Just a few days after announcing Diablo: Sword of Justice in trade paperback for this July, Blizzard gives us another great read to look forward to. Diablo III: Book of Tyrael will come out in October and will have 148 pages and beautiful hard covers.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(Blizzard Entertainment and Insight Editions are proud to announce the newest book in the Diablo series, Diablo III: Book of Tyrael!
Diablo III: Book of Tyrael takes players even further into the events in Sanctuary with a detailed and beautifully crafted book of lore as seen through the eyes of Tyrael, a former archangel of the High Heavens. Here, in this illustrated and comprehensive tome, he reveals never-before-known secrets about the history of the world, the dark threats that yet face mankind, and his decision to join the ranks of humanity as a mortal.
This 148 page hardcover book is set to release this October, and it features never-before-known stunning original art and writings from iconic Diablo series characters such as Leah and Deckard Cain, as well as a fully removable family tree.
Catch a first glimpse of the newly-revealed cover below, and keep an eye out for future updates on how you can pre-order this secret-filled tome!
Diablo III: Book of Tyrael takes players even further into the events in Sanctuary with a detailed and beautifully crafted book of lore as seen through the eyes of Tyrael, a former archangel of the High Heavens. Here, in this illustrated and comprehensive tome, he reveals never-before-known secrets about the history of the world, the dark threats that yet face mankind, and his decision to join the ranks of humanity as a mortal.
This 148 page hardcover book is set to release this October, and it features never-before-known stunning original art and writings from iconic Diablo series characters such as Leah and Deckard Cain, as well as a fully removable family tree.
Catch a first glimpse of the newly-revealed cover below, and keep an eye out for future updates on how you can pre-order this secret-filled tome!
CMs and Their Personal D3 Accounts
Blizzard's Community Managers for Diablo seem to have individual roles in communication with players. This, along with the fact that their accounts and in-game characters are private, started a huge discussion on the Official Forums where Vaeflare elaborates on CMs passion for the game.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(We all play Diablo III on a regular basis (just like developers and other employees at Blizzard), and while we have a passion for Diablo, we keep our play accounts private so that we can enjoy the game just like any other player.
My main is a Wizard and I play Public Games quite a lot though, so you might have even bumped into me without knowing it.
Do any CM or developers play HC?
All of the North American Community Managers and each of the Diablo III developers I correspond with frequently do, yes.
In terms of the CMs specifically, I'd have to say that Grimiku probably plays the most Hardcore among us.
Vaeflare, I completely respect you guys wanting to keep your profiles private but one thing bugs me here. You said, "that we can enjoy the game just like any other player." But any other player's profile is public and there is not (to my knowledge) a way to make it private.
Can we at least have the options to make our profile private, friends only and/or public implemented into the game in the future?
+1
I have been wanting this for a long time now. The CM kind of put her foot in her mouth this time. It is clearly hypocritical of them to be able to play in secret.
It's not hypocritical in the least, really. My Diablo III characters are on the armory just like every other player's, and so are those of the Diablo III developers. When I am off the clock slaying demons in my free time, I'm acting simply as any other player, and there's really no need for that to be connected to "work." It certainly doesn't sound like any fun to have people pestering me in game for patch release dates or the like.
The reason you cannot see blue profiles for D3 is because they barely play the game.
Its not because the game sucks or anything like that, on the contrary this is the best game I ever played and you can easily get 10,000 hours out of playing this game due to the nature of it being online and no cheats allowed.
If you were to see blue profiles you would also see they have little to no time put into it. Their items are very bad, and they are probably like paragon 9 or something and without a doubt they have never completed all the characters.
The reason for this is quite simply, grown ups don't play video games. Not the so called grown ups who are in college and CLAIM to be adult gamers. No I mean real grown ups like blues who work for real companies like Blizzard and have real lives and things like children and family to attend to.
Regardless of what blues tell you, what I have told you is the 100% truth. And thats why you cannot see their profile.
If they actually played the game often it would be perfect marketing for them to make it public. They would give anything to have awesome public profile. However their profiles are something no one but a beginner would be impressed about.
If you believe otherwise you are more gullible than people who believe Disney cartoons are real.
Just my $0.02
It never ceases to amaze me the size of some of the tinfoil hats I see 'round these parts sometimes, yikes!
So here's the thing: if someone is utterly and entirely convinced that myself or any of the other Community Managers or developers have never logged into Diablo III or played a character beyond Paragon level 9 (or whatever the accusation of the week is), there's probably little I can do to convince them otherwise. It's easy (too easy, really) to make blanket statements against other people you don't really know, but it's also not very conducive to having a meaningful conversation with them. That said, I implore you to delve a bit deeper with me on this topic.
