Diabloiiiblog's TwitterI have the good fortune to announce that we have been given permission to host the Diablo 3 based Fiery Runes wallpapers from HolyKnight3000, who is also a member of DiabloIIIBlog.com now. You find all of his work in the gallery and can keep up to date with new creations through the forum.
Enjoy!
Join the forum discussion on this post - (3) Posts As you can see the new Diablo 3 wordpress theme is starting to take place and is now the default design for this website. Things are still not 100% and I need to customize many more areas before I am happy with how things look, but at least its usable. I have taken great ains in making this design widget-ready, which is a little troublesome at first.
I will focus on some other projects for a while, but this project will have my attention as far as posting goes, even if the design bit will have to sit back for a while. I especially need to re-design the forum that I have done pretty much nothing with it so far other than just change a few things here are there.
I hope you like it so far.
Our friends at diablo 3 community have announced a new nifty tool called the Diablo 3 blue tracker, which basicly dig out official comments by Blizzard from the Diablo 3 battle.net forums. Its a very nice way to keep up to date with what the boys in blue are saying and stay on top of the news flow.
We are proud to present the Diablo 3 Blue Tracker
What is a Blue Tracker?
A Blue Tracker grabs the official Blizzard posts in the Battle.net forums, so you can just read the important information.Diablo 3 Blue Tracker
The Diablo 3 Blue Tracker gets the important posts from the Diablo 3 Battle.net forumsFuture
The Blue Tracker will be integrated into the site soon when Fluxbb 1.3 is out of beta.Credits
Thanks you sc2Pod for making the RSS feed for the Blue Tracker. Feed aggregation is powered by Simple Pie
I am going to start on the new Diablo 3 design for diabloiiiblog.com today since I feel I want to get a flying start with it. I will begin by adding the “wrapper” as soon as possible and then the actual postbit. The sidebar will be a simple version where I will try not to poke things to much so it can remain widget friendly and the footer I will ponder on later as I am sure I want to add something down there as well eventually 
I am preparing some advertising spots for the future (you never know) with a 468×60 adspot below each post, a 720×90 spot in the footer, a 300×250 spot in the sidebar and I will try a plugin for random adspots as well. It may sound like a bit to much, but I want to see how it looks and if its not working I’ll remove the areas that are not working.
Feedburner get alot of attention with graphic spots for RSS for posts as well as comments along with a feedburner counter. I am also going to add Technoracti features and work on making the social services sections a bit nicer.
When its in place I’ll start working on the details a bit, like fixing the gallery and the forum so it will look nice and bland with the new design.
It will take a while to get this done since I am home with my son, but I will at least have something to show by the weekend. If you want a sneak preview, please post a comment and I’ll give you a link to see the work in progress.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (3) Posts 
Today I continued the word of implementing the items on the guide “WordPress SEO - Definitive Guide To High Rankings For Your Blog” which today included setting up the possibility to subscribe to comments directly and to take the step over to Twitter, which I have to admit is rather amusing so far all alone (please join me or I will go mad!). This done I also added my latest “Twitterings” as a widget so you can follow more easily.
I have also completed the setup for Feedburner so that the RSS feeds are parsed through their service and make it easy to signup for latest posts in the mail (email that is, not snailmail) and started to add the social services features so its easy to add to your favorite service.
If you want to stay on top of what happens here you can follow the diabloiiiblog.com Twitter stream or subscribe to diabloiiiblog.com’s RSS feed here. You can also subscribe to get notifications through email here.
For those that are addictive to RSS feeds you also have multiple choices for subscribing to different areas of the forum including an overview RSS feed for all activities, Forum based RSS feeds and down to feeds for individual topics…all to make you stay on top of what happens there.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts On Diablofans.com they have gathered a few questions to let Bashiok, the Diablo 3 community manager, answer as good as he can. There are some interesting things in that post and I’ll repeat it here for you.
Bashiok rolls his engines to answer a few concerns from the Diablo III Gameplay Video.
Q u o t e:
Here are some smaller information I gathered from watching Diablo 3’s gameplay video. Some may be obvious but have not been posted, so here it goes!Undead Comes Back for Revenge
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/9…orsc813de9.jpg
At 8:13 of gameplay, an already dead creature comes back to life. A zombie of the undead!
Bashiok: This is the detached torso of a Walking Corpse. After death the torso of the Walking Corpse has a chance to survive, detaching itself and crawling after the hero.
Q u o t e:
Crittershttp://img169.imageshack.us/img169/5…ers1409zl6.jpg
14:09 of Gameplay - Besides from there being cute bunnies in Diablo 3, critters don’t die. Man, I always liked killing critters in Starcraft. This image is the Witch Doctor throwing a random fire ball which directly hits a critter, but the critter receives no effect.
