Diablo Gamer

Already in release note was to be seen that the Dropchance of runes will generally improve.

From the patch files have user "Dazmogan" now read the current values:

• Zod - x4
• Jah and Cham - x3
• Sur & Ber - x2, 3
• Ohms and Lo - x1, 78
• Gul & Vex - x1, 45
• Time is & - x1, 18

This increases the Dropchance something less drastic than many have expected. One big difference will probably find only the most active players among you will find the regular Highrunes.

Remains to be seen whether was now really fixed the last dupe method by the Realm. Otherwise, a balance of rune drops were quickly down the drain.

Bashiok announced just in the official Battle.net forum the details to Diablo 2 Patch 1.13:

Quote:

-------------------------
- Patch 1.13
-------------------------

Major Bugs

• one dupe method has been fixed
• Videos will be improved for Intel Mac computers (OS 10.5)
  

Minor bugs

• Over-Mephisto is now considering whether or killed over-Baal and over-Diablo, before he invokes his servants
• The game starts is no longer the background music to new, if the Diablo II window briefly leaves.
• Diablo II minimizes longer (occasionally the window) in the Window mode of the game in progress
• The Diablo II window will now always properly centered on the screen

Specific changes / improvements

• The Re-allocation of skills is now possible. We conclude from the "Cave of Evil" quest, we obtain a Respec-point. Even players that quest have already been solved with old chars to get a respec-point (Hell). - Increased the drop rate of high runes.
• The drop rate of "Highrunes" has been improved
• Wide-screen: The game can now be maximized to the highest 4:3 resolution
• Some rare items are now dyed orange (such as runes or organs for ÜTristram)
• The maximum amount of gold in the treasure chest is no longer the level dependent
• The loss of Champion / Unique "Souls" was reduced to NM / HELL
• There is no requirement (Play through more) to create hardcore chars to
• The explosion damage feuerverzauberten monsters has been drastically reduced
• Übertristram leveling is no longer possible (servant of Meph / Baal be no experience more)
• The "Iron Lady" Pirates of the Oblivion Knights (eg Chaos Sanctuary) was removed
• The chance of a fire storm of hell torch was reduced by 5%
• The display of food and mana bar can now be hidden
• Two Akt5 mercenaries now hear the name "Clear" and "Tryneus"
• Generated If a single player game, you can by pressing the Enter key is automatically a light-generating game (if possible)
• Hotkeys for difficulty in the game-creation were added (R = normal, N = Nightmare, H = Hell)
• The Enter key can now enter the Battle.net chat
• Min / Max / Close buttons were added to the game window
• With the parameter "-nofixaspect" can prevent distortions in widescreen
• With the parameter "-sndbkg" you can select background music
• Other (self) new parameter: '-nosound', '-window', and '-windowed'

Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes

Amazon

-Effect Immolation Arrow - Increased radius of explosion by 33% and Immolation effect by 50%.
-Immolation Arrow - Explosion Effect damage increased by 20%.
-Immolation Arrow - Increased base duration by 33%.

Assassin

-Shadow Master - Increased resistance range per point from 5-80 to 5-90.

Barbarian

-Whirlwind - Reduced initial mana cost by 50%.
-Masteries - Changed critical strike chance from 0-25 to 0-35.

Paladin

-Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.

Druid

-Werebear - Damage bonus increased by 15% across all ranks.
-Werebear - point Increased health by 25% and armor by 1% per.
Shockwave - Synergy from foot adds 5% damage per point.

Necromancer

-Blood Golem - Removed critical shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).
-Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.
-Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.

Sorceress

Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.
-Blaze - Synergy receives 2% damage per point of firewall and 4% per point of Warmth.
-Rank Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per.
-Projectile Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra.
-Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.
-Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.

The Battle.net forum wanted user "Afflictionx" know how far the weapon balance has changed from two-handed sword, and whether it might be possible, without blocking shield. In Diablo 2 2-dealer are still very popular because it eg as a barbarian with two-handed weapons do more damage distributes. Only werewolves and mercenaries are in Diablo 2 completely happy with their polearms.
This should change now, if you believe believe Bashiok:

On barbarians should 2H be current much stronger, as skills (yet) to add any damage from the two individual slots and take on many skills so easy to significantly higher weapon damage of the two-handed sword. Blizzard wants the balance, however, is adopted so that all types of weapons are comparably strong. Other specializations could be made through a Mastery.

