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In a recent interview with Diablo III lead content designer Kevin Martens, AtomicGamer.com went a little farther than the general-purpose game highlights that non-fansites are so ready to post. Yes, it covered all the development bases like the classic isometric view, the scalable system requirements and gameplay complexity, and randomness (word of the week here at DiabloFans), but after all that came perhaps the most interesting and complete topic: questing and quest stories.

Atomic asked what the team believed needed real improvement from Diablo II to Diablo III, and, without hesitation, Martens replied, "The questing and story." Kevin continued:


Over five distinct acts, including Lord of Destruction, Diablo II offered only twenty-seven unique quests, some of which were optional and not all of which were that interesting. Most quests consisted of stumbling upon a monster or item or otherwise being debriefed in a long-winded, impersonal dialog with a town NPC. Then out you went, into the wild, and, with relatively minimal effort or brain power, the quest was completed.

Most interesting of note with quests in Diablo III--besides, of course, the obvious randomized quest upgrade--is that NPC's will actually go on adventures with you from time to time and take a hand in the journeys so essential to the gameplay. Mischief, betrayal, and adventure combine to form quests that aren't quite as repetitive and linear as those of Diablo II. But who can tell how effective these quests will really be until release?

Better storytelling.

Last year's Blizzcon gave us just a taste of some of the ways storytelling will be improved from previous games. Drooling as the minutes tick away while you watch dialog scroll by in town isn't the greatest way to spend your time in an action RPG. Story elements--history, character, etc.--are now shown through interaction and events in the dungeons we explore. Fully-voiced lore books collected on the field will play as you continue to explore, and field NPC's will add more to the mix, including the usual dialog, interaction with elements in the levels, themselves, and more.


Unfortunately, if you were reading the interview in the hopes of finding release date information, Blizzard has countered us yet again. However, Martens echoed earlier Blizzard sentiment this year: 2011 is still the plan.

But it'll be 2012.

Twitter saw some updates this week clarifying some of the details surrounding PvP arenas. If you happen to be fuzzy on the upcoming arena environments, liquorice wrote an excellent summary of many of its features in Diablo III PvP - Battle Arena Environments. If not, onward to health orbs!

We've seen what health orbs do for players in the PvM context in the years since 2008's announcement, but how do they affect the PvP experience?


Blizzcon 2010's arena gameplay demo certainly showed us how interestingly health orbs affected choices in the heat of PvP battles. As soon as the red orbs popped up, the choice had to be made: can I make it to the end of the round with half health or should I clear a path through my enemies--and possibly die--to get an orb?

Camping was essentially a non-option, not with the speed at which health was lost and the relatively long (challengingly so!) delay between health orb spawns. Of course, the option was there, and in some cases was the difference between a winning character and a dead one.

But with randomization being so heavily stressed throughout the game, why not set health orbs to random spawns? Bashiok responded:


Getting lucky. We could very well sit here for hours posting arguments over whether or not setting them on a fixed timer eliminates the element of luck in even this single regard. What about players not keeping track of health orb spawn rates? What about running in to one by accident, just in the nick of time? What about losing health just as an orb spawns?

Regardless, the fixed timer will likely be but one of the many new components of Diablo III's arenas that define dueling pros and novices. As Bashiok noted, keeping mental notes of the average time between health orb spawns can free players to execute effective offensive tactics, as well as plan when to run to known orb spawning locations. Such knowledge could even be used to predict where low-health players, and thus easy targets, will go when the timer hits zero.

In response to further fan questioning, the age-old level cap discussion was brought to light again last week on the Battle.net board. While Bashiok's lengthy replies did not necessarily give us any new information, per se, he did give us very thorough explanations of what the team was thinking when it set the level sixty cap on Diablo III characters and how this will logically factor in to expansions in the future.

The level cap is not a new topic by any means, but it has been seeing more discussion as of late. Juystafan's poll shows just what DiabloFans members are thinking when they see level cap: in terms of end-game grinding and regular questing.

So, what did frequenters think? It appears that the current majority in the poll believes something similarly to the Battle.net thread's progenitor: less is less. Aveh, the maker, went on to express his opinion that "having a high and very difficult to achieve level cap is actually a good thing for continued playability. In most games, when you hit max level, you're done. You character can no longer increase in strength other than gear that you might receive. What this does subconciously is actually give less reward for more play time. So when you hit max level, everything you do is less valuable-"

And this is where Bashiok, and the team he represents, begins to disagree (see Bashiok on the Level Cap). Despite that explanation--and other iterations before it--there are still those that explain the "low" level cap with other rationalizations. Raseru, posting in response, may be expressing the sentiments of many when he says that "the level cap is obviously just so in the expansion they can increase it."

