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I think what most people are afraid of is that this system waters down the playing experience, but at the same time we must also realize that runes (which have not changed as of yet, it was just an idea wilson had) increases the experimentation range. Instead of each class having similar skills with different points in them, classes will have different skills.

Each charater will have to select 6 skills from, currently, a pool of 21*5=105. And while you will be losing out on minute differences in the skill department, it looks as of crafting your gear and modifying that with various gems and enhancements will still allow people to customize their characters quite a lot.

The instant respect is a little worrysome, but I'm not sure how much yet.

You're Hpnot1q, they plan to allow it in the future, essentially switcing characters between accounts.

Quote from sickleSC

No. Blizzard's brilliant idea will make gold completely worthless again. Do you really think that if some1 finds a rare as fuck epic weapon he would put it on the gold AH rather than make some good cash on the real AH.

Gold will have usese since you need it for crafting, repairs and vendors regardless of whether you use the cash AH. And since gold can also be sold for cash, gold will in fact not be useless, it will be a regularly traded commodity.

I'm generally positive to it, adding skill points in addition to limiting skills was a little problematic. Now they've also ensured that people will always get 6 skills, as opposed to maxing all but taking fewer than 7 skills under the old system.

Honestly I haven't played with either, but I think it's a good change. We'll see whether it works.

Quote from Scottehs

Oh so I can sell a in-game item for a e-balance but why not sell for real money instead and just use that real money for everything that the e-balance can but more?

or did I read what you said wrong?

You can get cash, but that cash will have to be converted back to e-balance if you want to buy items with it. Since a fee will be applied on the transfer of actual cash, doing so all the time will result in less total e-balance acquired for you.

The cast time appears to (currently) be instant, but perhaps it can't be used with monsters around. In fact that makes a lot of sense. Hopefully the game will have an easier time figuring out when all monsters are dead than WoW did at release though.

I am a little uncertain about the Stone of Recall. I don't see how a personal traveling device will in any way solve the issues they had in D2 where people could pop back and forth to town during fights.

That might be entirely possible, I have no idea what kind of changes Mordor has done quest mechanics

Quote from Siaynoq

I'm....almost positive it is though. Even if you don't see the slain townsman, the Butcher's lair is still always there on level 2.

The Butcher (Diablo I Quest) has a 67% chance of appearing. It belongs to the same quest group as Gharbad the Weak (Diablo I Quest) and Ogden's Sign (Diablo I Quest), and only two of the three appear in one game.

Quote from MicroHunter

So when Sankekur, being influenced telepathically by Mephisto, shattered Mephisto's soulstone, he shoved a piece of the soulstone into himself to contain Mephisto and each of the counsil members (willingly?) shoved a piece into their hands, corrupting them? Is that the reason that the counsil members have soulstones in their bodies?

Yes.

Quote from MicroHunter

But why did Diablo use Leoric's son? Wouldn't it be better to use a grown man's body, like one of Leoric's servants? Maybe it was easier to possess a boy's mind than a grown man's mind? When Diablo possessed Leoric's son, the boy went into the labyrinth and shoved a large piece of Diablo's soulstone into his forehead, and became Diablo?

Diablo was likely looking for a strong mind to possess, not a strong body: Albrecht is tranformed into a demonic form way larger than his human size.

Albrecht was also abducted by Lazarus himself and drawn into the labyrinth.

Quote from MicroHunter

1) If Diablo's and Mephisto's soulstones were shattered by Lazarus and Sankekur, how did they keep the stones close to their human hosts? And how do we imprison them in the stones again then (to later destroy them at the Hellforge)?

Diablo shoved it into his forehead and Baal had it in his chest (before Marius pulled it out). Originally the High Council had them shoved into the palms of their hands (as you can see if you look at Ismail Vilehand (Diablo II)). The particular detail about the palms might have been retconned, but Mephisto likely had some shard stuck in his body somewhere as well.

Imprisoning them again in new soulstones is not needed or favorable I think.

Quote from MicroHunter

2) Why did Diablo not use Lazarus as his human host?

Perhaps he was too weak, Diablo wanted a strong host and Leoric was the strongest he could find until the warrior came along. There is also some hints from the D2 manual that Lazarus might have already been touched by Mephisto while he served as a priest in Kurast, which would explain how Lazarus knew where Diablo was and perhaps also by how easily he seems to have succumbed to Diablo. Since Mephisto would then already have touched his mind, perhaps his body would no longer be suitable for Diablo as a host.

Quote from MicroHunter

3) How was Tyrael fooled into using the using the soulstones for the benefit of the Three? Was it a bad idea to imprison them in the soulstones? If yes, what would be a better idea?

Doomscream is pretty right about this. There doesn't seem to have been a really good alternative either. Why simply killing them wasn't a good idea isn't quite explained: perhaps the Horadrim couldn't kill them (unlikely seeing as they did beat all Three before capturing them) or perhaps killing them would in effect just send them back to Hell on way or another (an explanation I favor) or something else entirely.

Quote from MicroHunter

Why would Tyrael want the soulstone to be destroyed? Baal is not in it, and because it's damaged it can't even be used to capture Baal again.

Not entirely. The soulstones weren't the perfect prisons the Horadrim though, but they still worked to some degree. That's why Baal remained imprisoned until Marius came, and why Diablo spent hundreds of years beneath Tristram stuck in a stone. Both Diablo's and Mephisto's soulstones were also shattered, the former by Lazarus and the latter by Sankekur, yet both Diablo and Mephisto kept their stones literally attached to their human hosts. Baal likewise also goes through the trouble of tracking Marius down and retrieving the fragment he holds in the ending cinematic of D2.

