Its been ages since I had any time to write here, but with dual workloads of 40+ hours per week I find it hard to find time to write anything here. This means that this blog is in need of fresh blood to help manage things around here.

So, if you have an interest in Diablo 3 and feel that it would be fun to blog about it, please let me know and I will talk things over with you and give you some space to conduct some testposting on before accepting you as a full editor.

The European Gaming Convention took place in Leipzig, Germany this year and there has been alot of goodies that came from this convention as far as Diablo 3 goes. No less than 6 different interviews with Jay Wilson has been uncovered with lots of juicy stuff and a whole lot of new graphics, so it was a really action packed event indeed it seems.

The first D3 team interview from the GC is up on IGN and it’s a good read. They spoke to D3 Lead Jay Wilson, and after getting the obligatory art direction question out of the way, they dug into some interesting game functions: inventory, skill use, monster design, health sytems, and more. A quote:

“A lot of people, I think, would say that’s a hallmark of the Diablo series, the potion system. We looked at it and said, ‘No, that just makes the game worse,’” said Wilson. “It doesn’t make it play like a better action game, it just kind of gives the player infinite health. It’s actually a fairly poor recovery mechanic because it forces the designers to design monsters that have to deal with a player that has infinite health. The only thing you can do is have monsters that can overcome that health and essentially one-shot you. That’s not a very interesting monster. It’s actually a horrible monster. But that’s the only option. The design shoehorned the designers into that kind of monster design. So we focused on a health system that actually forces the player to think tactically to recover health from monsters and to put them in some situations where they are low on health but have to walk into an enemy encounter anyway. That makes for a much more challenging encounter but it also makes for a situation where we can design the monsters to be a lot more interesting. We actually can lower damage on monsters. We want monsters to do less damage because we want them to wear you down over time and do things that are challenging in different ways.”

Gamespy has posted their own interview with Jay Wilson. This one is less a conversation about game mechanics and more a standard Q&A, with quotes from Jay about the features we’ll see in Battle.net 2.0, the state of the RPG genre, randomizing level design, D3’s planned financial model, and how D3 might handle PvP. Here are the highlights of the interview, and a quote for good measure:

Read the rest of this entry »

To a poster who complained about the obscuring visual fireworks created by various Diablo 2 skills, Bashiok explained the D3 Team’s design philosophy.

Keeping the visuals distinct and “readable” is an extremely important focus for us, and as has been stated quite a few times, relates to a lot of the art style and direction choices.

You need to be able to read the scene, tell monster and player apart, and not have it turn into a mess of spell effects. While we’re really aiming for over-the-top skills and effects, it’s going to be a constant goal (and likely struggle) to keep those in line so that in a multiplayer game it’s going to retain its readability.

It’s fine for things to get chaotic, it will happen and we want there to be mass-mayhem and slaughter, but we’re trying to keep the game playable even during the chaos. It’s a balance.

Other fans are hungry for more content, and are already wondering if we’ll see the goods at Blizzcon. Will we get a gameplay movie? Bashiok deals with one such fellow with Roper-ian grace, acknowledging, inspiring, and redirecting him so smoothly he never even feels the PR knife slide in.

Well, you’ll just have to wait and see!

In the more immediate future a few of us are heading out to Leipzig for GC next week. We’ll be joining our friends from the Blizzard Europe office to meet and greet the fans. If you happen to be passing through Germany and also happen to have a ticket to the convention, be sure to stop by and say hello.

Other forum goes are not so easily put off, and a follow up question is quickly posed, asking what sort of information we’ll see released to coincide with that major German gaming event. Not a whole lot, apparently:

From what I gather I think I would equate it more to our presences at similar booth-style conventions, ComicCon and GenCon Indy in years past, for instance. We have a booth, usually some gaming stations set up, and we talk with people about the games and hold interviews. I fully expect some good interviews with Jay to come out of it, but I would more or less expect that to be the main focus of information coming out of the show regarding Diablo III.

Stop by and say hi though. I think I may be the only Blizzard person there with a goatee, so I should be easy to spot. I’m scheduled to be there every day to chat up fans about the game.

