[Medievaldragon]

The Diablo panel started just now at 2:40pm

Evolution of Diablo
- Outdoor Environments
- Amazing moment to moment action
- Expanded RPG experience
- New Systems most of which wont be talked today but in upcoming months more info will be released.

Spirit of Diablo
- Replayable RPG
Powerful heroes engaged in epic large scale combat
- Approachable gameplay cooperative focus

Epic Heroes
- Large scale combat
- Massively powerful classes
- Strong and unique archetypes
- Hallmark of diablo ii better in diablo iii -- Blizzard wants to improve the classes diversity

Approachable
- If you can click a mouse ... you can play diablo.
- Isometric gameplay in 3D
- Simple to learn, but deep
- Smooth difficulty curve


Cooperative Play
- Play on Battle.net
- Join your friends anytime
- Massive cooperative battles
- More to come ...

A better action game
- Kickass player characters
- Improved controls
- Less spam, more death.
- A new breed of monster

Hotbar
- Skills over potions
- Cleaner UI
- Greater skills diversity escape, control, buffs
- Class specific tactics
- Better gameplay slightly less carpal tunnel

New Health System
- Little to no downtime
- Encourages conflict
- Positional gameplay
- Cooperative play

Diablo III is a very intensive gameplay RPG hack'n slash with big epic battles in multiplayer.

The Barbarian can now actually help heal other players who are in the back when gaining health loot in the frontlines.

Monsters
Berserker - Aggressive creatures, massive damage charged up attak, vulnerable if he misses.

A better RPG
- Improve story without losing opt in feel
- Rmove the generic feeling from random dungeons
- Bring the world to life with more npc interactions.

Adventures
- Events that can be placed almost anywhere
old abandoned house to explore evil cult sumoning ritual
Caravan that needs protecting
Enemy camp with boss

Sumary
- Diablo iii remains true to the universe and gameplay of the series
- Diablo iii is a deeper action game without sacrificing ease of play

Guys we have a lot of technical issues over here. My macbook power plug has 3 sticks, my power converter US to Europe only has 2 plug sockets. In short, I can't powerup my batteries. Only have 1 left, and the current one is at 40%. If you are at WWI and you have a cable or adapter for USA 3 plugs to USA 2 plugs email me at blizzplanet@fanforce.net

[Umpa65]

i made the same thread md lol. woops

[Chaosdragon94]

It all sounds good. Hope they talk about some new stuff :)

[Umpa65]

A live info stream. i type as i hear :)

Yes the game will have random environments, just like d2.

NEW
Random adventures.
The developers can now create limitless quests continuously and script in whatever they want.

They didn't explore the idea of other camera view because of the isometric feel of diablo.

They continued the curve of depth. When diablo 2 started it was easy and got super hard.
The developers told us that they are staying true to that.
They arn't going to talk about pvp much. ill update as it continues.


They used the word "massive" when discussing how they wanted battle.net to be. They made it to support massive battles.
This might lead to it being that next gen mmo

They noted Diablo 3 IS infact a "mouse killer"

The hotbar was implemented to promote diversity in gameplay, no more one skilling :P.well you can, but as it gets harder "you would want to use a more diverse set of skills"

Instead of just mass potting, you will use skills to give you time needed rather than potting. Another way to diversify

Althoguh not explained in the beginning, they just announced potions are in here.

They actually tried a shield system like halo but it slowed down the pace of the game to where people would want to stop and heal. They want the game to be really faced paced. "no down time" as they put it

Health globes will NOT be convenient, they put them there in the way so that you have to hack and slash your way to heals

The witchdoctor will be very diverse in that he will be great in combat and also will be a great support guy for healing if necessary

Monster section:

The skeleton shield guys show the great "synergies" the monsters can have with each other.
Also the shield brings in a different aspect that will promote skill diversity.