Funny enough right now two-handers on the barbarian are much stronger than dual-wielding because most of his skills are based on weapon damage and The Game does not add up the damage on both weapons while dual wielding (yet). So actually we're trying to make dual-wielding better right now, but, that of course means two-handers will probably then fall by the wayside and we're back in Diablo II's shoes. The witch doctor and wizard do not really apply, the monk has specific skill support for his weapon choices, and the ... * mumble mumble mumble *.

Off the top of Wyatt's head there's a few ways it could be addressed. One potential way would be to have passive skills that allow someone to specialize in two-handers or dual wielding, and we can stat and tweak those however we need to make them effective. We could therefore make special affixes that can only be rolled up by two-handers that overcome the innate issue of it only being one item.

Bottom line though is we intend for two handers to be as viable as any other weapon choice and we'll do what we need to to make sure that happens.

[....]

Well the affix idea was more along the lines of having something like the highest strength affix a two-hander could roll would be 100 points, and the highest a one-hander could roll would be 50th So everything would even out. Of course that does not offset things like block, but it's just sort of a half-hatched solution anyway.

A little freedom could, however, are lost. Since there currently is no shelf life of goods falls and the complete "essential part" away eventually. A pity, since there are perhaps no Ultra will be rare weapons that are truly unique in the world. Still, however, nothing was decided, because Blizzard still think that makes it the subject.

It was not removed, it was never in The Game. Whether we'll ultimately have durability or not relies on a lot of factors. We do not have it right now though.

Source: Battle.net Forum

Already a few weeks ago we spoke with Blizzard concerned about the performance problems that might arise from a larger treasure chest. This seems to have been confirmed now because Bashiok announced that they will no longer be part of the new patches.

We've recently completed a revised version of the Diablo II 1:13 patch that removes the increased stash size. A larger stash will unfortunately no longer be a feature included in Patch 1.13 due to the previously mentioned concerns. As higher priority work continues on Warcraft III, we're hoping to complete our quality assurance tests for the 1:13 patch in the next few weeks. But as always, the types of issues that may appear and take higher priority are rarely foreseeable. We continue to plan a release based on our best intentions.

Again, must be the Diablo 2 community so be patient because of Warcraft. But what is already half a year late?

Diablo 3 community manager Bashiok volunteered to the Battle.net forum once again to speak. Some information is already known for some time. Since Blizzard, however, likes things discards / revising, are re-confirmations quite interesting.

Bashiok: Regarding mercenaries, the most we've said is that for Diablo III we have them and we're calling them followers ... and that's all we've said. So I could not comment on what features they would or would not have or speculate on if a feature would work for us or not. You'll just have to wait and see.

We've said since announcement that we want to make sure you can get items to other characters quickly and safely. It could take any number of forms, an account-shared stash is one option we've talked about.

In addition, said Bashiok for outstanding 5th Class in Diablo 3

Well The Game was originally announced with the barbarian and witch doctor. BlizzCon '08 saw the announcement of the wizard (at BlizzCon, not three weeks after), and BlizzCon '09 saw the announcement of the monk.

The fifth class was something that was decided early on, but after continuing to work on The Game and the other classes it just was not up to standards any longer. So it's back on the drawing board.

We only have one class left to reveal, it's sort of a major card we can still hold close to the vest. While development does not depend on our plans to reveal it, we definitely are not going to tell everyone what it is just because we know what it's going to be.

Another (not surprisingly) little thing was Bashiok for the camera in Diablo known 3:

It's a fixed camera. Back when we announced The Game we had our dialogue interaction set up where the camera would zoom in, and you'd see the characters up close and they'd talk to each other in this zoomed in view. We threw that out a long time ago though just because it was too intrusive, it stopped The Game, pulled you out of the action, and just felt like too much. There was also a point where we zoomed in on the character in one of the videos to show some attack animations and item switches better, but that's not a feature of The Game.

The camera does not zoom or tilt or rotate, it's a fixed camera.

It's kind of fun to watch people that have never played a Diablo game before, or it's been a long time. They immediately go for the WASD keys, and when those do nothing they then try holding down the right mouse button to rotate the camera. Sometimes by accident they're reminded it's click to move.

It's just not a control scheme and camera angle that are used a lot these days, there's maybe been a handful of games in the past five years that qualify as isometric ARPG's? So anyway, props to all those games and the developers keeping the style alive. We're continuing the tradition, proudly, because we feel it's the best way to present a sequel in the Diablo franchise.