A part of the Prime Evils was indubtably still contained in their respective soulstones, and it likely hurt their powers to keep it away from themselves. Likewise, if a part of the stone remained after the death of a Prime Evil, it could perhaps have been used to bring them back. If I were Tyrael and I realized I had been fooled into using the soulstones for the benefit of the Three, I would have them destroyed even if I didn't know for sure that they were a potential threat in and of themselves.

Quote from Umpa

Why don't you try actually finishing them before critiquing them?

If you've read half of Birthright and don't like the writing style, there is almost zero chance of your opinion changing later on because all of the books are identical in structure and presentation. The only difference is in the content of the story, and as kdt05b pointed out even that is sometimes doubtful with the constant regurgitation of:

"I am so weak, my enemy is so powerful, I can never win, I've failed... No wait, I'm not beaten. He's is in fact really weak and I'm super strong, even though I just used up all of my energy. RAAAARGHH! Victory!"

I guess that's fine every now and then, but the problem with these novels is that theyr suspense is largely based around these encounters, and there are so many of them. Normally a book could throw this free card at a reader without much notice, because suspense is generated elsewhere and it only happened once anyway. But in the fights against Malic, Gulag, Lilith, Lucion, Inarius, Tyrael, even Gamuel.

As a work of fiction in and of itself I think the books are mediocre, but it's probably due to the strange nature of how video game novels are created. I've never read anything else by Knaak so I can't really make any sort of judgement on his skill as a writer in general, but the author isn't really given creative freedom, and the people coming up with the story (or what has to be in it at least) aren't writing the book, so it's probably not that easy to coordinate. Besides, I don't think it was ever the intention for the Sin War novels to become works of fiction of the level of Lord of the Rings and similar series.

Quote from asSmiLk_LemoN

I see what your saying, but I cant find 1 inch of truth in it im afraid.

That was harsh. You could have just said you couldn't find anything to agree on, rather than call me a liar. But it's ok

Quote from flawkstawker45

So what we are saying is we would rather have people just click and look up our builds and counter so more builds can come out faster rather than try to make a challenge of creating a better build and let them unfold at a pace the players of the game allow it to? Is that what we are saying people who are for no toggle?(I wanna be fair but that's how I see the statements summed up as) Is the main argument speed of changing builds over challenge of finding builds?

I think you and others incorrectly correlate forced public builds with not only an easier pvp environment, but also an easier time of theorycrafting in D3. This I believe is not the case, and I will try to explain why. It's a theory that really is a form of pseudo-economic reasoning, but nonetheless I find it quite applicable to this situation.

Quote from flawkstawker45

How much would it slow things down as said in the podcast this is the information age, people are going to be showing off their build they want you to see that awesome crap they found and what they used to smash face in the arena.

Different people. You and me migth blabber about whatever inferior build we have, but at least I will be nothing special in the PvP environment (can't speak for you), because we do not intend to be at the top of the ladder. Other parts of the game, perhaps a social forum, will be comparatively more important to us. But if you're in the game to win, you will always want to give your opponent as little information about you as possible. So top players will be far more likely to turn their toggle off. They will primarily do this to prevent people from looking at them specifically, but when many people start to do this it will affect the information available through the hypothetical D3 armory as a whole: It will stave off the flow of information from some of the people who will be the very best in figuring out how to build a character effectively.

Quote from flawkstawker45

I think many people feel that creating characters/builds is a fun and challenging part of the game(it's meta game)on top of that if there was a toggle option, lets just say all the best players turn it off so we can't see their builds and copy there traits and what not. Doesn't that sound like a fun mountain to overcome?

Here's where I think the confusion arises between my opinion and yours, and it's something I didn't really touch on before. There is a difference in how community knowledge will be spread depending how how easily build information is shared.

If build information is not public at all (everyone has it toggled off) then information between players can only be shared by choice and a little by actually encountering said character in battle. The spread of information becomes fractured, de-centralized and harder to get a grip off. This reduces the effective available information for everyone. So when you try to make a build, it's true that you will have to make it yourself. But you will not only have a less information about your opponent, but about builds in general. The aggregate knowledge about builds for the Diablo community as a whole will develop slower.

If build inforamtion is public (everyone has it toggled on) then suddenly you have a lot more information at your disposal. Knowing that Blizzard is making is easy for external sites to track data nowadays (leading to pages like wowprogress.com quickly rising to prominence) this will give the Diablo community a fountain of knowledge. Ideally, information about total builds currently used, builds used by high-end players and other things will be easily overviewed online. This causes the aggregate build knowledge of the community to rise.

And this is important. Because not only will you know what builds are popular, but your opponents will as well. And as the aggregate knowledge and information available to the community rises, the gaming environment will grow more complex, because with each passing day with more build variations will have to be accounted for, and the more public display of information guarantees that everyone has the opportunity to use this information.

So while this will highlight effective builds more easily to less dedicated players, it will still provide high-end players with a clear advantage: they will be able to take the greater amount of common knowledge and apply it to their theorycrafting. Which in turn will spread and be used by the collective community.

Keep in mind that this is not instant, and it is not an analysis on a personal level. Good players will be able to stay on top, but with greater information spread they will have to work harder to continuously improve their game, or be overtaken by someone else.

Quote from Don_guillotine

A practically unstoppable entity (the system) is a scary thing. It's a beast that should be restrained and feared at night. The system should never be allowed to legally torture or kill.

There is much truth to this I feel, and that's not even mentioning the cases where the state will make mistakes and torture people by mistake. "Sorry we waterboarded you all those time. Here, have some cash." That's true for any punishment, but becomes much worse when talking about a death/torture penalty.