Full List of Achievements, Monster Affixes, Item Affixes, and More, Interviews, Blue Posts

DiabloFans Site Update
Many of you may have noticed we had a few changes today. Nothing big, but a few things you should know!
  • You can now view all posts you have given +1's, as well as see all your posts that people have +1'ed
  • Looking for Group
  • Hardcore (Now its own section)
  • Hardcore Trading Subsection
  • We now have a place for you to put your battleTag in your profile
  • The "Unread Post" Icons are finally there! If you don't know what each one means, look here
  • You can now see the "Infractions" bar under your avatar. This is pretty much the same system we have always used, however now you will be able to see your own Infractions.


Full List of Achievements, Monster Affixes, Item Affixes, and More.
A user was able to get a hold of the limited edition strategy guide. He was kind enough to upload some key points to a gallery. Keep in mind this is a massive spoiler, and holds a lot of information.

However, some of the pages are a little hard to read, but the members here at Dfans are hard at work extracting the information. snowhammer currently is typing up every single achievement there is, check out his thread. (Though a few are to blurry to read). Amphetamine has posted the full list of bosses we will fight. This is not the same list we saw with the event windows, as not everything on that was a boss. You can check out his list here. Emmo has posted a chart showing monster HP and dmg scaling vs how many players are in the game for each difficulty. You can check that out here.


Diablo III Breaks Amazon's Record for Most Preordered PC Game Ever
It looks as if Diablo III is Amazon's most preordered game ever! One more amazing feat by Blizzard. The record holder before Diablo III was World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. And before that - StarCraft II.





Jay Wilson On Player Expectations and In-game Purchases
Jay Wilson recently had a two part interview with game site mcvpacific.com. Here's a brief summation of what was discussed or you could just go visit the actual interviews located here and here.


DiabloFans Quote:


Design Process
  • I've looked at both Diablo II and God of War because Diablo is both an action game and an RPG.
  • You’ve gotta assume that your players are going to change the game somehow. You’ve gotta assume that you are going to play the game and understand it a lot better than you did before, and that’s going to cause you to change how you want to develop it further. You can’t move forward and blindly hope that you can make good decisions.
Storytelling
  • We wanted to keep it snappy with in-game storytelling. We have a number of in-game custscenes but I kind of wish we didn't even have to do those. That's because of replayability. Players will play the game over and over. Do we really want them to watch those cutscenes?
  • The storytelling has been expanded through the use of the Followers. They provide context without getting in the way of the action.
  • There’s a couple of places in the game where the run to the next spot is a certain length just so that a character can say something. They're mostly under 10 seconds.
Voice-over
  • There were talks with a famous actor about voice-overs, but even though the cost per session was reasonable there were 25,000 lines of dialogue, so we decided to not use that actor.
  • I don’t know the exact length of the final script, but it’s definitely got more voicework than any game Blizzard has ever made. By a lot.
Auction House
  • People want to trade. I can’t tell you how many hardcore Diablo II players I know who pay money for high-level items. But Diablo 2 didn’t facilitate trading at all, so in doing the Auction house we really want to facilitate trading, and we really wanted to embrace what players were doing, and what we knew players were going to do regardless of whether we did real money or not.
Expansion
  • When it comes to say doing an expansion, I think that’s one of the decisions we can make without waiting to see how players react.




Diablo III: Inside the Game - Interview with Jay Wilson and Christian Lichtner
The Wall Street Journal managed to get an interview with Diablo III Game Director Jay Wilson and Art Director Christian Lichtner. Here are some of the highlights from the interview, or you could visit the actual thing here.


DiabloFans Quote:


Design
  • The Health Orbs system comes from the very first game Jay has worked on - Blood.
  • One of the lessons that they learned in development was people’s memories of Diablo II were way different than the reality of Diablo II. People remember all kinds of stuff that never actually happened in that game. They remember what it was like in hell difficulty. They don’t remember what it was like in normal difficulty. They remember something that's visually darker than it ever was. They remember a variety and depth of monsters that was never there.
  • One of Jay's mantras is, if you’re going to be an M-rated game, don’t be a soft M. Embrace it. Sometimes they had to push people — "you can be gorier than that, you can be grosser than that, go more in!"
Isometric Camera
  • People have suggested Diablo 3 be with a First Person or Third Person camera. Jay was adamant it stay isometric.
  • Christian wanted isometric as well so that players can choose what they're fighting - ahead of them, behind or at their sides.
Barbarian
  • The Barbarian is the only returning hero because it was felt he was very underexplored.
  • Jay "freakin’ loves" The Hulk, he think it’s the greatest thing in the world. The Barbarian is inspired partially by The Hulk—he hits the ground and makes a crater around him. "Guess who else did that?"
Classes
  • None of our heroes are evil. Regardless of their appearance, the hero was unquestionably good.




Meet Diablo III's Sound Team
Destructoid.com has some great interview with some of Diablo III's sound team. It has sample music and insight info from Russell Brower (Composer / Audio Director), Joseph Lawrence (Composer / Sound Supervisor), Derek Duke (Composer / Performer) and Laurence Juber (Composer / Performer)! Go check it out here.



