Diablo 3 Rumored

[Taeme]

Yeah, as long as it feels like a world about to be overrun by demonkind and put to the flaming stick, right?


I'm fairly sure there will be a D3, the question is totally when and what. And how many bugs. Perhaps a character class where every single skill doesn't do what it's supposed to do? Then they can name him a "Chaos Mage" and we'll all be amused.

Besides, sequals are big right now.

[nobbie]

Off-topic, but if Obsidian is ex-Blizzard, maybe NWN 2 will be even better than the first?

Obsidian Entertainment

Press Release

Obsidian is ex-Blizzard?

[kandrathe]

I thought they were mostly from Black Isle...

[Assur]

Based upon their record, why would anyone buy another Blizzard game as long as Vivendi is their parent corp.?

I 'd say that somebody who has never played D1 or D2, but has played WC3.TFT would be prepared to pre-order D3

[Doc]

Hrm...

With all the who vs who lately...

D3!! (Loud summer blockbuster music and that guy that does movie intros)

D3!! Diablo vs Zerg Queen! No matter how much money Buzzard makes, we lose!

Diablo, Mephisto, and Bhaal would so have their sorry arses kicked to the curb by a Zergling rush.

[Guest]

Flagship seems to have the bulk of ex-Blizzard North people.

The other 2 have people from Blizz North but quite a few less I think.

[D-Dave]

Even though it has been said, that any of us fans (with the technical staff) could create a Diablo 3, but I doubt that. The Problem imho is that a company that buys a developer that has one or more very high profile games usualy goes for maximum money without caring much about the past titles.

A very sad example for this is the command and conquer series. The past was made up of realy two seperate lines (Tiberum age and Red Alert time travel theme) but they had some things in common.
For one the gaming atmosphere started with the installation process (those eva briefings during install had this nice "welcome back" feeling) and there was at least a basic story beeing developed inbetween levels.
C & C Generals on the other hand: plain normal windows installation, only "story" in form of news clips (booooooooring). The realöy sad thing about this is that at least the Tiberium story line had plenty of romm for another part.
While I am not saying that Generals was a bad game I felt ripped of by the "Command and Conquer" part in the title as it did not only have nothing in common with the previous parts but simply felt rushed onto the market without the love for detail, story and funny little easter eggs.

To come back to Diablo 3 I fear that something similar may happen to this series as well and I would realy hate that.
Summing up I would say I'd rather have no Diablo 3 then one that does not continue the great fantasy / gothic feeling.

Long live "Take heed and bear witness to the truth that lie herein..." :)

[Griselda]

I was under the impression that Blizzard North has been left all but dead with the leaving of all of the employees

Yeah. I just wanted to specify that WoW isn't done by Blizz north. I really couldn't say what their actual status is at the moment, other than that they seem to still exist.

[Guest]

[QUOTE]Summing up I would say I'd rather have no Diablo 3 then one that does not continue the great fantasy / gothic feeling.


I dont think anyone would dare make D3 witout that atmosphere. I think whats more likely a problem is that it could be cluncky and unoriginal this time.

[Artega]

And that Gothic themes are in style at the moment. The reason WoW will be a flat-out success (besides the fact that it's a Blizzard title) is because it's VERY distinctive, much like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. There is no possible way you can look at a screenshot from WoW and confuse it with any other game out there - the look is original and functional, and that's one of Blizzard's selling points. It's a good marketing strategy, if you ask me. After all, The Wind Waker and Pikmin are considered some of the best titles available for the GCN, FedEx quests and brevity aside, respectively.

[kandrathe]

The Problem imho is that a company that buys a developer that has one or more very high profile games usualy goes for maximum money without caring much about the past titles.

There are ways to go for maximum money that work, though. First you excite your current fanbase, then deliver to their expectations. Second, you are innovative, creative and pre-market the heck out of the product so that you attract pre-orders and media buzz (ala Doom3). Games or movies have the same problem to create sequels that are part of the original broad story line and fit the fans expectations. There are only a few examples of success with both games and movies. For instance, there was so much potential in the "Highlander" story and yet they hacked together the sequels and totally destroyed the mythos.

