The guys at Joystiq are going over their first Diablo 3 multiplayer experience during Blizzcon.
The quality of the video is way better that most I’ve seen. You need to wait a bit for the multiplayer gameplay to start (at 3:08). The party is complete with all three Diablo 3 classes: Barbarian, Witch Doctor and Wizard.
The only complaint was that the screen was a bit overwhelmed with all the special effects, however, playing the game feels amazing.The Wizard skills revealed thus far are:
You can watch the Wizard in action at Blizzard’s site here.
Jay Wilson stated in an interview that dungeons will be randomly generated - in true Diablo tradition. Btw, Jay is Diablo 3 lead designer.
Outdoors will be persistent, however, and will not change from game to game. In other words, you can use landmarks in multiplayer as meeting places. I.e. Meet me by the river ford.
CG: Are the dungeons still going to be randomly generated?
JW: All the dungeons’ layouts are randomly generated. The exteriors are not. We have a new system of adventures that allows us to cut sections out of the terrain to put random — whatever — in there. We can put random terrain, we can put in scripted events — we wanted to add a lot more scripted events into the game.
So expect that outdoor monsters could be heavily scripted (as the terrain stays constant). They could run to a chest, get a bigger axe and come back.
The other thing I’d like to see in Diablo 3 is getting better, bigger “rogue camps”. Come on, Jay, you can make a city that’s more than 3 houses. Let’s hope that Caldium (picture right) is that city.
If you’re the kind of guy, who always goes for a macho character, you might ignore the screenshot below.
It’s not Bruce Dickinson fighting Eddie, it’s a female barbarian fighting a Siege Breaker. If you ask me, she’s pretty cool. Favorite skill? Whirlwind!
I’m partial though - my favorite Diablo 2 character was an Ice Sorceress (before they nerfed Blizzard it kicked butt).
A week ago I posted that Diablo 2 is back on the sales chart. I also posted that if you want a copy, you don’t need to purchase a retail copy for $55 (for the Battle chest) or $35 (for Diablo 2 and LoD).
You can purchase a Diablo 2 CD key for just $5 online. Once you have your CD KEY, you go to Blizzard’s online store, you register and then proceed to DOWNLOAD your copies of Diablo 2 and LoD.After Diablo 3’s previous Art Director left, Blizzard started looking for a new Art Director for Diablo 3. So I guess the screenshots done by the fans do have some weight when it comes to the art direction. Here’s the ad:
Blizzard Entertainment is currently looking for a talented, motivated, and experienced art director to lead the Diablo III art team. For this position, you must be highly organized with outstanding communication skills and proven experience in management. We’re looking for a proven track record of shipping AAA products in an art director role. Experience modeling and texturing assets for a diverse visual range of environments and a solid grasp of form, color, and light for both 2D and 3D art assets are also essential. You must be experienced at mentoring a team, able to work well in an environment of artists who are passionate about making great games, skilled in another art task (illustration, modeling, texturing, animation, or concept drawing), and well-versed in related tools (Maya, Photoshop, etc.).
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that whoever they choose will not be an arrogant bastard and will actually listen to fans when they express their concerns about Diablo 3’s art direction (check out the screenshots redone by the fans).
I gave my copy of Diablo II to my cousin a few years ago, so now I’m beating my head against the wall. If you’re like me and would like to replay Diablo 2 with friends on Battle.net, I suggest you find yourself $5.
Why $5? Because that’s how much a Diablo 2 CD key costs. That’s an original key (not some keygen thing) and it works like a charm. You download Diablo II, you enter the key and you’re ready to roll.
Here, I just saved you $55 (the Diablo Battlechest retails for 59.99).
Update: Here’s a direct link to one site offering it at $5 - link.
A while back we examined the top 5 differences between Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. Now, it’s time to examine the Diablo 3 announcement, the demo and the trailer, as well as all the additional info that has been released by Blizzard.
Here’s the top 5 differences!
1) More color, less darkness
According to lead producer, Keith Lee, Diablo 3 is going to feature more outdoor environments with a lot more colors. Instead of pleasing the core audience though, this move has so outraged gamers that they started an online petition. They want good, old darkness back and the colors out the door!
2) Less monsters, more varied killing
Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo 3, states that instead of hack-and-slash through throngs of monster, Diablo 3 players will have to focus on killing fewer but tougher monsters. Things like positioning, skills, and so on will have a greater effect than they did in Diablo 2.
For example, the Berserker monster has a charged up attack that deals massive damage. If you dodge the attack though, the Berserker is left vulnerable. Similar fate awaits the Skeletal Shieldbearers when they drop their shields.
3) Epic heroes, class quests
According to Jay, the new Diablo 3 characters will be more badass than ever before. Judging by the demo, it seems likely that there could be fewer characters but with a lot less overlap than say WoW. Class-specific quests, armor, etc are also in the works.
4) COOP play - large-scale, harder battles
Judging by the demo, it could take four or more characters to kill a boss in Diablo 3. I hope these bosses can be defeated by a single player too (same as Diablo 2 ubers). The coop play will be through Battle.net - it’s not 100% clear whether that will be free (same as Diablo 2).
5) No more potions, less downtime
In order to speed up the game, the designers have removed the massive belts full of potions. Instead, each monster has a chance to drop a red sphere that replenishes health. That means that you can go into combat even when wounded and get healed that way.
There’s more than five differences? Discuss below!
Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational 2008 starts in half an hour in Paris. If you can check the intro image - there’s a dark shape that is more and more visible.
UPDATE: Diablo 3 is OFFICIAL! Live news from the event:
12:15 — Announcement…..!! Guy playing Diablo music on an acoustic guitar…
12:18 — Footage of large scale battles, comets streaking across the sky, demons, Diablo 3 officially announced.
12:20 — Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo 3 coming out. He’s going to demo the game.
12:20 — It’s apparently still an action RPG. Same interface — red
health and blue orbs. Skill bar at bottom. 3/4 overhead perspective.
Character with 2 axes hacking at demons in what appears to be a foggy
cathedral. Has a jumping attack where he smashes the two axes into the
ground.
12:21 — The axe guy is the barbarian class. Says improvements have
been made, like the hotbar for skills. Using the mouse wheel and tab
key you can quickly switch between skills. Whoing inventory. Appears to
still have slot limits. Using enchanted axes with frost and lighting
,which stuns and freezes opponents.
12:25 -- Each piece of gear is custom designed for each class. Barbarian puts on demonic sort of garb with giant devil horns. Barbarian can hop across gaps on the map. Barbarian dislodged a rock wall and dropped it on zombies, killing them. Demoing moving whirlwind attack.
12:33 -- Witch doctor can cast out locus swarm, which spreads between targets and deals damage. Can summon mongrel things that he can cast locust swarm on, which buffs their damage. Outdoor environment now. Quite pretty in that vibrant, slightly cartoonish Blizzard graphical style. Like with StarCraft 2 and it's similarities to the original, Diablo 3 looks and sounds, at least at a glance, quite similar to previous games. Witch doctor also has a mass fear type of ability.
12:36 -- Multiplayer will work over battle.net. Heads into a final fight against some gigantic moving trees. Final boss here, called siegebreaker assault beast, is absolutely gigantic, maybe around six or seven times taller than the player characters.
12:37 -- Demo ends. The crowd roars...
Activision, Inc. and Vivendi have announced that they will combine Vivendi Games, Vivendi's interactive entertainment business which includes Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, with Activision, creating the world's largest online and console game publisher, the total transaction being worth more than US$18.9 Billion.
