Diablo Junkie

You’d think that the combination of BILLIONS from WoW and the recently announced $100 for Starcraft 2 will make Blizzard sit comfortably on its huge pile of cash.

Think again. They are now thinking of “monetizing” the new version of Battle.net.

Initially, I thought “oh, we had banner ads in battle.net before, no problem”. Here’s from the horse’s mouth (Rob Pardo interview):

So Julian Wilson told us that you guys are looking monetize Battle.Net in some way. Is that right?

Wow, that’s an evil way of putting it. Julian’s turning into a business guy on me. Here’s the way I would put it. We’re definitely not looking at turning Diablo into a subscription based game…

With Battle.Net we’re definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money… I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren’t core to the game experience, they’re really just optional things that some people want.

OK, that’s a relief: Diablo 3 isn’t a subscription game; changing your name to GobbleCoque is going to cost $29.

However, I still get a bit suspicious of Blizzard’s “innovation” when it comes to pricing. After Starcraft 2 is split into three separate games we need to purchase separately, I wonder if Diablo 3 is going to be the same way.

Purchase Acts I and II for $49 and then shell more money for Acts III, IV and V which are entirely optional. Optional in the sense you option OUT of all the end-game bosses, equipment, etc.

Bashiok answers a few questions people at Battle.net forums had after BlizzCon 2008 was over

He tried to download a copy of Diablo II from their digital store, but the download didn’t work. Blizzard’s customer service then tried to download it again — which also didn’t work. Finally, they told him to buy it at an actual store — which he did. Now he’s bought the game three times and would like some money back.

SC2 will be released as a trilogy

BlizzCon 2008: Rob pardo talks Battle.net Monitizing

Blizzard have finally revealed the third Diablo 3 character – a Wizard. As far as I can tell from the gameplay video and the class description, it looks like a copy&paste of the good ole Diablo 2 Sorceress.

The Wizard skills revealed thus far are:

• Disintegrate – constant ray of energy going through multiple enemies
• Electrocute – chain lightning
• Teleport – blink about half a screen away
• Magic Missile – single target damage spell
• Slow Time – creates a sphere that slows down projectiles (very similar to the Protoss Mothership skill)

You can watch the Wizard in action at Blizzard’s site here.

There’s yet to be any official confirmation that the upcoming Diablo 3 will be released on anything other than the PC, but according to recent comments made by Blizzard president Mike Morhaime, it certainly seems like they’re strongly considering console versions of the highly anticipated sequel at some point in the future.

In the opening minutes of BlizzCon, we jumped right into a hands-on Diablo III gameplay session. The big story here is the new character class that joins the Barbarian and Witch Doctor: the Wizard. Wizards are a magic-focused class that play like a Diablo

No decision made on powerlevelling.

There will be respecs.

Classes do not have ‘roles’ like an MMO would. All classes are DPS classes.

There’s hell, nightmare, normal modes (but we knew this already).

Deaths:
Special deaths ….