Less than an hour later, Bashiok responded:


Is this a confirmation of higher level caps in expansions? Probably. But since the team is only looking forward to release at this point, perhaps even the current level cap is somewhat in the air. Show everyone what you think about the current level cap here.

Diablo II's seventh ladder season started on new terms with the release of the publicly-tested patch 1.13. Bashiok made an initiative to see how long players wanted the new season and the ones to follow to last. Now, months shy of the winning full year, the results are in question:


After restating what the ladder resets actually do for players, the game, and the in-game economy, Bashiok opened a new poll to see what players are feeling roughly half a year after season seven began:


Get involved in all the action in the official poll here!

With the growing popularity of modding support for RPG games, such as the rising Torchlight series by Runic Games and the Elder Scrolls series, we can see that there is a vested interest by players of today in creating their own challenges, and by game developers in providing the tools to do so. Legacy Diablo modders have created some innovative things, but as we look forward to Diablo III in a game generation where anything is possible, we wonder why Blizzard hasn't jumped on the user-created content bandwagon.

Through interviews with numerous prodigious legacy Diablo modders and scarce snippets from Blizzard, we will delve in to a trove of opinion, fact, and speculation.

Modding has a long history with the Diablo series. Entire modding communities have popped up around the web (see the Phrozen Keep) devoted solely to this formidable practice. In Diablo I, we saw an entire expansion added by third-party company Sierra (Diablo I: Hellfire), and post- patch 1.10, Diablo II's modding community virtually blossomed. However, both games still lacked any form of modding toolkit as seen with newer mod-friendly games.

Of course, with Diablo III coming as a very modern game, the lack of a modding toolkit in a user-created content age is something of a pitfall. Laz (whom we interviewed last year: Overhaul Diablo II with Median XL), developer of the popular Median XL mod for Diablo II, believes that "[...]there is no real reason to fight to the death with an inflexible game engine when you have Starcraft II's world editor." And other fantasy ARPG's with editors, to boot.

The lack of an editor isn't the only thing making mod developers angsty. The lack of multiplayer LAN suport in Diablo III has been a source of consternation for some. We asked Soulmancer (whom we interviewed last month: Unlock Diablo II with Hell Unleashed), creator of Diablo II mod Hell Unleashed, how he believes this may affect the future of modding with the Diablo series, and his response wasn't particularly bright: "Diablo at its core is a multiplayer game and if mods in Diablo III are going to be strictly limited to single player it is doubtful you'll see much motivation from developers and players to create high quality and in depth mods."

Soulmancer isn't the only mod developer to recognize this challenge. Laz of Median XL shared his sentiments, noting that "the lack of any (legal) multiplayer options whatsoever in a multiplayer oriented game may prove to be fatal for the popularity of any mods that struggle to the surface [for Diablo III]."

While Blizzard did consider making an editor available to the masses, more recent considerations led them in a different direction. Various Blizzard representatives have stated that modding isn't necessarily something they want to discourage, but something they have decided not to support. In an article on ShackNews, Jay Wilson even admitted that many game designers got their start in modding games over the years.

Later, in an interview at the 2009 Blizzcon, Leonard Boyarsky graced the subject when he was interviewed by Joystiq:

Oh, the irony.

LAN, a feature whose usage could never really be tracked in prior games with any degree of scientific accuracy, was among one of the earliest things to change in the transition from Diablo II to Diablo III. As early as summer of 2008, the same year of the announcement at the last WWI, Blizzard stated:


These combined factors are a major hurtle for would-be Diablo III modders, and a major deterrent for legacy modders in adapting to the new game. Many games could be said to have survived for as long as they did due to their modding capabilities. As we look toward another stepping stone in the Diablo saga, we can only hope that it will last as long as Diablo II did.

But will the preclusion of modding tools for Diablo III hurt its longevity? Soulmancer responded that "there is no doubt that the ability to mod does preserve the longevity of games for certain audiences and there are plenty of examples of this, such as Oblivion (which is still popular only due to it's modability.) Some people don't care for mods at all, and some people love 'em, whether it's playing them or creating them."

But not everyone is on the modding toolkit bandwagon. True Mage, creator of Diablo II mod Battle for Elements (whom we interviewed last year: The Battle Beyond Sanctuary: Battle for Elements), went as far as to say, "To be honest, I would even prefer to see absence of modding support in Diablo III, as well. It is always more interesting to explore unknown mechanics than just make a mod and the second reason it will get rid of many cheap cut-corners works proudly named 'mods' for us."

