Diablo Gamer

Bashiok reported yesterday in the Battle.net forum to speak again and said something to the drop rate of Health Globes, which will replace the potions in Diablo III (in part).

Health Globes are small magical items (different thickness), the monsters are killed by lying and whole group in collecting something heal.

In something like this is now known to:

• Normal Monsters: There is a small chance that they will drop the death mini Health Globes
• Champions: Champion Monster (formerly blue in Diablo II) may already fall in battle and also at a slightly higher death Globe Health can
• Rare Monster: (known in Diablo II diced by their funny names) can be already lost 25% of all life and the death of even greater Globes.
• Uniques / Bosses: Here you have to let surprise you, but often they are at the end of quest lines, so that a cure in the fight rather insignificant.

Furthermore Bashiok incidentally revealed a few details:

• The Siege Breaker Assault Beast (known from the gameplay video) will probably be a unique monster.
• Rare monsters can get various magic affixes (possibly even teleport)
• Healing potions there will continue - but they are no longer available in large quantities and have a cooldown timer
• Globes can probably come out of boxes

Source: Battle.net Forum

As in the past year, one can allude Diablo 3 again on the Gamescom game exhibition in Cologne.

Less gratifying, however, is that Blizzard again presents the previous version, which does not include other new features. Why Blizzard has decided to take this step, is unfortunately not entirely clear.

It could indicate that they present to the next BlizzCon so serious changes in the demo that this is not just Gamescom times can be made compatible.

A small ray of hope remains:

This year, Jay Wilson on the D3 Leaddesigner Gamescom to be a guest and answer questions about Diablo 3rd

Blizzard announced recently that they must in future give his first name & last name in plain sight in the new Battle.net account. To this end, also decided Diablo community manager Bashiok write his name in the forum.

"Micah Whipple at your service."

They forgot he had probably how fast the community to their personal information including address, telephone number and details would come to family members. Some sites have the info now removed, but this then distribute the net.

Until now it was in the Battle.net forum strictly forbidden to publish personal data of users in any way. Now Blizzard breaks the self-imposed rule and would become the social network. Concern it is that information about children can be published here. Although there are some features for parents to prevent this - but what parents are interested in already for the games their kids?

initially affected only the games of "Battle.net 2.0" (WoW, Starcraft II and Diablo III) - whether the older games are integrated, is not yet known.

What do you think of Blizzard's plans?

Longer is already known that Diablo III is optimized for the now very popular widescreen format 16:9 and 16:10.

The competent Diablo II players wonders, of course, as Blizzard will compensate for the benefits of a larger picture, for example in PvP not to let the hardware decide between victory and defeat.

Bashiok commented on Battle.net Forum:

We're supporting all the normal and widescreen (16:9 / 16:10) resolutions. Switching from a normal to widescreen aspect you will see more playable space, but within each aspect ratio you're not going to get more game info space. [...]

The advantages (especially in PvP) could therefore be limited, since you will only see a little more of the map. Blizzard is therefore the visibility of the light radius and objects limit on the card, so that even with an old 19 "(4:3) monitor can still play under fair conditions?

Somewhat recently we've been trying out the line of sight mechanic (that maybe called fog of war by some). It's not dependent on light radius, it's simply what's blocked by geometry. It introduces all sort of technical issues for us, not that they're insurmountable, but it's something we're playing around with.

Tactically quite interesting, then, that monster can hide (or player?) Behind an obstacle, the system should find its way into Diablo 3rd Indirectly, he confirmed that of course the light radius from which this feature is independent.

It is also unclear to what resolution you choose to be minimal in order to suffer no disadvantage. Possible would be 1280 × 1024, as this format is supported for many years by all 17 "and 19" monitors. This would fit very well to 1080p (1920 x 1080) and owners of small notebook displays (eg 1280 x 800) would not have a big disadvantage. It would be conceivable but just another "camera-height", which provides the players with low-resolution graphics with slight losses identsiches a picture.

Let us wait.

