DiabloFans

I do not believe the graphics resemble WOW and are perfect for the Diablo universe. This artistic style adds longevity to the game as these graphics allow the game to age gracefully unlike Diablo 2.

Those fan edited screen shots look really stupid and dull, the colour makes the game more varied and pleasing to the eyes.

I believe from what we have all seen from the beta, the game is looking really really good, i'm sure many will agree that now that we have actually seen some direct in-game footage that this argument of kiddy/wow like approach does not stand and in fact is quite opposite to what we are seeing in the beta. In conclusion, these graphics are very satisfactory and I wouldn't want it any other way. =)

Quote from proletaria

Quote from Umpa

Who said Big Foot doesn't exist? I dono if I believe in Big Foot but I do believe in the Lock Ness monster. Why? There's evidence. However, evidence to me might not be evidence to you.

Belief has nothing to do with evidence, you're mincing terms again. Furthermore, you've got a diffirent definition of evidence than the rest of us. I have seen articles about loch ness being dredged, sonar'd, and drag netted for decades. If all we have to show for that are blurry (and some fake) photos and eye-witness accounts, I don't feel that qualifies as evidence. It is hear-say.

Quote from Umpa

Personally I like to think more like Dae here. It simply seems more likely that all of this was designed rather than randomly poofing into existence.

I've insisted several times now that "poofing," is not required, but if that's all you can come up with... I suppose I understand why you're making that decision.

Quote from Umpa

Let me pose a question to you:

You walk into a kitchen and see a cake has splattered all across the floor. Upon further analysis, you realize there are words spelled out from splattered cake, on the floor reading "I fell for you".

What is more likely; the cake fell with the perfect conditions to splatter in such a way that it spelled out those words? Or that someone came along, knocked over the cake, and proceeded to run their fingers through the cake on the floor, to spell out those words.

How is this analogous to the universe? What is it that you are claiming as evidence for a deliberate design insted of an evolved natrual explanation in the case of the universe. I would agree, in the case of the cake, you are describing human interaction with the cake, but I disagree that this is in any way analogous to the universe as we understand it today.

Quote from Umpa

What are the odds that my existence on this earth is completely by chance? Randomly, everything in the universe worked out so well that, by chance, I simply exist?

We don't know those odds. What we do know; however, is that nothing in the universe would exist as it does without the laws of physics being what they are. This is a zero-sum approach. We're either here or we are not. Evidently we are here and thus we know the universe is such that we can be here. We don't know how "well," it works because we have no point of comparison. There are no other universes we can see to tell us wether or not ours is fine-tuned for life or not.

Quote from Umpa

Out of all the billions of species on this planet, why is it that only humans were able to evolve to a point of removing ourselves from nature and effectively removing ourselves from anywhere but the top of the foodchain? Why is it just us?

Why is it just us? Because our brains evolved where other animals had not. You can study genetics and neurology to get a better grasp on what made the mammals and the apes diffirent. This isn't indicative of design, it is simply an expression of how evolution has turned out.

Quote from Umpa

Just got done reading about several near death experiences by blind people who are able to see during the period of death and recall details no blind person would ever know(There's a reasonable explanation, I know, I know!). The nde's are interesting. Dmt could be involved. But the recollection of detail is what gets me.

I'd love to read these, any chance at a link?

Backing up Proletaria:

Quote 1: There is no such evidence proving the existence of big foot or the lockness monster. Eye witness accounts and fake photographs do not count as evidence as these sources are not entirely accurate and divulge much information that affiliates with the term proof. First off - eye witness accounts differ, thus their is no reliability with them. Photographs are few in number resulting in loss of validity. Thus you have you 3 terms of what is evidence: accuracy, reliability and validity.

(BTW what does this have to do with the topic?)

