Official Diablo 3 Thread - Its Finally Here!

[Serinous]

Sad thing is we probably won't see this game until next x-mas or even sometime in 2010

That's what I'm afraid of. Hopefully next year though.

[Orangetomato]

New class revealed. Won't spoil it for you.

[ame="http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41304.html"]Gametrailers.com - Diablo III - BlizzCon 08: Wizard Class Reveal Trailer HD[/ame]

[pittsfitz]

while all of this is exciting, I am wandering is that all they are going to announce? or is there more later tonight or tomorrow??

[HellsJester]

I have never really been interested in caster classes pretty much my whole life but after seeing a few Diablo III Wizard videos i gotta say i will actually try this class.
Blizzard has impressed me greatly with this class.
I think next class revealed will most likely be the 50%Melee/50% Caster "Paladin type" class. I hope we dont have to wait until Blizzcon 09 to get the final character class.

[pittsfitz]

are we going to get another class reveled tomorrow?

[HellsJester]

There is a debate going on that is King Leoric from Diablo I.

are we going to get another class reveled tomorrow?

Most likely no sorry.
I wouldnt be suprised if we didnt get another class reveal for half a year.

[pittsfitz]

dang..i am sorta of disappointed i thought they would share more, however this game still looks incredible i just hope it doesnt take another year

[HellsJester]

dang..i am sorta of disappointed i thought they would share more, however this game still looks incredible i just hope it doesnt take another year

Earliest im expecting Diablo III is 2010 but if sooner great.

[pittsfitz]

i dont know either to laugh or cry. This game will be incredible. Anyways thanks for answering my questions. You are doing a great job updating the site.

[HellsJester]

i dont know either to laugh or cry. This game will be incredible. Anyways thanks for answering my questions. You are doing a great job updating the site.

I hardly do anything.
Credit goes to Nuvian.

[pittsfitz]

haha alright but thanks to both. Also i see the schedule says Diablo -Lore and Art. What do you think that will be
?

[HellsJester]

Male Wizard concept art

If this is what the male Wizard looks like im going with the female.

[Jimmy_Stewart]

Holy sweet nuts that's awesome! This game is going to save my gaming culture from being totally oblivioned. Without gaming, I have nothing man!

[HellsJester]

Ok its confirmed by dev, The skeleton guy in wizard video is King Leoric from Diablo I.

[Nuvian]

Diablo III Wizard Screenshots, Skill Movies & Trailer

All the latest Diablo III media, promoting the just-announced Wizard:


Wizard Trailer - Flash HD (118MB) / Flash SD (33MB)


Disintegrate Skill


Electrocute Skill


Magic Missile Skill


Slow Time Skill


Teleport Skill

Click on the big pics for the video about the skill.

D3 Gameplay Panel

The D3 gameplay panel was held Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the class design panel held earlier in the day. For the gameplay panel, Jay Wilson spoke for about 15 minutes, covering the basic gameplay design concepts of the game. It was largely a repeat of information presented in the WWI panels, and covered nothing we’ve not already heard in various interviews and other info releases. Fortunately, the short presentation was followed by an extensive Q&A session chaired by Jay Wilson and Wyatt Chang, which had quite a few good questions.

We recorded video of the entire panel and will post that when Blizzard allows it. We’ll also type up a full transcript for the wiki next week. In the meantime, I’ve summarized a few of the better questions below the fold…
We’ll post a verbatim transcript when we have time. For now, here are summarized versions of the lengthy answers Jay and Wyatt gave to various questions.

One of Jay’s main points in the presentation, one he’s made a number of times in interviews, is that they want to add more challenge by diversifying the difficulty. Instead of D2’s style of easy easy easy instant-death, they’re making D3 more consistently difficult. They want to create more moments of danger and tension, and one of the ways of doing that is by making potions less useful and less common, and making players earn health globes to heal. Having played the demo a few times so far, I can say that that’s working nicely. I was frequently down to a sliver of red while playing a Wizard, and had to back up, nail monsters with ranged attacks, run past tough ones to nail some easy cannon fodder and hope to find a health globe from them, etc.

They want quests to diversify gameplay. Instead of just attack attack attack, they want players to have to think of strategy, use some caution, and sometimes do things like rescue NPCs, hold off monsters, race to key locations, and other things that will still have combat involved, but will not be solely click click click.

They want to make gold viable and useful and a part of the economy, long term. They don’t want it to just become all SoJs or perfect skulls or runes. How they’re going to do that they haven’t said. Paying for respecs seems to be hinted at, but other methods might be utilized.

A player asked about immunities, and how they could stop players cold sometimes, if they had a build or equipment that couldn’t adapt. Wyatt said that they hope to address that by incentivizing players to use a variety of skills. They’re designing the skill trees so that players will have 6-7 active skills on their switches, along with various support passives and masteries. And they’re forming the skill trees so that there will be a variety of damage types on the top skills, so players will almost unavoidably have ways around immunes. Not that they’ve confirmed that we’ll see immunes at all, in D3. There aren’t any in the low level demo we’re playing at Blizzcon, at least.

