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…

You can check a screenshot below:

Let’s hope and pray there’s a Diablo 3 announcement at the WWI.

A few months ago we were contacted by Blizzard in regards to the Diablo3.com domain name. While they appreciate all the work that’s been put into running this big Diablo fan community over the years, they still want the domain name. Hmm, I wonder why?

I wonder why myself. It could be that Blizzard’s lawyers decided it’s high time they earn their keep. I mean apart from telling Uwe Boll to go blow when it comes to a WoW movie, they haven’t done anything.

Hmm, I wonder why Diablo2.com is still independent then. It has been out for YEARS and it’s a clear violation of the Diablo trademark. Blizzard can get it by just writing to ICANN. I think they care NOT about Diablo 2.

So although Blizzard do acquire domains (as they told the owner of Diablo3.com), I find their timely interest in Diablo 3 suspicious. Not in a bad way, though. I’d just love to hear more about Diablo 3!

You can forget about that… Diablo has become Blizzard’s bastard child. They’re probably going to deny they ever did it … which is close to the truth as Blizzard North did it and they have left the company a long time ago.

Check out Blizzard’s latest April Fool’s joke - the love child of their favorite franchises (WoW and SC2) - enter the Tauren Marine.

Anyone managed to save the Princess already?

Note: Game courtesy of Necromanthus.

That’s right! They have had the Diablo 3 domains registered for a while now but I guess they decided that a single sequel just won’t do. So they got diablo4.es , diablo4.it , diablo4.eu , diablo4.fr … you get the idea.

What’s more - Blizzard has also registered Diablo5.fr , Diablo6.fr and flipping Diablo7.fr in October 2007. I really hope they come up with something to post on these domains… as in a Diablo sequel!

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

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).

The game comes from the team who did Diablo II so naturally the expectation are running high!

Gamespot haven’t reviewed it yet but here’s a few bits from other reviews:

Besides the simple fact that no map generation program is ever going to be as good as a human designer, the random maps introduce some other problems too…

That same room layout, that same pair of tunnels, repeated over and over in slightly different configurations… We don’t doubt that Underground tunnels really are quite monotonous, but there’s no need to inflict that on us in a videogame. It’s bad enough having to go through them in packed train carriages, frankly…

Each of the six classes is genuinely fun to play, which is rare enough in RPGs. Most players will probably settle on their preferred archetype pretty quickly, of course, but it’s definitely good to see a game where you can roll just about any class, and be fairly confident that you won’t be coming back to restart in disgust a few hours later.

That’s from Eurogamer giving it 7 out of 10. The user reviews are equally split, there’s some guys that couldn’t play for more than 15 minutes without restarting which naturally got frustrating pretty quickly.

Oh well, I’ll be playing the demo anyway. The question remains whether I want the game as well.

GS: Does the overwhelming success of it mean that a hypothetical Starcraft MMOG would be pushed further out because you have this thriving community that you don’t want to cannibalize?

MM: Not necessarily. It’s actually more a question of us not wanting to cannibalize the resources that are going into supporting the game. We can’t just take the World of Warcraft team and have them work on another game. But what we can do is staff up the World of Warcraft team and gradually peel off some of our developers to start working on something new. But it will take time. And we’re at the stage right now where we’re starting to think about what we want to do next.

GS: When do you think you’ll want to talk about what you’re doing next?

MM: Probably not for a long time.

Now, I’m not sure what that means! Is he talking 2008? Is he talking ever?

When talking about the upcoming WOW movie, Mike is asked whether he feels that the Diablo world can support a Diablo movie. “Absolutely,” says he. So maybe we’ll see a movie before we see a game.

Here’s a few bits and pieces from the interview which I found … revealing:

• Diablo movie - when talking about WoW, The Movie, Paul said “we would LOVE to bring certain of the other franchise to the big screen”. So if the WoW movie comes out strong and Legendary Pictures live up to the challenge, I think we can have a Diablo movie (in our life time yeah!)
• Diablo 3 - “It is definitely a very important franchise to us,” said Paul. The bad news - they are so focused on WoW, they are probably not “returning” to it soon.

So don’t get your hopes high for now. Or rather, get your hopes high but patience will still be key!

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 weeks away, I wonder if Blizzard are warming up to a formal announcement of this mysterious third project.

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!

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.

Diablo has become uber Diablo, gaining a a few extra hitpoints. Same goes for the other bosses (Mephisto and Baal) as well as the lieutenants (Duriel and Izual).

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.

