DiabloFans

Jumping and leaping are different. I'd be fine with everyone getting to jump. A leap is something that requires great strength and atheleticism - I don't want to see Wizards and Witchdoctors leaping around the place. LEAP should be Barb-specific. A small jump should be afforded to everyone (if the 3D environment requires/permits it)

Americans, you're right. We are your hat. We are neighbours the most powerful nation in the world.

On the other hand, its YOUR tax money fighting all the wars for us while we got maybe a couple thousand soldiers in Afghanistan. Our government prefers to spend that money on other stuff, like you know - healthcare - and social services. Education doesn't hurt either. So continue funding our safety. We are happy in the knowledge that if anyone were to threaten Canada, our big brother will step in and take care of it. We'll continue to spend our money on beer and staying alive.

Yeah but part of Diablo's "dark and brooding" environment was that it was a pretty poor-looking graphical game. I mean at the time it looked fine but now when I look at it, its just so pixelated and rough. Things like Crysis exist now. It just looks silly.

When Blizzard makes the move to revive this franchise with an all new 3D approach to the isometric camera, they also create a dynamic colouring system to make the game more vibrant, so its more than just "dark". It can be light outside to give a sense of atmosphere and when you enter the confines of Hell, the DARK will be that much more potent and meaningful.

I thought that even that early video of the Barbarian in that dungeon was pretty decent. With the new colouring system, there can be all types of dungeons. Bluish greenish and reddish hues can make every dungeon feel very different. We've seen very little of the geography of the game, but its silly to have a 2010-2011 video game that is one big shadow. Nostalgia isn't an excuse to confine Blizzard from creating greater graphical quality with more dynamic colouring to make the game feel a bit more layered.

WC4 definitely needs to come before they decide to do something drastic. I mean lets look at it:

Diablo 3 --> Follows series' formulaic approach to hack'n'slash-type action, standard online RPG with single player, no monthly fee

SC 2 --> Sequel to the most acclaimed RTS of all time. They try not to mess with the formula too much, and add maybe a few units as not to make a carbon copy of SC while keeping it easy to balance.

Unknown Next-Gen MMO --> Not much to say here, but just something to notice. The WoW team is the WoW team and they've got their own thing to do, at all times. There's developers who are responsible for the monthly material while some are strictly always working on the next expansion, and I'm sure the WOW team is extremely expansive by now. This MMO is being developed by yet a different team, we are told its not from an existing Blizzard franchise, so its new and "next-gen" is all we have to go on.

--WHAT'S NEXT?--

There next project can't be an MMO. With WoW at its peak (11 million subs?) and possibly still climbing, they can squeeze out like 10 more expansions before starting to feel a decline, but Blizzard isn't stupid. All their expansions have been pretty massive, and their not even going to put any serious pre-production development into WoW-2 until the numbers actually look like their starting to wince. 11 MILLION subscribers world-wide. MMO's that have like 250,000-500,000 are considered profitable and successful. WoW has 62.2% of the world's MMO market. Lineage and Lineage II together own 13% of the world share. Everquest I and II have only 2.3%. So forget WoW-2, because WoW is simply too successful to start diverting resources to WoW-2.

WC4: Warcraft-3 is also one of the highest rated RTS games. Its still played competitively worldwide. Of the average 150,000 users still playing on battle.net at any one given time, half of those are on Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. In a few years, when D3 and SC2 are both out and done with, WC-4 I think has to be the logical move for Blizzard. With WC4, they have top-notch games from their 3 franchises along with the world's biggest MMO (by a LONG shot) with another MMO in development and pretty much the freedom to do anything they want. Diablo 3 will rejuvenate the old D2 crowd. SC2 is the sequel to a still-popular RTS thats 11 years old. You can bet anyone who has ever played Diablo will be interested in D3. Tons of ex-WoW'ers (like me) are looking forwards to playing it. It will likely draw tons of new-comers as well who were maybe too young during the D2 prime and will discover the series.

After WC4 you say? Probably the release of the Next-Gen MMO they're working on (MMO's have huge dev cycles). After that? I really can't even speculate.

That's a good question. My Empire savegame is corrupted (anytime I load my savegame and click end turn, it crashes on me) so I don't know. Ive seen other people's screenshots that go past the year 1800. I don't know if the game officially stops you at any point. I just know that for most of the campaigns (I chose the longest campaign available), you have to complete your goals BY 1800. Not sure if the campaign simply ends there.