Regardless of how legacy modders viewed the preclusion of a solid game editor in Diablo III, opinions of the plausibility, and even necessity, of modding in Diablo III were as varied as they were sincere.

To get to the root of what created the modding communities for the legacy games, we asked Soulmancer what he believes contributed to the growth of the Diablo modding community. He presented us three considerations:

A dedicated, motivated and knowledgeable community of players and developers as well as the release of the official 1.10 patch were two huge factors in Diablo II's modding evolution over the years. But there was also a multiplayer option: TCP/IP, LAN and Open.net.

While multiplayer is now a vapor in the wind, the first two factors are still just as, if not more, applicable to Diablo III. The wealth of modding knowledge, or perhaps logic, that legacy Diablo modders can bring to the table, combined with the possibility that Diablo III will be open to modding in much the same way as Blizzard's other more modern releases (through things like XML scripting), could make Diablo III's modding future brighter than previously anticipated.

Perhaps the easiest way to see this is by looking to the past. Mod developer Mordor (whom we interviewed last year: Return to Diablo I with "The Hell") brought us back to the days of Diablo I, which was about as mod-unfriendly as it could get, and yet there were still some great mods, even, as mentioned earlier, an entire third-party expansion. Mordor continued to state that "[...]if there are some crazy devoted fans for Diablo III in the world, there will be decent modifications for it, I'm sure. Another thing to remember is that modding is not about simply changing a game to make it different, it's about improving the game, making it better. The better the original game, and the more complete it is, the less work we modders (of my kind) would have to do."

Whether or not Blizzard is open to modders tinkering with their work, and whether or not modders are up to the challenge, may be some source of debate, but in the end, many of these doubts will only be resolved once we finally have the game in ours hands. Long-time developer Onyx at the Phrozen Keep (whom we interviewed last year: Back to Hellfire with Diablo II) had this much to say: "I think we'll find our way through Diablo III's structure, anyway, and I'm optimistic about Diablo III modding, but it's too early to speak."

Set items functioned more as a precarious past time than battle armaments in Diablo II, often only assembled in full in the end-game or after the point at which they would be any use to a player. These and other issues have troubled the folks behind Diablo III for some time, especially since they still have every intention of including them in the newest game in the franchise. For some time, we have been very much in the dark as to how the team actually intends on addressing the complex issue:


With Diablo III's development nearing 2011, Bashiok posted one of the ways that the team is trying to get around some of the drawbacks of set items as faced in prior games and their own experience with Diablo III:


With any luck, we won't be completing Sigon's Complete Steel in Nightmare mode this time around, and the nearly impossible to find sets won't be useless in Hell. But will tuning set items to work in the end-game only replace the old conundrum of mass Runeword abuse in Diablo II? As is just about everything concerning the third installment, we wait on the question of balance.

Blizzcon 2010 has given us a veritable treasure trove of interesting new information on Diablo III, and the good times keep on rolling. Everything from the newly-announced PvP arenas to the in-game gadget responsible for salvaging valuable resources from useless loot was discussed as news representatives pelted Jay Wilson with questions from a wide variety of Diablo areas.

Of particular interest was the PvP arena, a revolution in PvP functionality, at least as far as the Diablo franchise is concerned. With the relatively short length of duels in Diablo II and I, with battles often over in a matter of adrenaline-pumping seconds, the validity of arenas was brought to question with none too little skepticism.


Though in previous games duels would last for only moments, the new arena system in Diablo III will allow for rounds of PvP within a single game, increasing overall battle length. Similarly, the introduction of team-based PvP will bring cooperative play to a new height, with players more easily covering each other's backs, allowing strategy to clime to a prime spot of concern, as opposed to the frequently-power-oriented mindset of Diablo II.

Jay mentioned that it is a concern they have, but that the development team will be able to more accurately asses PvP when more players are able to get a hands-on experience with the new system. This would presumably take place during a form of beta, though patching after release is also a possibility.

PvP and PvE have been a grey area in previous renditions of the Diablo franchise, but, as mentioned yesterday, the team is more concerned with preserving the PvE element of Diablo, and so PvE and PvP will be regarded separately. Unbalance of a skill in PvP arena battles will not cause the team to nerf the skill for PvE players, and Jay wants players to realize that skills that seem useless in PvE games may be entirely valid in a PvP context.

