DiabloFans

Tristram is like a second home to many of us who played the original Diablo.

Within this article, entitled "A Nostalgic Return to Tristram" I write about a return to the iconic, but ill-fated town of Tristram. The town that defined the world of Diablo and what we, as players of Diablo III can hope to expect when we step foot back into the town with which we grew familiar so long ago.

This is the first of many Journal entries to come of my forays into Diablo's place and setting, which hopefully serves to compliment our growing anticipation for Diablo III.

Quote from "mattheo_majik" »

(and in accord to Sol Invictus *by the way did u take ur name frmo akhenaton's album*)

I took my name from the god of the Romans, which is the same source from which Akhenaton derived their album's title.

I actually liked the D2 Inventory system. It was annoying to manage at times, but I think that was part of the fun.

It was a novel idea a decade ago but it's just bad now. They tried to implement it into Titan Quest and it was annoying there. In Hellgate: London it was a nightmare to deal with the 'tetris' inventory. I'm glad Blizzard is moving away from it towards a better interface with unique artwork.

Yeah ,I'd imagine that Sanctuary being a different world from our own would have its own native flora and fauna. There's no reason why each and every one of them has to be demonic.

Quote from "Num3n" »

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU HAVE TO LEAVE FOREVER? for God's sake someone answer me. why cant he still post... seems rather silly if you ask me

anyways if this is a must, then farewell m8. Good luck to you and all your future endeavors

I believe it has something to do with his contract at his new employer. It is my understanding that they do not acknowledge the existence of other fansites.

Bashiok has been a busy bee lately. With BlizzCon coming up and anticipation for new Diablo III information pouring in, he's somehow found the time to respond to a couple of threads over at the official forum.

First up, a response to a question regarding Monsters:

It would be naive to think that with all of the creatures, demons, and monsters in the world of Sanctuary that they'd all purely be concerned with killing you and you alone.

Hinting that the player may discover monsters who fight each other in the wilderness!

Concerning the inventory, Bashiok had this to share:

We have an awesome UI guy (Mike Nicholson) who is constantly iterating on the interface. Right now it has a lot of the core pieces of what we want, but it's still being worked on fairly heavily. Specifically regarding item images and being able to see the artwork - being able to reach a happy medium between single slot and having nice big item images is something we're striving for.

Quote from "Krow" »

Sol Invictus links to Hellforge. :mad:

A lot of the time.

And they don't really have news there, but the articles can be damn funny.

Hey now. Don't hate on me. I'm not trying to have Hellforge compete with DiabloFans. We're more about articles and opinions than anything else, and we've got a blog system to accommodate anyone who wants to have their views read.

Sort of like Townhall (political site) but for Diablo III.

And Hellforge does have news. Sp3tsnaz posts them all the time.

I liked a lot of Basekick's questions. Here are my choices, not listed in any order.

- Dimebog - #33
What are you currently planning for the new crafting system?

- Veltras - #4
Is item trading going to be improved upon? Will there be "market" games, in which players can set up a shop to display their items, and browse other shops?

- USNSEALs - #31
In Diablo II, if you took the time to really enjoy every detail, playing it the second time around, there was a feel of 'I know what to do next. I remember this guy was here, I know I have to do this to get to this.' It didn't even take 3 or 4 completions. How is Diablo III going to improve upon that if at all?

::: You know, I'm pretty sure the answer's going to be "Our open areas will solve that with their somewhat randomized, but prefabricated locations" but I'd like to hear them say it anyway :::

- basekick - #8

Will there be Magic Find in Diablo III, if so, how will it be different/similar? If not, how will the dropping of super rare items be dictated?

- hiDDen - #26

Are companions going to have skills like the player?

- basekick - #8
Are we going to see the same types of loot (i.e. normal, magical, ethereal, rare, set, unique)?

- AcidReign - #14
Is there any interest to stop players from "rushing" others through the Acts in Diablo III? (Online)

- Jster - #101
Will there be team PvP?

- jwest88 - #53
Are lower level skills still going to be useful when we have higher level skills later on in the game? Or will we feel like we need to save our skill points for higher level skills?

-basekick - #8

1. How similar will the skill tree be to Diablo 2? For example, will all characters be using Mana to cast our spells? Will we be having the same progression-type skill tree as in Diablo 2? And will synergies make a return?

One solution to the problem is by adding monster health regen.

Monster health regeneration might not work if there are other players within the same dungeon who haven't yet died. This could become an exploitable element of the game, whereby one player stays alive and hides in a corner while the other player lowers their health little by little.

Then again, it all depends on how the health regen mechanic works. If it works like it did in Diablo II, in that monsters a certain distance away from the character regen their health, then it'll solve the issue.

Another way would be to add a temporary experience and loot penalty that lasts for a period of time or for a certain amount of experience. That is to say, the next ten monsters that the player kills will provide reduced experience (due to the exp penalty) and have a lower chance to drop good loot.

