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The Making Of: Diablo
A great article was posted on Edge-Online about the making of the RPG that started it all - Diablo 1. The piece includes interviews with the Schaefer brothers and David Brevik and explores the inspirations for each of them, the help they got from Blizzard and some technical aspects of the design of the game. Read the whole thing here and check out an excerpt below.

DiabloFans Quote:


Erich agrees: “We didn’t want anything to get in the way of what some developers dismiss as ‘the grind’. Instead we focused almost solely on the grind, trying to make it fun to kill the same monsters over and over again. What we cared about was the tactile feel of smashing skeletons and constant sense of exploration. Mouse control seemed natural, although there was a lot of iteration. We noticed that anyone could pretty much play, even people’s moms.”

“Making a game simple for the player is actually harder for the developer,” suggests Max. “One of our philosophies was to make it a reward-based rather than penalty-based game. A lot of RPGs fell into the trap of penalties: you don’t eat and you die, everything you find is a penalty. With us, it even feels good to pick up a potion in the inventory and put it back down.”



Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Act IV Yet to be Buffed
We are indeed working on improving the monster density across all Acts, but we have not yet been looking into Act IV though: http://eu.battle.net...c/7257016797#13

:-) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)



Community Commentary: Why Can't We Be Friends?

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

This week's community commentary shout out goes to thebabaghanoush over on /r/Diablo for a great thread focused on finding multiplayer groups in patch 1.0.8.

Patch 1.0.8 offers a lot of great buffs to co-op games in Diablo III, and it's no surprise that some players are looking forward to finding like-minded individuals with which to join forces and kill demons. Teaming up against Diablo's minions can go a long way to enriching your experience (both literally and figuratively), so if you're interested in locating a few heroes to kick ass and takes names with, be sure to drop by /r/Diablo and leave a post here.

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Source: Reddit


Are you excited about the multiplayer buffs in patch 1.0.8? Did thebabaghanoush's post help you make a some new BattleTag friends? Leave us your thoughts and feedback on the subject in the comments section!



Mephisto's Visage Fan Art
Battle.net forum member xEvernightx has created this awesome Mephisto skull and has displayed a few pictures of it! He has used a few different materials for the different parts to get that proper Hatred feel. You can check out the rest of the pictures in his thread, which even got a blue response!

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Exploitation of Bugs in Diablo III
An official statement was made regarding the usage of exploits in Diablo 3.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Providing an environment where all players can enjoy Diablo III in the spirit of fair play is extremely important to us, which is why we monitor the game for exploitative activity. Through applying hotfixes and patches, we aim to improve the game and keep it as bug-free as possible; however, sometimes bugs will occur and some players will be eager to reproduce them for different reasons.

We would like to remind you that using bugs for personal gain is viewed as exploitative activity. Accounts found to be participating in dishonest behaviour, such as exploiting bugs, may be investigated and subjected to disciplinary actions in line with our Diablo III exploitation policy.



Ideas for an Expansion
A great list of interesting ideas was posted on the official forums by user POSEIDON. So great in fact that Vaneras decided to "tag" it blue, letting other users know that this is a good thread for discussion on the topic of a potential Diablo 3 expansion. Check the whole threat right here.

Update: It seems the original thread was actually posted on these forums by Astion! Check it out through this link.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

A lot of effort has been put into this, so I am just blue-tagging this thread to acknowledge that effort :-)

Blizzard ... do it, just do it. That will just make all happy. Thanks.

No thanks I do not like these changes.
What I am about to say is not targeted at Tear or Shadowhand in particular, but at people posting on these forums in general; When you take the time to post that you like or dislike something, it would be really great if you would also add a few lines about why you think that something is good or bad. I say this because it is really helpful to us when we are gathering player feedback that we can read why you guys have the opinions you have :-)



Builds, Skill Positioning and Difficulty
Another good post on the official forums, this time by user coodav. He points out that Diablo 3 lacks a bit of strategy when it comes to several aspects of the game. Check out his whole post here.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thats alot of text but some good points. I wish blizz would read some of these posts that gamers actually put time and thought into writing.
Read or respond to? We read a lot, we just don't respond to everything. We also don't necessarily agree with everything players suggest, but the discussions in and of themselves are super meaningful. :)

Diablo 3 challenges me on all fronts:

