DiabloFans

I am reminded of this bit by Bryan Regan. CAN YOU JUST FLIP IT!?!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmmgx_jPlKI

I downloaded it and got herpes, WTF. Thanks diablofans, there's no cure for that shit.

I think the models look amazing. One thing to remember: We, as humans now unrestricted by the worldstone, can finally realize our true powers, and emerge more heaven-like or hell-like as we grow in strength. The monk looks to be wearing armor similar to Tyrael or some other high arch-angels.. it makes sense in the context of lore..

Let's look at the art direction in context with what our characters are experiencing in the game.. Given that Leonard Boyarsky mentioned specifically that we will be faced with the full power of heaven and hell, and may need to choose, believe me.. lots of thought has gone into the art style. Perhaps they are witholding the "darker" side of loot for spoiler reasons.

But even without that, I think the models are gorgeous.

Wait wait whoa whoa whoaaa.. you mean Blizzard is retarded and ruining everything?? You mean they're NOT coming to your house, cupping your balls, and bending to your every whim and fancy?

Cool fucking story bro. See you in-game when it's released.

These whiner-ass armchair developer threads need to stop.

If you've decided you're not going to buy the game, do us all a favor and GTFO.

Quote from paroxysm2010

Your all tripping, the items REALLY do not look that impressive, your just for lack of a better description, diablo whipped, and you would pretty much love anything they throw at you,
look REAL close at the items, they are ok ya, nothing to throw a hissy fit about, but seriously not that impressive, I know 15 year olds who can draw armor/weapons that would blow those away

Thing about these icons.... people either LOVE them, or they HATE them. Or they think they're just ok. One thing is for sure.. the hater tears are DELICIOUS.

I'm taking pre-orders. Just gimme your credit card #, 3-digit code, full name and your address, and we will ship the Super-Special Leetgamer Collector's Edition to you. If you include your social security card and passport or driver's license with payment, we will throw in a bonus beta key for you and a friend. Original copy of your birth certificate will get you 50% off MSRP! Send me your kidney and I'll personally make sure your bathtub stays filled with ice so you can recover in time for beta!

Quote from FelReaver

I wrote this on bnet.

I have nothing against cooldowns, but despite all their talk about pvp not influencing pve, i'm now in doubt.
I think pvp is the reason for the cooldowns. And i wonder what other "pleasant " surprises pvp will bring.

I think the reason for cooldowns is that it allows for extremely OP skills to exist. OP skills are awesome, they make you feel godlike, and that's a design goal Blizzard stated for D3. But how do you balance an unbalanced skill? Put a timer on it.

Whether or not people think that's a cheap way to balance skills, it's a simple and effective way to do it. Those who have a problem with it, I understand. At the end of the day, I want a couple of 1-button nukes. But without a cooldown, I will have to form my entire build around that 1-button nuke, min-maxing for resources needed so I can spam it. Otherwise, my character will be intrinsically weaker than those who have min-maxed. That kicks down the potential viable builds into a D2-like situation. Like it or not, that's a fact.

Quote from hoboman27

it'll be nice if they have something like "shift + left click a item on the ground" and the item goes straight to your salvage cube. so you dont have to pickup everything (thats valuable for salvaging of course) on the ground and then go into inventory to salvage items 1 by 1.

I could see that going wrong in a hurry.. Epic drop? Muscle-memory shift-click salvage. /ragequit. /throw coke bottle at wall. /smash keyboard. /yell NO EVERYTHINGS NOT FINE MOM!!!

Quote from popo_joe

ok you take away haggling, since games r reduced to 4 players and you dont need to see people for trading, what would be the point of playing online?

Seriously? You're saying "The only purpose of playing online is to trade items face-to-face and haggle." Literally the most absurd argument I've ever seen on this matter. Possibly any matter ever.

Quote from popo_joe

stop comparing diablo and wow, they have nothing in common.
diablo is not an mmo, and the only way to socialize in the game is either by trading (which wont be popular with an AH) or by helping people or getting helped.

I am so sick of this argument, it infuriates me. There is a very very large intersection between a game like WoW and a game like Diablo. They are played with other people, you create and build characters, those characters fall into identical RPG archetypes, said characters rely heavily on gear for their effectiveness.. I could keep listing things, but it's pretty boring, so. The point is, just because one's massively multiplayer and the other isn't is immaterial. And I would argue that Diablo has ALWAYS shared some minor elements with "massively multiplayer" games..mainly because parts of Diablo are indeed persistent: battle.net. You can get into a game at any time with almost anyone. That right there lends itself to having certain similarities with WoW.

Quote from popo_joe

in wow, since the world is so huge and openworld, an AH is practical.

So your argument is, since an AH is practical in a large persistent world, and Diablo does not have a large persistent world, therefore an AH would NOT be practical in Diablo? Hopefully you can see the fallacy in that argument. Just because it's convenient in WoW has no bearing on the fact that it's ALSO convenient in Diablo.