I've known a few girls in World of Warcraft who played as male characters in order to simply play the game as normal players do (e.g. raid and PVP) and not get sidetracked by the guys who try to hit on them for having a female character or get benefits (e.g. free stuff) just for being girls.

But I've also known girls who played female characters because they wanted people to know that they were female.

It really comes down to individual preference, and the article makes a pretty good attempt to draw out some of the archetypes.

I'll be playing a male character for the whole 'protector' aspect. It's fun to take care of other players with an armored knight guy.

Spellbooks featured strongly in the original Diablo as being the only way for a character to learn new skills. Each character, regardless of class, was limited in his spellcasting abilities simply by the amount of spellbooks he or she discovered in the course of the game. This of course resulted in much imbalance and added not a small amount of tedium to the game as a whole. In short, it wasn’t very well implemented; more suited to its roguelike predecessors rather than action RPGs of which Diablo was the first of its kind. Bashiok speaks:

That came back in Diablo II too eventually in the form of rune words, and I don't think it really worked out too well in the end. I do think it actually could be designed and implemented properly; balanced, etc. but...

For me the more important question though is what impact does it have on the class you're playing and also our knowledge of the Diablo world? Is a class nothing more than someone who read from a book, or is holding a specific item? No, they're very specific and very iconic figures (heroes even) from very distinct styles and backgrounds. The characters we play are these concentrated images of their cultures, beliefs, etc. Everything they do resembles who they are and where they're from, and what does it mean to then piecemeal that out to any one who just happens to throw a couple runes in to an item.

It worked better in Diablo (1) I think. Conceptually it was a bit easier to digest just because of the basic pen and paper underpinnings, and the heroes were far more generic. It was also far less obtrusive.

In Diablo II though, for me anyway, it always undermined the uniqueness of playing a specific class, and also what it meant to be that character. Aside from everything else it caused.

I don't understand the hate. It's no N'Gai Croal, but it's certainly no 'worse' than the stuff Brian Crescente writes over at Kotaku. It's mostly funny, jock type humor. And maybe some people don't get that, but that really comes down to personal preference.

Besides, last I checked, we're fans of the game and we cover interesting articles that spur discussion.

Many people make the choice of their gender in games an important issue, especially during character creation. There are a myriad of reasons behind this, and while some people just don't care, the millions of people who play World of Warcraft or any other game with a gender choice in it do so for reasons that can range from something as simple as preferring the armor on a male character to something as psychologically complex (relatively speaking) as pretending to be a female to get preferential treatment from other players.

Project XII has written a great article on Hellforge entitled "Beauty or Brawn - Have You Got the Baals?". It's an article on sexuality and gender in role-playing games, and how it relates to Diablo III.

It’s the question asked since the beginning of time; even before Abraham turned to Jesus and said “Dude, if you could be a chick, who would you be?” (to which Jesus replied “Angelina Jolie of course. Duh.”). It’s the reason Shakespeare wrote “the Tempest”, and went on to direct “The Crying Game”. The ultimate in X and Y bending enigmas: Why do gamers choose the genders they do?

Diablo III's community manager Bashiok has posted a response to the suggestion that a weight system be implemented in Diablo III in the Official Forums.

A weight system is simply a different approach to inventory restrictions, and it's actually fairly similar to a grid based system except that weight systems are generally augmented by a character stat instead of being item based upgrades.

The main issue with these systems as they relate to Diablo III is they add an additional value to items. That secondary value works to complicate and thus slow down the inventory management of a player, drawing their attention away from the action, which is of course the main focus for us with Diablo III.

I've played a few RPGs with weight systems, and they're among my favorite games of all time, but it's a case of choosing which systems works best for each game.

Reading his response, it seems unlikely that they will be implementing weight, as these would add an additional value to items, which bogs down inventory management almost as much as the 'tetris inventory'.

I wouldn't be surprised if they used World of Warcraft's system, perhaps with a few interface tweaks that allow for simpler management of equipment, as some player-created mods for World of Warcraft offer.

The amusing articles from Project XII just keep on coming on his blog over at Hellforge. This time, he's written an article entitled the "Top Ten Biggest Douchebags", with regards to the top ten biggest jerks in the Diablo setting.

Every story has its bad guys. They’re often a one dimensional, single minded villain that wants something like money, or power, or world destruction. An antagonist who everyone hates and whose defeat drives the plot. In the case of the Diablo games, it’s Diablo himself.

And while Big Red is nasty in appearance and intent, he’s not much for conversation. In fact, during the series so far he’s had no more then three lines of dialogue! Some might not even count the speech of the Dark Wanderer as Diablo, in that case, two!
We love our bad guys, but occasionally we like them to be a little less… “Grrr I’m bad, kill me”.

That’s where the Douchebags come in (Note: not an official authoring term). Stories often need side characters to give one-dimensional-bad-guy some support. Sometimes they’re working for him as ultra-skilled or ultra-humorous body guards. Sometimes they’re protagonists that can never get things right. More often then not they’re double-undercover-secret-triple-serial-side swappers, who started off good but turned bad on the road to revenge (and will probably come good again in the end).