Here’s the proof below. As always, the Devil is in the details (pun intended).

Kotaku posted a shorter version of the same video, so you don’t see the Diablo logo. This one is much better.

My reaction? As one Youtuber put it: “Put Diablo 2 on PSP and I’ll buy not one PSP, but several - so we can go in as a party with my friends.” Ditto!

Here’s the LONG story:

The guys from Legendary Pictures (yep, the guys behind 300) have posted on their site that a Diablo movie is in the making. Diablo was listed in the “In Development” section.

Once the news about the movie leaked to fan sites, Diablo was promptly removed. My guess is it was a phone call from Blizzard that got them going.

Besides these facts, we have the following:

1. Legendary Pictures are already working on a WoW-based movie, so they look like an obvious choice for a Blizzard project.
2. Vin Diesel’s movie - A Man Apart - was originally named El Diablo which resulted in a lawsuit from Blizzard “claiming they trademarked Diablo and intended to make a movie based on their game”

I’m hoping and praying a Diablo movie is in the making. I loved the Diablo 2 cinematics and making the next logical step - the big screen - will be an amazing experience.

Update: Ha! Look at this. I just checked who the owner of this domain is!

Domain Name: DIABLOMOVIE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Universal City Studios - UPG Domains
100 Universal City Plaza
2160/8H
Universal City, CA 91608
US

There’s less than half of the tickets remaining. While you’re at it, you might want to stockpile - keep in mind that up to 5 tickets per billing address are allowed.

Will Diablo 3 be announced at Blizzcon? There have been plenty of rumors lately but no one knows for certain. This is the official announcement from Blizzard:

BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the players who have helped make them so popular around the world. Gamers from all over the world come together to enjoy many fun activities and to learn more about Blizzard’s products. Don’t miss out on this amazing event!

One of the reasons a ticket could be worth it, is that it will allow you to take part in a beta of a Blizzard game. There’s little doubt that’s going to be the Starcraft 2 beta which is rumored to start before the end of 2007.

In essence, Rob Pardo talks how Starcraft 2 is one of the smaller projects currently in Blizzard:

Pardo also dropped a hint at the scale of Blizzard’s future plans, saying that the 40 developers working on Starcraft II are “one of the smaller teams.” Job listings on the Blizzard site have indicated it is working on a “next-gen MMO”–which the company said will not be another World of Warcraft. Also, rumors persist that Diablo III is in development.

Now, Paul Sams also said something similar - that Blizzard is working on three projects.

Here’s how I interpret it - Diablo 3 and the next-gen MMO are probably the same thing. After all, what’s better than a MMO in the Diablo universe? You got Heaven and Hell as factions… you got an Epic conflict that’s going to dwarf everything that WoW has. Frankly, who cares about Illidan when the can go after Diablo.

Thinking about it more, however, the cold, hard facts remain the same.

Let me go through them for my (and your) well being:

1) Blizzard has been recruiting heavily lately: not only art directors but all kinds of artists. Judging by the StraCraft 2 trailer, their work at SC2 seems almost complete, so they are not hiring them for that.

2) Knaak commented about the Diablo storyline and basically confirmed Diablo’s world is not dead, it’s a world with dead.

3) Paul Sams interview where he says they have three product announcements. So far we’ve got a WoW expansion and StarCraft 2. I don’t know about you but I only count two so far…

4) Diablo 3 trademark and domain activity. Blizz have secured rights to all things Diablo 3 and since they aren’t making a movie, my guess is they plan a game.

5) Diablo 2 still has tens of THOUSANDS of active players. I bet more people play Diablo 2 than StarCraft (maybe not in Korea but worldwide).

Here’s another bet I’m willing to place right now: Most Diablo players are critical of WoW. I know I am. For example, I hate the fact I can’t access probably 50% of the end-game content.

Why? Because I don’t have the time to RAID. With Diablo, I can log in and solo Diablo or Baal whenever I feel like it. There’s no waiting for a healer or a tank. You go in, you kill. It’s that simple.

As a die-hard Diablo fan, I’m disappointed. Yet, die-hard Diablo fans are just that - die hards. I’m not giving up hope that Diablo 3 is going to be next when Blizzard announces a major product (and not another WoW expansion).

Starcraft 2 is as good as a consolation as any! It will make the wait for Diablo 3 less painful - if not downright enjoyable.

Update: Blizzard have released a Starcraft 2 trailer and I managed to find some gameplay videos from the WWI. The game doesn’t look much different in terms of gameplay but the graphics definitely ROCK!

