DiabloFans

They ask us to tell them what is freaking wrong with the game and how to fix it and we have been doing that even throughout the whole freaking Beta...

They have not listened or chose to ignore the majority of it, where as on other parts they have listened...The game also relies far too heavily on items and without items the character you make is utter garbage...

If Rob is proud of what they did then something must be seriously wrong at Blizzard... Too much iteration imo with no clear direction.

R.I.P Cain, Last of the Horadrim to be killed by a butterfly...lol

Quote from Mayne

Quote from Soul

So they have a third of the page talking about SSS and then don't freaking tell us what it does lol?

sad blizzard... very sad.

But I bet you're dying to find out...Blizzard wins.

Actually the opposite I haven't played a single game or even opened up D3 in over 1.5 months now... I still keep my self updated on what these new patches bring.

Having a preview about class changes and have 1/3 the page just saying pretty much "it's changing in a big way.... see patch notes when we decide to put them up"... Is really REALLY sad.

Monk Passive - All that was said is OWE is pretty much a needed passive and that's it besides 10% increase to some rando stupid passive no one will ever use...

We also only got 2 skills with dmg increases compared to over 6 with the barb(not counting SSS cause no %dmg number was given)... Even though it is a preview this one is crap even compared to the Wizard one lol...

grats on the lucky drops, but in all honesty... we should be seeing a shit load more legendaries and sets... Remember legendary is the new name for uniques so they aren't meant to be so bloody rare that you find shit all of them... They also need to be powerful if they are to be of legendary status.

Don't get me started on how crap the items are in D3 atm. All the rage is about the items sucking so bad with nothing to find bar stupid rares since the sets and legendaries have crappy stats(most). You should not be playing for 320 hours to find 1 or 2 fucking set pieces in a diablo game PERIOD...

Go play a game of Diablo 2 classic or LOD play through to act 5 hell and tell me how many uniques and sets you find now compare that to Diablo 3... You see where everyone is coming from? Don't say you can't compare a 10yr old game to a new release, this should have been done a long long time ago. When you release a sequel it is generally a lot better than the predecessor.

I'm gonna stop here cause man it just isn't a diablo game atm...

So with one last look at the Beta and talking to people.

This is my final Screenshot from the beta...

So yeah I opened up my email and found this survey from Blizzard, decided to try it and take pictures of each set of questions.

Here's what was asked. Click on links to see the questions.
It is mostly WoW Related, the D3 questions start at Question 29.

Email | Front Page

Question 1 | Question 2 | Question 3 | Question 4 | Question 5

Question 6 | Question 7 | Question 8 | Question 9 | Question 10

Question 11 | Question 12 | Question 13 | Question 14 | Question 15

Question 16 | Question 17 | Question 18 | Question 19 | Question 20

Question 21 | Question 22 | Question 23 | Question 24 | Question 25

Question 26 | Question 27 | Question 28 | Question 29 | Question 30

Question 31 | Question 32 | Question 33 | Question 34 | Question 35

Question 36 | Question 37 | Question 38 | Question 39 | Question 40 | Question 41 | Thank You Page

That's them all.

What do you guys make of this and the few Diablo questions that were asked?

I first started playing softcore or softc*** <-- figure it out for your self lol... When I began playing D2, just like everyone else..

However after my friend got me into playing Hardcore, the threat that your char only had 1 life, just like we have IRL, was too good to pass up. To be able to have a high lvl and powerful hardcore char that had yet to die always kept me on my toes. It made me feel like I accomplished something meaningful as I guided this hero through dangerous areas and lived to talk about it. Yes the occasional lagspike / internet problem / computer issues aside... Didn't damper my spirit as I never wanted to go back.

Hardcore was just sooooo much more than the original game, always keeping you on the edge of your seat, having to react and adapt to the situation at hand. Where as in softcore you could just die, leave game get corpse back. sure u lost gold / durability / experience points... YOU CAN GET THOSE BACK EASILY...

You die in hardcore, your inventory / stash / merc gear was all GONE, if you allowed someone to loot your corpse you could only get back the items / gear you were wearing. You knew the risks and the dangers, yet you still played. Heck even this season teleporting around on my bo Barb with 6K HP and landing next to fanatcism Death lords with the extra fast mechanic still scares the hell out of me(Others might ask well why didn't u go around? well I've chosen to not use any hacks since 1.09 NONE). I didn't need any cause I was more experienced than I was back in 1.09.

