Diablo 3 announced

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.

(Watch Diablo 3 trailer here)

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...

Diablo 3 box

I've seen plenty of BAD fake trailers for Diablo 3. I wonder who in their right might would think this is an ACTUAL box for Diablo 3!

Believe me - the discussion on some forums still rages on ...

Activision Blizzard

You've probably heard it already but here's the summary:

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.

Hmm, I wonder if this would change anything in terms of how Blizzard develops its games. I sincerely hope they don't start licensing their game "worlds" to allow Activision to create second-rate games. I want Diablo 3 but I don't want a broken game... (Vivendi already announced once that Diablo 3 is going to be an MMO).

Medusa project demystified

Remember when just before Starcraft 2 was announced, there was a rumor about a Medusa demo.

Some people thought it could be something related to Diablo 3 (I wish!). The mystery is over - courtesy of Kotaku:

Sigaty, Starcraft 2’s lead producer, told me that the original codename for Starcraft 2 was “alpha”, but when the game was nearing alpha they decided to change it.

“We couldn’t say that alpha was hitting alpha, so we needed another name,” he said. They settled on Medusa.

This isn’t another Diablo 3 rumor. It’s just setting the record straight!

E3: More Diablo 3 hints?

E3 has been tamer this year. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening there.

Gamasutra has an interview with Frank Pearce, founding member and senior vice president of product development for Blizzard.

Here a bit from the interview:

“Our global headcount is 2,700,” said Pearce, “And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there’s sound and Q/A and that sort of thing.”

When pressed for details regarding the new project, Pearce was cagey. “Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome.”

All attempts to extract additional information were understandably met with looks of shock and horror from Blizzard’s director of global public relations, who also attended the meeting.

With Blizzcon just a few days away, I wonder if Blizzard are warming up to a formal announcement of this mysterious third project.

E3: More Diablo 3 hints?

E3 has been tamer this year. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening there.

Gamasutra has an interview with Frank Pearce, founding member and senior vice president of product development for Blizzard.

Here a bit from the interview:

“Our global headcount is 2,700,” said Pearce, “And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there’s sound and Q/A and that sort of thing.”

When pressed for details regarding the new project, Pearce was cagey. “Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome.”

All attempts to extract additional information were understandably met with looks of shock and horror from Blizzard’s director of global public relations, who also attended the meeting.

With Blizzcon just a few days away, I wonder if Blizzard are warming up to a formal announcement of this mysterious third project.

Diablo the Movie

News |
Trailer |
Pictures |
Games |
Soundtrack

Cast |
Awards |
Reviews |
Downloads |
Wallpapers |
Posters |
Documentary

Uber Diablo a taste of things to come?

I’ve been thinking lately about the new content that Blizzard added to Diablo 2 with the Pandemonium Event (i.e. the Diablo 2 Ubers).

I’ve heard many arguments that it’s not REALLY new content as Blizzard have just taken a few bosses and made their uber versions. For example, they’ve used Andariel’s model to create Lilith who shares very similar spells and effects.

That is one way to look at it. However, lets turn to the year(s) preceding World of Warcraft’s launch. Blizzard created a special “custom” campaign (The Founding of Durotar) for Warcraft III that used the game engine BUT simulated WoW in terms of gameplay. The quest structure, the items (epic, legendary, etc), even the levelling.

Come to think of it, I might have enjoyed the campaign MORE than I have enjoyed WoW. You could control three heroes plus summoned creatures and henchmen, the quests made sense (i.e. not repetitive), and the items were pretty powerful.

That’s not my point though. My point is that what Blizzard has done with patch 1.11 is test the realms for the style of gameplay that their next-gen MMO (lets call it Diablo III: Heaven and Hell) will feature.

This looks a long shot now but come back in a year and we’ll see. I definitely think Blizzard’s next-gen MMO should feature top SOLO content in addition to raid content.

I do expect to kill Diablo even as a casual SOLO player. Surviving the fight might be a 10% chance and loot might be just a few greens but I’d like to see Diablo go down. Amen.

Diablo site update

I've just updated the Diablo site, so here's the updated sitemap:

Diablo Home
Diablo Downloads
Diablo Cheats
Diablo Item Editor
Diablo Hero Editor
Diablo Hellfire expansion
Diablo Story
Diablo Heroes
Diablo Spells
Diablo Items
Unique Items
Diablo Quests
Diablo Monsters
Diablo Guides

Diablo 3 listing

Just got word that the BOTW directory included a Diablo 3 blog to it's structure. Great news indeed. Also, the updated Diablo sitemap. Includes Diablo 1, Diablo 2, and Diablo 3.