I’ll be tracking Starcraft 2’s progress over at my Starcraft 2 blog.

I’m attaching a snapshot below (click to zoom) in case they decide to remove it.

I’m really hoping Blizzard will announce Diablo 3 on the 18th. It was only a few days ago that everyone was convinced they were going to announce Starcraft 2 in Korea.

It’s not just the rumors that Blizzard will announce Starcraft 2 in three weeks in Korea. Obviously, if Blizzard announce Starcraft 2 this puts Diablo 3 on the backburner for an year if not longer.

It’s not even Rob Pardo’s interview (that’s WoW’s game designer), where he explains how they have a commitment to keep the WoW money machine going by doing an expansion every year. No such commitment to Diablo, thank you very much!

It’s the OVERALL feeling that Blizzard have sold out. Money - good. You probably still remember that animation - Money good, Napster bad - from Camp Chaos.

Blizzard have become the gorilla in the room - catering to the millions of casual gamers (not to mention Chinese farmers!) and forgetting about the hardcore players who have built their franchises.

For God’s sake, there are tens of thousands of players who play Diablo 2 till this day and who who have been praying for a sequel since 2001! Say it ain’t so.

He’s the guy credited with the success of World of Warcraft and the first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

I ask him if getting these expansions out on a regular basis is a matter of survival. After all, if gamers aren’t getting fresh content, they’ll start looking elsewhere and WoW’s subscriber base will dwindle.

“Calling it a matter of survival makes it sound grim,” he says, “It’s more a matter of entertainment. Of course we want our gamers to stay in the world for as long as we can. But I look at this from the positive angle of us trying to entertain them. We’re trying to give them new experiences. One of my favorite analogies is how much an MMO is like a TV series. We’re developing episodes just like Lost or Seinfeld. We’re always trying to come up with something that’s true to the theory; that’s true to the content that people love; but that is new. From the moment that the series starts re-treading the same ground over and over again… well, that’s what we’re trying to avoid.”

Enough about WoW, if you ask me. Let’s hear something about what else is cooking in Blizzard’s kitchen.

We have other PC projects in development and we’re already working on new stuff for World of Warcraft, like another expansion. We’ve mentioned in the past that we’d love to get a boxed expansion out every year but it’s more important to deliver really high quality content to our fans. If we can do that every year that’d be great but we’re not going to do that at the expense of the experience.

With all due respect, I’m sick of hearing how Blizzard is now ONLY working on WoW expansions. What are these PC projects in development, Rob? Spill the beans already! I’d like to know if you’re talking about Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2.

The event itself will be held for 2 days. Make sure you reserve August 3 and 4 for a trip to Anaheim, California.

More from the press release:

• Discussion panels with Blizzard developers
• Artist and developer signings
• Competitive and casual tournaments for players to showcase their talents
• World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game tournaments and demos
• Costume, machinima, and character sound-alike contests with great prizes
• Commemorative merchandise and other products based on the Blizzard franchises

Here’s what caught my attention:

BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises and the players who have helped make them so popular around the world.

Now, Blizzard, if you want me to celebrate Diablo and Starcraft, just get the friggin’ games out, OK?

Now, I expected the Google guys to make it to the top. What I didn’t expect is that Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s President, is right there at number 4!

Considering Steve Jobs is number 2 and Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) is number 3, this is a pretty amazing accomplishment.

Or is it? More than anything, it goes to show how the guys at PC World spend their time: browsing, ipod, torrents, World of Warcraft … and then everything else.

I don’t mind their bias at all. I’m just a bit concerned about all the praise going to WoW though (see below)…

In the world of online gaming, there is World of Warcraft and there is everything else. With 8 million players worldwide, Blizzard earns about $1.5 billion a year on WoW. And each player is breathlessly beholden to Mike Morhaime for the chance–if it ever comes–to obtain that Blade of Eternal Justice…

Blizzard used to be more than a single game company. Now, everyone equates it with WoW and each story focuses on becoming rich off a hit MMO.

It’s high time Blizzard do something about reviving their other franchises with sequels - namely Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2). Complacency is a grave digger in any fast-moving industry.

I’m interested in anything having to do with Diablo 3 and I wasn’t dissapointed:

Diablo is trademarked as

ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES, NAMELY, PROVIDING ON-LINE COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES, ON-LINE PUBLICATIONS IN THE FIELD OF TIPS AND STRATEGIES FOR COMPUTER GAMES; ARRANGING AND CONDUCTING COMPUTER GAME COMPETITIONS; ENTERTAINMENT IN THE NATURE OF AN ONGOING TELEVISION PROGRAM IN THE FIELD OF CHARACTERS AND PLOTS BASED ON A VIDEO GAME; AND PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF MOTION PICTURES

I’m not sure Blizzard plans to make a Diablo movie just yet but obviously they want to keep their options open.