I didn't get as good as I am today without practice. Countless hours mfing, lvling up, playing with mates, slaughtering god knows how many cows(all that beef gone to waste... damn shame) of course even I had the occasional death.

My very first death in D2 HC was on a bowazon in 1.09, I was in the bloody foothills, those used to give decent xp back in those days. I ended up dying to a bloody catapult... Yes a stupid Catapult... What the hell I was a newbie to HC after all. I was shocked that I could of been so careless, not watching my health globe or my surroundings(I think I ran over alot of those mine things or w/e they are). This is what you DID NOT WANT TO EVER SEE!!!!


I knew the 2 players that died, I wasn't there when this happened. They died due to how damage was calculated... FELE Lister bug.

However my resolve was strong and I wasn't going to give up that easily, I had demons to vanquish and uber loot to obtain! My Quest continued.

This is just the screenshot of my Zon, my Necro is also 98.

I finally dinged lvl 98.

Onto the final lvl, I'm getting 75k a game, so it will take me aprox...

3870 runs to ding lvl 99.

In hours thats 259.

Fun times ahead... lol

Quote from Kiserai

Wow, very nice! Congrats.

I'd say we should play sometime but I'm on US East.

Any tips for a fellow HC Necro? What's your build? I'm doing standard skelliemancer. This is only my second HC character. I'd love to hit 90 before quitting D2 for good.

I only just started the current season, only lvl 23.

Ahh, very nice, my Necro is also skele.

How ever its only Skeleton / Mastery then 1 into each curse and rest of my points into spirit / bone wall / bone prison, as those also provide more benefit to bone armor, with his current gear. He gets like 650 damage absorb with bone armor, and since I don't play any games without a barbs Battle Orders.

With HC u only have one life. With the internet and how instable a DSL connection can be, taking every precaution is a must. Unless u know the game from head to toe...

The way I'm baaling atm, I call it all legit, I run a 2:8 or 3:8 xp split for throne and 2:8 ( by myself) or 3:8 with a friend( also a nec #2 ) for Baal.

I have my Bo barb teleport runs, zons clears then nec comes down, summons a few skeles then auto casts Lower Res ( window mode- Continuous casting) then I recently made an Assassin, she takes tp makes her own( so i keep my barbs one open). She gets BO from the barb, and lays down traps.

***I have 8 windows, 4 are on a proxy so I can get a FULL D2 game*** NO HACKS ARE USED. Besides a program called Sandboxie (runs d2 in its own sandbox/sandpit) - I also use a program I used for Multi-boxing in WoW that just sends mouse clicks / key strokes to multiple windows. I use that to get the extra chars into the game without having to type the game name 8 times per run...

Quote from "JAZZ" »

I don't think Diablo 4 would come out one year after Starcraft MMO


Edit: Matter of fact, None of your dates are resonable, Blizzard won't release another game so close to a brand new one.

I agree with you, it has been a year since the first WoW Xpac was released, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. There will always be like a year gap, atleast... you can't produce the quality of games that Blizzard publishes in such a short time... You do remember when they started work on SC2 right?? RIGHT?!

Since WoW is bringing in alot of money for vivendi, i believe that vivendi will do w/e it takes to support blizzard in making these huge money making games. None of that EA crap, same with hellgate, rushed and not polished coulda been an awsome game, but just completely failed...

Diablo 3 closer than ever! one more day and we shall finally have the game in our hands!. I made this video to show how far we've come. Years of waiting, scouring for any bits of information, begging Blizzard for a release date, drooling over the class videos, and now we shall finally face the demonic hordes! ... So I say in the words of King Leonidas: "TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!"

January 17th viable? Yes.

(Edit: Also added some kitties to make the reading easier.)

All of you should know this by now, but might have forgotten or just pushed it to the back of your head. Blizz initially stated that they aimed to release D3 at the end of 2011 if nothing went wrong. This implies that they probably could've released it then, but with a couple of bugs and most likely without the RMAH. If they really pushed the 2011 release, they would've included the RMAH maybe between the first and second patch of the beta. Maybe even in the initial beta release.