Everyone who plays Diablo, from the players rocking 200k DPS, to the players with one of every class to Paragon 100, through to the players working on achievement-grinding, all of us have different experience with Diablo III. Some play Hardcore exclusively. Some don't. Some play a few times a week, some play every day. Some have one character they covet, some rotate mains like it's going out-of-style. That is part of makes us a really vibrant and passionate community.
In comparison to those posting in this thread, there are some that have more experience with certain classes than I personally do, and there are others where my in-game experience and achievement point count are much (in some cases very much) higher than other players. But that doesn't make me better or worse than any other individual player out there, and it doesn't make their game experiences or feedback any more or less valid.
The breadth of diverse experience each player has is similarly mirrored among employees here at Blizzard. The Diablo III game team is constantly playing Diablo III and iterating on it, and each developer has different focuses and specialties. Some crunch numbers, others work with tablets to make your spell effects look just that much more awesome. Some (particularly the system design team) play tenaciously and on a regular basis, others like to vary it up. The point is that it's a group effort, and one where we as the Community Managers are helping to funnel feedback to and from the developers so that they have a fuller picture on community topics and trends that impact Diablo III. That's pretty much what I view as my primary job here: I'm here to try and make sure player voices are heard by the developers and that development news is heard by players. As such, I as an individual don't need to have 4.5k+ Diablo III achievement points in order to do my job, but it helps that I play nearly every day, certainly, because it ensures I'm touch with the pulse of the community.
TLDR: Blizzard employees play Diablo III. We don't all have 4.5k+ Diablo III achievement points, but that's okay because it's a collaborative effort, and our combined experiences and great player feedback continue to help shape the game that we're all so passionate about.
My main is a Wizard and I play Public Games quite a lot though, so you might have even bumped into me without knowing it.
Do any CM or developers play HC?
All of the North American Community Managers and each of the Diablo III developers I correspond with frequently do, yes.
In terms of the CMs specifically, I'd have to say that Grimiku probably plays the most Hardcore among us.
Vaeflare, I completely respect you guys wanting to keep your profiles private but one thing bugs me here. You said, "that we can enjoy the game just like any other player." But any other player's profile is public and there is not (to my knowledge) a way to make it private.
Can we at least have the options to make our profile private, friends only and/or public implemented into the game in the future?
+1
I have been wanting this for a long time now. The CM kind of put her foot in her mouth this time. It is clearly hypocritical of them to be able to play in secret.
It's not hypocritical in the least, really. My Diablo III characters are on the armory just like every other player's, and so are those of the Diablo III developers. When I am off the clock slaying demons in my free time, I'm acting simply as any other player, and there's really no need for that to be connected to "work." It certainly doesn't sound like any fun to have people pestering me in game for patch release dates or the like.
The reason you cannot see blue profiles for D3 is because they barely play the game.
Its not because the game sucks or anything like that, on the contrary this is the best game I ever played and you can easily get 10,000 hours out of playing this game due to the nature of it being online and no cheats allowed.
If you were to see blue profiles you would also see they have little to no time put into it. Their items are very bad, and they are probably like paragon 9 or something and without a doubt they have never completed all the characters.
The reason for this is quite simply, grown ups don't play video games. Not the so called grown ups who are in college and CLAIM to be adult gamers. No I mean real grown ups like blues who work for real companies like Blizzard and have real lives and things like children and family to attend to.
Regardless of what blues tell you, what I have told you is the 100% truth. And thats why you cannot see their profile.
If they actually played the game often it would be perfect marketing for them to make it public. They would give anything to have awesome public profile. However their profiles are something no one but a beginner would be impressed about.
If you believe otherwise you are more gullible than people who believe Disney cartoons are real.
Just my $0.02
It never ceases to amaze me the size of some of the tinfoil hats I see 'round these parts sometimes, yikes!
So here's the thing: if someone is utterly and entirely convinced that myself or any of the other Community Managers or developers have never logged into Diablo III or played a character beyond Paragon level 9 (or whatever the accusation of the week is), there's probably little I can do to convince them otherwise. It's easy (too easy, really) to make blanket statements against other people you don't really know, but it's also not very conducive to having a meaningful conversation with them. That said, I implore you to delve a bit deeper with me on this topic.
Everyone who plays Diablo, from the players rocking 200k DPS, to the players with one of every class to Paragon 100, through to the players working on achievement-grinding, all of us have different experience with Diablo III. Some play Hardcore exclusively. Some don't. Some play a few times a week, some play every day. Some have one character they covet, some rotate mains like it's going out-of-style. That is part of makes us a really vibrant and passionate community.