At the last Blizzcon it was announced that Blizzard is the new Battle.net "2.0 set" more on social networks.

In the first step, it is Starcraft II players be able to add their Facebook friends on Battle.net. This function is probably also exist in Diablo III, so you can see his friends very easily. Whether, however, the German StudiVZ / MeinVZ integration will get is not known yet.

Source: Blizzard Press Release

On 3.6. starts at 4 clock (CET) of the first early ticket sales for BlizzCon 2010th

For $ 150 you can proudly assure you one of the coveted tickets. The Blizzcon 2010 of 22 - 23 10th again take place at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. Besides Diablo 3 is of course a lot of Starcraft 2 and get the new WoW Addon Cataclysm.

The second Sales promotion will run on 5.6. to a reasonable amount of time (19:00 h). If you want to but really take the long way up, which will probably also make sure the alarm clock.

See you in California

Blizzard has just announced the patch 1:13 incl Ladder-Reset, but we read something in the Battle.net forum, so the story interesting.

How many of you know, a ladder season usually lasts at least 1 year. could Bashiok expressed now in a proposal to bring a potential Topic Patch 1.14, the additional balance changes.

I think it's widely recognized that some new content for end game is a desired addition. It's not something we could include in this patch for many reasons, but we do have plans to continue full point release patches (ie 1.14). What those could contain is still up in the air, but we have plans. Diabolical Plan! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA (source)

Since there are dealing with major changes, this would not be feasible without the ladder reset. Diablo 3 would be published shortly after a Diablo 2 Patch incl Reset relatively meaningless, so that we would be in a full season already 1:14 on a release date of 03/2012.

The hope remains, of course, that these are two short seasons is to be together no later than age 10 by Lord of Destruction (06/29/2011) ended. More info will probably only give it to BlizzCon, the supposedly * 22 - 23 To be held in October.

*) A webmaster of the Anaheim Convention Center had some time ago a hasty announcement placed online and a little later removed.

The Battle.net forum user wanted "Afflictionx know" how far from the two-handed sword weapon balance has changed in and whether it would be possible, perhaps even without a shield to block. In Diablo 2 today are 2-dealer or very unpopular, as it eg barbarian with two-handed weapons do more harm than distributes. Only werewolves and mercenary in Diablo 2, with their pole arms completely happy.
This should change now, if you will give Bashiok believe:

Barbarians are to be current on 2H much stronger since Skills (yet) add no damage from the two individual slots and assume many skills as easy to markedly higher of the two-handed sword weapon damage. Blizzard wants the balance, however, is required that all types of weapons are equally strong. Other specializations may come 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). Sun actually we're trying to make dual-wielding better right now, but, of course means that 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 support for his weapon skill 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 tweak those stat and 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 being only 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 idea was more affix 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 be lost, however. Since there currently is no shelf life of goods, is also the complete "essential part" may be gone. A pity, because there will be no ultra-rare so maybe weapons that are truly unique. Even though nothing has been decided, since Blizzard still makes thoughts on the subject.

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

Source: Battle.net Forum

Diablo 3 community manager Bashiok reported in the Battle.net forum again to speak. Some information is already known for some time. Since Blizzard likes things but rejects / revising, re-confirmations are 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 that announcement 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, Bashiok commented on the outstanding fifth 3rd class in Diablo

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 very surprising) Bashiok trifle was the camera work in Diablo 3 announced:

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, you pulled 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 switches better item, 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 been maybe 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]

Julian Love (lead technical artist) spoke with Planet Diablo Diablo about his involvement in third Unfortunately, Julian had to virtually any point of the interview to emphasize that he is not too much can go into details / may. The interview is at about the state of diii.net News from last week - unfortunately, are also similar questions.

Some more or less interesting points:

• Trade options are improved. External Trade Forum or Channel trades are probably unnecessary.
• Gold should remain and their value is still thought of as a trading currency
• Chars can wear pants (actually nothing new ^ ^)
• identical items from different view on the different classes

Source: here