1. The most popular builds do not account for position. Barb WW builds, monk TR builds, and DH strafe builds are unaffected by pathing, and there are no environmental effects to consider, anywhere.
2. The key builds do not significantly consider the placement of skills. There is typically only one skill utilized, and that skill typically does massive AOE damage centered on the path of the player.
3. Complexity and speed do not change. The game does not alter fundamental mechanics between Normal and Inferno. Speed does not change. There is ONLY the scaling of damage and health, with the exception of a few monster affixes, most of which are not particularly strategic, but instant and automatic.
All solid points, and we agree on most fronts. Popular builds don't account for position or placement of skills, and we could do more to scale difficulty better. The conclusions you came to in terms of how we might address those pain points are different than the solutions we've considered, but it's totally understandable to see how you arrived at them.

Either way, this is a great discussion. I'm curious to see what other players think and have them weigh in on two points: 1) whether or not they agree with your premises and B) how they'd personally like to see the game evolve to improve on those areas.

Interested to see where this dialogue goes from here, so I'll be keeping an eye on the thread. (May not post much, but I'll definitely be reading along.)

Edit: Typos :(



Imperius Fan Art
Another great piece of Imperius fan art was posted by Blizzard - MadVoske's Imperius. Check out his gallery on Deviant Art for a good collection of game-related drawings.

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11 Comments

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Diablo II Ladder Reset May 14th
A ladder reset is upon us!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

It's that time again! On the morning of Tuesday, May 14, we'll be conducting maintenance in order to reset the Diablo II ladder. We anticipate the realms could be down for up to six hours, and during that time all existing ladder characters will be converted to non-ladder. All characters and items being converted to non-ladder will remain intact, but once converted these characters will no longer have access to ladder content such as creating ladder-only rune words.

This ladder reset, like all those before it, creates a clean slate where all ladder characters begin at level 1 with no previous items to help them. To participate, simply wait until the Diablo II realms return to service on May, log in to Battle.net, and tick the “Ladder Character” checkbox when creating a new character. You can track ladder character leveling progress by clicking on the Ladder button from the main Diablo II in-game Battle.net interface.

For more information on ladder characters please visit here.



Diablo III Hotfixes: April (Updated 4/30)
Another exploit has been hotfixed.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

APRIL 30
  • Bug Fixes
    • Players and pets no longer have the chance to drop loot in the Scorched Chapel



Still No Date for 1.0.8

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beetlejuic---! I mean... we haven't yet announced a release date for patch 1.0.8 yet, but we're working on it just as quickly as we can.



Maintenance is Breaking the Report Spam Feature
It seems after each maintenance the Report Spam feature breaks. Blizzard is investigating the issue.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thanks for the reports, guys! I bumped this up to QA and they're taking a look at it currently.

Your team does realize this isn't the first time this has happened? I can think of at least 2 other maintenance Tuesdays where the spam report has broken.....you would think the same exact thing would stop being broken once a month under the same circumstances.
Yup. It's something we're aware of and trying to troubleshoot. We're taking a look at previous reports, bug fix implementations, and maintenance processes to see if we can identify where the revert is happening/what's causing it.




No Controller Support for PC
Same goes for a mouse/keyboard combo on the console version.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In terms of allowing an analog controller hookup for the PC, we don’t have any plans for that kind of support right now. Similarly, since Diablo III for console was designed with a controller in mind, the PlayStation version of Diablo III will not support USB mice or keyboards.

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Watch Tower Density Lowered
The Watch Tower has received a nerf to density, because it offered a bit too much compared to the rest of the changed content.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The Watch Tower was changed because of how insanely good it was compared to most farming locations. It benefited from having an abnormally high Elite density, resplendent chest spawn, and was located conveniently close to a waypoint (a combination which made it an outlier in terms of efficiency as well as a go-to spot for a large number of players). While there's nothing wrong with a particular farming location being good or even better than other areas, it becomes an issue when one spot starts to eclipse everything else. We wanted to make sure players didn't feel like they had to farm that spot or else they'd be missing out, so in patch 1.0.5 we moved it from Northern Highlands to Southern Highlands with the idea that it would require spending some extra time to find it, since that was one of major reasons why the area was so OP. Initially we didn’t want to nerf the dungeon, but eventually the Elite density was toned down anyway, and the tower remains in Southern Highlands.

To answer your question, though, parts of the Watch Tower were nerfed, but the chances for it (and the merchant) to spawn have not changed. I wish you good luck in your search for the merchant, but it’ll probably take a few attempts!