The real reason an AH is convenient? So many items. With such a huge influx of items, there has to be a common center where people can go to efficiently and effectively exchange said items. That's why one of the first things humans ever built when tribes got large enough was a marketplace. You wouldn't just walk through an entire city with a wagon full of crap yelling "CELL PHONE CASES! GOT SOME CELL PHONE CASES!" No. Go to the fucking mall and get a console.

That's also why, in a game that relies on other people but does NOT have a persistent in-game world, an AH is absolutely critical! Trading and economy was so ridiculously broken in D2 that people literally created a web site that made their own, out-of-game economy because the in-game one was pathetic. If you don't agree with that, we're done here.

Quote from popo_joe

dont take AH for granted, we still dont know and im sure blizz dont wanna take down trading.

and btw for me, as soon as you cant haggle , i dont call it trading, you dont trade in an AH, you just buy stuff, just like with merchants.

Seriously? You're gonna make a semantic play right now? Trading is the exchange of goods between two parties. If you honestly believe that the word "trading" means meeting face-to-face and physically exchanging stuff through a p2p trading window, and anything other than that is not trading, I can do nothing for you.

Omninom rebutted your points perfectly, but I simply had to contribute for the sheer enjoyment I get out of debunking ridiculous collections of words.

Quote from popo_joe

an auction house would kill the trading.

people wont bother to trade.

what kept me playing the game for all those years was the trading.

I have always hated face-to-face (manual) trading and prefer an Auction-house style GUI. Maybe the reason trading kept you playing the game is because the core game got really boring. It did for me.

All these people saying "nope, auction house won't work" aren't thinking straight. A streamlined GUI, that allows you to filter items based on whatever specs you need is BY FAR the most effective way to acquire items. (What appears to be) A small minority of people get off on the face-to-face trading sub-game, but most people hated that.

Also, let's remember two things:

1. Crafting: dis-enchanting items into mats will greatly offset a flood of items into the economy.
2. Econ 101: Economies have a tendency to correct themselves. If everyone floods the market with crap items, and there's no demand for them, the items won't sell. Then, people being not idiots, will stop spamming crap items on the AH because they'll just lose money and waste time posting them. After an initial period of volatility, the economy will settle into a predictable steady-state where buyers get their needs met by sellers. Volatility will creep back in, and supply/demand will correct it back to steady state.

I think what you are forgetting though is that they have to dedicate to Warcraft, to Starcraft and to Diablo. People demand it, they demand it even more than new titles from Blizzard. Blizzard has to supply what people demand and then when the money and timing is right, they can invest in another project.

I'm sure Warcraft 4 is in talks, I'm sure they already have plans in place for Starcraft 3 and Diablo 4. They said they are 'wrapping up this story arc' in Diablo 3... so they probably already have people working on a new story arc for another trilogy of games. They have to, because people will demand it, people will want it.

WoW is finally dying down enough and has a stable enough 'hardcore' player base to make the game still somewhat relevant even if it starts to 'die'. So they have moved a lot of the top people off of the game and onto Titan. Their resources and best/brightest are now on their new project, while they have groomed other employees to take over WoW.

I don't think people remember Blizzard when Diablo and Starcraft were being made. They weren't a huge company or anything, they were just kind of scraping by. WoW turned them from a great, but somewhat small company into probably the most known game maker in the entire world. So they HAD to dedicate to WoW and they still have to do so since 10+ million people still subscribe to the game.

If the companies that churned out Oblivion/Fallout/etc. created an online game that captivated that many people, it would be the same way. It takes time for a company to grow, to expand, to get used to being massive. Blizzard seems to have finally adjusted and like we have agreed upon the sign of their adjustment lies in the development of new games (Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2), but more specifically in their willingness to branch out and develop a new game (Titan).

You are speaking based off of passion. It is creating an illogical response. Everyone else is using common sense. The people using common sense find it difficult to understand you, period.

It's not a personal attack so much as just telling you (and other people who complain about this) that they just come off as whiners for no reason what so ever.

"OH GOD! YOU CAN BUY A SUBSCRIPTION TO WOW AND AT THE SAME TIME GET DIABLO 3! WHAT A SLAP IN THE FACE BY BLIZZARD! JUST LET IT DIE!!!"

What? Why do you care? Just buy Diablo 3 and don't get the subscription.

Let one of the most (if not the most) popular games in history just die? Don't give discounts for their players who want to play both WoW and Diablo 3?

So Blizzard should:

1. Just abandon their cash cow that has brought them billions of dollars.
2. They should be less friendly to the Diablo and WoW player fanbases?

Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? No one would call you out on it, but those statements are just ridiculous. It bothers me that you do not realize this when it is just blatantly obvious.

In addition, it is YOU who is slapping Diablo 3 in the face. It is you who are questioning it, not Blizzard. If the game is good enough, people will play. If it is more entertaining/addictive than WoW, people will play it over WoW. You seem to have this opinion that they are giving away Diablo 3 so that people can play it for two weeks, beat a couple of difficulties and then go back to a game that YOU YOURSELF believe to be inferior.

I guess it just comes down to this. I shouldn't have typed it all... because in the end one thing describes what you are saying:

"What you are saying makes no sense."