Quote 2: If you research into quantum mechanics, specifically the applications of quantum chemistry and physics you will understand that atoms share certain forms of "attraction" with other specific atoms when certain amounts of energy accommodate for fusion between different elements, when subjugated between the weak and strong nuclear forces of differing nucleons. My point being that, our sun (stars being the producers of elements of the periodic table, heavier elements requiring higher temperatures), over the 4 billion years that the Earth has been around for, has provided its limited amount of energy to "excite" atoms in a way to produce the structure of our Earth and everything inside it, along with the exact specific amount of elements available from other stars within the universe. This means that this universe was not in fact randomly designed, but created with a set structure resulting from the laws of physics in reference to the Big Bang and the positioning of our solar system. It wasn't random, its known as a fond word scientists like to use called: coincidence.

Quote 3: WTF?

Quote 4: Refer to quote 2, also your existence in this universe is extremely likely due to the massive scale of the universe and what was said in quote 2.

Man you should really get into making anime lol.

OMG!!!! Internet colloquial language can be extremely irritating! What is up with all these stupid, grammatically incorrect words!

"Haters" "Infinite" "Breh???" "newbs" - This shit is really immature and doesn't make you sound "cool" at all! It makes you seem like someone who is trying to hard to get noticed and achieve some sort of delusional credibility in order to maintain a falsified sense of stature?

But anyways... Ya kiddin me dog, u got sum killer shit here, getting to da griefing b4 the game is even released. Come at mi brah!

So what exactly is the point?

While researching some stuff for my physics study I happened upon an exceedingly moronic question and a hilariously sarcastic answer! It was too good to not tell anyone about it so I need to show you guys.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110922203851AAif3ab

The question was:

"Is there any scientifical proof that atheists are causing global warming?"

And the really funny answer:

"Oh yeah.. It's a huge conspiracy put on by just about every atheist in the world. I was in on it. I used to be a scientist stationed at Perito Moreno glacier with National Geographic. Every night, me, other scientists, and 450 village people climbed up on the glacier with blow driers and melted the thing one inch at a time. We've got people doing it secretly all over the world. It's a master plan to first flood the planet. Then that'll allow fish (our under-appreciated and graceful ancestors) to rule the world along side us. Pretty brilliant huh?"

If the beta were to start late August - early September, it will go for 2 months and end sometime in early - mid November.

From this, I hypothesize that Diablo 3 will be released either late November or early December. =) For a more specific answer, I'd say: 25th November - 10th December.

I've been playing the game 'browsing these forums'. =)

I just want to say that i've been waiting for Diablo 3 for so long and i will definitely buy it and probably love it.

But i'm scared that it will not meet my expectations of what a true Diablo sequel should be and I say this because of this recent decision with skills.

Having skills automatically acquired for you character is not Diablo, it removes customisation, it removes a unique build and it makes your character just feel like everyone else's.

I believe Blizzard did find a reasonable problem with the previous skill design, but have now made that problem much much worse. They did not fix ANYTHING. The argument was that the previous skill design made players choose one skill that they would invest all their skill points into, making everyone come to the same build as it would have been the most effective. All they have done now is allow everyone to still come to that same build, but if someone on the off-chance wants to be a little different and make a different build just to experiment, they now cannot do this, they are pigeonholed into this ONE build - there is NO choice. Yeah you can swap skills out and choose another, but once you manage to find a really good build, guess what, everyone else can just switch their skills and do the exact same thing. No need to respec, just a click of the mouse and their good to go.

Now from my rant you may get the idea that I hate this current set-up, which I don't really as I can still see different forms of customisation. Its just that I feel Blizzard just got lazy and only want to now rush the game to release. What they could have done was developed some sought of different skill system that allows the players to choose what skills they want and everything, but are unable to just respec and put all their skill points into 1 or 2 skills. In fact, I would much much much much much prefer for Blizzard to completely scrap the respec idea and keep the old skill design, its much better than what they are leaning towards now.

So Blizzard - get rid of respecs and replace the old skill system. Respeccing is in no way a loss in comparison to removing our freedom to make a unique character build!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In fact, by removing respeccing, it will further enforce the longevity of the game as people will create more characters to try different builds rather than just try a different build on the same character. I know I would prefer to do that and I had no problem making a new character in Diablo 2 - its one of the things that made the game last for so long!

