I am fortunate to be one of the lucky people who played the Diablo III demo showcased at Blizzcon 2008 in Anaheim. Not only was it a pleasure to play it, but left me craving for more. I decided to create a female Wizard. She spawns in the outskirts of the Tristram Woods where Captain Rumford and an armored warrior are piling up a bonfire of corpses. The warrior can be seen transporting the corpses off a wagon and into the bonfire.
Captain Rumford says they are burning the corpses to prevent them from rising as undead. NPCs that have something to say have a black oval with dots hovering above them when you place the cursor over them. A popup window displays the “introduction” option, feature that remains a constant from Diablo II. However, not only does each NPC talk to you. Your very own character talks back, interacting with the NPCs. By saying talk, I mean both: the NPC and your character have voice over actors adding emotion and life to the Action / RPG.
Read below a lengthy preview on various features observed in the Diablo III hands-on demo
During BlizzCon, Flux sat down with Jay Wilson who was on hand to answer a few questions. Topics included removal of assignable attributes, waypoints. the party system and more. Jay even let us know what is favourite food is, so if that's got you intrigued, make sure you view the video..
We have been diving in and out of our BlizzCon 2008 Live Blog since the show started to answer your questions. The Live Blog ran from the start of the show right through to the end and also through much of the night as well. Between attending panels and exclusive interviews, we popped back to answer your questions. If you missed the blogging, or parts of it, you can now view the complete transcript here on the site spit into numerous pages (see below). Alternatively you can watch the instant replay of events in the Blog window.
Although BlizzCon is over for another year, our work is just beginning. We have lots to report and some cracking interviews with Blizzard to still get online. Stay tuned to your number one source for everything Diablo 3.
Text Archives
Yesterday Blizzard held the gameplay panel which was pretty much what was shown at WWI. However the questions from the Diablo players are usually interesting so we filmed those and the Dev team responses. Read on to watch the movie which we have split into two parts.
Fresh back to the press room after attending the D3 Lore and Art Panel, and here are some highlights. We’ll post the full video of this panel later today.
The main presentation was largely repeated from the
Lore and Environmental Art Panel we saw at the WWI event in June. The story and art design fundamentals were covered again, with emphasis on continuity of design from D1 and D2, stylization in art design, big sounds and strong profiles, and so forth. They had added a few elements to the presentation; some sample NPC dialogues from the new BlizzCon demo build were shown to illustrate how the NPCs react differently to each character, for instance. They also talked about how the story is conveyed by visual events as well as words; one example was comparing how 3 enemy cultists might be seen failing to summon a demon (it turned on them) while 5 cultists could successfully call up the demon and turn it against the player. We were invited to speculate on what might happen if a large circle of cultists was found, and several of them were killed before the summoning was completed…
Surprisingly, they dared to go into the art controversy again, with the whole, “We remembered D1/D2 as very dark, but when we went back and looked at them, they were actually quite colorful!” Let’s hope that’s not enough to start up the damn fool petitions again. For some newer info, of which there was a fair amount… check below the fold.
We’ve been taking turns fielding questions in our live blizzcon chat this weekend. This afternoon I got in and fielded D3 questions for a while, and for those of you who aren’t in the channel, here they are. Here are a couple of samples, then 30 more are below the fold. They’re basically a chat room transcript, so excuse the typos and sub-optimal grammar.
12:22 [Comment From arthas]—When you level up, are the stats fixed or can you add like 5 points to them?
Flux: i covered that in the jay wilson interview post I just put up. they’re automatically assigned. i thought it was just for the blizzcon show, but it’s how th egame is in full, at least for now.
12:24 [Comment From Doroga]—for the D3 interface I’ve noticed in older videos that the inventory has a bag system much like WoW, is this true?
Flux: you have 10x4 rows of spaces in the inventory. you start off with 12 available, in this build. you find bags that add 1 or 2 more slots. there are 4 bag slots. obviously there will be larger bags to be found later in the game.
also, skill runes are stored in 10 slots you see when you open the skills window. so they don’t take inv space. but apparently you an only hold 10 you’re not using. all subject to change, of course.
We just left an interview with Jay Wilson, and we’ll be posting the transcript and full video of it later today. In the meantime, here are some of the juiciest tidbits. Click through to read about the removal of assignable attributes, how waypoints will work in D3, how the party system is changed (removed for redundancy), lots more about spell runes, and how Jay thinks we’ll react to the next character to be revealed…
At yesterday’s class panel, Diablo players were given the chance to ask the development team questions, To find out what was said hit the jump and watch the movie shot from the show floor.
Yesterday we sat down with Blizzard’s Ray Gresko and Leonard Boyarsky to get the latest info on some of the game’s features. Topics included skills, battle.net, runes, gambling, the game world and much more. This is a lengthy interview and well worth a watch. Read on to watch the movie…
Despite what you may have read in the past 24 hours, Blizzard has confirmed Diablo 3 is not planned for a console release. Speaking to us yesterday, Leonard Boyasky, lead world designer, said that although the rumours were kicking around, there are no plans to port the game, keeping it a PC exclusive title.
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| "Of all our games, Diablo III would be the one to port because of the way it plays,” said Boyarsky, “but there are no plans to move this to any other platform. | ||
This echoes Mike Morhaime’s comments denying there was a plan to move to consoles.
There have been all sorts of misquotes and rumours being thrown around yesterday, There have been stories about Warcraft IV being in production and we have been told by Blizzard this is an unfounded story and is more than likely a misinterpretation of a comment made in a press interview. Also there have been stories about WotLK going gold, again, nobody at Blizzard can confirm this rumour, or wants to.
All the Blizzcon 2008 Coverage.
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