July 26, 2011
Yesterday @Diablo tweeted that Christina Estrada, the 2010 BlizzCon costume contest winner (for her female Monk outfit), recently visited Blizzard Irvine. And they posted a really bad picture to prove it. You see it below, with Christian flanked by Jay Wilson and Josh Tallman (who really lives up to his name).
June 10, 2011
In this episode Flux interviews three fans who got hours of play time on the Diablo 3 demos at Blizzcon the past few years. The guests talk about their play experience, their favorite classes, what they liked best and worst, and much more.
May 11, 2011
Mr_Bartuc points us to a high quality shaky-cam video that collects the best action/animation events from the Blizzcon 2010 Crafting Sanctuary panel. That entire panel can be watched via YouTube from the wiki article, but this video is just the best action bits, and with the video camera zoomed in on the display screens beside the stage at Blizzcon. It’s far from HD, but it offers a much larger/better view of the action than we got from the Direct TV feed.
April 28, 2011
This episode opens with half an hour of Flux discussing Blizzard’s social media marketing with Wolfpaq777 and DiablosMinion. Neither of the guests are very enthusiastic about the ongoing Facebook and Twitter approach Blizzard is taking. The second half of the show is all about the BlizzCon 2010 PvP Arena demo. Flux speaks with three fans, Exile, Dana, and Neinball, about what it was like to play the demo, which class they chose, if they played on a team, how successful they were, and much more.
April 11, 2011
Fmulder points us to the blog of Rampaging Coconut, wherein she details her and her BF’s experience at Blizzcon 2010, and talks about the creation of their quite elaborate, masked and wigged, home-made, his-n-hers Witch Doctor costumes.
March 31, 2011
Today brings another new video with some great skill visuals. Just like yesterday’s offering, this one is a tight closeup of the video screen, showing the skill runes coverage from the Gameplay Panel at Blizzcon 2010. It’s pixely and the sound isn’t very good, but the visuals are far clearer than they were via the tiny view from the Direct TV feed. (This section starts about 13 minutes into part 3 of the panel.)
March 30, 2011
Our friend KLS over at Diablo3.net.ua, a Russian-language Diablo 3 site, pointed us to a newly-posted video from last year’s Blizzcon. It’s a zoomed in closeup of the monitor during the Blizzcon 2010 Gamplay Panel, during the Arena discussion.
January 10, 2011
A few days ago, we posted a 17-minute Arena video recorded by a fan from Blizzcon. The author of it, Redalb, has now uploaded another long, ninja-recorded video of his PvP play from last year’s Blizzcon, and it’s much better than the first one. The camera isn’t aimed dead on the at the screen in this one, and late in the movie it drops down lower as the wearer (he had a camera hidden in his shirt) gets intent on the action and leans forward, but that’s not all bad because… you can see the interface bar! Thus we can see the Wizard’s health bulb, his skills and their cooldown time display, and the buff and debuff icons. I hadn’t previously noticed that the Diamond Skin icon that popped up when I was buffed with it had the same second hand racing around to show how much longer it would last.
December 26, 2010
During one of the dozens of Starcraft II panels from Blizzcon, they had a number of the voice actors on stage. One of them was Michael Gough, the actors who voices Deckard Cain, and he promptly launched into his most famous voice, with some Diablo quotes, jokes and a bit of the Deckard Cain rap. There’s nothing D3-related, but it’s cool to stay a while and listen while watching the real person do that thousand year old voice.
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
PC Gamer has posted a nice write-up of the Blizzcon 2010 Diablo III experience. The article mixes PvM and PvP demo reports with panel quotes and Diablo III development history and provides a nice general gaming audience preview. There’s no *new* info, but it’s a good read, despite a few assertions with a slightly wobbly connection to the truth.
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 12, 2010
Let’s hear it for the insufficient staff/security at the Blizzard booth at the G-Star expo in Korea! First we got 10 minutes of high quality (low player skill) Demon Hunter footage, and now Japanese 4Gamer.net has posted a bunch of photos they took of the monitors at the show. The image quality is good and the image content is excellent, with clear looks at the character window, skills window, traits window, inventory, paperdoll, and more. Cleaned up versions of these photos have been added to our Interface gallery, and are thumbed below.
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.