If Blizz say something like that they aim for 2011, you must know they really think they might be able to do it, since they usually announce release dates about 2 months prior to official release, hence they aimed to announce the release date in Sep/Oct, which at this point, sounds ridiculous.

In the meantime, after they announced the "early 2012 push back", they probably slowed down a bit and went over the mechanics of the game which required the most attention (AH and runes the 2 biggies) and of course the beta players' responses.



Likely? Meh.

The Blizzard ANZ tweet and the thread. It's obviously not an official announcement of any sort, but it does sounds kinda solid, depending on how you interpret the tweets! (most of us will say it's release, cause it's the most sought out thing in the universe atm. And it isn't the Full Opening Cinematic, cause it has been announced already) . If they do announce the release date at the VGAs (promoting myself a bit ), late Jan/early Feb is most likely.

I also read this regarding the RMAH and Rating(18+) situation in Korea. Blizz is still trying to sort it out (Translated) source:

Diablo III - Korea Ratings Under Consideration

As we approach it's release, players can review the ratings to see if it is within their age group and if the game is suitable for them. We recently contacted the Korea Ratings Board to receive a Diablo III classification. We are aiming for a Mature Adult 18+ rating. The ratings for consideration were based on the latest version of the game and they have been provided a full version with all elements of the game included. We will provide more information and progress of their deliberations sometime at a later date.

I'm sure this won't take long now, since Blizz recently contacted the Korea Ratings Board. But it did take long from beginning compared to already assigned Ratings in other countries:

US - M (26 Sep)(not necessarily the exact date)
UK - 15 (4 Okt-ish)
Germany - 16+ (31 Aug)

So why does it take so long?

The Auction House

There have been many questions about the currency auction house. An auction system like this is in some ways an unprecedented new effort, and there are different regulations and laws in other regions, which we are working on. After an internal investigation, we concluded that the auction house system is legitimate in Korea. However, we respect and are taking the classification system for each region very seriously. Blizzard has been working closely with the national regulation groups, and we are cooperating fully with the Korea rating committee. We are getting closer to release more information, and we will let you know the status soon.

This will take longer to sort out than the Rating. So yeah.

Quote from jabroni85

AH is working great IMO, and i think Jan 24th but probably the 31st, first week in Feb at the latest.

DO you mean the Gold AH? Then yes, otherwise no. The RMAH still has many bugs.

Quote from Brake Failure

I wonder what the odds of them officially announcing th their pushing the date back again are, or will they just not release it without formally stating, ok, late 2012 now.

Yes I think if they do intend to push the release back again, they will definitely not announce it!! Defecation will get accumulated in many people's pants!

I also think they might have pushed the release back another couple of notches: Do you remember the A Day In The Life articles? There were initially only 3 "issues" but there were recently added 2 more articles...

Blizz obviously wants to keep us busy/distracted. They spread out the info they're gonna release to the public between now and when the game is eventually released. Also the art, omgeez the art.

Just a thought though.

Edit: Hope this bring some perspective otherwise I wasted a lot of time doin this... <_<

Are you zoomed in at all?

For me, your sig normally looks like this:

http://s876.photobucket.com/albums/ab329/kberry7/?action=view&current=Sig1.png

However if I hit ctrl+ once to zoom in, it looks like this:

http://s876.photobucket.com/albums/ab329/kberry7/?action=view&current=Sig2.png

I think that would also cause the dfans logo to be blurry too.

And sorry for not putting the pictures in the post, for some reason it said "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board."

Quote from Graphics_I

Your post sounds like a whole lot of speculation to me, but I like where your heads at. Any way of verifying the amount of private games?

Quote from "33415594705" »

with a set of keys going out this next Monday/Tuesday for the Facebook Sweepstakes, consider this. If just those invites go out (no Opt-in), we can see how much the public game pop changes, thus allowing us to calculate a very generic ratio of how many players are playing privately, which then leads us to calculating the total beta population.

While these calculations must be taken at face value, it may be helpful down the road to be able to look back and formulate educated guesses as to how many players were in at any given time.

Just something to think about.

Your post sounds like a whole lot of speculation to me, but I like where your heads at. Any way of verifying the amount of private games?

Quote from Harison07

I dont ask open-beta for millions, but if there is no 20-50k active players, there is not much public/infrastructure testing going on.