Yours sincerely: Frustrated, but understanding fan.

Quote from Tilgare

Quote from Osky

but the thing is, she basically lied when she said "the release date is not known yet."

I'm quite certain she didn't lie to you. I'm also quite sure she doesn't religiously follow Diablofans.com, nor does she have an intimate knowledge of all of the products on all of Amazon which number in the millions. What she DOES have, is some sort of internal guide that did not get updated in the 2 day time span (over a weekend) between Blizzard's release date announcement and your conversation.

Give it a few days, and if it becomes available, you'll either be told or see it yourself. Shipping isn't a limited engagement, you could change it a week before and it would all be just fine.

so other customer reps can discuss the fact that they're able to offer release date shipping to other purchasers and is in their system for it(honestly by proxy this invalidates anything you're "quite certain" of)but for the simple fact that it has not been made available for me is the exact reason why I was wanting to contact them since I actually got an order in before they stopped making them. Never mind the fact that Amazon was able to update part of their systems to notify me that the PUBLISHER was updating the release date. but yet this unknown to a customer service rep.

So amazon updates their site by offering release date shipping to a few purchasers. Amazon updates their systems to actually send me an email that the publisher has updated the release date. other customer service reps offer this to specific purchasers EVEN TO PEOPLE WHO PLACED THE ORDER THE SAME DAY AS ME. but yet the sales rep who I spoke to is oblivious to all of this. obviously she's not following anything her company is doing. thanks for your insight.

I have to make a quick edit here.

Here is my problem with this* customer service rep. Nothing that I said reached any part of this persons brain.

My only question was "is this going to be available for me."

she responded "we don't have a release date."

I said. "yes you do, and the offer you're stating is contingent on a 'release date' has already been offered to other purchasers and you even sent me an email notifying me of the release date."

she said "yes we still don't have a release date because im a stupid bitch and didn't hear anything you said."

I said "I'll try to be polite here and simply restate my question of whether or not this option WIll become available to me"

she said "if it can ship to that date(which is most likely only contingent on being in the main states of the USA) or we make sure that we actually didn't make more promises than we can keep so that we can put you on back order and shove a big dick in your ass by denying you the opportunity to seek other venues to make a secure purchase for that date."

yep...that about sums it up.

http://d3db.com/article/read/blizzcon_2011_press_conference

Q. Can you talk a little bit more about the Halls of the Dead?

JW: The idea is when you lose a hardcore character, you don't really want that character to go away forever and you don't want it to take up a character slot. Well, it'll probably be optional where you can choose to free up the slot by archiving the dead character into the Halls of the Dead. You'll see the name, the gear on death, and maybe some other stuff.

Q. Is it actually part of the ui?

JW: It's part of your profile, so you just need to right click on your character to open up your profile and it tells you all about your character, your achievements and your progression.

Q. When you say Halls of the Dead I just imagined a hall where you walk around with statues of your characters.

JW: That would be awesome, but it's probably just going to be in the UI. Maybe someday it'll be a big awesome hall!

Q. Now that all spells are dependent on weapon speed and damage, are you getting rid of spell damage and increased cast rate?

JW: We are getting rid of increased cast rate, and increased weapon rate will replace it. Spell damage was a stat that only really appeared to the Witch Doctors and Wizards, we probably made this change for 2 reasons. The major one was we found casters were not valuing their weapons, that was a big problem with Diablo 2. The second one was Witch Doctor and Wizard randomly generated affixes were very confusing, our testers were coming back with questions like "What’s the math on this, when you say 20% increased damage does it apply to base damage, to spell damage?” If you can't understand it and can't understand which one is better than the other than that's a bad thing.

Q. What did you have to change in order to make followers viable in the end-game?

JW: The big one is we have to do a multiplier on your base stats, because you don't have the same item options as your character.

Q. So, do we still have to sacrifice passives to buff our followers? I remember back in the press event you said that.

JW: Oh, that what just an idea I had at the time, you won't have to sacrifice passives.

