Diablo Junkie

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

A while back we examined the top 5 differences between Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. Now, it’s time to examine the Diablo 3 announcement, the demo and the trailer, as well as all the additional info that has been released by Blizzard. Here’s the top 5 differences! 1) More color, less darkness According to lead producer, Keith Lee, Diablo 3 is going to feature more outdoor environments with a lot more colors. Instead of pleasing the core audience though, this move has so outraged gamers that they started an online petition. They want good, old darkness back and the colors out the door! 2) Less monsters, more varied killing Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo 3, states that instead of hack-and-slash through throngs of monster, Diablo 3 players will have to focus on killing fewer but tougher monsters. Things like positioning, skills, and so on will have a greater effect than they did in Diablo 2. For example, the Berserker monster has a charged up attack that deals massive damage. If you dodge the attack though, the Berserker is left vulnerable. Similar fate awaits the Skeletal Shieldbearers when they drop their shields. 3) Epic heroes, class quests According to Jay, the new Diablo 3 characters will be more badass than ever before. Judging by the demo, it seems likely that there could be fewer characters but with a lot less overlap than say WoW. Class-specific quests, armor, etc are also in the works. 4) COOP play - large-scale, harder battles Judging by the demo, it could take four or more characters to kill a boss in Diablo 3. I hope these bosses can be defeated by a single player too (same as Diablo 2 ubers). The coop play will be through Battle.net - it’s not 100% clear whether that will be free (same as Diablo 2). 5) No more potions, less downtime In order to speed up the game, the designers have removed the massive belts full of potions. Instead, each monster has a chance to drop a red sphere that replenishes health. That means that you can go into combat even when wounded and get healed that way. There’s more than five differences? Discuss below!

Despite ongoing efforts with StarCraft II, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and Diablo III, PC developer Blizzard has confirmed that it has another MMO in the works.

Blizzcon 2008 has just been announced. For those interested to attend, it will be on Oct 10 and 11th at the Anaheim Convention center in California. The price for a ticket is $100.

Part of the lure for going to BlizzCon 2008 is the beta keys that you get which can get you into Starcraft 2 or another future Blizzard release.

So should we expect Diablo 3? There’s a ton of people on different game sites that argue (with passion) that the time has come for a Diablo 3 announcement. They bring up the job postings on Blizzard’s site, they talk about the next-gen MMO that’s currently in the works.

Don’t get me wrong, my hopes are high as well. And there’s my skeptical side that says … just look at the way Blizzard listed the franchises in their press release:

BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment®’s Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises.

Notice how Diablo has permanently moved to the back of queue. Hope this is all part of a plan to cover up what they’re doing, so they can surprise us!

You’ve probably heard it already but here’s the summary:

Activision, Inc. and Vivendi have announced that they will combine Vivendi Games, Vivendi’s interactive entertainment business which includes Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, with Activision, creating the world’s largest online and console game publisher, the total transaction being worth more than US$18.9 Billion.

Hmm, I wonder if this would change anything in terms of how Blizzard develops its games. I sincerely hope they don’t start licensing their game “worlds” to allow Activision to create second-rate games. I want Diablo 3 but I don’t want a broken game… (Vivendi already announced once that Diablo 3 is going to be an MMO).

Mike Morhaime has been interviewed by Gamespot at the AGDC ‘07 (Austin Game Developers Conference). He covers a lot of ground during the interview but there’s one part of specific interest to Diablo fans - when he talks about Blizzard’s future development plans:

GS: Does the overwhelming success of it mean that a hypothetical Starcraft MMOG would be pushed further out because you have this thriving community that you don’t want to cannibalize?

MM: Not necessarily. It’s actually more a question of us not wanting to cannibalize the resources that are going into supporting the game. We can’t just take the World of Warcraft team and have them work on another game. But what we can do is staff up the World of Warcraft team and gradually peel off some of our developers to start working on something new. But it will take time. And we’re at the stage right now where we’re starting to think about what we want to do next.

GS: When do you think you’ll want to talk about what you’re doing next?

MM: Probably not for a long time.

Now, I’m not sure what that means! Is he talking 2008? Is he talking ever?

When talking about the upcoming WOW movie, Mike is asked whether he feels that the Diablo world can support a Diablo movie. “Absolutely,” says he. So maybe we’ll see a movie before we see a game.

E3 has been tamer this year. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening there. Gamasutra has an interview with Frank Pearce, founding member and senior vice president of product development for Blizzard. Here a bit from the interview:

“Our global headcount is 2,700,” said Pearce, “And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there’s sound and Q/A and that sort of thing.” When pressed for details regarding the new project, Pearce was cagey. “Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome.” All attempts to extract additional information were understandably met with looks of shock and horror from Blizzard’s director of global public relations, who also attended the meeting.

With Blizzcon just a few weeks away, I wonder if Blizzard are warming up to a formal announcement of this mysterious third project.

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.

Blizzcon tickets almost sold out! If you plan to attend Blizzcon and you think there’s plenty of time till August, think again.

There’s less than half of the tickets remaining. While you’re at it, you might want to stockpile - keep in mind that up to 5 tickets per billing address are allowed.

Will Diablo 3 be announced at Blizzcon? There have been plenty of rumors lately but no one knows for certain. This is the official announcement from Blizzard:

BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the players who have helped make them so popular around the world. Gamers from all over the world come together to enjoy many fun activities and to learn more about Blizzard’s products. Don’t miss out on this amazing event!

One of the reasons a ticket could be worth it, is that it will allow you to take part in a beta of a Blizzard game. There’s little doubt that’s going to be the Starcraft 2 beta which is rumored to start before the end of 2007.

UPDATE: All Blizzcon tickets have been SOLD. I hope you’ve managed to get one. If not, stay strong, we’ll be covering the event!

Gamespot’s coverage of Starcraft 2 has been spot on. At the same time, IGN has got it wrong before when it comes to Diablo 3, so I take these articles with a grain of salt.

In essence, Rob Pardo talks how Starcraft 2 is one of the smaller projects currently in Blizzard:

Pardo also dropped a hint at the scale of Blizzard’s future plans, saying that the 40 developers working on Starcraft II are “one of the smaller teams.” Job listings on the Blizzard site have indicated it is working on a “next-gen MMO”–which the company said will not be another World of Warcraft. Also, rumors persist that Diablo III is in development.

Now, Paul Sams also said something similar - that Blizzard is working on three projects.

Here’s how I interpret it - Diablo 3 and the next-gen MMO are probably the same thing. After all, what’s better than a MMO in the Diablo universe? You got Heaven and Hell as factions… you got an Epic conflict that’s going to dwarf everything that WoW has. Frankly, who cares about Illidan when the can go after Diablo.