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.
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- Zarx
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I hope the PvM has a lot more skill involved. PvP will always have a higher skill ceiling.
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I can imagine that a high level of customization would be possible with this. Different combinations could yield much different results for different classes. After all, we have blacksmiths in the game, I'm sure there are NPC's that could remove precious stones and re-apply them to jewelery.
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The reason most people couldn't interpret the Bible is because it was expensive to buy books. They were hand copied by monks and thus only the nobility could afford them. The printing press made books cheap, and when Luther adapted the Bible to the native tongue so that all could read it in plain German (and not latin), people found out what a sham some of the clergy had been running, which helped form the Protestant Reformation.
You asked how a small change in the past can affect the future. Time travel to the past is impossible. Simply put, with our now greater understanding of the universe, it will never be possible, not even in theory. Time travel to the FUTURE, in THEORY, is possible. We simply lack the technology to accelerate ourselves to speeds nearing that of light. To travel to the past is impossible and wiill always be impossible thus many of the paradoxes you encounter in discussing travelling to the past are indicators that it simply will never, EVER be possible. If you care for an explanation, read the next paragraph.
Basically, Einstein wanted to find out why we are able to feel acceleration and not feel constant velocity. Travelling in a car at a steady 50 km/h you won't feel like you're moving if you close your eyes. However, put the foot down on the pedal and you'll feel G-Forces through your body. Taking a tight curve at high speeds, you'll also feel extra G-Forces on yourself. Why? What was it about acceleration that seperated it from constant speed? Einstein figured out acceleration and all speed were based on a comparison of the object and its motion relative to something he called ABSOLUTE SPACETIME. This was the idea that space and time formed a spacetime continuum that contains all events that have ever happened/will ever happen at any interval of time. Thus once an event has been defined (it has passed into existence), it becomes a part of the spacetime continuum and can never be changed.
It's difficult to discuss the butterfly effect of changing something in the past and then going back to the future/present to see the effect of that change simply because you cannot make that initial change.
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As for not selling a million copies, Diablo III will do it, easily, and in a pretty short period of time too. I didn't buy the original Diablo or Diablo II, my friend lent me his copies and here I am, a new fan who discovered the games after their initial release. I can imagine there are tons of people out there like me, so I imagine tons of new fans as well as old ones coming to purchase D3.
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I bought a power supply, 600W, with two connectors so I could SLI two 8800GTX's. Funny thing is, the damn card needs two power connectors to supply it adequately with power. I didn't even bother getting a second one just because of how retarded the engineering on these cards has become. AMD has finally put its foot forward and begun to design cards that aren't top of the line but are cheaper and are not overly huge (the 8800GTX is almost as long as my PC tower) and do not use as much power. I hope the trend continues so that video cards become more efficient as well as more powerful. Wait it out, you won't be sorry.
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As for Stamina vs Fury, perhaps certain skills that are not supernatural will require only extra strength (hence some of your stamina) while others require Fury to activate, like that shockwave-type attack that we saw the Barbarian use to smash walls and other doodads.
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