DiabloFans

Eurogamer: I guess this is where the influences you've mentioned from enemy design in Zelda and World of Warcraft come into play...

Jay Wilson: Or God of War. Games like that are some of my favourite games. It would be far more interesting if we could have a boss monster that wasn't just a giant sack of health that deals out ridiculous damage. We've got monsters that drop health at percentages of their damage, we also sometimes spawn monsters that are just there basically to drop health. Even there: if you have a boss that just walks around and hits you, and a bunch of smaller monsters that continually spawn and generate health, that's already a far more interesting fight than you ever got in Diablo. And that's just the bear minimum of what we can do.

A crafting system is also in the works, though it won't be anything like Diablo II's Horadric Cube combinations. "I don't know if I can think of a comparison," said Wilson. "I think that system is a pretty cool and different kind of system from anything that we've had before."

GFW: Have you thought about how you would feel if they get some team together and actually somehow cobble it into a game? Are you going to have mixed feelings -- like you're glad that somebody was finally able to put this baby out -- or do you wish that it just got killed with you guys?

BR: I think what I would really want to see is that there was some way where Travis [Baldree] and his guys were able to finish their game. It's pretty different from, for example, how I feel about the Diablo III stuff. I'm excited to see Diablo III, because it's a whole new thing. They've got a whole new direction on it. They have a few of the guys that worked at Blizzard North still around, but there's a whole new team on it, and it's like, OK, it's their license, and they're trying to really move the bar and do something different with the Diablo license. Yeah, I'm excited when I see what they're coming up with.

GFW: What was your own gut reaction to the art direction?

BR: I just thought it was different. I think the thing I always liked about the Blizzard North and Blizzard HQ constructs is the fact that they were two very distinct groups. At Irvine, we had a way that we approached things -- game development, art style, from color to character shapes, everything -- that was very distinct from the guys at Blizzard North. I think that it made it pretty compelling when you bought the Diablo titles. You got something that was markedly different from what you got out of a WarCraft or StarCraft. I think now, because everything's down there, you're seeing the Irvine take on the Diablo universe. So it's just the direction they're going with the people they have and the mindset there. I always liked the fact that Diablo was very dark and Gothic and gritty and edgy, but I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the direction they've gone. They just chose to go a different way.

I think the core Diablo fans are saying, "We really like the dark, edgy, gritty look of that game!" We had people impaled on spikes, for god's sake. And now it's kind of bright and airy and doesn't quite feel the same. But I dunno. I look at it, and it's got high production quality, and it looks like it's going to be really fun to play. I think that wall of zombies is the coolest concept for a spell maybe ever. It's not any different in terms of gameplay mechanics, but it's so cleverly thought-out. I'm gonna raise a wall of undead! Oh my god, why didn't we ever think of that! It's genius! So I look forward to that. Again, it's a take on something, even if it's different. With Mythos, it's a thing where...it's mostly done, and you want the guys who were working on it, pouring their vision into it, their heart and soul into it, to be the ones who complete it. Short of somebody else being involved with the project, I don't really see that happening.

Q: Can you, meaning Blizzard, be specific as to what technically happened and why do you think the system broke down? Was it outsourced?

Blizzard: The issues that people faced were due to an incredible rush to purchase tickets. Last year we sold about two tickets per minute, selling out in 72 hours, and this year, with 50% more tickets available, we sold out in a combined total of 15 minutes. This meant that thousands of people were trying to purchase tickets at the same time, so some people were not able to get all the way through the purchase process before the tickets had been sold out.

Jay Wilson: “When you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them.”

Bobydole: They keep touting potiopn dropping as if it's a new dynamic that's going to make the game more interesting. It's been around for decades as a game mechanic.

What made diablo interesting was the lifetap ability of most classes, it wasn't so much the potion popping, though that was important for casters.

What gets me is these guys claim they're fixing this that, putting in potion drops rather than potions, then they say some BS like this...

"We want diablo III to be beatable by just pushing one button."

No &#$%ing *(&#, genious. Diablo I and II both got that right for lower difficulties.

How about we stop trying to fix what isn't broken and refine it. Rather than, oh i don't know...

