DiabloFans

I want screenshots of the Diablo III Battle.net interface. Just the login screen would be fine.

Good article, and good things being discussed here. Overall, I feel that the 95% hit chance is the right way to go. I always felt like even though my characters were geared well and had a great skill build, sometimes the attack rating was not what I had hoped, and was the crippling factor in my overall build - no matter how well I played with them. I like to see that our gear, skills, traits, and prowess will make us succeed, and not the ridiculous mathematic equations. +1 for the Diablo dev team.

And yea....


Lot's of beta talk going on around here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=andaxt5UkEY&feature=related

9:53

I remember saying after I beat Diablo II in 2000, "Baal survived? Wow. I can't wait for Diablo III."

Then I found out that there was going to be a Diablo II expansion to pick up right where the original Diablo II left off. I instantly made a character and got him beefed up for the expansion, and when it came out, I beat it that very same night - and I had a great time doing it. Although I was not satisfied by Act 5, and the music, I did enjoy where the story was going. I knew that it was a cliffhanger, and I didn't have a clear answer to what was going to happen next. So I sort of forgot about it.

But in 2006, while still playing D2: LoD with my friends from school, I thought to myself, "It's a bit overdue for a sequel to this game..."

I searched Diablo III at Google, and lo and behold, a news site came up - www.diablo3.com. I entered, and read through tons of rumors and hints at Diablo III's arrival. I joined as a member to it's forums, staying relatively quiet for the first few months while I watched the site take form. My first avatar was the Warrior from Diablo I swinging a sword - while wearing plate mail of course.

Soon after, I started diving into the speculation, and became one of the top posters and acclaimed members of the site. My activity within the forum stayed high, even when the site's name was changed to www.diablofans.com. A month after the name change, Diablo III was announced, and the site exploded.

My activity dropped late 2009 when my girlfriend and I learned that we would be having a baby! Nevertheless, I still checked the forums everyday - even until now, as my daughter approaches 9 months of age.

What keeps me going in the wait for Diablo III, is not the Blue Posts, or the Diablo Tweets. It's Diablofans that keeps me going. Every week there is always a damn sweet article to read that isn't from Blizzard, but from the die-hard Diablo fans themselves. Such as the article about cameos this week. I love that stuff. It's so interesting to read, and it is nice to see there are others out there that are just as passionate about this game as I am. This community is awesome, and it's what keeps me contently waiting.

I think there should be an NPC that hands out bounties for exceptionally strong champion monsters. Think of it as a Monster Shrine from D2, only the monsters are stronger, and you get crazy rewards.

I'd have to say that Repo: The Genetic Opera was the worst movie I've ever laid eyes on.

I wanna see District 9 extremely bad.
Had to see Time Travelers Wife though...

This interview blew my mind about the lore and storyline aspects in Diablo III. Watch it: http://diablo3.battlenet.pl/portal/d3/1/99/Wywiad_Battlenetpl_z_Jayem_Wilsonem_i_Rayem_Gresko.html

At 12:00-12:50, Jay Wilson talks about how killing Diablo and his brothers was pretty much the "tip of the iceberg" and that "everything has gone the way Hell has planned". He also says that the people who think they know how things work, and think they defeated Diablo once and for all, are wrong.

Sounds huge.

Karune said at the end of 2007 that there were going to be larger annoucements in 2008

Quote from "Siaynoq" »

That was kind of strange. Even though he said Diablo was a beloved franchise and they plan on revisiting it, he almost seemed surprised and a little annoyed that he even had to address it. Then it's like as soon as he could, he got back on the topic of the Wrath of the Lich King.

Watch very closely with what Blizzard says about Diablo. They are very short, but at the same time, they give away many answers. Obviously the game will be revisisted, and they are remaining tight-lipped about it - a good indication it is in production and they don't want to slip and spill the beans. That's why they avoid other questions so quickly.

