Diablo news, info, guides, cheats, and downloads
To all the Blizzard fans out there, the long-awaited Starcraft 2 beta is out.
Players who have signed up for the beta should start receiving their beta keys in the coming days. The way you sign up for the beta is through your Battle.net account. Log in and go to where it says Beta Profile Settings.
I’m a big fan of Starcraft, even though Diablo 3 has suffered some neglect because of it. It will keep me occupied till Diablo 3 comes out in 2011.
Diablo 3’s official site has been updated with new screenshots. As always this triggers the discussion, if Diablo 3’s art has taken a new direction, after the previous Art Director was sacked.
I think the new screenshots speak for themselves. They’re definitely more contrasty and have plenty of dark areas. The outside areas (Act II?) are looking similar to Luth Golein, so Blizzard seems to have taken to heart the pleas of their fan base.
Our friends at Diablofans has asked Jay Wilson a question about items, that we all care about:
Will there be items as rare in Diablo III that are as powerful from the start, or will players have to slowly improve the quality of their items, through crafting/runes/other systems?
Jay Wilson: Throughout the history of patches on Diablo II, there were a lot of updates to runewords and they really powerful from when they were introduced. At one time or another though all of the different item types were the most powerful, like unique items were the best, or rare items at some point.
Our general approach for Diablo III is to make sure that every type of item has a place to be useful. For example, maybe we’ll have a legendary item, which is the new name for our unique items, be the best helm, whereas rares will have the most powerful chest armor, and so on. Having a spread like that will allow for a more varied itemization system we hope.
I think we’ll still be stuck collecting exotic components but time will tell if Diablo 3 will be like Diablo 2 item-wise.
Blizzard’s GFX team has been hard at work re-doing the effects: from the humble magic missile to more serious stuff like the Slow Time skill (Wizard).
It does look very much like the same skill in Starcraft II – the one that the Protoss mothership had. Anyway, it’s a fine animation, hopefully the finished game isn’t too heavy… I don’t want to upgrade my hardware so I can stop time.
Now, ever since Activision and Blizzard merged, I had a feeling that moneytalk will take over. Sure enough, listen to Activion’s boss, Bobby Kotick: “Next Blizzard MMO will have a “more broad appeal”…
I can’t believe 10+ million subscribers is now considered marginal for a MMO! For some perspective, LOTRO has about 250,000 and Warhammer online is seeing a decreasing 300,000 or so.
The other point is … how is WoW not appealing enough for everybody? It has purple (gay?) elves, orcs on motorcycles… it’s as cartoony as a Disney picture.
It looks like Activision-Blizzard is definitely pursuing a strategy of attracting the lowest common denominator and putting “niche” products like Diablo 3 on the backburner. Just 40 people are working on Diablo when the support team for WoW alone is something like 3000?
Now, this is the first time I hear about Torchlight, thanks to Shacknews. One look at the screenshot and I could swear it’s very Diablo-esque.
Update: Wildgames have Torchlight for just $6.99 – download it now!
Turns out the team has some Blizzard North veterans like Peter Hu; Erich and Max Schaefer, and some artists. The best piece of news? You don’t have to wait till 2011 to play it. It’ll be on Steam in 5 days!
Blizzard is hard at work figuring out the inventory management. If you compare the screenshots from the initial announcement to the current version, you’ll see plenty of differences.
Yet, they aren’t happy with it. Blizzard states:
Inventory management and the systems that surround it are something we’re obviously interested in, but not something that can really be tuned until we have more of the item game fleshed out and tuned itself. It’s hard to know exactly the best way to handle inventory management when the items, types, pickup frequency, and removal frequency can’t really be measured with any real accuracy.
I hope this doesn’t mean we get to play item tetris – as it was in Diablo 2 with different items taking different number of slots.
At the same time, Blizzard obviously don’t want to copy WoW’s inventory system. Or, Warhammer Online’s system of different bags filtering different item types. They want to make us THINK about which items we put in the inventory.
Remember the big discussion about Diablo 3 getting TOO SUNNY for a Diablo game? The fans had to re-do screenshots in Photoshop just to make their point that a darker Diablo is called for – no green fields.
In public Blizzard remained adamant about the art direction but since then they have let the Art Director go and lo and behold – the updated screenshots look very much LIKE Diablo 2!
Check out the desert screenshot below – I did some minor sharpening in Photoshop but I must say it looks like Act II (Lut Gholein). Mercifully, the green grass has been removed and the characters look dark and desperate!
You get an email the second Blizzard announce the Diablo 3 beta. Don't miss your chance!
