money Auction House and effectively create gold out of thin air. The AH was taken down and the bug fixed with Blizzard taking action for the next several days in order to bring the economy back to where it was. Game Producer John Hight made an official statement about the issue, going into detail of what exactly happened and what actions were taken to reverse the damage.



Major Patch Notes
Here's a list with all the Patch Notes for patches that brought more than just a few bug fixes.

June 19, 2012: Patch 1.0.3

August 21, 2012: Patch 1.0.4

October 17, 2012: Patch 1.0.5

February 12, 2013: Patch 1.0.7

May 7, 2013: Patch 1.0.8



What the Future Holds
While we're certain that developers have only scratched the surface of what Diablo 3 might become in the future some incoming changes have already been announced.


Legendary Dyes
Vanishing Dye already works on Legendary items, but the actual colors are also in the works! It's simply pretty time consuming as the artists need to create all the colors for the Legendary items.


Itemization Changes
Likely the most requested by the fan base thing for Diablo 3 is a revamp of the current itemization system. A few months back Travis Day posted a Developer Journal announcing that the team is already working on that, but not giving any ETA.


Gear Customization
While this isn't a highly demanded feature from fans the Diablo 3 team does really like the idea of customizing your characters' appearance. It has been confirmed that a feature like that is in the works.

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