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Runewords were my LEAST favorite part about D2. Rune drops were ridiculously random, and even though there were a ton of runewords there were just a few that were amazingly good (Enigma, Infinity come to mind). As a crafting system, Runes were really predictable and boring.

The only reason Runes were exciting in D2 was because runeword items had abilities and affixes that didn't exist on rares or uniques, which is mainly because they were added years after the original game was released. I hope D3 will have a much deeper pool of random affixes.

When they release an expansion pack, we will solemnly pass our D3 characters to our grandchildren, as we fill their ears with tales of how great the game was when we were their age.

WoW is a relatively slow-paced MMO game. It is balanced around many players doing many easy tasks but is relatively unforgiving of mistakes. It's very easy to position yourself correctly, DPS the correct add, and use "Dream" when you get Shrapnel on you. However, all it takes is one mistake (Oops, forgot to switch to elementium bolt) during a 15 minute long fight and you wipe. Being a "good raider" in WoW is more about consistency than any amazing skill.

A lot of WoW mechanics are simply a matter of what target you are DPSing. (ie, Spine of Deathwing) This would be incredibly lame in a game like D3. D3 mechanics are more likely to be either about avoiding major damage, or killing a large pack of adds so that you can get health orbs. By virtue of being an action game, D3 mechanics should be a lot more fast-paced and reaction time dependent. Judging by the one avoidable boss attack in the game right now (SK's teleport strike), boss attacks should be a lot better-paced than in D2 where abilities were either unavoidable (fire nova! hoarfrost!) or so weak you didn't care (mephisto poison cloud!). The teleport strike is balanced to where it is avoidable, but not if you are poorly positioned or slow to react.

Another major difference is that D2 boss abilities had no pattern and gave you little to no warning. Dodging Mephisto's Ice Skulls as a ranged character was pure luck - his casting animation was so fast and unpredictable that you were either already moving or you got hit. On the other hand, the SK has a somewhat (but not completely) predictable pattern of when he will use each of his abilities, which you can see in any of the Level 1 SK kills. This is pretty cool because it allows a skilled player to both predict and react to boss abilities.

It would also be cool if some boss mechanics required players to use the boss's own abilities against them, like tennis ball boss in Dragon Soul. Obviously this would be a much faster-moving ability than the WoW tennis ball.

I completely agree that fake passives are lame. Passive/Activatable abilities should have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT effect on activation. Look at League of Legends - there are a ton of "activatable passives" in that game and most are fairly interesting.

I don't agree with spiders, frogs, spectral blade, etc being useless. Oddball abilities promote niche builds - certain D2 abilities like Charged Bolt and Poison Dagger were garbage for most builds but pretty darn fun for very specific builds.

Good AI is vitally important to any action or RPG game. That said, there is a difference between "smart" as in effective at killing you and "smart" as in fun. We all know from Halo 2 that the most effective way for an AI opponent to kill you is to sit back and snipe. This is really un-fun for the player. In Diablo 1, many ranged enemies would automatically run or teleport away if you melee'd them. In Diablo, pre-nerf Oblivion Knights frequently cast instakill Iron Maiden on melee, and would reliably dodge ground AoEs like Meteor/Firewall. This was also very effective at killing players, and not very fun to play against.

Most abilities in Diablo-type games are balanced around monsters not playing "smart" as in "killing the player in the most effective possible way". Behaviors like "always teleport away from melee players", "always avoid ground-targeted AoEs", and "always run away and pull extra aggro" are very good at killing players but aren't always fun.

The fun AIs tend to be more about group behavior; big monsters summoning little monsters and little monsters fanning out to try to surround you. Individual "attack patterns" can also be fun, and were relatively lacking in Diablo 2. The Skeleton King has a couple of decent attack patterns (ie teleport-swing, summon-teleport, whirlwind), although he is so weak that they don't matter on Normal. Dodging SK teleports is actually pretty fun gameplay. I'm sure Blizz will think of more stuff to put in later D3 bosses.

D3 is designed like an action game, not an MMO. The rate at which you can use spells/attacks is limited by casting/swing animations, not by any "GCD". Some attacks have a faster animation than others; for example the Barbarians ancient hammer is very fast.

D2 animations occurred in a whole number of frames. You either had a 5 frame attack or a 6 frame or a 7 frame. Because D2 frames were always whole numbers breakpoints were super important. On the other hand D3 is a modern game so the speed should be continuously variable.

Both shooters (halo, mw3 etc) and MMOs (WoW) handle lag compensation of attack speed in a similar way. Attack speed is calculated server side. Even is your client is significantly lagged, as long as you hold down the fire button (or spam your arcane blast button) the server will have your character fire his gun or cast arcane blasts as fast as he can.

A lot of people are completely missing the boat on the Diablo 3 endgame. The removal of Runes as an item does nothing to change the process ("difficulty", "hardcoreness") of maximizing your endgame power, it simply shifts the power increase from one item to another.

Under the old Rune system, your level-60 Barbarian might have a stronger Whirlwind than mine because you socketed a higher ranked runestone. However, I used my rank-7 runestone on Frenzy so my Frenzy is stronger than yours.

Under the new system, your Barbarian might have a stronger Whirlwind because he has several pieces of +Whirlwind gear, while my Barbarian has a stronger Frenzy because he stacks +Frenzy gear.

The two systems accomplish the same thing. There will be plenty of post-60 progression and it will be driven by hunting for randomly generated items. Whether it is a randomly-dropped Runestone or a randomly-dropped piece of gear, the end result is equal.

One of my biggest complaints about some of the D3 theorycrafting going around is that they are using a WoW-like standard of "DPS"/"DPET" - calculating how much damage you output while standing still and hitting Ultraxion / Patchwerk / Target Dummy.