Diablo was such a click-fest that I started wondering if we could use something like Nintendo’s wiimote (that’s the Wii remote/controller). Forget PS3!

Then I saw a few pics (and videos) of guys going CRAZY with the wiimote: Smashing lights, windows, and one one guy who actually hit (and destroyed) his 60″ rear-projection TV!

Check out the pic on the right. This guy got lucky and skewered the side of the TV but the TV survived (as did the guy.

So what do you think? Would you like to swing your sword at Diablo while destroying half the house?

I’ve seen Hellgate London’s trailer as well as gameplay videos but I wasn’t too impressed. The guys there were saying DirectX 10 allows them to do all kinds of character customizations.

Enter Age of Conan. See the trailer below and then download the HD versions. It’s simply AMAZING to look at. If Diablo 3 looks anything close to that, I’m sold.

Note: this low-res version doesn’t do it justice. You should download the high-def versions below:

• DirectX 10 trailer, 720p (.wmv) - 46.5MB
• DirectX 10 trailer, 480p (.wmv) - 26.4MB

On the funny side, if you machine can’t play the 720p video smoothly, you probably need a hardware upgrade as well. I know mine can’t.

…another little nugget of gold dropped alongside it with the public admission that Itzik Ben Bassat, Vice President Business Development and International for Blizzard Entertainment, would be keen to see a new StarCraft before too long.

On stage in London for the game launch, Bassat stated, “I’m a StarCraft player myself and I hope it’s not a decade, and we launched StarCraft in 1998, before I’m standing here again, celebrating the next game in the series.”

During another previous interview, Paul Sams (Blizzard’s COO) said that in 2007 they’ll have 3 (three) product announcements. If we consider that the Burning Crusade has been one, we’re left with two.

Could it be that our wildest dreams will become true? Both Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will be announced soon?

Update: IGN has a rumor that a Starcraft 2 beta will be out by the year end.

Note: A StarCraft 2 wiki and a Diablo 3 wiki have just been setup.

Isn’t that cool? I wish someone will create an beautiful aerial view of Diablo’s world next (I know it’s randomly generated for the most part!). In the mean time, go enjoy the WoW map.

Another interesting thing about Azertoh - a guy measured it at roughly 40 square miles (~ 100 square kilometers). As such, it’s not a continent but rather an island. I think Corfu is about that…

I haven’t pre-ordered it and I’m sure that will be a stupid decision in retrospect. Some of my friends have pre-ordered and will be queueing to get their copy at midnight today.

Blizzard says there will be signed copies of the game in these stores, so you haven’t pre-ordered, you might want to go there (it’s California only from what I can tell).

Now, that they’ve got the expansion out, they might speak out on Diablo 3 (or Starcraft 2). I don’t want to wait till E3 to get a trailer!

Indeed, Hell has frozen over. Only problem is Diablo 3 is in development hell, frozen.

Now tell me that it doesn’t look like a Diablo 3 trailer! For the first 60 seconds or so. Portals, banishing, etc.

The new company is called RED 5 and consists mainly of World of Warcraft developers. They’ve managed to raise $18.5 million in funding, which is approximately half the money Vivendi says it needs to make a MMO. I guess keeping it small might be cheaper.

Mark Kern, RED 5’s CEO, had these comments in a recent interview.

“We’re not really a PC company or a PlayStation or 360 company,” he said. “We’re really about building an MMO as a platform. Because you’ve got essentially what’s a supercomputer on the backend, the question for us as game makers is what to do with that. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“Our goal is to continue to build our team, and this funding allows us to do that while building that technology base that can be used across multiple games, too.

I’m still at a loss about what their specific game plan is. Are they developing a platform for other developers or just a normal game. Hopefully, it’s the latter. I’d like to see more good MMOs coming out.

The layout assumes that Diablo 3 will be similar to Diablo 2 in terms of its isometric perspective. It might be that Diablo 3 is more flexible - like WoW or Hellgate.

The team behind Diablo I and II is looking for a skilled Senior 3D Character Animator. The ideal candidate has experience animating both human and non-humanoid characters. A solid grasp of the principles of body movement, anticipation, overshoot, follow-through, squash and stretch, forward and inverse kinematics and other facets of both 2D and 3D animation is essential. The ideal candidate works well in an environment of peers who are passionate about making great games.