This same concern for preserving the PvM focus of the game has led to a number of other decisions, such as the removal of toggle-able hostility in PvE games (as was done in Diablo II), as well as arenas being entirely separate games from story and monster-slaying PvE games. Ultimately, when it comes to PvP and PvE, he wants us to know that the two are entirely separate.

When it comes to the arenas, themselves, Jay mentioned that although randomization for the actual arena area is entirely possible, and quite easy to do since arenas are made with the same system that composes dungeons, the team has several concerns that are causing them to be careful with how they offer arenas to players. Randomization, while obviously offering many different arena experiences, also can create many useless and irritating PvP environments. Offering more options for such customized games is something that they want to play low so that players will spend less time with the bureaucracy of setting up a game and more time slaughtering each other. It's ultimately a question of how useful such functionality would be, how much it is desired, and how much good it would do for PvP players.

Diablo III Q&A Panel
Turns out, hardcore is going to stay hardcore. One of the coolest bits of information we got the from Q&A panel was that if you take a hardcore character into the Arena, if it dies, it's dead. No second chances, no life after the arena, just dead. Rounds were not elaborated on however, so we may end up seeing 1 round matches with hardcore characters. Either way, now you'll finally have a way to kill your max level hardcore player in style.

We also learned a bit about how the stash will be working. As it turns out, we now have a shared stash between characters. It also turns out, that the shared stash is massive. Add in the fact that Blizzard will never delete your characters, and everyone out there who enjoys hoarding their items just got an early birthday present.

Blizzard has finally posted their last armor set update pre-Blizzcon with one focusing on the male Barbarian. The set bears a striking resemblance to the armor previously released for the female Barbarian, especially in the "claws" covering the arms and wrists, though Bashiok remarked that the two armor sets are not the same.


Now with all six armor sets revealed, minus any emphasis on the Monk, we can look forward to the icing on this proverbial cake with all the Diablo III goodness Blizzcon has to offer. If you missed any of the former armor sets, see here:


(Blizzard does not actually have all of those links in the real excerpt, they were added only for readers' convenience.)

As part of a long-standing tradition of Blizzard's Halloween spirit, "The Hollowing," or its yearly pumpkin carving contest related to all things Blizzard, once again takes the stage. Fans will be expected to deface their pumpkins in artistic, unique, and entertaining ways to convey the worlds of the Blizzard franchises, but we all know that Diablo's the best, so who really cares about the rest?

(On a side note, sorry about our Blizz Tracker lately, everyone. The issues are slowly being resolved!)

MMO Champion recently posted a big image of the schedule of events for Blizzcon 2010. If you're capable of reading on your own, just skip to the image.

Note the Diablo III gameplay segment right after the opening ceremony: hopefully this will be where we'll see all the latest for this year's event. Also note the kick ass image of the Monk with a pretty sick staff at the right. The second day will feature a Diablo III Q & A segment and what I'm guessing is a party for lore-crazed fans: Diablo III: Crafting Sanctuary.




As for the break down on just what will be covered in each of these panels:

UPDATE:

For those of you worried about the limited Diablo time, here is what Bahiok had to say.

As we near Blizzcon 2010 this October, Blizzard is committed to upping the hype for Diablo's biggest Blizzcon yet! Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, to shed away those mid-week blues, Twitter and Facebook will be highlighting in-game gear:



The first being a quick look at a set of Witch Doctor equipment:



It's good to finally see content again, and this plethora of images is only the icing on the cake. Keep up-to-date on all of these developments as we reach Blizzcon here at DiabloFans, and get instant on-site updates off the official Diablo Twitter by checking out our Twitter feed here!

(Also, I think it's really amazing how tribal he actually looks. Nothing too outlandishly unrealistic ftw.)

UPDATE:

First off, we now know exactly what class and gender they will be revealing over the next few weeks.
Along with the schedule, Bashiok further commented on the actual gear presented. First, that this gear set is around mid-range. So for anyone worried about this being the Witch Doctor's top-end gear, worry not. However, for those hoping this was the first level, sorry. Another comment he made was how the dye system would effect this particular armor. As it has already been stated, only certain pieces of the armor can be dyed. Bashiok said that the redish-orange pieces of the armor would be the pieces effected by dyes. Non-armor related, he also revealed that the Witch Doctor is able to wield all two-handed weapons. Lastly, he also stated that this "set" of gear is not an actual set. Meaning that it is not a set with a particular name and stats attached to it. It it more like the leather, gothic, full plate, type of set. Which is also good news for those worrying about its style and epic-ness.

Original Thread by EndersGameD3: New Item Sets Every Tues & Thurs!