Sources: [1], [2], [3]

The game Torchlight is now available for several hours.
You can expect a quick singleplayer action RPG in brightly colored cartoon graphics.

The resemblance to Diablo 2 is unmistakable. This does not come by accident, because the developers were around Max and Erich Shaefer used the creative minds at Blizzard North.

After the unsuccessful launch of Hellgate: London (Flagship Studios) was quickly established Runic Games, the vessel was no longer save. However, this time without Diablo II flagship character, Bill Roper, who at Cryptic Studios (Star Trek Online, Champions Online, changed ...). Unfortunately remained beside Hellgate including the rights to the action-RPG Mythos in Koranic Publisher

Now back to Torchlight:

Time for the release Runic Games is the official YouTube released channel a trailer. Here you will find also some excerpts from the developer diaries.

The 3 playable classes are:

• Destroyer - A mixture of warrior and barbarian. He is particularly characterized by its melee strength. (Gameplay)

• Protector - A classic rangers with balanced skills. (Gameplay)

• Alchemist - The magic class in Torchlight. (Gameplay)

Some Features:

• Randomly generated levels, the maps, monsters, treasures, Itemdrops and some tasks are generated randomly.
• Easily accessible user interface.
• Companion / Pets - Players can be a pet to choose, which she supported in the battle, items bear and meets other useful tasks.
• Fishing - Players can recover from the action-packed battles and move a few fish from a river.
• Editor - You can create with the editor's own dungeons or entire Mods by Torchlight.

A little review of the demo will follow later.

Free Demo: Steam (free Steam account required)

Price: U.S. $ 20 (approx. 14 Euro)

Julian Love (lead technical artist) spoke with Planet Diablo about his involvement in Diablo 3 Unfortunately had to Julian at nearly every point of the interview to stress that he too can go into great detail / may. The interview is roughly at the level of diii.net news from last week - unfortunately, similar questions are asked.

Some more or less interesting points:

• Trade options are improved. External Trade Forum or Channel trades are probably unnecessary.
• Gold is their value remains and continues to be thought of as a trading currency
• Chars can wear trousers (really nothing new ^ ^)
• identical items look different impact on different classes

Source: here

This small development studio, Runic Games could many have no idea.

As Diablo players should perk up when people like Max and Erich Shaefer and Travis Baldree, however. The former Blizzard North / Flagship employees (which include Diablo 2 Cheffe Bill Roper was one) are nearing the release of their new action RPG "Torchlight".

On 27 October to appear Torchlight

Price: U.S. $ 20 (currently about 13,40 Euro)

Commendable that you are there, trust without major publishers in a release. Perhaps because of the bad experiences that have been made in Hellgate: London? Pub is the game of Perfect World Entertainment, which in Asia are already somewhat familiar.

Links: Official Torch Light website

There is news from the already longer announced Warcraft movie.

Film directors Sam Raimi (Army of Darkness, Spiderman 1-3, ...) recently spoke to MTV Multiplayer about his new film. He announced that, write Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot), in collaboration with Chris Metzen the screenplay for the film aims.

"But we would have our writer, Robert Rodat, really craft to original story within that world that feels like a 'World of Warcraft' adventure. Only obviously it's very different 'cause it's expanded and translated into the world of a motion picture. "

The title is The Rise of the Lich King, however, still controversial. The movie database imdb.com added the epithet added a few days ago for the description. Now, however, it is gone again, making further speculations on the story possible. Not least thanks to cult director Sam Raimi, the film a must would be the lake in 2011.

Jay Wilson answered many questions from the community.

As always, a rough summary:

• Wizards and Monks will have no mana ball. Thus mana is only the Hexendoc reserved.
• Monks are expected to support-getting skills (possibly auras) to strengthen the party
• Monks will get maybe some waffenabhängige Attacks
• Chars can wear all armor classes. The optics changed here (as in Diablo 2) depending on the class. A penalty to heavy armor is not planned. Whether that includes the Runmalus from Diablo 2 is however not known.
• Skill Runes were disabled in the Gamescom / Blizzcon demo. However, they will remain in the form of the game.
• It is still unclear, will emerge which items from Diablo 1 & 2 again in the game. Blizzard wants to create items at the end of development.

More info will follow in the coming days, as has diii.net decided on the basis of currently scarce news to split the information on many small articles.

Sources:

[1], [2] and [3]