Source: Diii.com

More goodies from MTV’s Multiplayer blog with Diablo 3 lead designer Jay Wilson, this time he is talking about how they struggle to appease what he refer to as an “extremely broad audience”.

“Diablo” fans aren’t just those taking the time to make petitions and their own screenshots.

According to lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson, the team has to appease an “extremely broad audience” as well as hardcore fans.

“Up until fairly recently, ‘Diablo II’ was Blizzard’s best-selling game,” Wilson recently told me when I asked him just who “Diablo” fans are. “‘World of Warcraft‘ has finally surpassed it, but it took it several years to do that. And part of the reason is how approachable the game is.”

Keeping the game approachable is key for Wilson. “It’s one of the reasons why we made some of the choices we made, like when we pulled out the potion system,” he said. “When we wanted to add a hot bar we knew we had to pull the potion stuff out. Every time we add something, we have to pull something out to keep the game very simple and straightforward to play.”

“One of the things that happened in ‘Diablo II’,” Wilson continued, “was the player was faster than most of the monsters and had pretty much infinite health because they would just pop as many potions as they wanted. So when you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them… by just spiking the difficulty.”

But in “Diablo III,” players will have to pick up health orbs after they’ve killed enemies, which will restore their health upon contact. Wilson saw on the forums that people were worried that this might make the game “ridiculously hard.” He said that fans shouldn’t worry.

“That’s only if we tuned it like ‘Diablo II,’” he said. “When the player has similar downsides, it means we can make a lot more interesting monsters. We don’t have to kill you to challenge you. We can make a monster that affects your mobility, we can make a monster that has different kinds of attacks that are dangerous to you and that you actually have to avoid. And so it makes the combat a lot more interesting.”

While Wilson said they’ll keep the game accessible, he knows “Diablo III” has to ultimately appease their hardcore fans. He assured me that the team has kept this in mind, and is making the game progressively harder.

“A lot of the choices we make are styled towards knowing the long term,” he said. “I think that hardcore players, long-term, will find a game that has lot more depth for them but we distinctly made the choice that in the first stage of difficulty, the game’s really easy. So it’s easy to get through, it’s fun to play and you can kind of spam with one skill. But as you get further and further into the game, you start having to go, ‘Okay now I’ve really got to use this ground stomp thing to stun some monsters and get some distance from them to recover.’ That’s something that we focus on more later in the game.”

Diii.com is going all out with this contest and it looks like a really nice one, so if you have an oppertunity to join, then why not give it a go? Here is the information from Diii.com.

Do you want to win a cool book on swords by one of the D2 artists, a spot in the ongoing WoW beta, and an in-game Tyrael mini-pet? Of course you do, and here’s your chance! We’ve got four signed copies of Ben Boos’ first book, Swords: An Artist’s Devotion, and we’re giving them away in two different contests. We’re even throwing in some Blizzard prize cards, each of which holds a code to get you into the WoW beta, and to get you one of those ultra rare Tyrael mini-pets.

We’re running two contests; you can win with your fan art, or your very short story writing, and we’re even picking two non-winning entrants at random and giving them prize cards, so your odds have never been better. Full rules and details on how to enter can be seen in the official contest article. Add your 11-word story to the comments of that thread, to enter.

Even if you care nothing about the WoW-themed prizes, you’ll want to check out our interview with Ben Boos, and the sample images from his new book. Swords is set for release on September 9th, and it’s a gorgeous volume, full of Ben’s original artwork depicting swords and their use throughout human history. In the interview Ben talks about his artistic inspirations, his work on D2 and D2X, how he got hired at Blizzard, how he sold his book, his next project, and more.

Blizzard has updated the official Diablo 3 webpage again with additional material for us to enjoy and for the graphic nuts to go haywire about.

1. Artwork 1 - Some form or armoured dog/hyena like creature.
2. Artwork 2 - A View of the city of Ureh.
3. Artwork 3 - An angel like shape standing in what appears to be a portal of some sort.
4. Screenshot 1 - A dungeon voew with a ladder.
5. Screenshot 2 - Outside view of barbarian fighting some skeletons.
6. Wallpaper 1 - A Wallpaper view of Artwork 2, city of Ureh.