"There is an effective area for finding loot in a loot finding game?!'
"We will change that...."
I think this is a pretty simplistic way to view the situation, but I agree that having a favorite farming spot nerfed doesn't feel great. We get that. The alternative, though, (at least in situations like this, where that spot is way beyond the norm) is that people feel forced into playing one tiny section of the game, and that's arguably worse for the health of the game overall.



Weeping Hollow Density Restored
It appears Blizzard just wanted a reaction out of the players on the PTR with adjusting the density in the Weeping Hollow. It was mostly negative, so the change is reverted!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Not harsh, just passionate. No worries. :)

The changes we made to The Weeping Hollow in the most recent PTR patch were really just an experiment. Based on feedback we'd seen regarding density (in terms of monster spawn pacing), it wasn't totally clear what players preferred; some wanted more clumps, some wanted less, and some liked things just the way they were. There wasn't a clear-cut answer, so our designers made a change to see what would happen. Rapid iteration like that is one of the cool things we can do with the PTR.

Given the response from players since the change went live (thanks for all your posts, btw), we're going to be restoring monster density and spawn pacing in The Weeping Hollow to its earlier PTR levels, and that will most likely be what we stick with for 1.0.8.



The Process of Adding Changes to the Game
Grimiku has shed some light of Blizzard's process of adding new content or changes to the game. It is not an easy one.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

I know there is a lot of criticism about sentences like "something we talk about in the office" or "it's something were working on", and the solution everyone wants are faster updates. I think we'd all love for the patching process to be quicker (that’s kind of like saying “who doesn’t want free stuff?”), but the fact is: patches aren’t created in a vacuum, and it’s really not as simple as you might think.

Seemingly simple changes usually have a lot of work associated with them, and it’s easy to underestimate the complicated nature of the work involved. New content has to be coded, implemented, assigned art assets (sometimes), have a test environment built for it, tested until its right, and then we rinse and repeat that process each time we iterate. After that, we need to coordinate a release on a global level, make sure everything is localized, and then deploy to the live game (which is not just a flick of a switch). That isn’t to say we can’t do better, and we’re always working on ways to improve, but my point is this shouldn’t be trivialized. It’s a disservice to your feedback and this discussion to do that.

We also tend to use flexible language when talking about changes that aren’t ironed out yet or have a timeline for when they’ll be implemented. That way, we can talk about what we’re working on and acknowledge ideas/issues even if we don’t have a lot of details to discuss (i.e. we may not always know when a particular change is going to make it into the game or how it will manifest, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it). While that may not be your ideal scenario, we prefer it over staying quiet since it keeps the community more involved. Just some food for thought.



Game Devs Don't Work on the Website
Some players have speculated that developers are wasting their time by adding things to the Battle.net site. That is not the case however, as that's the Web Designers' job.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Web updates (like the new icons) are handled by our web team, not the game development team.

Similarly, polls that we post are handled by the community team, not the game development team.

These are small things we can do to improve the site and how different players use it; they do not impact game development.

So, my loquacious button enthusiastic...as much I enjoy great satire, I'm going to ask you to please stop trolling. ;)



Console and PC Teams are Different
On the same note as the previous article forum members fear that the development of the console version of Diablo 3 might be slowing down the PC version. Again, those are different teams.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We know there is a concern among some players that working on the console version of Diablo III takes away from PC development, but thankfully that's not the case. They are entirely separate teams with individual content cycles. Lylirra made some comments about this issue in this thread, and this one. I'll quote a few of her comments below.

Our plan is to continue using staggered development, which means the PC version and the console version will have their own separate development teams and cycles.


Beyond that, we actually have an independent team of designers, engineers, artists, and producers that are dedicated to adapting Diablo III to the PlayStation and creating an epic console experience. It's their job to take the PC game and translate it to the PS3, and in a way deal with all the considerations you're talking about. While our console team and PC team do collaborate (and have collaborated in the past), it's always to ensure that we’re staying true to D3 on the PlayStation platform.




Curse Weekly Roundup
In last week's Curse Weekly Roundup James talks about the new LOTRO DLC, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Battlefield 4's release date, Nintendo on E3 and much more!

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1.0.8 is Not This Week
No official date yet.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

No patch planned for tomorrow. Just standard maintenance.