New role playing section
Long stories for the rpg kinda guy
Really cool quests
Everything they learned from d2 they will try to put in d3.
Adventures is the great new feature
They can put in a scripted adventure in different places throughout the world at their will
Personally i feel its a great combination with the random nature that kicks it up a notch and will define what it means to be D3

Conversation system section:
Character interaction will be better
The characters have a voice and can tell their own stories.
They want to bring the npc's to life and make it a lot more engaging

That is it for their panel and now come the questions
Question:
1.What will the group sizes be?
Can support a LOT of players on the technical side. But smaller groups tend towork better for the screen size. They want to focus on about 4 or 5 players per group.
2.Inventory size?
Havn't settled on a final size but they will improve the system and make trading easier and better
They are NOT using the same inventory system as in d2
3. Loot
Their loot system sucked and they wanted to impliment a new loot system that worked way better than in diablo 2
4. The witchdoctor does NOT replace the necromancer, but they didn't say if there would be a necromancer
5. The new battle.net is so improved and security is a big issue and intend for the new battle.net to able to stop such things as hacking etc


I saw MD hahaha XD

[Syteless]

omg I just saw you ask a question on the live feed xD

don't hate me if this is inappropriate

[Umpa65]

The system reqs will support us casual guys wont require the high end stuff

no specifics on map developing and editing. But it's complex and probably wont happen because it's not very friendly to map editing.

no comment on runes O_o

[fieldgar]

16:25+ ( GMT+2 ) Dev Panel:

Q: Hi, I'd really like to know if the options of male and female
characters will have different attributes for them or just skin?

A: No there won't be any differences, other than visual. It is just an aesthetic choice.

~!~

Q: Hi I wanted to know if the system requirements of D3 will be very high? And little hint if you are gonna use DirectX 10 or 9?

A: We haven't set the system requirements yet. I can't tell you if it can run on very low systems, but we want to set the requirements as low as possible, high requirements are not our focus. No, DirectX 10 will not be required.

~!~

Q: Hi, First nice job for everything. My question is do you plan on creating some map editor for Diablo 3?

A: We have not nailed any kind of specifics for map development or editor. But I can say that our games like Diablo are not friendly to custom development because of the random levels system, so its not a priority for us. We have not decided anything yet, anyway.

~!~

Q: In Diablo 2 there were runewords. Will you be keeping and expanding this system?

A: Hmmmmmmmmmmm... No comment at this time.

~!~

End of the panel.

[Szczuldo]

anybody know where I can find the video for this panel? I slept through it because they were talking about WoTLK before and thought logically they'll go to Starcraft II next, but alas they tricked me!

[Umpa65]

most of the stuff was covered by md and myself. it was really just a big dude talking and then a session of questions by small skinny people with crackly voices. But all the information is right here, i repeat most of what md says

[nomaddjs]

I missed the trailer and ingame footage = but from what the panel was SAYING!!!

WOW Amazing best game of the decade to come for sure!!!

More importantly they picked true spirit of the game and content over making it MMO and First Person to rip people off.

Guys - officially one of the best days of my life - and I've had a few good ones :D

[Szczuldo]

yeah I noticed, it ended up that i wrote it and noticed that you had written even more. But I'm glad they won't use DX10, at least some company realizes that it's nothing but show. No one can get it right anyway at the moment, that or it takes forever.

[JAZZ]

soooo, It's not a mmo?

I just woke up and this is all new to me....

[Umpa65]

JAZZ said:

soooo, It's not a mmo?

I just woke up and this is all new to me....

Not in the sense that your thinking but it could very wlel be the described next gen mmo based on what they said, that it could support a lot of people in one group

[valeo]

Umpa65 said:

Not in the sense that your thinking but it could very wlel be the described next gen mmo based on what they said, that it could support a lot of people in one group

It is not the next gen mmo that has been talked about.

If you look at the job ad's the "next gen mmo" ads do not have "Makers of Diablo I and II" at the start of the paragraph. The rest do.

[Umpa65]

valeo said:

It is not the next gen mmo that has been talked about.

If you look at the job ad's the "next gen mmo" ads do not have "Makers of Diablo I and II" at the start of the paragraph. The rest do.

Then maybe there is some incredibly secret game in the making that we have absolutely no clue about and wont be announced for a very long time im sure and should probably be ignored since we have our D3 :P

[JAZZ]

Why the hell did they get rid of the Gauntlet?

and I like Jetralls Diablo III image better then theirs.

[fieldgar]

There was a fan question about the "Hardcore" system, but the answer was a bit disappointing. They said that they have not decided yet to either include it in Diablo 3 or not.

[Umpa65]

fieldgar said:

There was a fan question about the "Hardcore" system, but the answer was a bit disappointing. They said that they have not decided yet to either include it in Diablo 3 or not.

But as he hinted, it will probably be there

[evul667]

im pretty sure that d3 will bring to us shitload of new abilities, skills and things we can't even imagine right now, sad,but true, is that we can only wait until alfa/beta/gamma/whatever version will be released ;D

[JAZZ]

But they got rid of the gauntlet!