Either way theres mods out there that can make each year last more than 2 turns to increase the time you have to play, or simply allow you to go past the point where the developers coded the campaign to end. Again I don't know for sure, but I do know that mods exist to make the game longer.

I'd say if you forget about their Next-Gen MMO, and you take into account the WOW expansions are handled by a different team, it probably has to be Wc4. After SC2 is released and D3, the next game is gonna be War4. By the time War4 is out, WoW is probably gonna be starting to slightly decline and then post-WC4 their going to be doing pre-production on WoW-2.

I really think that the next iteration of consoles should come STANDARD (thats right) with a damn keyboard and mouse. Take the step towards PC gaming. I think the article is right - you're going to see this shift towards a console that is going to be like a computer, gaming system and entertainment center all in one. Heck - you might see Windows 7 on the next Xbox. They might as well sell a damn computer to people - thats what its shaping up to be.

It's a great game. I'll give you guys a quick rundown:

Empire combines turn-based strategy with real-time battles to make a great game. Imagine a Risk board with all the countries of the world, then you have your like 30 different factions, England, France, Prussia, etc... all on the map. The Grand Campaign starts in the year 1700, basically the gunpowder age. Like I said there's two arenas of the game which you'll find yourself in - the real-time battles and the main map of the world where you manage your empire.

The main map consists of all of Europe, the northern tip of Africa, all of Asia continuing down southeast, also includes the northern part of the Middle East and all of India. There is also of course the Americas, which includes modern Canada, USA, Mexico and islands of the Caribbean in Central America as well as South America.

In the Grand Campaign (the main game mode), you pick a faction that starts with some territories on the world map and your job is to conquer territories and forge an empire. This is the newest in the Total War series and it has the deepest gameplay yet. On the world map, you play turn-based strategy where each "turn" (much like a turn in Risk or Monopoly) presents you with an opportunity to move around armies, construct buildings in your cities as well as upgrade things like farms, smaller towns and everything in between to keep your Empire running. A big part of the game is trade and commerce. You can make diplomatic deals with other nations, such as alliances, trade agreements, payments, swapping and demanding certain regions, etc...

Each turn lasts 6 months of calendar time, so every 2 turns, the year increases by 1. You receive an income each turn based on money made from trade and taxation, and then subtracted from that are construction costs and upkeep costs for your military and naval units. The surplus is left for you to spend.

You can google some screenshots of the world map, but armies are represented by a single soldier on the map who can walk around a certain distance each turn. It may take 2-3 turns (12-16 months of "time) for an army to travel a long distance. Remember this is 1700, they had to walk

When it comes time for inevitable battle, whether you are advancing on an enemy city or defending, you can fight the battle in real-time, as people posted the screenshots in this thread. You have complete control over formations, firing orders and everything in between. Its the gunpowder age so it's mostly muskets and line infantry firing away at each other, but of course there are canons and other artillery used to bombard the enemy, as well as melee infantry and cavalry. There is a great deal of strategy involved in the real-time combat which makes the game extremely fun.

Managing the Empire can be tricky but also immensely fun. You can set up colonies in the Americas and start making tons of money from trade and colonization, or set about conquering mainland Europe. Its a great game that takes some time to learn, but I'll say I played it for 4 days straight and finally ended up winning the campaign. Great game. 9.5/10

In that case, iPhone definitely. I'm not an Apple geek or someone trying to promote the phone, but I must say its an incredible product and it deserves all the success it has had. The MAIN reason I bought it was because I wanted to finally invest in a good ipod and I was needing a phone too, and this was the perfect combo so I didn't juggle so many little devices.

The iPhone has really good texting, and is a GREAT platform for games. A lot of third-party game developers have said the iPhone is more capable than the DS and the Sony PSP in terms of game functionality. The graphics have potential to be extremely competitive, and with the whole touch gameplay and accelerometer (tilting the phone, etc...) makes the possibilites for games really exciting.

You would no doubt get rid of the ipod and DS once you get the iPhone, not to mention its phone capabilites are great. It has the best contact list ever (you can zip through the list as fast as you want, especially for someone like me who likes to scroll through it and find the person's name rather than type it). It's pretty thin, the screen is big and i've dropped it a few times even and it's still working.

A fellow Canadian, unfortunately for cell phones we are both in the hole. Your only choices is Rogers/Fido (rogers owns Fido) for the iPhone. I would suggest looking at Fido's new plans. Unless you want to blow $30 a month on data, you can get a fairly cheap deal from Fido. I got unlimited texting, 300 daytime minutes, weekends and after 5pm free and voicemail for around 50 bucks a month. Considering they also charge by the second, I rarely go over my bill.