Article Courtesy of FingolfinGR

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There’s been a long discussion about how accounts and character creation will be handled in Diablo III. How many characters will we be allowed to create per account? The question is one more directly answered, even if it’s nothing yet conclusive. Blizzard tweeted about the team’s thoughts on the number of characters we’ll be able to create for online play earlier Tuesday:

Official Blizzard Quote:

http://www.diablofan...y-less-than-50/" class="blizzsource">

@FingolfinGR There's going to have to be a limit. Definitely more than 10. Probably less than 50.

This would easily solve the issue of creating multiple accounts to create the amount of characters we want to have – especially if the number is closer to fifty than ten. We also heard rumors of a shared stash to prevent the well known and annoying mule games. All that with Bashiok's blessing on the official forums.

Official Blizzard Quote:

No update, it's something we hope to do, it's not designed or in any sort of implementation phase so until we reach that point and either hit a revelation of it working or not we won't know for sure. But yes, still hope to have some sort of easy way to share between characters. "Drop games are dumb." - Bashiok

Diablo III confirmed to allow only one account to each CD key through Battle.net "2.0," and drop games hopefully a thing of the past, one wonders how item storage will work for characters, and possibly accounts.

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Ten years and going strong, Diablo II continues to peddle through the Y2K with all the persistence of a bad joke. Not that the game's bad, though. Verily, it's still going so well all these years later that we're prepared for yet another reset:

Official Blizzard Quote:

A fresh ladder as you know is really about the rarity of items, a fresh economy, and the fight through the game starting from scratch. Ladder is about challenging yourself.

Though season seven is still grinding us on with patch 1.13, all of the challenges, triumphs, and epic loot still await all of us, just as any reset, and that's something to be happy about, right? If you're just starting again and don't know what to expect from 1.13, check out some of our featured 1.13 articles and guides. Our Wiki, as always, is an indispensable center of statistics for all your block-maxing, MFing, grinding, and gearing-up needs.

The reset, itself, will only take a few hours:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Diablo II will be down September 28, from 10:00 AM PDT until approximately 1:00 PM PDT for the scheduled ladder reset.

NEW v

Official Blizzard Quote:

Diablo: Diablo II realms are currently down for the scheduled ladder reset. They're estimated to be back up at approximately 12:00 pm PDT.

NEW ^


That's roughly 1:00 PM to 4:00 (NEW: 3:00) PM for our EST audience, and all the rest are a minority, so we don't care about you. (Just kidding, we want everyone back on Diablo II ASAP, so here's a handy-dandy time zone converter. Hm... Maybe we should add that to our tools. Get on it, Ceb!)

All that in mind, we have good reason to rejoice. The formerly-inconsistent resets will be going mainstream, with a ladder reset every six months. And maybe, just maybe, there's a glimmer of hope on the horizon as Diablo III gets closer and Diablo II gets older. After all, what's Blizzard about but stirring up hype, and what better way for Diablo than a shiny-new patch? Eh? (Well, besides a damn release date.)

Official Blizzard Quote:

I also want to impress upon everyone that 1.13 isn't and never has been intended as a final patch for Diablo II. I realize with the long delays in getting it to PTR, and longer stretches of time inbetween patches that it seems like it's necessary that 1.13 encompass everything because, well, there's just no guarantee that anything will come after. Or in a timely fashion. But, there is a solid long term plan of action for future support of Diablo II. There's obviously plenty of room for skepticism, and I can't blame anyone for that. But even with that skepticism I hope that we can get the message across that we have no intention of stopping here.

Did you feel too limited in Diablo and Diablo II with your skill choices? As promised so long ago when Diablo III was first announced, runes will be adding a ton of customizability to your Diablo III skill armory. When the announcement first came, though, who would have thought that, base skills and rune combinations combined, we would be fighting the hordes of Hell with over seven hundred skills?

Official Blizzard Quote:

It's staggering really, even to me still. Those are all unique in their visuals too, which is important to note. Sure some of them may be simple color shifts but most of them are unique mechanics with completely unique visual effects. It's crazy. Big up to our effects guys.

The flip side, of course, is that not every skill can possibly be interesting or useful enough to bother exploring every possible rune combination. Or will they? Perhaps Blizzcon 2010 will give us more to chew on as we near the as-of-yet unknown release date of Diablo III!

Although we all pretty much knew this would be coming, anyway, the Diablo III Twitter feed was updated today:



Can't wait to see what surprises wait for us this October! Stay tuned to DiabloFans for all your Diablo III needs.