Quote from Phrayed

Good lord man, you act like they are taking a shot at your manhood or something. It's a freaking video game.

I think some people really, really enjoyed the bliz glory years where they created franchises like D, SC, War, and the original release of WoW.

Seeing the company since then, and their change of their values is a really heartbreaking, personal thing when those games were like the tv/movie/sports for your entire teenage years. Is that a little sick, and immature? Sure. But it is what it is, and is a powerful testimony to how great those games were.

Inevitably, anyone who has worked in the real world knows that big money ruins everything. But that doesn't make it less sad.

Quote from maka

I have to say, the empathy level on this forum has to be on an all-time low. The amount of times I've read "I don't use it, so I'm glad it's out" is staggering. No big surprise, though.
It's especially funny when you read things like "MODS RUINED MY ONLINE BORDERLANDS EXPERIENCE!". So? What does that add to the discussion? Nobody's asking for mods in the main, bnet servers. What does this have to do with anything?

And it's funny how people feel that when a company takes a stance on what's best for their product, people think they have a right to tell them what to do. Diablo 3 belongs to Blizzard, and yeah, they are making it for their fanbase, but ultimately they will create it anyway they see fit. That is 100% their right, isn't it?
Who are we to dictate the usage to their intellectual property.
I've never felt the urge to write to an author to let him know I demand changes to his work, just because I disagree.

Really it's not so much a matter of empathy, more a case of apathy. This is Blizzard's choice and that's how it is.
You know what, people cracked WoW and created 3rd party servers. Perhaps the same will happen with D3. Then people can create their own second rate, illicit content.

I'm just gonna through this out there...

I am okay with the "no modding" thing, because it is tied to the online only. Which means I'm also okay with the online only, for two reasons. 1) I was going to do that anyway (and I honestly don't care if you weren't, I'm buying games based on how I am going to play them), and 2) It will make hacking (not modding, hacking) more difficult.

As to how much more difficult? I do not know. But something needs to be done, and if this is what lets me play a game without hacking/bots, so be it. Because I basically had to stop playing Borderlands online because of all the stupid hacks/mods in there. And not just mods where some jerk shows up and starts shooting a bajillion rockets at once, slowing everyone down to a crawl, but the mods that look like a normal item, and then fill your inventory with undroppable crap, or ones that automatically give you super shields and health, thus not just running that game, but the whole stupid save file.

Normally I'd say I'll except the bad to get the good, but when it gets that bad, its just not worth it.

One thing that I think get's glazed over here:

Suppose even a medium-small fraction of players from WoW have not tried Diablo but will no as a result of this offer.

Let's say 1 million (of 10-11 million) WoW players have never played Diablo and don't have much interest, but with this offer they get it for free and decide to give it a whirl when they run of out things to do in WoW:

Now, let's say fully half of these people just hate Diablo 3 but the other half enjoy it:

Of the remaining 500k how many do you think will buy expansions for Diablo 3? How many will spend money on the RMAH?

This is good business through and through. The only people complaining are the ones looking at it and saying "Well, that guy over there got something for free, why not me?"

Well, that in itself isn't even true - 12 months of WoW isn't terribly cheap as far as video games go and you can be damn sure a lot of the revenue generated by WoW went into developing Diablo 3, not to mention the experiences and lessons learned by the WoW Development team.

Quote from Dolaiim

Quote from Snaks42

I see no problem with that at all, I would have that all over the press, it shows good on Blizzard. I mean, duh wow is their money maker, and they want to keep players playing. But they know people will want to play diablo 3, so why not give their brand new game FREE to wow players if they sign up for a year more?

Seriously, it's an awesome idea, and so what?

You know what my problem with it is? It's the fact that Blizzard has shown they have no intention of actually committing to a new generation of games. I was very underwhelmed with SC2 in terms of innovation. It's a great game, but I want Blizzard to start taking some CHANCES again, that's how they got to the top. WoW doesn't have a lot of steam left, and the fact that they keep DESPERATELY begging people to stay with that dying franchise speaks volumes to me about the state of their innovation engine.

Quote from Snaks42

I see the exact opposite. A move like this makes those who are teetering on trying anything else then the game they have played for 6 years actually try Blizz's new product. If they like it, they keep playing, and will buy the exp packs to D3, or any of the paid services they will offer on battle net. It's a smart idea.

That's a good point there.

Very true, they do need to start taking some chances, and it's my belief that they will take that chance with w/e the hell Titan is going to be. From that leaked chart of expected release dates they are thinking titan in late 2014 (of course it could all change) and their track record is a 3 year period after announcement until release.

There really isn't much else they can announce at next blizzcon. The only thing I can think of would be plans for the first D3 exp pack, possibly early plans on the last WoW exp pack, and i'm not even sure if there is going to be anymore to Starcraft. With their franchises well grounded but defiantly old news, in steps w/e Titan is to yet again take top =D

Would be pretty cool if, in order to defeat an unstoppably powerful Azmodan, Diablo had to be willingly unleashed.

Cue Leah's self-sacrifice etc.