BlizzCast #12 was just released and covers basically the company of Blizzard as a whole. Of course, it focuses on Warcraft specifically, since recently was the 5 year anniversary of WoW and the 15 year anniversary of Warcraft; the game that started everything for Blizzard.


It may not be too Diabloey for your tastes, but it's still something that any Blizzard fan should listen to. Though, something interesting was brought up throughout the conversation, and while it is in fact the only mention of the Diablo series, it's still something to think about.


A Diablo MMO? World of Sanctuary? Sounds kind of catchy... Or perhaps they wanted to call it Diablo II: Salvation? Could this have been the patented game that never saw the light of day, much less an announcement?

Download BlizzCast 12
BlizzCast 12 Transcript

Finally, a lengthy post by Bashiok!
He's been rather silent as of late, but all is forgiven...

In case nobody has seen this response by Bashiok yet, it's essentially giving us more info on the rune system, which, thus far, has been kept pretty tightly under wraps. What we do know, is that they will be applied to skills, and that they will have a multitude of different effects.

What we don't know, is everything else.

One of his responses in particular, while very short, stood out from the others for sheer potential for discussion.


Now, this can be taken two different ways depending on how you interpret it.

First, he could be saying that rare versions of the same rune will not simply add to the effect, but will add more effects. So for instance, a low quality version of a rune that adds a multiple shot effect, may add a bouncing effect at higher qualities.

OR

He could be saying that runes as a whole, as you move up the rarity tree, will be doing more than just adding a flat power bonus to the skill they are applied to.


Then, we've got this next little gem of information..


Basically, this means runes will be much, much more interesting and complex than simple "adds X damage" runes, such as with the power rune.

This fact is also confirmed by the runes that have been announced so far: Power, Energy, Lethality, Multistrike, and Striking.

The Power rune has not had it's purpose revealed, but by the name, we can safely assume that it simply adds more power. The same goes for the energy rune, which probably makes the spell itself more energy efficient.

Then, we have the Lethality, Striking, and Multistrike runes.

Multistrike is pretty self explanatory, it adds multiple strikes to spells. Basically, this allows you to turn skills into a "chain" skills, such as with the skull of flame, which bounces when this rune is inserted into it.

Lethality, is more open to interpretation. The only skill we've seen it with is Electrocute. When socketed with this rune, Electrocute makes the target monster explode when killed by this skill. From this, we can conclude that this rune adds to the overall killing power of the skill, without adding a flat damage bonus.

Then, we've got the Striking rune. This one, when inserted into Teleport, makes it deal area of effect damage upon teleportation. So far, we've been led to believe that this rune turns non-lethal skills, into lethal skills. This open up an incredible amount of customization options. Imagine adding this to a warcry, would it turn it into a skill that sends rippled of force to knock back any nearby enemies, as well as benefitting allies?

In any case, it seems that we're going to be getting near endless skill customization options. Build-experimenters rejoice, your time has come.

So Diablo 2 made it to #7 best game of all time.

Quote

I have to admit, while I have played this game for the last 10 years, I never took the time to learn the small minute intricacies of the game. Maybe this might just be my lack of knowledge but what is with this dragon in the screen shot of hell forge.

Well, more news on Act II, now it seems they're really getting some solid work done on it, as was indicated by their twitter tracker.


Now, of course, this raises the question, just how much have they got done?

Thus far, we know that a boss encounter in Act II has been tested, this news came to us some time ago, so by now they should be wrapping that up.

Also, we know that a boss in Act II has had concept work done, and may soon be going into modelling.Whether these two bosses were the same, was never elaborated upon. I'm assuming that with the time elapsed between both were released, and the fact that concept work was done after testing had occured, that these are two separate bosses.

As for locations, we've been shown dungeons filled with claw vipers, and endless wastes full of zombies and the like. These dungeons were the main location in which the monk demonstration took place, as well as some in the sand wastes, or what are being called the Borderlands.

SO!

We've got bosses, and several locations. The rest has yet to surface, but from the sounds of it, we're going to be shown more of Act II quite soon.

ALSO!

Props to Scyberdragon for already having written up a significant post about the news about Act II, throw some rep at him if you get the chance.

Does anyone remember the Fan-made Warcraft 3 / Diablo 3 game we reported on in early April? Or how about the recent BlueTracker post regarding it? I think this project needs no real introduction, it's received quite a bit of publicity since it's inception and now I am pleased to announce that we are now going to be supporting CloudWolf's Diablo3Warcraft project within our community. CloudWolf will be providing DFans with updates on his map and exclusive screenshots to go along with them.... Starting today. So, without further a due, here are six exclusive DiabloFans D3W screenshots!







You can visit the Diablo3Warcraft Subforum within our new Community Projects section for more information. On another note, the Fan Art and Fan Fiction Forums have also been moved into this new Community Projects section. Lastly, I urge you all to check your profiles, there's been another field added: your Wiki account. Go ahead and create an account on our Wiki and add it to your profile! It will display in the post information next to your posts as well.

With the shedding of the traditional and nostalgic skill tree system of Diablo II (see Could The Skill Tree Be Gone Forever?), game mechanics are slowly re-gearing to fit with the new system, which Blizzard has not yet revealed. Respeccing, a feature confirmed many moons ago, will be facing some changes as a result of this new direction:


Not even knowing how the new skill system will function, it could be very well impossible to predict what this could mean for respeccing. Even so, have any thoughts?

(Sources: DiabloFans Twitter Tracker)