And if there's not much public/infrastructure testing going on, that means that they're not ready for it yet. No point in inviting a ton of people if useful testing can't start until the new hardware is in. This isn't some advertising campaign- it's a test. When they're ready for large numbers of people, large numbers will get in.

I agree that there must be a lot more people in they beta than we think, I'm not sure how many, but you bring up a good point that not EVERYONE is going to post about it, or make videos, or say anything at all to anyone that they are in the beta. I for one never really used forums before, so if I got into the beta, I'd only be telling a couple of my friends, and not really posting about it anywhere. Plus I have no interest in public games, so I wouldn't show up there. I know a lot of people are looking at the public game numbers and thinking those are the only people playing, but it's definitely not.

I have no idea how many people are actually in the beta, but it doesn't really concern me too much, as long as they give feedback and help Blizzard get the game in a good state to be released! Though I think a lot of people who play in betas don't bother to give feedback anyway.

Ok, this has been bugging me.

There are FAR MORE than a few hundred people in the beta. Everywhere I look people give these miniscule estimates of the beta population. THEY ARE WRONG. The actual number is in the tens of thousands.

Peak numbers of public games have been ranging from around 50-75. I don't know how they at this exact moment, but that's pretty recent. The VAST majority of games are private. Generously, 10% are public. That means an average of 500-750 games going on most of the time.

Now, most non-diehard fans (which make up the majority of the beta) are not playing day and night. Even die hard ones aren't. The most hardcore ones have played through the content quickly, multiple times, and likely cut back to a few hours a day max.

So the wildest, highest estimate for the percentage of players online at any given time is about 10%.

So we're looking at a current number between 5000-7500.

THEN, we take into account that players are being phased in as old ones drop stop playing as much, to keep server population relatively stable.

Since this has happened twice (I think, it's hard to tell when waves happen), we can only assume that a significant portion of the previous players stopped playing frequently, or at all. So it's possible, even probable, that we have had a half of a server group of players cycle out over the course of the beta so far (about a month). Probably more.

So I would estimate (and this is still lowballing it) that somewhere between 7500-11000 people have been invited to the beta so far. This figure could easily go as high as 20,000.

I'm sure quite a few people will doubt this, because intuitively it seems like 10,000+ beta invitees would mean a bigger percentage of the community would be in the beta. We should have people all over the forums with beta keys, right?

Well, no.

Using the highest estimate, just to give these stats a chance, if there have been 20,000 invites so far, there are still millions of opt-ins and FF. Lowballing the hell out of it, call it 2 million. That means you have a 1/100 chance of getting an invite out of these waves. Probably less, since FF members make up a reasonable chunk of that total, and they are drawn from another pool.

Since only a small percentage of the Blizzard community posts regularly on forums related to the games, we hear from only a select few testers. So it's very easy to look at the few dozen beta posters and say "THERE MUST BE ONLY A FEW HUNDRED PEOPLE LOL."

This helps put the sweepstakes into perspective as well. 2000 keys sounds like a lot less after you know the actual number of opt-in testers.

First off, thanks to Astion for posting the images. A great find. (original post: http://www.diablofan...game-portraits/ )

Here is all the avatars in those images that are:

-Cropped best they could be
-All sized at 200px x 200px
-A bonus avatar of the hourglass, because I knew someone would want it.




PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD 501 COPIES PLEASE! this is of my hosting sever. it's a compressed file, but please, if one download is all you need, leave it at that...

Download Rar: ~4MB

i was really disappointed when i heard the 4th class was a monk, however it's by far the most fun to play based on the blizzcon demo.

i was hoping for an assassin-like class and the monk is slightly assassinish in the playstyle. one skill reminds me a lot of dragon flight and another a lot like cloak of shadows.(i can't read back through the post to see if they've been discussed because i'm on a terrible net - but i'll catch up later)

the way the combos/chaining skills work is very fun also.
each skill of the demo has 3 variations so that if you're on stage one, or stage two, or stage three they do different things.
i wish the chain level/stage you were on was visible somewhere though.
right now i think you just have to know based on timing (like if more than .6 sec passes then you're back to stage 1 then count from there)

but anyway the monk is more fun to play than any of the others, for me at least.