Bashiok: This was unfortunately a bug that existed in the build that was being used to record the gameplay video. Those critters die, and there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a bunny corpse flung across the screen. It just wasn’t working for the demo, which stinks.
Q u o t e:
Leader doesn’t die until new spawns come?http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/2…die1525jy4.jpg
15:25 of Gameplay - That same leader of the post above this one, leads the Witch Doctor and Barbarian to the hill where it was the supposedly “nasty trap” they got caught into. But this leader was not able to get hit or damaged in any way until after the new enemy spawns came.
Frozen
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/4…zen1530nx5.jpg
15:30 of Gameplay - The Witch Doctor and Barbarian are frozen by the same group leader. It shows 2 red effects on the bottom left of the screen, one looking image looking like a time thing (forgot what its called lol) which may show how long the effect lasts or just slows target down, and second being ice image, which is for the completely frozen effect. Also when frozen, your whole skill bar goes red. (Frozen effect seems dangerous for Hardcore players !)
Bashiok: It was a scripted event to pretty much have a cool way to introduce the female Witch Doctor and Barbarian, so yeah, it wasn’t necessarily indicative of something that would show up in the actual game.
Q u o t e:
Jumping/Dodging?http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/1…ing1653kl5.jpg
16:53 of Gameplay - During the end of gameplay, the Siegebreaker Assault Beast boss makes his entrance by slamming through the wall, charging against the players. They all jumped. Either its automatic jump reflexes, which seems kind of weird, or theres a jumping button.
Another part when the jumping is really seen as, what’s really going on?
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/8…ain1738rc5.jpg
The Siegebreaker charges at the Witch Doctor at 17:38 of gameplay. The Witch Doctor clearly dodges the attack somehow. I would assume, this cannot be automatic reflexes because that would make no sense. Just let him stomp on the damn player, or are the players really dodging somehow?
Bashiok: This is a knock back effect when the Siegebreaker would use its “charge” type ability. It effectively damages your character and pushes them away from the charging path.
| Blackdoom: What is the point in posting ideas and suggestions on her asking for this or that to be in the game, or saying those things should or shouldn’t be in it. I doubt anyone from Blizzard… at least anyone from Blizzard that matters, is reading any of the posts here, and even if they did, they most likely do not give a rat’s ass about what their fans think. Hell in a post, or somewhere I read it, not sure where, they said they make the games and things in the games around what they like, and want to see in a game, not what the fans want. It would be great if they did give a $!@% though, there have been some awesome ideas on here, but they just do not seem like people who care what their fans want. They are in it for the money from what I’ve seen, even though they seem that way, I am not saying they suck or anything, Blizzard is still the best! Anyway, anyone have proof that blizzard (someone, or a group of people that matter and might carry some kind of decision making weight) actually cares about what we think? An e-mail, a link, past posts, ect… |
Bashiok: Aw, of course we care! A large part of my job is specifically to ensure that the valid concerns, comments, and critiques are brought to the appropriate people’s attention. That doesn’t mean that every idea or suggestion is something we agree with, or are going to base changes on though. There’s a point where, as a game designer, you have to stick to your guns and know that your choices and direction are what’s best for the game and ultimately those that will be playing it. There’s a point where you have to be confident that you’re making the right decisions. So at the end of the day you’re staying true to your vision and design, and doing what’s best for the game.
A good example of us paying attention though was the concern and thread about corpses not sticking around long enough. I read that thread, brought it up, and some discussion was happening on it. Later our lead tech artist Julian was reading through the replies, and got some ideas of how we may want to keep corpses on screen a little longer. Now we’re playing around with some changes that shouldn’t have a huge performance hit, while still keeping the corpses on screen for variable amounts of time. Hopefully it works out.
Would any experimentation for corpse decay have happened had it not been brought up on the forums? I don’t know, maybe, but we’re not just dismissing good, valid, and well reasoned concerns.
As I said not every suggestion, comment, or idea is going to be considered, but we’re definitely watching and reading.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts The official Diablo 3 forum seem to have been spammed by a user ironicly called “SHUT-the-FK-up”. From the bottom half of the first page and all the way to page 1000 (yes, thats almost 30.000 topics). It seems to have calmed down now though and some voices are yelling to have this person (bot) deleted along with the spam posts.
So far I have not seen any comment or action from Blizzard though…maybe they are sleeping or at vacation?
Official Diablo 3 forum spammed
The Official Diablo 3 forum spammed
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