BlizzCon is opening October 10th to 11th in Annaheim and for those fortunate enough to live close enough to attend and the very lucky ones who managed to get their hands on one of the elusive tickets there will be a lot of fun going on, not just for Diablo 3.

For those interested in Diablo 3 however there will be 3 panels to attend and enjoy:

Diablo III Class Design

You’ve witnessed the raw physical power of the barbarian and the terrifying alchemy and diseases of the witch doctor. Now you can learn more about these heroes — and see if any other champions emerge to defend the mortal world.

Diablo III Game Design

Get a detailed look at the design and development process behind the visceral gameplay of Diablo III. We’ll explore the influence previous Diablo games have had, as well as the new and exciting features the upcoming sequel has to offer.

Diablo III – Lore and Art

From lore to spell effects, from creature design to quests — sit down with our writers and artists as they discuss the creative process of building Diablo III’s rich world of Sanctuary.

Read the rest of this entry »

Multiple sources has already reported this, like StarCraft 2 Forum:

Brian Morrisroe, the lead Diablo 3 Art Director apparently quit last week, according to a statement released by Blizzard to game blog Kotaku. The announcement comes on the heels of criticism from Diablo fans about the style of the new game’s art, but according to Blizzard Morrisroe’s disembarkment is unrelated. Blizzard also stated that the game art would not be changed and that they “are pleased with the look and feel” of the game, and it won’t change after Mr. Morrisroe’s departure.

Still, the timing of the event leaves one to wonder if the Diablo community has offended. Blizzard is now seeking new talent at the Art Director position. It doesn’t look like they’ll have a tough time of it.

Regarding Brian, he recently resigned to form a startup company “outside the game industry”, which is why we posted about the open position. That change won’t impact the game…we’re really pleased with the look and feel that Brian helped create for Diablo III, and the new person we bring aboard will work with other artists on the team to maintain the art style moving forward.

There has been some controversy regarding Bashioks hint at there being a Beta key in the goodie bags at BlizzCon and now he want to withdraw that, while still keeping the door open anyway?

I think the wording in my original post got some people thinking I was hinting that any included beta key would undoubtedly be used for a Diablo III beta.

That was not my intent, and as I said any beta key we give out on those cards could be used for any purpose deemed necessary. If the Wrath of the Lich King beta is still going after BlizzCon and we want more testers, then it could be used for that if we wanted.

My original post was only meant to say that regardless of what a beta key is used for, you should still attend as you won’t be disappointed.

There has been no release date announced, shared, hinted at, or otherwise imagined. Retailers may have dates in their computers which someone at their company made up, none of them have anything to them other than best-guess work. This is how video game pre-orders work.

…there’s no standard announcement-to-release formula.

MTV Multiplayer continue to spit out gems from their interviews and this time its about the question if Diablo 3 is the end of the series or not…

Not much has been revealed about “Diablo III“’s storyline, but lead designer Jay Wilson did tell me that the game will round out the story arc set up by the previous two games.

The plot behind “Diablo III” was developed with Blizzard’s VP of creative development Chris Metzen, who crafted the tales for the first two games. In the first “Diablo,” the player quests to kill the Lord of Terror.

Then in “Diablo II” and its expansion, the player is an adventurer set off to discover what happened to the warrior from the first title, who became corrupted, and fight the Prime Evils, other Hell-spawned superpowers unleashed by Diablo.

Wilson also told me that in addition to fan-favorite Deckard Cain, “Diablo III” will feature other characters from “Diablo” lore.

“We also tried to focus a little more on bringing characters back, and not just from ‘Diablo II’ but from ‘Diablo I,’” he said. “We feel like a lot of the focus is on ‘Diablo II’ but ‘Diablo I’ started it all and has a lot of really good stuff on the gameplay side and on the character side. So people can expect to see characters from ‘Diablo I,’ more characters from ‘Diablo II,’ and characters from some of the books. We’re definitely going to bring a few of them in.”

And while “Diablo III” ends the trilogy, fans needn’t worry — it’s not the final curtain for “Diablo.” “We’re not saying this is the end of the ‘Diablo’ universe, but we are trying to bring this storyline to a close,” Wilson said. “It’s not just ‘Diablo III’ — we’ve got plans beyond.”

Is it too soon to start complaining about the art style of “Diablo IV“?