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:

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This is an extensive examination of the Diablo 3 lore, in fact its so long that I will break it down in several posts. The first will be about the background, which is my favorite part. The original post can be found on StarCraft 2 armory if you prefer to read it as a whole.

So, the sequel to the almighty RPG title Diablo 2 has finally been announced, Blizzard has been unusually mysterious about the plot giving us virtually nothing to go off of, except some remarkably provocative artwork and a cinematic trailer. Here’s what we got from them (Blizzard.)

-Set 20 yrs after Diablo 2
-There will be returning NPCs (Cain, Tyrael)
-Meteor’s are the harbringers of doom, one just crashed into the cathedral at Tristram where Diablo himself once stood.
-Tyrael is being punished (confirmed)
-Hell was expected to attack as soon as the worldstone was destroyed
-Hell has not
-Hell is just beginning to come up (from where the worldstone once stood)
-The Sin War trilogy of books is considered canon
-Most hero’s played in Diablo 2 have gone insane from the horrors of Hell.
-One new NPC we know is a young woman named Leah who has a direct relationship with Cain, probably apprentice or something. There’s artwork further in the article to confirm this.
-The destruction of the Worldstone will have massive ramifications.

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Solivagant has written another great post about the comparison between Diablo 3 and Fallout 3 which I find to be a very nice post well worth reading and pondering upon. What do you think?

I’ve received a lot of feedback regarding a post I made on my Destructoid blog, more positive than negative so I decided to continue that line of thought and further compare Diablo 3 and Fallout 3.

I started my post by stating that everything that I’d seen on June 28 got me interested in Diablo 3. Everything that I’ve seen since then has only gotten me even more interested.

Specifically, Leonard Boyarsky’s involvement as Lead World Designer. His title means that he’s the guy in charge of making sure the storyline holds up, in charge of all the details and tales that, as I mentioned in my previous post, kept running backstage while chaos erupted in the forefront in the previous games.

While you were mass clicking some miniboss, somewhere in the gameworld an NPC kept waiting for you to come back, ready to present you with your next quest. This NPC had a name, a personality, a backstory, a personal agenda.

But you barely got to know any of it.

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IGN managed to get an interview with Leonard Boyarsky, the game’s lead world designer, on the importance of lore in the game and the decision to give the character classes voices, among other things.

Australia,  July 24, 2008 - BlizzCon is likely to be the gaming world’s next chance to see some more on the highly anticipated Diablo III, but to tide you over just a little, we had a quick chat with Leonard Boyarsky, the game’s lead world designer, on the importance of lore in the game and the decision to give the character classes voices, among other things.
IGN: What do you do as the lead world designer, and what have you worked on in the past in that respect?
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Chronicle of forbidden Ice - A Diablo 3 RPG Chronicle

I am reading through the old Griswold Chronicle and prepare to write the prologue of the Chronicle of Forbidden Ice now and I see that there are many areas where I think the old chronicle strayed quite a bit from what I think a Diablo 3 chronicle should be like, but its salvageble I think

I expect to have the Prologue ready in a few weeks to get things started…

The Chronicle of forbidden ice | a Diablo 3 RPG Chronicle

The Chronicle of forbidden ice is the name of the new Diablo 3 chronicle that will begin shortly and it will start with a short prologue to let you kow what has happened since the Griswold Chronicle and then the actual RPG process will begin.

In short it is done by me posting an introduction post that give the setting for a scene and then the cast use the comment system to further the storyline. In order to keep outsiders out these RPG posts will be closed by password given only to the cast and when the scene end a new post will be made with the full transcript of that episode and hopefully also a nice .pdf to download as well.

The cast will be choosen from friends and members of diabloiiiblog.com, so if you want to join in, please post a comment with why and what character you wish to play.

Rainark opened his eyes and saw Graywind moving his way.
“Good morning, Rain” Graywind said as he and Rainark Clasp hands.

Graywind told him he did not know who the field commander was and that he was on his way to his room to gather his supplies.

“Ok Brother, While you get things in order ill be off looking for the field commander”

Rainark turn and headed out to the Yard thinking to him self –A quest before my quest..what a pain– he chuckeled.

Looking everywhere he hope to find the Commander he seeked , and soon…

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