Diablo III Hotfixes: April
The Witch Doctor XP exploit has been hotfixed.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

APRIL 27
  • Bug Fixes
    • Pets summoned by players and items no longer grant experience when killed in the Scorched Chapel



What if All Legendaries Were Good?
Travis Day came to the forums today to tease players with the upcoming Itemization revamp.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

That's an interesting idea. It is unfortunate when you see a legendary crossbow, pick it up, and realize its a Hellrack. I've got an alternate idea, what if we make all the legendary items good so that you can Actually get excited even if you know it's a Hellrack? ;)



On Gear Customization and Stats
Grimiku gave a reminder that Blizzard are working not only on itemization, but also visual enhancements for gear.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We’ve seen a number of post letting us know that there are a lot of players who want to be able to customize how a piece of armor appears, and the good news is that we agree. Being able to distinguish yourself from other players can be compelling, and it goes a long way to enrich Diablo III's experience. We don't have an estimate on when this feature will make it into the game, but it's something we're working on. Travis Day is one of the game designers on Diablo III, and this is what he had to say on the subject.


I agree, visual customization has a lot of value, people like to differentiate themselves from each other or sometimes just get bored of looking at the same thing all day every day. In fact we agree SO much that we have plans to add this feature in the future.


Back in March we posted a developer journal focused on itemization, and Travis made a brief reference to customizing the appearance of armor then, too. Here is a link to the entire blog, but the section I quoted below is towards the bottom of the Gold Sinks Should be Exciting section.


"Other avenues we want to explore include providing players with vanity options or potential ways to differentiate themselves from their friends or other characters (i.e. character customization options in terms of gear)."


We’re also exploring ways to customize gear that isn’t just aesthetic, like giving players the ability to augment stats and sockets:


Don: Giving players more control and customization of their item stats is something we talk about a lot in our office. There have been a lot of ideas thrown around here and some great suggestions from the community, but we have not finalized any systems yet.

To give you an idea of what direction we're heading toward, though, here are just a few ideas that we're considering right now:
The ability to change a portion of a particular stat on an item to another stat of your choice
The ability to augment an existing item with a stat bonus of your choice
The ability to create an item with one or several fixed affixes—similar to the Rare recipes introduced in 1.0.7
We've also discussed adding other types of "socketables" with a wide variety of possible affixes that you can put in your socketed items instead of gems

All of these systems have their positives and negatives, so we want to make sure we make the right choice and consider all other changes we plan on making before deciding which systems we want to implement.

As far as the Mystic goes, she's a cunning lady. I’m sure we haven't seen the last of her.



Wyatt: When the game was in development, the Blacksmith had the ability to add a socket to an item. Adding a socket makes the item better, so you pretty much always wanted to do it, and we found adding the socket felt like a small chore that didn’t actually increase the gameplay depth. You already need to insert gems to a socketed item, and felt having to add a socket as well would be a step too many.

With that in mind, there are still some gameplay benefits to adding a socket that we’d still like to capture. Although having to add a socket every time can feel like a chore, if there was a mechanic that made it a legitimate decision, that is something we could explore. Additionally, there’s something to be said for feeling more invested in an item—taking steps to improve an item increases your emotional bond with it, which is something we could definitely do better at.

So, to answer your question, it’s something that’s definitely on the table for the future, but it likely won’t be identical to the system that was in Diablo II or the early iterations of Diablo III.

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Diablo® III for the PS3™ – Preorder Bonus Revealed
The Infernal Helm we mentioned yesterday is now officially announced!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As foretold in ancient Horadric texts, Diablo® III is coming soon to the PS3™. The launch date still has yet to be announced, but you can prepare for it now AND receive this exclusive Infernal Helm in-game at your local retailer.

Wearable at level 1, the Infernal Helm confers a +EXP bonus to help you whip your new PlayStation® characters into tip-top shape. Plus, it looks sweet as hell (pun intended) on all five mortal heroes of Sanctuary—Witch Doctor, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Wizard, and Monk. Keep in mind that the redeemable key for the Infernal Helm, which you will find in your preordered copy of Diablo III on launch day, will apply to all of your PS3™ characters, but will not transfer to any PC characters.

We'll be announcing a launch date for Diablo III on the PS3™ as it gets closer. In the meantime, get your preorder lined up, and begin preparing your living room for the imminent arrival of your three closest demon-slaying friends.

You're going to need a bigger couch.

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