Note: Those ******s and that blue gem again. :stongue:
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IGN's Diablo III FAQ All the basics on Blizzard's newly unveiled action-RPG.
What is Diablo III?
We're developing Diablo III to be the definitive action role-playing game, and a true continuation of the Diablo series. Players will create a hero from one of five distinct classes (Yan's note: expansion is sure to add more character classes), such as barbarian or witch doctor, each equipped with an array of spells and abilities. As these heroes adventure through rich and varied settings, unraveling an epic storyline and engaging in combat with hordes of monsters and challenging bosses, they'll grow in experience and ability and acquire items of incredible power.
The game takes place on Sanctuary, a world of dark fantasy. Unbeknownst to most of its inhabitants, Sanctuary was saved some twenty years ago (Yan's note: More than 2 decades since the events of Lord of Destruction, looks like) from the demonic forces of the underworld by a few brave and powerful heroes. Most of those warriors who directly faced Hell's armies -- and were fortunate enough to survive -- went mad from their experiences. And most of the others have buried their haunted memories and pushed the horrors from their thoughts. (Yan's note: Alluding to the return of some NPCs other than Deckard Cain [who should be pretty ing old by now but as a Horadrim, I'm sure he's fine] while others, including the main cast of heroes, won't be returning? Read on to find out. Answer comes in a few questions) In Diablo III, players will return to Sanctuary to confront evil in its many forms once again.
Diablo III will be a fitting sequel to Diablo II, with the easy interface, fast-paced action, and visceral gameplay that Diablo players have come to expect and enjoy. It will also include many new features that will take the Diablo action-RPG experience to the next level. We look forward to going into much more detail on our plans for Diablo III as development on the game progresses.
What's new about Diablo III compared to the previous Diablo games?
Exciting new classes like the witch doctor bring new gameplay options to the table. Returning classes (Yan's note: Take note that it says "classes" and not phrased so as to say "class"), like the barbarian, have been completely redone with new skills to give them a feel unique to Diablo III. New customization options will provide for an even greater level of character specialization than the previous Diablo games, allowing the player to create unique characters brimming with power.
Diablo III is powered by a new graphics engine that can display characters and hordes of monsters in lush, fully 3D environments. Powerful special-effects systems and Havok-powered physics allow the player to lay waste to Hell's minions in spectacular ways.
Also, Diablo III builds on the random environments of the previous Diablo games by introducing a host of new ways to create random scripted events throughout the game. This creates a dense and exciting world alive with quests, NPCs, dynamic encounters, and viciously challenging new monsters and bosses. Diablo III's environments add a great deal of interactivity to the game, including destructible elements and environmental obstacles that can be turned against your enemies.
In addition, Diablo III will benefit from Battle.net upgrades that will provide some exciting new features (Yan's note: Other than Ladder? haha) for players. Cooperative online play remains a primary focus, with multiple enhancements being planned to make connecting with your friends easier and cooperative gameplay even more fun. We'll have more details on all these aspects as well as other exciting new features at a later date.
Can you give an overview of Diablo III's storyline?
It has been twenty years since the events of Diablo II. Of those who faced the Lords of Hatred, Terror, and Destruction in the battle over the fate of Sanctuary, there are few still living who can bear to remember the horrors that the Prime Evils wrought upon the world. And of those who did not witness the terrible events firsthand, most believe the stories to be little more than myth. But something evil is stirring once again in Tristram (Yan's note: Always Tristram, huh?), and it may already have claimed its first victim: Deckard Cain (Yan's note: Not likely. Thought the trailer pretty much gives it away - this guy's a tough cookie to crack).
(Yan's sidenote: Methinks we'll be doing battle in the heavens before the end of the game. Just check the tagline in the teaser image up top.)
Will there be any other familiar faces in Diablo III (other than Deckard Cain)?
Yes. Players will encounter several new characters as well as a number of characters from the previous games.
Will players be visiting any familiar locations in Diablo III, such as Tristram?
Yes, definitely. Players will return to Tristram and certain other locations from the previous games, and they'll be exploring new areas of Sanctuary as well.
How many character classes are included in Diablo III? What are they?
Five character classes will be included in the game, two of which, the barbarian and witch doctor, were revealed when the game was announced at the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational. The other classes will be announced at a later date.
Will players be able to choose the gender of their character, regardless of class?
Yes. Players will be able to create male and female characters for all five classes.
Will Diablo III be playable over Battle.net? What new features can we expect?
