Blizzard theme park

Blizzard has just announced a theme park contest. If you’ve ever imagined taking a Diablo ride, this is your chance to get acknowledgment for your imagination.


Update: full HD video can be found too.

Diablo 3 skill runes

The runes (thought not runewords) make a return to Diablo 3. They’ll still drop from monsters, however, they will be used in a way that’s VERY different from Diablo 2.

OK, let’s go over how runes worked in Diablo 2. There are 33 runes that drop from monsters. Note that some runes drop often while others drop extremely (e.g. Zod rune). Also, there are items with sockets that are able to take runes (or jewels). Some rune combinations (called runewords) create Runic Items, which are among the most powerful items in the game.

For example, socketing the runes Hel + Ohm + Um + Lo + Cham gives your axe or hammer a whole bunch of additional stats and it also adds the label “Doom”.

OK, so what are the changes to the runes in Diablo 3? Runes will still be used to CUSTOMIZE your character, however, runes no longer modify ITEMS. Instead they’ll be added to skills (each skill has a single rune slot).

Also, to make runes easier to use, rune names will be changed to reflect their effect, e.g. Rune of Multistriking. How does this affect gameplay?

For example, a Minor Multistrike Rune attached to the Skull of Flame will make projectile skip along the ground once , but higher quality Runes like the Major Multistrike Rune may raise the amount of bounces and the distance traveled by the projectile.

Jay Wilson, Diablo 3 Lead designer, expressed his strong desire to make each skill customizable while at the same time retaining the uniqueness of each class. In other words, he doesn’t want the Barbarian to be able to mimic the Wizard by adding certain runes to skills.

Diablo 3 art update

Blizzard has uploaded some new art and a couple of screenshots. I must confess I’m a little underwhelmed.

The barbarian character looks fine when reduced five times but zoom in and you see brush strokes - it looks like the artist had an hour or less.

It does carry the message that barbarian armor is crude and rugged but I’d love to see a bit more details. Other AAA titles have MUCH, MUCH superior art.

Update: I see a few Blizzard fanboys commenting how I don’t appreciate Blizzard brushstroke genius. I simply said “I’d love to see a bit more details“. Here’s what I mean - compare Warhammer concept art to Diablo 3 concept art. Now, tell me Blizzard are not taking shortcuts when it comes to concept art. They do and you’ll be blind as a bat if you don’t see a difference in the level of “finish”.

Diablo 3 released on 09/09/09?

Diablo 3 release date has been a hot topic and we’ve all heard the usual Blizzard rhetoric that Diablo 3 will come out WHEN the game is ready.

First, some background: a guy who played Diablo 2 for years got a DOL rune and experimented with it until it crushed the game. He got an error message … a series of meaningless numbers. Or are they?

64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39.

So why is this significant in ANY way? OK, this is the geek part: 64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39 is hex for : Diablo 3 09/09/09. That means that if you translate the hexadecimal code, it gives you Diablo 3’s release date.

Now, the critical part. How likely is that Diablo 2 developers knew in advance when Diablo 3 will be released? NOT LIKELY. At the same time, if I were head of development at Blizzard and I was a bit of a numerology freak… I’d pick EXACTLY this date. Why?

Well, it’s pretty obvious. 09-09-09 represents 666 if you turn it upside down. The number of the beast! (cue the Iron Maiden song here)

Starcraft 2 review

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.

Diablo 3 class - Wizard

Blizzard have finally revealed the third Diablo 3 character - a Wizard. As far as I can tell from the gameplay video and the class description, it looks like a copy&paste of the good ole Diablo 2 Sorceress.

The Wizard skills revealed thus far are:

• Disintegrate - constant ray of energy going through multiple enemies
• Electrocute - chain lightning
• Teleport - blink about half a screen away
• Magic Missile - single target damage spell
• Slow Time - creates a sphere that slows down projectiles (very similar to the Protoss Mothership skill)

You can watch the Wizard in action at Blizzard’s site here.

Diablo 3 random dungeons

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.

Barbarian character

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).

Diablo 3 art design

Adam Sessler from G4TV is speaking against the guys who re-did the Diablo 3 screenshots to make them darker and gothic.

Even some Flash RPGs have a better design than the cartoony feel of Diablo.

Diablo 2 cheap cd keys

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.