Q. What about the unattuned runestones on the homepage?

JW: Where is that system at? It's... interesting. It's not great, as one of our people said to us "It's kind of a new kind of horrible" because it just had different problems. It's really the last big system we have, the last big problem to solve.

Q. What's the biggest thing you've learned since the beta was released?

JW: Most of the beta has been useful to us from a technical standpoint, so there's not a lot of tuning stuff that the beta tells us about. The vast majority of feedback we've received has been "it's too easy". We really wanted the beta to test our hardware.

JAB: In the industry, it's really hard to test load and infrastructure without the players. Players play differently and are smart, our testing bots are not.

Q. Do you have to play through softcore to unlock hardcore?

JW: Oooh, good question, yes, you will have to play through to a certain point to unlock hardcore mode, I think it's through normal difficulty after you kill the end boss. I'm like 90% sure, so we could change our minds.

Q. We had a discussion on our forums about the color of resource systems, specifically the Demon Hunter and Monk, everyone got new resource systems other than the Witch Doctor who is stuck with mana. The same old blue orb, what are your thoughts on changing that to something more Witch Doctery like green?

JW: We like the Witch Doctor one the most, the biggest problem with green is its poison. So, if we put it in there that's going to be the reaction people have, like is that my poison vial... have I been poisoned? Some people have suggested we make the Monk orb Yellow, like the urine ball as opposed to the jizz ball. One of the suggestions we got for the Demon Hunter was to make it black... but that won't work since you just won't see it, and white is a massive contrast. If you do that you'll suddenly have a resource that you just can't see. So we were comfortable with the red and blue, they work better.

Q. Surely you have the resources to just add a new color to the spectrum.

JW: Umm, we have the power, but we don't have the will. (looks to JAB) You know it's true.

JAB: I don't know that.

Q. Are we going to be forced to use Real ID to add friends?

JW: No, and that's all I can say. We do have some plans; we aren't going to force you to be Real ID friends.

Q. With the banner system in Diablo III, are we going to start out with everything we see in the beta unlocked, or will we have to gain achievements to unlock them.

JW: It's just there for you to see, you'll have to gain achievements to unlock those.

Q. Do you have a number of achievements yet?

JW: Umm, no.

JAB: 12?

JW: No.

JAB: 13?

JW: More than 13.

JAB: 15?

JW: More than 15, would you like to take another shot?

JAB: 16.

JW: You're getting closer, very slowly. It'll be in the hundreds.

JAB: That was my next guess.

Q. How many hours do you anticipate the average player will have to invest to hit level 60 in Diablo III?

JW: This is a really hard question to answer, people ask me this all the time. The answer depends on how insane you are... I'm gonna say... I'm not even gonna guess, because if I do I know that's going to come back and haunt me. We're not really concerned about making 1-60 some ridiculously long grind. We're not douchebags, it'll be based upon what feels good.

Q. Compared to Diablo 2?

JW: Again, it's speculation that will come back to haunt me. It'll probably be shorter than Diablo II, but D2 also didn't have an end-game.

Q. With the rich lore and races of World of Warcraft, have you thought of incorporating some of that into Diablo III such as Dwarves?

JW: No, one of the things that is driving the Diablo universe is that it's a very human-centric place. Anything that isn't human is pretty much bad.

Q. Why isn't Diablo III supporting mods?

JW: There's a variety of reasons for that, one of the things people say a lot is "Oh, mods are such a hallmark of the previous games!" and I say... really?. There are mods, and there has been some developer support for those efforts, but that's not the same as us directly support it. To do that, we release tool sets and treat it like a product. We decided that the effort it would take to make mod tools would be a monumental effort. I know it seems like we're Blizzard and we have unlimited resources but we don't - we had to figure out our priorities to get the game out.


DTOID
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbGG46plgQ&feature=player_embedded

GamerLiveTV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LCHPoUnx7s&feature=player_embedded

Force
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk8M8xOnLdI&feature=feedu