Not sure why you're mad.
Diablo 2 didn't have traits, or skill runes, or crafting for that matter. Stats also doesn't really grant as much freedom as you think it does. Think about it. You pump strength to get armor, and then you just push what's needed based on your class, i.e. some mana for casters, a lot of dex for non caster, a lot of vitality, etc.
Blizzard has stated this fact before.
In Diablo 3 you get to add traits to your character, which modifies a huge part of how you'll play. You will also get 5 runes to mix and match so you can change your desired skills the best way you want.
Also, items play a huge part in Diablo and in D3 you will be able to craft the items you want. There are more levels of gems that you can now add sockets, remove, and upgrade with artisans. And you can also enchant your items. Gold is now a lot more important than it ever was in D2, which adds so much more variety and important choices.

If you sit and think about it, D3 has a lot more options than you'd expect from face value. And I'm glad they removed the simple, one sided mechanic that the stat points brought to the game.

I always appreciate the criticism.

Proof reading is something I hate doing. I am by no means a professional journalist. I just do this for fun and proof reading for grammar is not fun.

Sorry.

I've been wanting to write this up for a long time, but I wanted to first play through D2 again just so I can get a feel of all the faults that D2 had, even though I do think it is a great game. But D2 is no masterpiece. That's right, I'm as hard a Diablo Fan as anyone, and I said it. D2 has some serious issues, but luckily I don't think we'll see these blemishes in the new product.

Issue #1: The End Game
One of the most important aspects of any game of this type is the end game. This is where we get all our fat loot, play with our friends in Hell, and spend most of our time on our Main. For some, this is where the game actually begins. Unless you were seriously hardcore, the endgame for D2 suffered a lot and heres why:

Even if you had a great build (which we'll get to game mechanics later), if you didn't have the items to back up the build, your character was useless and you weren't viable in Hell, or it just wasn't fun to play because it was so hard (immunities and resistances were to blame here). The sorceress in particular can die in hell in one hit at lvl 90 with the right combination of hits from monsters. The solution to this? The removal of immunities will be awesome, but I also think the monsters will be better tweaked to not cause you to die in one hit, and I think it's that simple.

So when you finally, after months of playing, do get your epic armor-stat combo, you can finally run Baal (or pindleskin, diablo, or whomever) so many times your eyes bleed. But seriously, that's pretty much all you'll be doing because that's where all that fat loot is dropped (rather, that's where the highest chance of it dropping is). Now hopefully this won't be worthwhile to constantly run Diablo (or whomever the main villain is) over and over a million times. Hopefully in D3 we will be rewarded for exploring different areas of the game and throughout all the acts in Hell difficulty. Not much is known here, but there is potential to make item finding interesting by putting super rare drops in obscure places throughout Hell, and/or just to simply make boss drops not so big.

The level cap has been debated for a while now, and it won hands down. Sorry you hardcore fanbois, but the level cap of 60 is necessary if you want a game where your skills actually mean something. You can argue "it was so fun grinding to as close to level 99 as possible", but no, it wasn't fun. And it wasn't fun because there was nothing to gain but a status symbol. I'm sure the status symbol for D3 will be in other, better forms such as dyes, items, and gold. Also, there are other forms of grindy things you can do in D3 such as gems that will make up for habit.

Which brings us to another topic.

Issue #2: Gold and Economy
If all goes well, we'll have a real economy that uses gold as it's currency and not SOJs. A form of the Auction House (though by no means the same) will encourage that gold be used instead of some user-defined item. This is important. This makes items you pick up worthy of being sold. Now you don't have to get really lucky and find the one Monk on battlenet that has that one Axe you were looking for and wants that one Cestus you found (but this ONLY assumes those two items are of equal value :(. Now you can put it up for auction and use the gold you get to trade for the things you need. Problem solved.

Nobody knows what the future holds for D3's econ, but I can bet we'll have a nice battle.net-level UI to do trading outside of the game (this is only speculation though, don't get your hopes up).

Issue #3: Skills
Diablo 2 has major issues with skill variety. There's a reason why there are builds named after a certain skill: Meteorb Sorc, FireWall Sorc, Hammerdin, and I could go on. These builds are designed around one skill. That's because the game encourage this. Now, why is this a bad thing? Because it gets very boring mashing right-click over and over again until your hand hurts, and seeing the same frozen orb hit the same enemies over and over just gets boring after a few days. (love ya FO, but you get old)

D3 is designed to be a more tactical game where your decisions in combat influence the battle a lot, more like Zelda, as Jay Wilson continually describes. And, as such, you're encouraged to diversify your skills. This I think will be the biggest plus for D3. I hope to see some outrageously interesting builds come out of all the classes. To further diversify these skills, we have the Runestones, which will definitely bring a whole new era of awesome builds.