There’s also another brand new opening at Blizzard - Cinematic Artist. I’m really excited by this one. Diablo 2 cinematics were a beauty to behold and enhanced the story so much.

It’s pretty obvious the cinematic artist will not be working on the WoW expansion as it’s already in public beta. I hope they are already thinking about a trailer.

One of the best parts of the WoW card game is that you can get a loot card that you can actually turn into loot within the WoW game itself.

Think about Diablo now. It’s virtually the same concept.

You got heros which will turn into hero cards.

The spells will be spells and a few summons could be added for each hero class. I’d like an Ice sorceress, thank you!

Also, I’m very excited about the whole concept of a Loot cards:

Randomly inserted into some booster packs are the legendary Loot™ cards! Loot™ cards have a scratch-off code that can be used to obtain an exclusive cosmetic item in the online game, such as a unique pet, tabard or mount! These cards are very rare…a player who finds one will likely be the envy of his or her entire realm!

From what I’ve heard legendary cards will be incredibly rare. Imagine having to collect a whole legendary set. If Diablo 3 is successful, there’s a pretty good chance Blizzard will do another TCG - this time a Diablo one. Amen.

I’ve just “upgraded” my WoW account and I’ve started downloading the client. It’s a helfty 2GB download but I’m already at 30%, so I got nothing to complain about.

I am semi-excited about the whole expansion thing. However, what I am really excited about is that finally Blizzard have NO EXCUSE.

Up till now, it was like “sorry, we’re working on the Burning Crusade, we have to keep our other projects a secret, ‘cos fans can’t handle the excitement of more than one Blizz game!”

Get the goddam expansion out and focus on Diablo 3!

Update: As of the 15th, the WoW Expansion is in stores. Go and get yours!

• Blizzard’s job announcements (Art Director to join the team behind Diablo and Diablo 2
• The new Diablo Trilogy to be published
• Richard A. Knaak speaking about Diablo and saying he’s “not writing for a dead world”.

Gamespot were kind enough to call Blizzard, only to get the following “official story”:

As it has in the past, Blizzard danced around any inquires about the status–or existence–of Diablo 3. “We love the Diablo universe and are definitely interested in returning to it at some point in the future,” a rep told GameSpot. “However, at this time, we’re wholly focused on completing the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft.”

I bet there are at least two development teams working on games at Blizzard. So my guess is Diablo’s development (or Starcraft 2!) hasn’t slowed down, just because WoW’s expansion has been delayed. More likely, it’s the marketing guys whose hands are full with card games and what not!

Update: Blizzcon has just been announced - August 3 and 4. Let’s see what kind of game announcements Blizzard will make. My biggest hope is they don’t put off Diablo 3 because of Starcraft 2.

Now comes another - Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s President answers a few questions about upcoming games (and possibly Diablo 3).

Q: Do you have a war chest now that you can use to do other things?
A: We have a number of other projects in the works. We can’t talk about them yet. They haven’t been announced.

Q: In the MMO space?
A: In general, broadly.

A few questions later, we get a console question.

Q: Starcraft Ghost?
A: Starcraft Ghost is on ice.
Q: Why?
A: It became pretty clear to us that we were late in the platform transition. We were on the wrong platform and were quickly running out of time to iterate and polish the game. We decided to pull the plug on working on old generation and we shifted all of our resources to working on next-generation platforms. There were a lot of things that we learned working on it. We’ll hopefully be able to leverage a lot of that with our next-generation games.

Q: Do you have a chance to do something like Microsoft did with Kameo, which started on the GameCube and moved to the Xbox before it was published on the Xbox 360?
A: At this point, we’re evaluating all of our options.

I think the key phrase here is “we shifted all of our resources to working on next-generation platforms”. As with everything Blizzard, you’ll find little more than a few vague statements but it seems like two things stand out:

1) There’s still a pretty good chance for Diablo 3 to be a MMO
2) Games are still being developed for the new gen of consoles (like Xbox 360 and PS3).

I really hope they don’t go after cheap video game movies like Doom.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Diablo 3 but what the heck.

I have prepared myself to be patient. No one ever managed to rush Blizzard anyway.

Here’s the first guy to get a Playstation 3 though:

“I thought that Yodobashi Multimedia Akiba would have them in stock. There were so many people I thought I wouldn’t be able to buy one, so I’m really happy,” said Okawa, who said he had waited outside the store since about 10 p.m. the previous evening.