In comparison to those posting in this thread, there are some that have more experience with certain classes than I personally do, and there are others where my in-game experience and achievement point count are much (in some cases very much) higher than other players. But that doesn't make me better or worse than any other individual player out there, and it doesn't make their game experiences or feedback any more or less valid.
The breadth of diverse experience each player has is similarly mirrored among employees here at Blizzard. The Diablo III game team is constantly playing Diablo III and iterating on it, and each developer has different focuses and specialties. Some crunch numbers, others work with tablets to make your spell effects look just that much more awesome. Some (particularly the system design team) play tenaciously and on a regular basis, others like to vary it up. The point is that it's a group effort, and one where we as the Community Managers are helping to funnel feedback to and from the developers so that they have a fuller picture on community topics and trends that impact Diablo III. That's pretty much what I view as my primary job here: I'm here to try and make sure player voices are heard by the developers and that development news is heard by players. As such, I as an individual don't need to have 4.5k+ Diablo III achievement points in order to do my job, but it helps that I play nearly every day, certainly, because it ensures I'm touch with the pulse of the community.
TLDR: Blizzard employees play Diablo III. We don't all have 4.5k+ Diablo III achievement points, but that's okay because it's a collaborative effort, and our combined experiences and great player feedback continue to help shape the game that we're all so passionate about.
Titan Project Delayed Until 2016
Venturebeat broke the news that Titan has been "reset" and will be delayed until at least 2016. The decision was announced to employees a couple of days ago and sources close to the project gave us more details on the subject:
- Blizzard felt that Titan wasn't going in the right direction and decided to make significant technological and design changes to the game. This happened in the past with Starcraft and Warcraft 3.
- A smaller dev team will be in charge of redesigning the project and about 60 or 70 developers are being moved to other teams (WoW, Blizzard All-Stars, Diablo 3 expansion, Battle.net).
Have book of cain and this one will rock as well!
Ironic if Jay is leading the newly forming reboot team.
The WoW team generally plans 2-3 expansions ahead. So I'm sure they do have quite a bit more than 4 years mapped out.
Even if Jay is moved to Titan Kaplan has been on the team for 5 years. And he's at Blizz for more than 10 years. He's quite more senior than Wilson.
The Wilson comment wasn't too terribly serious, but whichever seniors happened to be in charge clearly screwed up since the title needs to be rebooted, at a bare minimum most of them are not going to have the same leadership positions. Not that seniority is what put Jay at the helm of D3 in the first place.
Nope, that's not how it went. I guess you took your info from Patrick Wyatt's blog ( http://www.codeofhon...ad-to-starcraft ), so you should take a look again.
What he means is that what was initially two months of crunch got stretched to fourteen.
edit: Just noticed what I wrote above. I didn't mean "directly" before launch. I meant they remade the engine entirely in an unspecified time during development. Sorry about that.
what? lol
balls? what?
only good companies restart projects or pause them when needs be. Every company does it, its for the health of their games, finance and future.
And companies do this often, the only reason we see it from blizzard is because everyone on the planet wants to find out what goes on with blizzard and whats going on with projects so things slip here and there cause someone cant keep their mouth shut.
Shortly after Titan get a reset just like the ones he did to Diablo 3 for five years.
Keep him there for long enough and Titan will be a crap released in the next decade.
Project Titan just got jaywilsoned. Guesses of when Rob Pardo will commit Hara Kiri for his decision?
So yeah, Lets see if your post is valid.
Nah, Not looking Valid at all.
Really? Why al the bashing for Jay? Anyone here that has anything worth saying would admit that D3 is quite a soild game now and with pacth 1.09. D3 is going to be made untouchable. So i ask whos idea lead us to this? Jay Wilson. The reason why we dont have a shitty run down old school clone for D3? Jay Wilson.
He was the base of this game and nothing will ever change that and for that i thank him for making an amazing game,
1. We're yet to see ideas that weren't planned ahead by Jay. We're likely not going to see any for a long time. Most of the expansion stuff is his as well, very likely.
2. There was never a confirmation on what product he is moving.
The Diablo 3 reset came directly from Vivendi and it was because they were not going to have Blizzard developing two MMORPGs at the same time.
They hired Jay Wilson AFTER Vivendi told Blizzard that the D3 MMORPG was not going to fly and to fix their shit. Jay Wilson had absolutely zero to do with D3s restart.
Just to cite that Vivendi shitcanned the original D3 game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North