Inferno
Bashiok hits the forums talking even more about inferno.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

A big part of what makes Diablo for us, or maybe more specifically Diablo III, is feeling like a total overpowered badass. It's entirely possible that what makes you feel overpowered is... in fact overpowered. We're not so dumb as to think there won't be someone that will find a build or co-op comp that we just didn't expect, and is able to take down Inferno due to an oversight, bug, 'creative use of game mechanics', or just a downright overpowered set of abilities. There are just too many skills, too many builds, too many possible comps, and too many players to believe we've been able to catch everything.

Some of that is cool. Some of what makes a Diablo game is the idea (and fact) that you can kind of outsmart the game and break its mechanics. Unlike a game like World of Warcraft where the core design of the game is to create a balanced experience and every change funnels into that, Diablo III just doesn't take the same approach. We don't mind if there are some inconsistencies and emergent favorites, we'd rather have tons of customization than boil it all down for the sake of balance. With a purely co-op (and eventually non-competitive PvP environment) we have that luxury, whereas World of Warcraft does not.

What we don't want to happen, and what we will absolutely work to patch and fix as quickly as possible, are the situations we simply can't predict that could trivialize parts of the game. There could be some build we just didn't create that is super effective against one specific boss in Inferno, and we'll likely want to rein those situations in.

I'm not personally worried about Inferno being too hard. People can complain all they want about that. I'm more worried about people focusing too specifically on clearing Inferno, someone beating it too quickly through cheesy tactics or bugs or broken OP builds, and everyone going nuts saying Inferno is clearly too easy (although they themselves will probably still be in Nightmare). People naturally want to focus on a competition of who can beat what first, or speed runs, or other time-based achievements, which is at odds with what the game is really all about (the item hunt).



Blue Posts

Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Judging entries for the #HeroesRise Portrait of a Champion art contest is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Too much great art. (Source)

Blues in-game
Rebound is indeed correct, I and the other blues will definitely be logging in and playing as soon as the game launches, probably in random public games as well :) However if you are grouped with one of us at any point you will not know it :( (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

that random quiet guy can be a blue/blizz employee!
This probably happens more often than you'd think ;) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Diablo III Authenticator
If all goes well, the Diablo III-themed authenticator will be available for purchase in the Blizzard Store starting on Monday. I'm really looking forward to this little collectible. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)


Community Managers are Best Buds
We all sit very close together, and keep roughly the same hours.

It's quite vital that we work within a few feet of each other. We constantly collaborate on what we're writing, and when any of us are away for a long time, it doesn't feel quite right.

So, if I paid you enough, would you start throwing things at mr bash all day?
I just threw a green highlighter at Bashiok. You're welcome. ;)

I just threw a green highlighter at Bashiok. You're welcome. ;)
I didn't realize she was announcing this to the world, but I'll vouch for it. I witnessed this happen earlier. Bashiok and I were in the middle of arguing with each other, so I just assumed Lylirra had my back.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Music in Diablo III
Well, the music isn't necessarily going to directly spoil the story for you, but I'd still recommend against listening to the soundtrack before playing through the game.

There are a couple quotes in this article I think speak well to why I say that: http://www.destructo...ed-227017.phtml

Joseph Lawrence, Composer / Sound Supervisor:

Some of the music I created for Diablo III definitely incorporates sound design elements. The main thing to remember is that in the end the world ambience and the music have to be able to work in concert to successfully create the mood of the game. In many cases I would have the world ambience file playing back in my music session and doing my composition with that as my back drop in order to facilitate the marriage of music and environment effects.


Derek Duke, Composer / Performer:
Enjoy the game. Play it, and play it. For me, that's where the music is meant to be heard. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)



Hero of the Day Winners - Wizard

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The last round of Hero of the Day contest winners are in! Each day, based on your votes, we select a new Mark of Valor submission to become the Hero of the Day, and we're ready to reveal the champions for the wizard.

Check out last week's winners below, or head on over to the Hero of the Day gallery to see them all for yourself.

​The Hero of Day contest has concluded, and we'd like to thank all of our participants for their submissions. While the contest is now over, you can still create own customized banner to earn all five exclusive hero sigils to use in Diablo III. Travel to the Darkness Falls, Heroes Rise promotional site and claim your sigils today!



Diableard Hack-and-Slash

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Diableard growers! Stand and be counted, for your face’s rebirth is at hand. If you’ve been one of the strong, one of the proud to grace all those around you with the sumptuous sight of untamed whiskers, your day has nearly arrived.

Almost nine months ago, we challenged you to grow your facial hair until the release of Diablo III. For those who didn’t have the chops (or the necessary physiology) to handle the unadulterated awesomeness that is a Diableard (or Mephistache), we asked you to craft a mock-beard and display it proudly for all to see. Your efforts astounded us. . . again, and again, and again, and again.

Then tragedy struck. With the game delayed to 2012, we feared for your hygiene, and offered you a reprieve from the shackles of your crumb collectors. But some of you exclaimed “Nph!” (which we assume was a “No” muffled through your overgrown soup strainers) and held your ground. To those of you brave enough to continue defending your follicular extrusions against the outcries of your significant others, we want you to know that you’re not alone. We will join you in your exaltations as your Diableard is shorn from your face at midnight on May 15.


The hour of reckoning approaches, my bristly comrades. Even if separated by great distance, we will stand together, clean and smooth and bare to the wind. Stay strong, for the Diableard Hack-and-Slash is nigh!

EN Facebook Diableard growers! Stand and be counted, for your face’s rebirth is at hand. If





Soon
4 days...

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