I do remember waiting in line for the Diablo 2 expansion. It was fun because all the guys on the line were fans as well.

The part about Diablo 3 being a MMO is pretty old but I just noticed he also mentions a console (and it’s not the PS3!).

All I have to say is Diablo 3 will be on epic preperation like WoW will be except they are going to have guild housing FINALLY! There was a rumor that WoW was coming to 360 which is completely false.

Blizzard tried to squash the rumor saying it was just going to preview new MS Vista software but Diablo is what they are really going to show coming to 360 … Ghost is too late in development and a big fuck up in Blizzards eyes and stuck on the PS2 - XBOX

OK, I think I get what Chris is trying to say here: WoW is staying on the PC, while Diablo will explore new “console” ground. Frankly, I don’t care if Diablo 3 will come out on Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 but I definitely want to see it on my PC!

Some other companies get into the role of making just MMOs, but Blizzard lets the developers pick what they want to work on, and it’s not all MMOs…

This has fueled hopes that Diablo 3 might not be a MMO after all.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that World of Diablo is already registered as a trademark! I did a trademark search and here’s the result:

IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game software. FIRST USE: 20060715. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20060715 IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line computer game. FIRST USE: 20060715. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20060715″ as the use and “(APPLICANT) GENERAL COMPUTERS, INC. CORPORATION NEVADA 606 JOHNSON AVENUE, SUITE 18 BOHEMIA NEW YORK 11716

From what I can tell General Computers are a Chinese company with offices in the US (or it’s the other way around). They are coming out with a MMO called Twilight War : After the Fall.

I’m not sure HOW they have secured World of Diablo but it seems pretty obvious they plan to use it for a MMO. It could explain why Blizzard started buying all the Diablo 3 domains they could find!

Medievaldragon: Hope I am not spoiling much at this point, however I really have to ask. Blizzard introduced a new Pandemonium Event monster named Lilith (Act V) in Diablo II Patch 1.11.

Knaak: She is, I believe, although she will look a little different by the game’s point. Her part in the trilogy is major.

Here’s the Lilith info from Blizzard (patch 1.11):

Lilith is believed to be Queen of the Succubi and matriarch of demons. After her legions of Succubi and strongest daughter Andariel were killed by mortals who successfully defended the Worldstone, Lilith swore to personally intervene. She masterminded the revival of Diablo by manifesting herself in the mortal realm and performing a ritual of Dark Summoning. This ritual, long thought to be impossible by the most powerful mortal wizards, allowed Lilith to link with Diablo across realms, strengthening him until he was finally able to once again reincarnate himself in the mortal plane. Rage and a deep yearning for revenge boiled within the eyes of the Lord of Terror, and together he and Lilith resurrected the two remaining Prime Evils as well as Duriel and Izual, two of their strongest agents.

I still don’t get it. Is Lilith supposed to be new Arch-Evil that will appear in Diablo 3 or she’s just a “facilitator”, an agent who will revive Diablo and the rest of the demon bunch in order to recreate the typical Diablo plotline?

Anyone has any insight re: Lilith?

A friend of mine (a pally who thinks he’s Rambo) claims he got killed more than once because he wasn’t able to see what hit him. Diablo 2 graphics are sooo outdated by now.

I love the isometric perspective and all but I hope they come up with good graphics in Diablo 3.

Which got me thinking about the Playstation 3 (プレイステーション 3) and all the amazing stuff you can do. Not only graphics but also motion and particle effects (Havok anyone?). Check out this video for a preview:

I’d love to see Diablo tap-dance into oblivion, all in 3D on a BIG HD screen.

I vividly remember the Diablo 2 trailer. It told a story and at 7 minutes it ran the length of a short-feature film! I recently found it (low-res) and I loved seeing it again:

I killed my first Diablo barely 30 hours after I got the game. The main reason is I was anxious to see the next cinematic.

I’m pretty sure Blizzard will make an AMAZING trailer for Diablo 3. I hate the waiting though.

The Knaak interview was scheduled quite late (in Europe anyway) but this didn’t prevent people asking the right questions.

The only right question in mind is: “What are Blizzard’s plan for the Diablo franchise?” Naturally, Blizzard has enforced Knaak contractually to keep silent about product releases. He definitely HINTED about another Diablo coming though.

Q: Any information on Diablo 3? Have you been asked to write a further story?

A: What happens in the Sin War is significant, as I mentioned, toward the future. I know that Blizzard is very eager to make Diablo fans happy.

Q: