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I'd say the Barbarian simply because it's the only holdover from Diablo II. It was the Barbarian in Diablo II at release because it was the most powerful class; decent lance (Or at release, a maul), and Iceblink, and you could WW your way through hell in the mid 30's. Plus they somehow made a vicious class feel even more devastating.

Quote from Kiserai

That's fair enough I think.

What's hard is that it's essentially impossible to find middle ground here; either people are seen as fanboys who think Blizzard can do no wrong and accept anything they're told without any skepticism, or as overly skeptical Blizz-haters that think Blizzard will never do anything right by the players, will always be months/years late, etc. I've obviously been open to being accused of falling into the former camp, and I realize I've been guilty tonight of leveling the latter accusation at you and others. Neither is fair.

All I'm really ever getting at here is that the people who really know what's going on with D3, as best as anyone really does (i.e., anything can happen, something game-breaking appears last minute and they have to postpone, or internal testing goings unbelievably well and we see beta ahead of schedule, etc.) are still saying they think can do this timetable. I think it's unreasonable to think they'd set even a caveat-laden goal this prominently if they didn't think they had a better-than-not chance of hitting it (i.e., 51%+, even slightly better than even odds).

Blizzard has had one sketchy history, we all know that. But I think we're seeing a new era of sorts, and SC2 was pretty pristine as far as living up to their timetable. D3 is a different beast (literally!) but I still believe it bodes well. They've been hyper cautious, as always, at every turn, so now that they've given us even this admittedly preliminary 'date', I'm confident.

/steps off the soapbox

Thank you, and /agree.

The only people who have any real inside knowledge of actual dates of releases have said: Q3 beta, 2011 release, just as you said. That being not only the BEST but the ONLY real non-speculation knowledge we have, I think that, Blizzard's history of timetable jumping aside, at this point (especially given the way the SC2 release went) we have no real reason to doubt those words.

Quote from Gheed2010

Quote from ScyberDragon

This is a beta announcement.

No, it is an announcement of intent to begin a beta at a period in the future, with caveats.

When Sams or Morhaime, or Wilson, or whoever tells the screaming fans "The beta starts next week!" at the closing ceremony of b'con, that will be a "beta announcement".

The difference really isn't that subtle.

Not really sure where you guys are getting this "beta announcement will not happen until Blizzcon"

That's perhaps the most unsubstantiated guesstimate of all. Neither the SC2 nor the Cata betas were announced/begun at a Blizzcon even. Both of those happened in the middle of the year, and the latter for a much larger release.

The beta will happen when it happens, let's leave the date to Blizzard.

Quote from Dolaiim

Quote from snared04drummer

I fully believe there will be external testing starting sometime in July, and that we will, in all probability, see this game around Christmas time.

Here we go again, not hours from this latest bit of "news." Assuming Beta will start in July, assuming seeing the game around Christmas time "in all probability."

What probability is it you're basing this on? Even while the conf call was still going on, Bashiok was quick to point out that this was a rough estimate, depending on how development goes.

Quote from ScyberDragon

Mike Morhaime:

Official Blizzard Quote:

We are still pushing for a 2011 release

nuff said

Nuff said? Really? Wait so during a conference call they didn't drop a bomb by saying that 2011 is now unlikely, even though everyone knows that? You can take that as confirmation of a 2011 release, but we all know they purposefully said nothing. D3 got 3 bullets and 0 questions, a total of not more than 1 minute in the call.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: That was not a Beta announcement. That was an announcement that Alpha has started, and the game is "looking good." They gave a 3 month margin of error for Beta start, and even THAT is subject to the bombshell caveat "unless things change." It was barely even a timetable.

I'm not saying this as a QQ gamer with no life. I'm saying this as an investor and a professional software engineer.

Yeah.. you're one of the ones I'm talking about. You put a negative spin on everything said and act like everyone who would like to view it positively is an unrealistic idiot.

Q1 SC2 beta announced
Q2 SC2 beta happened
Q3 SC2 released

nuff said? It can happen. Don't run around foretelling things that haven't happened yet. You're not actually solving or saying anything substantial.

And on top of that, I might add that, with the exception of the "we're shooting for release this year" from a quote earlier this year, there has never been a tangible date named for ANYTHING concerning Diablo III, period. So when they start throwing around actual dates, I find they're pretty much ready to go.

Quote from Kiserai

Snared nailed it in my opinion. I think the final stretch is finally in view and I think it's time to take the risk of getting excited & investing in the idea of the timetable Blizz has put forth. Yeah, maybe we'll get burned again, but I'd rather get my hopes up and really enjoy the momentum of the next few months and deal with the frustration later than sit around and humbug every time Blizz even hints that a 2011 release is coming. As of (literally) this afternoon, Blizzard doesn't anticipate having to move the date into 2012, and we shouldn't either. History be damned, this is a new Blizzard & a new Diablo. They didn't disappoint with SC2's timetable, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Exactly, thank you. This was pretty much deja vu for the Q1 call last year concerning Starcraft 2. He said it was coming at within the next 1-2 months of that call, it did, and about six months later we had Starcraft 2. Now here comes along the EXACT same message, and half of you in here are almost wishing that it gets pushed back to 2012.

The man said "we are still shooting for 2011". Optimism is fun, or so I hear.

Having started with Diablo I over a decade ago, I have waited just as long as most people in here, and understand the frustration. However, I'm getting a little annoyed at the naysayers to this announcement. I know just as well as all of you that Blizzard makes its own timetables for things like this, but this, in my mind, is a pretty positive, tangible thing to put our hands and minds on for a change.

I fully believe there will be external testing starting sometime in July, and that we will, in all probability, see this game around Christmas time.

Quote from Jackzor

Well Blizzard has said they have no problems with a higher level character "rushing" a lower level character through content, as long as it doesn't involve skipping large parts of the game or anything like that. So in D3 it seems like you'll still be able to rush but it won't be just teleporting past groups of monsters or anything like that.

Rushing, and opinions about that aside, I just don't want a lack of town portal mechanic to get in the way of having fun with friends. Like I described in Hell Unleashed, and in games like Borderlands, where quests cannot be synchronized in the party, things like this get in the way of fun, and are not good mechanics.

As far as an anti-rushing measure, or measures against skipping large areas of content, just make it to where a character can't be portal-ed to somewhere X number of levels above their level. Acts are pretty much divided that way anyway. And I stand by the conclusion that simply having them, and making them only usable outside of combat is a good way to go.

Quote from Polrayne

Quote from crittercutter

I think there will still be some portals. For example, after you kill the boss and there's a dead end a portal could automatically open up for you. Also way points will be closer together.

I'm concerned about the lack of portals in D3 as well - but I believe that Critter is right.

Blizz's motivation to remove town portals seems to be centered around the easy escape from combat. They want people to learn how to navigate issues and ultimately develop a creative play style - not mash buttons until you are near death, pop a TP and then flee.

For long sigh inducing mechanics like "killed the Countess, five levels down of a dungeon - do I have to walk all the way back up?" I'm sure they have plans to assist with that.

As far as death and corpse walking back - its a little tedious, but I think its much more realistic to have a penalty of dieing. The town portal made it to easy to be reckless in fighting mobs, because you can always just run back in. Playing WoW made you have to think about being cautious, sizing up a fight and executing it as safely as needed - to avoid that long walk back if you were wrong.

I'm going to miss the Town Portal - but I think it will make for a better game.

Lol, here's a thought! Why not just make portals obly useable while not in combat? Seems like a simple solution to me. I'm pretty sure all boss fights will be in contained areas, so it won't be an option then. Just make them useable when enemies aren't around.

At first, when they announced this mechanic I was pretty much behind it. I mean, it was fairly easy to just TP out of any danger zone in Diablo II, though it often left you with the problem of you getting immediately owned the moment you stepped back in, especially while doing Baal runs in hell and things like that.

However, this mechanic was almost undoubtedly modeled after the famous (infamous?) Diablo II mod "Hell Unleashed" (I say this because there are a lot of mechanics in HU that made it into Diablo III, and the mod was made before the Diablo III announcement happened, so I assumed chicken before the egg mentality), which removed town portals from the game.

While playing through this, I discovered three very large problems with not having town portals:

-Any time you were engaged in a lengthy dungeon that dead-ended (Such as the Forgotten Tower for the Countess, Nihlathak, etc.), once you reached the end of that area and killed the boss/mini-boss... then you had to run alllllll the way back out. Super frustrating.

-If you died, you had to run alllll the way back from the nearest WP, in which case "nearest" may be pretty damn relative. Now, this is sort of solved in a multiplayer situation in Diablo III, where they have promised a resurrection mechanic, but what if everyone dies? In Diablo II, there were pretty common places where you would also drop a TP in case the group wiped, so that you could all get back down there without having to run an inordinate amount just to pick up where you left off - Catacombs Level 4, Worldstone Chamber, etc.

-If you like to play with friends, if any of you get ahead, then the farthest ahead person just has to start wherever the other people have a WP. Might not always be bothersome, but believe me, it can be. Blizzard has already stated that they're not particularly against the concept/idea of rushing friends, but if you can't give them Waypoints by any other means than walking them to them, then that's a pretty loose definition of rushing. And even in a non-rushing situation, where you might just be a level or two ahead of them via some solo play while they were offline, then you have to backtrack and do it all over again.

Just my two cents. I say these things mainly because in Hell Unleashed they really detracted from the fun level, and whenever that's the case, the mechanic becomes undesirable in my opinion.