Yes, Diablo III will be playable over Battle.net, and Battle.net will offer some exciting new features to enhance players' Diablo III experience. We'll announce specifics and go into much more detail at a later date.
Will there be a single-player component in addition to multiplayer?
Yes. In addition to battling the hordes of Hell cooperatively with friends over Battle.net, players will be able to adventure through the world of Diablo III solo. More details on both the single-player and multiplayer experience will be revealed at a later date.
What will questing be like in Diablo III? Will it be similar to Diablo II?
Our plans for the story and quest mechanics are still under wraps. We'll go into detail on those elements of the game at a later date. We can say, however, that we expect to have class-based quests in addition to the main story-line quests. (Yan's note: !)
TECHNICAL ASPECTS
What engine is Diablo III running on? What graphical enhancements are included?
Diablo III runs on a custom 3D game engine for rendering full-3D characters and environments. The 3D game engine not only simulates advanced animation sequences and sound effects, but also uses a custom physics engine (Yan's note: Not all THAT amazing from what we've seen with sliding corpses but that's just nitpicking. lol) that allows for realistic object dynamics and cloth simulation.
What are the system requirements for Diablo III?
We'll announce specific system requirements at a later date. (Yan's note: I'm going to build my own desktop for this thing. pkc, will bother you around time of release :gsmile: )
RELEASE PLANS
When will Diablo III be released?
It's too early to estimate Diablo III's release date. As with all Blizzard Entertainment games, our goal is to create a game that is as fun, balanced, and polished as possible. We intend to take as much time developing Diablo III as is necessary to ensure the game meets our own high expectations and those of our players.
Will the game be released in multiple countries? Will the release be simultaneous? Which countries and what languages will Diablo III be localized in?
As with all of our games, our goal with Diablo III is to release the game simultaneously in as many regions as possible, and to localize the game in several languages. We'll have more details to share about countries, languages, and specific dates as we get closer to release.
Will Diablo III be available on Windows and Mac simultaneously?
Yes. (Yan's note: Yay! Another title for the Mac gamers :p) As with all of Blizzard Entertainment's recent releases, Diablo III will ship for both Windows and Mac simultaneously.
How much will Diablo III cost? Where can I buy this game?
Pricing and availability for Diablo III will be determined and announced closer to the release of the game.
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DIABLO 3 GAMEPLAY PANEL INFORMATION:
All pieces of information listed here are of interest
Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo 3, says there'll be some major reveals of features and the like over the coming months.
Focuses are making D3 replayable, making the combat feel epic, making it accessible and keeping a focus on co-operative play. There will be random environments in the game, random dungeons.
Random items, random monsters, and random adventures, which is a new feature. It allows Blizzard to place random scripted events almost anywhere.
All the new features the updated version of battle.net that will show up alongside StarCraft 2 will be taken advantage of with Diablo 3.
Blizzard wants to ensure players have entertaining skills to use. "Less spam and more depth," says Wilson. The hotbar is important, says Wilson, because it promotes skills over potions. He says his team didn't feel like spamming potions should be a focus here.
Potions are still in the game, they're just not as core an element. So there's a new health system here. Wilson says he actually tried a Halo-style shield system with regenerative health, but didn't put that in because it encouraged players to leave combat. Didn't want to implement a WoW-style health which encourages players to drink and creates downtime when out of combat. Wilson wants the health system to ensure combat, which is health globes were implemented.
In cooperative play, when one player picks up a health globe, all players benefit from its restorative effects.
Some monsters will miss players and get their weapons stuck in the ground.
Says the story isn't going to be forced in front of your face, but it'll be there for anyone that wants to dig into it. Says there'll be better quests and more in-depth NPC interaction.
Citing their adventures feature, where scripted events can occur at random so as you go through the game multiple times you don't see the same thing. Talking about the conversation system. Character classes will have a voice, which Blizzard believes gives them more personality.
Question asked about group size. Wilson wouldn't say anything specific, but did say "once you get more than four or five people onscreen, things get kind of chaotic." Sounds like it'll be around four or five limit.
Question about inventory size -- Wilson says a lot of improvements are going to be made like with trading and such, but no final inventory size settled upon. No grid inventory being used in this one (Yan's note: Awwww... :().
Question about classes. "We're doing a fresh start on classes," says Wilson. Says he hasn't figured out how many classes will be in yet, but they're not necessarily trying to mirror what was in Diablo 2. (Yan's note: MAY BE <, = or > 5!) They're trying to do things a little differently.
Hardcore mode may or may not be included in the game. (Yan's note: . They better include this mode in the game. It was practically the only reason why I REALLY enjoyed playing D2 for a challenge.)
Wilson says the witch doctor is not the evolved version of Diablo II's necromancer.
Question about how "gear system" is different from Diablo 2. Not quite sure what that means. Wilson says there'll be new ways to make items better, but won't provide any specifics. (Yan's note: Probably has something to do with socketry, runes, jewels, precious stones, ethereal status, etc...)
Question about how Blizzard is trying to prevent cheating over battle.net. Wilson says it's a big focus and the new version of battle.net should have features that work to stop cheaters. (Yan's note: Hopefully they'll be successful in implementing some proper fixes here... Although I'd love to get my hands on a working maphack :p) Wilson talking about how because of Diablo's random nature, it's difficult to provide support for mods / map editors.(Yan's note: Darnit. :mad: )
The team wants the game to be able to run on as broad a range of systems as possible. The game will not require DX10 to run.
Interesting tidbits from the Joystiq Interview:
It's about 20 years after Lord of Destruction. Essentially since then, if you're familiar with the lore, Tyreal destroyed the worldstone and the general consensus was that this was going to be the big Hell invasion because the worldstone's keeping everything back. And essentially that invasion never happened and one of the many questions is ... why? And we aren't going to answer that today, but that's what the story addresses. What's happened to Tyreal since then? What's happened to Deckard Cain?
We bring back a lot of characters, not just from Diablo 2 but Diablo 1 as well. We're also bringing back some characters in kind of unconventional ways. For example, the barbarian we showed today is actually meant to be the same barbarian from Diablo 2. So we're planning on doing a lot of cool stuff to make a richer storyline.
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Slo-mo'd it through the gameplay video to bring you all the information regarding items, enemies, skills and whanot I could find.
Item Drops
•Not unique to location - some of these happen to appear in both Forgotten Tombs and Leoric Highlands.
•Only those that were highlighted (mouse-rolled over) have been added for the sake of name preservation.
•Did not add doubles.
FORGOTTEN TOMBS:
Gold
Minor Power Rune
Minor Energy Rune
Throwing Knife
Short Bow
Elixir of Vitality I
Gauntlets
Plate Leggings
Gothic Helm
Plated Greaves
Gothic Plate
Plated Pauldrons
Chipped Star Topaz
Inferior Leather Gloves
Scroll of Identify
Inferior Quilted Pants
Quilted Pants
Ancient Medallion
Short Staff
Small Bag
Minor Health Potion
Chest Armor
Unidentified Two-Handed Axe
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LEORIC HIGHLANDS
Minor Lethality Rune
Leather Gloves
Elixir of Willpower I
Amulet
Unidentified Short Staff
Area - Enemy
Forgotten Tombs - Ghouls
Forgotten Tombs - Grotesque
Forgotten Tombs - Lamprey (inside Grotesque)
Forgotten Tombs - Dark Berserker
Forgotten Tombs - Dark Summoner
Forgotten Tombs - Dark Demon (summoned by Dark Summoner)
Forgotten Tombs - Ghostly Orbs
Forgotten Tombs - Wraith (continuously spawned by Ghostly Orbs until destroyed)
Forgotten Tombs - Zombie
Forgotten Tombs - Wretched Dead
Forgotten Tombs - Walking Corpse
Forgotten Tombs - Crawling Corpse (appears when a Walking Corpse is knocked over but not dead)
Forgotten Tombs - Skeleton Archer
Forgotten Tombs - Skeletal Shieldbearer
Forgotten Tombs - Dark Vessel
Forgotten Tombs - Activated Vessel (when enough time passes, a Dark Vessel turns into one of these)
Forgotten Tombs - Thousand Pounder: Gluttony Incarnate (Area "Boss")
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Leoric Highlands - Zombie (same as FT)
Leoric Highlands - Walking Corpse (same as FT)
Leoric Highlands - Crawling Corpse (same as FT)
Leoric Highlands - Beast
Leoric Highlands - Skeleton
Leoric Highlands - Skeletal Summoner
Leoric Highlands - Scavenger
Leoric Highlands - Moon Clan Warrior
Leoric Highlands - Moon Clan Shaman
Leoric Highlands - Wood Wraith
Leoric Highlands - Siegebreaker Assault Beast: Living Siege Engine of Hell (Area "Boss")
Abilites
Barbarian -
Battle Cry
Rank: 5/10
Shouts out a warning, increasing defence of all nearby party members
A massive attack that has increased chance to critically hit.
Stamina: 16
Deals 225% weapon damage plus an additional 14 physical damage
+25% chance to critical hit
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Whirlwind
Rank: 1/20
Swirl in a cycle, delivering attacks to everything in his path.
Current Level: 1
Fury: 1
Hits for 25% of weapon damage
Next Level: 2
Fury: 1
Hits for 30% of weapon damage
Witch Doctor -
Horrify
Rank: 3/5
A spectral mask that horrifies all enemies in proximity, casugin them to run in fear.
Mana Cost: 10
Radius: 20
Fear Duration: 1-2 seconds
Mask Duration: 5
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Wall of Zombies
Rank: 4/5
Zombies erupt from the earth to attack your enemies.
Current Level: 4
Zombies attack for 15 damage.
Next Level: 5
Zombies attack for 15 damage.
Random
•Mouse icon changes from arrowhead to sword when over an enemy
•Mouse icon changes from arrowhead to a speech bubble when over someone you can talk with or ask to accompany with you
•Weapons have "Damage per second/Attacks per second/Sell Value"
•Forgotten Tombs and Leoric Highlands are successive locations in D3.
pkcRAISTLIN
i will wait to see some vids before discounting this, but im not holding out much hope for me ever giving a about it. indeed, as this is being touted as "first and foremost" a cooperative game, how is it that different to WoW?
smakmagik
Holy mother of god
Diablo III !!!!!
YES!
Project-K
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
i will wait to see some vids before discounting this, but im not holding out much hope for me ever giving a about it. indeed, as this is being touted as "first and foremost" a cooperative game, how is it that different to WoW?
Wow is an MMORPG in the true sense of the word. Diablo is a top down, fast paced hack n slash action game with some rpg elements. The storylines are also very different. Wow is your typical fantasy setting. Diablo is dark, grim and more mature.
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by Project-K
Wow is an MMORPG in the true sense of the word. Diablo is a top down, fast paced hack n slash action game with some rpg elements. The storylines are also very different. Wow is your typical fantasy setting. Diablo is dark, grim and more mature.
yeah, but the both games revolve around running a character around with gameplay that requires very little skill (in comparison to say, a shooter).
isometric viewpoints, storylines and differences in tone arent all that integral to the game. diablo's fun wasn't in its plot, and neither is wows. its the dungeon hunting that is the crux of both games. then again ive never played wow.
Project-K
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
yeah, but the both games revolve around running a character around with gameplay that requires very little skill (in comparison to say, a shooter).
Of course, but skill was never the point of diablo, in fact, quite the opposite is true. One of the things that made the game fun was that you could practically play it with one hand because it was just so damn simple. It's a game you play just to relax and enjoy the experience, not one you play to be challenged.
quote:
isometric viewpoints, storylines and differences in tone arent all that integral to the game. diablo's fun wasn't in its plot, and neither is wows. its the dungeon hunting that is the crux of both games. then again ive never played wow.
Wow just feels different in every way. I haven't played wow that much either so I couldn't really explain it any better.
Yan
Spent the past hour looking through all the different things on the website. I'm guessing that "World", "Media" and "FAQ" will be updated as time passes, amirite?
Based on the Gameplay video, it seems like the action is still quite quick-paced. The running animation looks a bit slower than usual but it's nothing too crazy of a change.
THE SHEER AMOUNT OF GANGBANGING MONSTERS AT ANY ONE TIME IS WIN.
Project-K
Is anyone else getting a feeling that the graphics look more like Guild Wars than Diablo?
BTG
At first glimpse of the screens, i was very "meh" about it.
but the gameplay video makes it look stunning.
i cannot wait to play till 3 am in the morning. it'll be amazing
Project-K
quote:
Originally posted by BTG
At first glimpse of the screens, i was very "meh" about it.
but the gameplay video makes it look stunning.
i cannot wait to play till 3 am in the morning. it'll be amazing
Kinda like SC2 you mean?
If that has thought me anything, it's that blizzard is absolutely horrible at taking screenshots. I only trust in-game videos now.
RJT
I liked Diablo 2, so I'll probably give this a whirl. Gameplay video did indeed look good.
r5a
Looks awesome.
Never played any of the others but I'll be giving this a shot for sure.
:D
Graphically, the game doesn't look demanding at all so they are targeting those with the 8600GTish level series at least.
I'm going to blizzcon to check out Sc2 and this will def be there so this should be interesting!