Good luck

I was basically trying to say that MMO game structures, by design, aren't looking for the best possible gameplay but the best possible gameplay that will force players to spend copious amounts of time doing pretty boring or repetitive things in order to advance. The key is, WoW has managed to make a lot of the grind seem either optional or "fun".

With no motivation from paid subscriptions, the gameplay is untainted. There's no alterior motives in making the game last 50,000 hours in order to make your character worth a damn. Obviously some time WILL need to be spent but it won't be simply for the sake of making players play longer and pay for more subscription months.

I'm not opposed to patches at all. They will be required to keep Diablo 3 functional from both gameplay point and obviously tons of technical issues that will arise. I just dislike the MMO architecture that is built upon designing endless gameplay just for the sake of making money.

I know D3 isn't an MMO. I agree that none of any possible future Diablo games should be MMO's. I was just outlining some of my frustrations with MMO's in general and why I'm glad D3 has stayed clear.

Well I'm looking for a POSITION but nobody's answering my PM's

The biggest problem with creating and maintaining an MMO is the nature of the video game that you're carrying into the world of MMOG's. First off I'll say I played WoW extensively, but not anymore, so I'm not hating on MMORPG's, but I got some gripes with them, namely that when every single player is essentially a dollar sign, then gameplay turns to create the most amount of dollar signs, and then is further directed to have the gameplay reflect a slower climb to the top. After all, what fun are MMO's if everything you can do in them can be done in a few weeks? The very genre and style of the game essentially force developers, who want the most subscribers possible, to dumb down gameplay to make it both accessible to beginners and challenging for the hardcore, and trying to accomodate everyone in-between. WoW does a fairly good job of this IMO, but it doesn't belong in a game like D3.

Think about WoW, for those of you who know it. To do anything in that game takes a fair amount of time. Just levelling 1-80 might seem like a long time to some, and an extremely shorter time to others who are used to even longer grinds. Reputation, pvp, tradeskills, all things in WoW take a long time, no matter how much you're doing them. The exception is arena, where if you're truly skilled (and start at the first season), you can receive the best PvP gear for only a minimum of 10 games a week, a couple hours of play at most. If you come into PvP a few months late, you're going to be grinding out battlegrounds to get a beginner's pvp set and then arena'ing for at least a season or two just to get some gear before you can start competing.

Its this gearing towards a longer-style of gameplay that begins to interfere with gameplay itself. In a perfect world, where MMORPG subscriptions were banned, and maybe we'll say Blizzard simply wanted to have the most popular online game and still created WoW, it would be a much better game. Whenever money is involved, it's going to affect the direction of the game. Imagine WoW without the endless grinds, with more accessible content, coming constantly on a monthly basis. Diablo 3 as an MMO would promote all of those same MMO attributes - a big fat levelling curve, creating grinds to promote long periods of play, and just a general required increase in playtime to essentially stay competitive.

What I liked about Diablo II was that, yes, you could sit there and play all day, but you could also play a few hours a day and still remain competitive depending on what you were doing. D2 isn't patched anymore (well NOW they're trying to make a new patch, but since 1.10 not much had changed) and so your decked out characters would essentially "last" and not begin to fall behind the bell curve for gear/power as they would if they were characters in an ever-changing setting, like WoW.

D2 was a fast paced hack'n'slasher, and was noted for this distinction. It wasn't like many other RPG's who followed the standard formula, and that's why D2 has such a cult following. If the Diablo series was just another conventional RPG, I doubt it would have had such a following. BNet 2.0 was the real way to go and I'm glad Blizzard hasn't gotten trigger-happy about just squeezing MMO's out of every one of their game universes.

Besides, maybe I'm giving Blizz too much credit for leaving the game F2P. Maybe it just came down to already having to maintain an 11-million subscriber-based WoW, while developing their "next-gen MMO" which apparently isn't part of any existing IP, and they simply didn't have the development space to make a third MMO, and thought that it would perhaps conflict. Or they really knew that D3 is NOT an MMO and refused to make it one. Either way, I'm glad they took this route for multiplayer.

Yeah I forwarded my message to Mockery. Perhaps just edit it so it says "PM Mockery" instead of Umaro?

Umaro please clear your inbox, the forum won't send my message because it says you've exceeded your stored msg limit. Thanks.

I guess this is a play on what the devs said at WII, where they said they had a running joke that they implanted bombs in employees' heads.