Diablo Junkie

Bashiok explains more on Diablo III on the Bnet forums

Blizzard has announced the next video game in their hit Diablo series, Diablo III. They’ve released a cinematic trailer and a 20 min gameplay video showing off some of the new features

Your favorite “running-around-an-old-danky-dungeon-with-a-bunch-of-scary-monsters” game is back with its third installment. A release date has not yet been announced for Diablo 3, which features more of the same dungeon crawling gameplay.

How Blizzard must save Diablo III from World of WarCraft. Will the success of WoW’s massively friendly graphics and gameplay influence Blizzard’s artistic direction of Diablo III? Early screenshots of D3 remind many of World

Diablo III was unveiled at Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational in Paris and over the course of the weekend we were able to see quite a bit of gameplay, talk to a couple of top Blizzard staffers about it, and listen to a host of panels about the game. We figured the time was right to look at the ten things that are central to Diablo III.

Blizzard shows off the first trailer and gameplay of its latest dungeon crawler, and we’ve got the first look.The Barbarian sees, and the Barbarian smashes. The Witch Doctor sees, and usually let’s something else do his dirty work. The two character classes shown off during today’s announcement of Diablo III….

At the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, Diablo 3 lead designer Jay Wilson, presented a rundown of the design philosophy behind the game, covering its origins, the game’s approachability, and the design team’s “better gameplay, less carpal tunnel” approach.”

This is the demo that was given during the Diablo 3 announcement in Paris.

You can download the high-quality gameplay footage here. Check out the Diablo 3 screenshots too.

I’ve been thinking lately about the new content that Blizzard added to Diablo 2 with the Pandemonium Event (i.e. the Diablo 2 Ubers).

I’ve heard many arguments that it’s not REALLY new content as Blizzard have just taken a few bosses and made their uber versions. For example, they’ve used Andariel’s model to create Lilith who shares very similar spells and effects.

Diablo has become uber Diablo, gaining a a few extra hitpoints. Same goes for the other bosses (Mephisto and Baal) as well as the lieutenants (Duriel and Izual).

That is one way to look at it. However, lets turn to the year(s) preceding World of Warcraft’s launch. Blizzard created a special “custom” campaign (The Founding of Durotar) for Warcraft III that used the game engine BUT simulated WoW in terms of gameplay. The quest structure, the items (epic, legendary, etc), even the levelling.

Come to think of it, I might have enjoyed the campaign MORE than I have enjoyed WoW. You could control three heroes plus summoned creatures and henchmen, the quests made sense (i.e. not repetitive), and the items were pretty powerful.

That’s not my point though. My point is that what Blizzard has done with patch 1.11 is test the realms for the style of gameplay that their next-gen MMO (lets call it Diablo III: Heaven and Hell) will feature.

This looks a long shot now but come back in a year and we’ll see. I definitely think Blizzard’s next-gen MMO should feature top SOLO content in addition to raid content.

I do expect to kill Diablo even as a casual SOLO player. Surviving the fight might be a 10% chance and loot might be just a few greens but I’d like to see Diablo go down. Amen.

For good or for worst, the wait is OVER.

As a die-hard Diablo fan, I’m disappointed. Yet, die-hard Diablo fans are just that – die hards. I’m not giving up hope that Diablo 3 is going to be next when Blizzard announces a major product (and not another WoW expansion).

Starcraft 2 is as good as a consolation as any! It will make the wait for Diablo 3 less painful – if not downright enjoyable.

Update: Blizzard have released a Starcraft 2 trailer and I managed to find some gameplay videos from the WWI. The game doesn’t look much different in terms of gameplay but the graphics definitely ROCK!

I’ll be tracking Starcraft 2’s progress over at my Starcraft 2 blog.