DEVOLVING ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME TO MIMIC THE BASIC PLAY MECHANICS OF PREVIOUS BULL(*&#$ TITLES.

Are we making a blizzard game here or an SOE title? Quit making bull*(&$, water-down, vanilla gameplay descisions.

Blizzard doesn't cater to massive audiences, they create them.

Refine lifetap, Refine player run speeds, make synergies work better. Make some skills powerful damage-wise, but weaken a players speed/ defense over time. Make more dynamic buff abilities like berserk.

Go ahead, kill the messenger. Blizzard can do no wrong, right?, Empires never fall..

Bashiok: Hrmmm, I was really confused at first but I think you make a very valid point. However, game development and design just doesn't tend to work the same as it used to, and I'm not talking about Blizzard games, but just in general.

The days of design-by-luck are by no means gone, but far less accepting are players of flaws as valid rules. It requires a more methodical and player-serving approach. I actually think it may have to do somewhat with the increase in expectations of customer service and consumer rights... possibly the ever-shrinking attention span, regardless though, players have higher expectations from their games, and systems/rules that may have worked or were at least accepted as part of the game even a few years ago rarely fly these days. It's not the same market, and you're not applying to the same small group of core gamers anymore. Aside from that I don't think most still enjoy the masochistic, obscure, and often overly-complex or undefined game design of yore. Nostalgia blinds though.

Anyway... I don't know, I'm just a player myself, but I think I get where you're coming from and the best we can do is play games and enjoy ourselves. Maybe more than we ever have before, but nostalgia is such a powerful lie it makes it difficult to properly weigh the experiences.

I'm reading a bit between the lines of your posts though I think, and getting way too far from discussing health regeneration in Diablo games.

I know at this point I probably can't really allay your concerns in this specific case until you try it out, except to say that I believe you're wrong in regards to health globes. The overuse of potions was a path of least resistance, and I don't feel removing it detracts anything from the game except to say that it's something that was in a previous title in the series.

Is it just me or does this recent pic indeed show a darker dungeon then in the previous screen shots?

Bashiok: All of the screenshots being posted were taken pre-announcement, the same time the video was shot. So no, there isn't any difference. There are darker parts, and lighter parts, and while there are certain to be lighting tweaks as we go it isn't expected to change dramatically.

Well at least one thing I noticed new in the screen shots was the barbarian has gotten new battle scars from killing demons in this picture, but in the game play video when they zoom in he didn't have as many on him..

Bashiok: Those are actually fading crit blood sprays. When you get a crit death on a monster (that isn't an elemental crit death) it sprays the hero with blood (decals) and those then slowly fade over time. The screenshot shows them pretty much faded all the way out which gave them the appearance of scars. Maybe we can get some screenshots out that show the blood sprays a bit more effectively.

“We also tried to focus a little more on bringing characters back, and not just from ‘Diablo II’ but from ‘Diablo I,’” he said. “We feel like a lot of the focus is on ‘Diablo II’ but ‘Diablo I’ started it all and has a lot of really good stuff on the gameplay side and on the character side. So people can expect to see characters from ‘Diablo I,’ more characters from ‘Diablo II,’ and characters from some of the books. We’re definitely going to bring a few of them in.”

Warcry: Just for fun, what do you think about the discussion swirling around the "tone and color" of Diablo 3?

Travis: Personally, I think what they've done with Diablo 3 is fantastic. It seems pretty obvious that the mandate was to make the game look like a concept painting brought to life, and I think they've succeeded pretty wildly. The contrast and use of color really works well for an Action-RPG, where there are hordes of monsters and spells, and separation of individual entities is required for satisfying play. I can't wait to play it!

Blizzard is really second-to-none, and I have nothing but admiration for their work. I know a lot of people are lamenting what they see as a move away from the grim vibe of Diablo, but I think a lot of that gothic feel is really sold by a combination of sound, content and story, and the visceral nature of the game - and Blizzard certainly isn't skimping on the visceral if the videos are any indication. I also feel strongly that there's some pretty grim content they haven't bothered to show everyone just yet.

Unlike the previous games, every controllable character in “Diablo III” can be male or female. Sound innocuous? Lead designer Jay Wilson told me the gender option was the result of “quite a big debate.”