D3's UI changes also help to encourage skill diversity by the use of 1-4 as well as left and right click to apply your skills. F1 through F8 got tiresome quick. As with any game, UI is very important and effects the gameplay.

Issue #4: PvP Is Separate From PvE
Running along in D2 and getting ganked is no fun. While this doesn't happen much anymore, it was a big problem when there were more people on battle.net. Now we don't have to worry about this as the arena takes care of all our pvp needs. I think it will also encourage a new form entertainment on YouTube (yes, I'm looking at you, Force), which is GREAT. Whether you're into pvp or not, getting more people to play D3 is a good thing.

Issue #5: Story
Lead Content Designer Kevin Martens explained at BC 2010 that most of meat of the story will be told through what he describes as "Action Storytelling", where the story is supposed to unfold in front of you in-battle, instead of some dialog in the Rogue Encampment. Regardless of your view on this matter, whether you like good-ol' story telling or not, this will be an interesting take on the genre, of the like I don't think I've seen before, so we'll see.

We'll also be privy to bite-size stories throughout Sanctuary that will are supposed to immerse you into the world, and you can pick this up at your leisure. The reason this is so great is that it encourages two playing philosophies at once: 1. If you don't want to learn about the story, you don't have to read it, and continue hackin' and slashin'. 2. It encourages you to, if you want to, to go search for these little pockets of story within Sanctuary, providing tons of replay value.

Obviously we don't know how Diablo 3 will unfold in terms of story, but Blue has made it clear that after 20 years of relative peace, the Hells are breeding an army for war.

Issue #6: Melee Classes Were Far More Difficult to Play
As per snared04drummer's request, we'll delve into what I think to be a major design flaw of the D2. Melee classes had this really big problem in Hell and even in Nightmare. With the exception of a Hammerdin, the melee forms of the Paladin, Barb, Druid, and Assassin were not competent paradigms, especially in the later game. Yes you could build a Hammerdin, a Fireclaw Druid, or a Trap Assn, but we're talking about melee classes. A WW Barb is really risky, but I don't want to go into details. Basically, D3 will (hopefully) be rid of these problems. From the videos I've seen, all the melee classes look like they're on equal footing with all the other archetypes.

One of the sources of the problem here is Attack Rating (AR) which makes melee classes need LOTS of Dexterity, which is not really where they should be spending their points. A melee class should be spending points into their respective stat based on what they want to improve, not being forced to go Dex because of a bad mechanic. Thankfully in D3, this will be taken care of for us - the damage taken will be set for your character.

Conclusion
I could probably go on forever about the ways that D3 will be better, and by no means do I think D3 will be perfect, but so far the game looks infinitely better than it's predecessor, and that excludes graphical changes (though the ragdoll physics is super delicious in a Diablo game). This is still kindof a work in progress, so I'll update it as I see fit. In the meantime, if you guys want to chip in any more things you think will be better or worse about D3, please let us know in the comments.

Do people ever just get excited about things? I guess I am a casual gamer because I totally do not look at features in an analytical way. I look at something and think about how it will add to the immersion, story or my gameplay experience. How frustrating life must be when things that are inherently fun and for leisure become points of contention and unrest in the eyes of those that play the games. What is the point? A lot of it also seems to be contrary for the sake of trying to play devil's advocate every single time something is shown.

From my standpoint I am very much excited to have the followers be added depth to my solo play experience and story of the game.

I have no idea what you are talking about

when people hit the green + you gain one reputation.

Just saw the reputation thingy on my profile page and I wondered how I go about making it higher? Do I just keep posting?

Thanks!

btw guys enjoy this..

http://www.diablowiki.com/Diablocasts

Agreed. I honestly can't even play any other games right now because I just want D3.

EDIT: fixed thread for you