Diablo is an action game. It is all about fast movement and fast reaction. You should not be standing still and DPSing a stationary target, unless it is a very easy boss (SK) that you massively outgear. And once the game is released, no one will care how hard you can crit against Normal SK.

Let's illustrate the irrelevance of DPS with a Diablo 2 analogy:
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What would you rather have, a 6-frame melee attack that hits for 1,000 (4167 DPS) or a 12-frame attack that hits for 3,000 (6250 DPS)?

Anyone who has played D2 knows that a 12-frame melee attack is just useless. You simply won't get it off. The target will move, you will get stunned, or your mercenary will kill it before you even finish your swing. This is why abilities like Impale were useless despite having high target dummy DPS.

A faster melee attack in D2 was generally more useful than a slower melee attack even if its DPS was lower. You certainly didn't want to use anything slower than a 7 frame attack, and most people aimed for a 4-5 frame melee attack.

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Another place where DPS greatly underestimates usefulness is "shoot-and-scoot" abilities. You can cast a Blizzard, Blessed Hammer, or Death Sentry and then run away while your ability continues to do damage. The more time you spend dodging enemy attacks (such as fighting Black Souls and Vipermagi when you don't have the HP to tank their hits) the more valuable scoot-and-shoot becomes. The extra usefulness of being able to cast spells and then run away cannot be calculated mathematically, at least not very easily or accurately.

WoW-style "DPS" makes absolutely no sense in an action-oriented game like Diablo. You might as well put a DPS meter into Halo or Street Fighter.

The power level of a Diablo character (whether its D1, D2 or D3) depends entirely on how efficient they are at clearing areas, killing bosses, and finding high-end loot. DPS output is only one of many factors that go into this. For example, a smitadin has absurdly high single-target DPS but definitely won't be able to clear out large numbers of enemies like a meteorb sorc. A werebear has slightly less singletarget than a smitadin, but has much better survivability. Depending on your gear and what you are fighting (regular trash versus an Extra Strong Extra Fast Aura Enchanted) you may clear faster with a highly survivable character even if his raw DPS is lower. If the vast majority of loot comes from uniques/champions, you may get loot faster with a singletarget spec, even though your total DPS is much lower than an AoE spec.

Also, a pure DPS figure completely ignores the issues of overkill and attack speed. When a monster has 100 hp left, hitting it for 4,000 damage inflates your DPS meter but does nothing to help you kill it faster. To use a Diablo 2 analogy, you might choose a 4-frame weapon over a 6-frame weapon even if the 6-framer hits dramatically harder. The overall farm speed is usually higher for the faster weapon, even if raw DPS output is lower. Having DPS meters in game could mis-lead a lot of players towards higher-DPS but lower kill-speed setups.

Blizz sounds like the Indianapolis Colts discussing when Peyton Manning will be healthy.

This is actually a huge bug. One item with +3-8 damage and 7 Precision should be the same DPS as two items, one with +3-8 and one with 7 Precision. The fact that it is isn't means that two items with the same displayed stats may very well do two different things. If that kind of bug persisted into Live it would cause serious problems. Imagine someone spending $50 for an item that looks like it has higher DPS than his current item, only to find out that it isn't...

So for the 18 boss images, we have (x,y).

(1,1) An angel. Anyone know which angel this is? He doesn't have a sword insignia so Imperius is out. Is it some other angel?
(2,1) A female demon with moth demons.
(3,1) A ghostly looking guy on fire.
*(4,1) The Mistress of Lust, presumably one of the seven Sins.
*(5,1) The Summoner Horazon. Looks enough like the D2 version anyhow.
(6,1) A bone axe that's partially under water. Could be anything.

*(1,2) Deckard Cain. OMGZORS! Not even gonna speculate on why Cain would be a boss.
(2,2) An undead looking fellow with a big mace.
*(3,2) The Spider Queen, Araneae.
*(4,2) Diablo.
(5,2) Vipermages and lightning?
(6,2) Some chick wearing a hood.

*(1,3) Azmodan.
(2,3) A bunch of different looking demons.
(3,3) Some chick shooting fire out of her hand.
(4,3) WTF is this?!??!?!
(5,3) A really fat demon, presumably Gluttony (a Sin!)
*(6,3) Good old Leoric.

So, if there are seven Sins then we are missing:
Greed (who has already been mentioned as a possible in-game demon)
Pride
Envy
Wrath
Sloth

Not sure if any of the portraits clearly represent one of the above.

Spectral Blade hits an awful lot of enemies at once, for 3 hits per cast. Put some crit buffs on and it will seriously refresh the cooldown of your abilities.

I think a lot of the "target dummy DPS" calculations neglect the importance of fast cast speed in a game where your casts can be interrupted by hit recovery, abilities (fists of thunder) and knockbacks.

Even if a slower cast speed gave higher target dummy DPS (and it seems like it doesn't), interrupts VASTLY penalize slower casts. Just ask anyone who's ever played PvP in WoW. Given a choice between a 2000 DPS, 1.0sec spell and a 1500 DPS, 0.5sec spell its pretty obvious which one will be easier to use on a harder difficulty.

Quote from dnavarre

Quote from Regnier_LoT

Quote from dnavarre

I think it'd be cool and controversial if you only got to fight Real Form Diablo on Hell or Inferno.

Like a True or Secret Final Boss?

Something like that. Where he's bigger and badder than ever before, with a completely new strategy to fight him...perhaps something like his true form only being half seen, emerged from the center of the final battlefield. So big that you can hardly get him on screen and that he attacks from that one area instead of getting out and walking around.

On Inferno mode Diablo has legs.