Magic find is in the game (I’ve seen multiple items with it in my play time so far) but they hope to equalize the utility of it by making modifiers on all item types that all characters have a need to use. Unlike D2, where sorcs and necros (and others) could ignore stats on lots of equipment and just specialize in MF. During my demo play time I saw staves and wants that boosted spell damage and exp gain, along with other useful mage properties.

Jay confirmed that the 4th and 5th characters will be Wirt, returned from the dead, and a playable verison of the Cow King. He said this with a straight face, but the room laughed.

The max player limit isn’t set yet, but they’re thinking it might be just 4. They can add more, and it’s actually less stress on b.net to have more players in fewer games, but as Jay pointed out, more than 4 turns into total chaos, or else players are off in different parts of the same game. So the upper limit will probably be more about fun and party play than technical capability.

There will be some kind of crafting mechanism, but not like the Horadric Cube. Wyatt said the cube was largely useful in d2 since the inventory was so small that the added space was great. They’re going to give us much more storage space in d3, so they won’t make the item creation utility much like the cube was.

They want stats to be useful for all characters. At least 3 stats useful for everyone, not just minimum str, never energy, and max vit, as many players did in D2.. So they’re going to make stats useful for multiple purposes. Str for wizards might increase hps regen, or make more/faster healing from health globes, for instance.

Binding items is still the subject of internal debate, but Jay’s clearly on the side of no binding. The concern is that with easier trading and muling players will transfer items around too much and the game will become too easy as inflation sets in. But they like that Diablo is a game of finding and trading, rather than endless raid grinding for the best gear in WoW, and they don’t wnat to change that.
And finally, there will be respecs of some kind, but they’ve not worked out a method yet. They want to balance the convenience of it and the accessibility for non full time layers, with the issue of making the game too easy, or making it boring to start a new char since there’s no one else in low level games.

[HellsJester]

Found the video for the class design panel where they explain skills, talent trees, enemy deaths and the rune system (very cool)
http://d3db.com/media/video/watch/14...E-39472A5E8647

Some news - There will be no map hacks or mods so you wont see anyone cheating or exploiting the game.

[Nuvian]

Awesome find mate, +rep.

[HellsJester]

Awesome find mate, +rep.

Thanks and i edited my post after reading yours because it seems there is confusion on how many players there will be in a group i read a summary of the very same gameplay panel and it said the max was 4 but when i read the summary you posted it says the player amount isnt final.
I would like 5 so you could have 1 of every class in your group if you like.

[-Deadpool-]

Diablo III Wizard Screenshots, Skill Movies & Trailer
Click on the big pics for the video about the skill.

D3 Gameplay Panel

Wizard!! Awesome, can't wait to hear more about it.

Some of those skills look great, wicked effects.

Nice work as always Nuvian

[HellsJester]

More news - Stat points when you level up will automatically distribute instead of you choosing what stat to put them into.
Blizzard says this prevents things like Wizards in Barbarian gear etc which i agree.
This is bad news to most people but to me its good news because it was a big hassle for me to put in my own stat points because i always couldnt decide what stats to put the points into and stuff like that so now it does it for me its much easier.

[Nuvian]

Diablo III Wizard Gameplay Movie


Six minutes of awesome, unedited Wizard gameplay footage:



Part #1 - Flash HD (120MB) / Flash SD (35MB)


Part #2 - Flash HD (114MB) / Flash SD (34MB)Too dark. Please be adding more colour.

Source
Nice videos, for the best quality i suggest picking the HD, then choosing to download instead of streaming.

[HellsJester]

Word is Blizzard will have some features for Battle.net 2.0 that will cost money but do no get upset until we find out what it is because i have already met some people overreacting to this thinking they will have to pay to play which has not been confirmed at all. All we can do is wait and see what it is so please people i beg you not to overreact to something that hasnt gone into detail at all at this point.

[pittsfitz]

I hope its not pay to play but it will not affect my decision to buy it. Any ideas when they might announce the next character? And what type do you think? Someone who uses mainly weapons?

[HellsJester]

I hope its not pay to play but it will not affect my decision to buy it. Any ideas when they might announce the next character? And what type do you think? Someone who uses mainly weapons?

No idea when they will reveal the next class because they dont have any big events in a long time. I doubt it will be pay to play i think it will be features like voice chat etc which if it is its just as easy to get a free voice chat program you can have running with all your group members in it while playing the game.
IMO the next class will be the 50%Melee/50%Caster "Paladin like" class but it will have its differences and be called something else.
Last class could be anything so its too hard to speculate i just have my hopes of it being a class that is good with a Bow.

[Serinous]

No idea when they will reveal the next class because they dont have any big events in a long time. I doubt it will be pay to play i think it will be features like voice chat etc which if it is its just as easy to get a free voice chat program you can have running with all your group members in it while playing the game.
IMO the next class will be the 50%Melee/50%Caster "Paladin like" class but it will have its differences and be called something else.
Last class could be anything so its too hard to speculate i just have my hopes of it being a class that is good with a Bow.

I hope its nature elemental caster/fighter... something like a druid.