December 24, 2010
At long last, our massive Blizzcon article series wraps up with the mega-sized Demon Hunter PvM report. This one covers D3 Archer expectations, Blizzcon demo class strength ratings, runestones, the DH vs. the D2 Bowazon, but it mostly focuses on the DH’s play style, and her skills. Oh does it focus on her skills.
December 17, 2010
Taking a break from the character reports, with only the Demon Hunter to go, here’s an absurdly-lengthy discussion of the Levels and Quests that made up the PvM demo at this year’s Blizzcon. This one covers the lighting, atmosphere, mood, theme, and layout of the dungeons, and goes into great detail about the minimalistic quests presented therein. It’s copiously illustrated with interesting tidbits from screenshots and the huge gameplay movie, and should teach you a thing or two that you didn’t already know about Diablo III.
December 8, 2010
Here’s the fourth of my five jumbo-sized PvM class reports from Blizzcon. This one covers the Witch Doctor , leaving the Demon Hunter for last. This article examines why the D2 Necromancer never quite satisfied me, explains why the D3 Witch Doctor should, digresses about Harry Potter, details the Witch Doctor’s skills available in the demo, drools over the vast improvements offered them by skill runes, and speculates about various long term Witch Doctor issues and skill varieties.
December 4, 2010
As night follows day and lethargy follows a big turkey dinner, here’s my Blizzcon 2010 Barbarian PvM report. As did the Wizard and Monk reports, this one covers extensively the Barbarian’s play style, his equipment and tactics, the skills I tried out, and lots of those miscellaneous little details that you know and love. Well, I guess you don’t know them or this would be your report, and not mine.
December 1, 2010
Here’s my Wizard PvM report, based on my play testing at this year’s Blizzcon. It details the skills system, discusses in great detail the five Wizard skills I used in two play sessions, includes a lot about the rune changes to her skills, goes into Wizard tactics, and more. It’s quite lengthy, larger than Monday’s Monk report, if size matters.
November 29, 2010
After several weeks of delays and excessive wiki work, I finally had some time over the holiday weekend to type up my Blizzcon PvM demo reports. I’ll be posting them all week, one per day, in no particular order until the Demon Hunter wraps things up on Friday. Today starts off with the Monk, and this article covers general Monk gameplay issues, his skills and equipment, and includes some basic info about the PvM demo, the dungeons, the monsters, and more.
October 30, 2010
Our second post-Blizzcon chat went off fairly well and fun was had by all. There were more mods and fewer attendees, so the vibe was more relaxed and conversational, compared to the non-stop machine gun question pace of the first chat. Click through to read the full transcript, and we may, as many attendees requested, organize these chats more regularly, going forward. Where else can you discuss Diablo III with several hundred like-minded strangers? Thanks to all who attended for the good questions, and thanks to Apoc and HK and the other mods who helped out.
October 28, 2010
Since our live chat during Blizzcon was such a success, we’re going to do what we did last year after the show and host a pair of shorter, more focused post Blizzcon chats. Got queries about Blizzcon, the PvM or PvP demos, or just want to share in the experience? Tomorrow’s your chance to get answers from show attendees with their invaluable hands-on D3 experience.
October 24, 2010
On Saturday morning I happened to bump into virtually the only Bliz North holdover on the Diablo III team, Julian Love, Diablo III’s Lead Technical Artist. We met by surprise; I was playing the D3 PvM demo and sitting along the central aisle when Julian came by, recognized me from the old days (and an interview I did with him last year) and waited until I was done to say hello. I got off my machine when the 15 minutes were up, grabbed my bag, shook his hand, asked him one question about how the show was going, and ten minutes later we were still talking when he checked his watch and realized he had to run to another appointment.
October 23, 2010
Blizzard has posted eight screenshots featuring the Demon Hunter. All of the shots are from the Act One dungeon shown in this year’s Blizzcon demo. This dungeon was called King Leoric’s Torture Chamber (or something like that) and it’s similar in layout to the dungeon we saw in the 2008 Blizzcon demo. It’s a bit higher level; characters start off down in the dungeon rather than on the surface,