For me, a good game involves two things -- a good "game" as in game theory where I am motivated and sucked into the game play, and "content". The expectation I have for a good game is that it is infinately replayable. When I buy a movie DVD, it is because after view it once I feel I might want to view it again, in a few weeks or months. Diablo delivers that because it takes along time to wear out one character and there are enough "builds" to try that one can play the game through a number of times without boring of the game. Back when I was building games, our motto was "Hot, Deep and Simple". You want it to be aesthetically pleasing and exciting with good gameplay, have as close to infinite playability as you can design into it, and easy to use or get into.

Ultimately, it comes down to the producers being able to look objectively at the market and develop games that fill gaps, or press into a new space. When Hollywood studios get into that "... uh, oh. Paramount is doing a race car movie, we need to do a race car movie" mindset we are guaranteed to have any number of stinkers. That is the case with MMORPG's now. I applaud "City of Heroes" producers for backing something other than another D&D adventure game. I've been looking at any number of demo's lately -- this week it was Sacred, Thief3, Doom3, and Alice. I liked each them enough to play through the demo, but something is still missing, like something new and interesting.

Back to Diablo -- for me this game is a dungeon crawl defined as much by its free internet "realm" offering and a compelling single player mode as well. Diablo3 needs continue that legacy and be derrived from the existing story, and yet offer something new and interesting to a saturated marketplace.

[Guest]

deleted

[degrak]

Bhaal?

It seems your BGII experience is interfering. :P

But while they are at it, they might combine all three.

Eww...

Edit: For those that only use linear view, that was in response to Doc.

[Munkay]

Orcs and Protoss breed into Orctoss, and Zerglings and Amazons breed into Zergazons, and Terrans disposing of nukes and machine guns and using BoTD Collossus Blade and catapults.

It is a clash of Nerzul vs Baal. Hordes of Orctross versus plains of bow wielding Zergazons.

:P

Munk

[JustAGuy]

Orcs and Protoss breed into Orctoss, and Zerglings and Amazons breed into Zergazons, and Terrans disposing of nukes and machine guns and using BoTD Collossus Blade and catapults.

It is a clash of Nerzul vs Baal. Hordes of Orctross versus plains of bow wielding Zergazons.

That's great. Orcs and Protoss. They're about the same in the Ugliness/Coolness looking factor (they're both ugly AND cool at the same time!), so it seems like a good fit. :)

I wonder what an Orctross would look like. Spindly little legs and huge arms, with big eyes and fang-like teeth, but with a surprisingly small chin. If only I was good at Photoshop... A wrist-mounted plasma blade wielding Orc brings to mind the Diablo 2 assassin...

[JustAGuy]

Yeah. I just wanted to specify that WoW isn't done by Blizz north. I really couldn't say what their actual status is at the moment, other than that they seem to still exist.

You are correct, as far as I know; there hasn't been a peep out of them since Roper and Co. left for greener pastures.

A Diablo 3 wouldn't be out of the question, though. An extremely popular franchise, a huge money maker for them, why wouldn't they make another sequel? Whether it be watered down or inferior to the previous games or not, it makes good business sense for Blizzard to release another one. Since we don't know of anything coming up from Blizzard North, it might be safe to assume that they're working on something Diablo related (since, they're basically a Diablo Development Studio). The fact that it's Blizzard working on the sequel just means that it has good potential to be a great game, if and when it comes out.

Diablo 3 a MMORPG? No. Another Action RPG? Why not? It's their bread and butter.

The only thing I'm concerned about is that it'll just be a rehash with upgraded graphics. It'll be a nice-looking Diablo 2, with very little the way of innovation. WoW seems to be soaking up all the good ideas... Honestly, how many skills can they come up with for Diablo 3? The Barbarian skill trees were pretty lame, and the Paladin resistance auras (despite their boost in 1.10) were pathetic.

If they are making a Diablo 3, I won't be surprised when they announce it. If it's anywhere near as addictive as Diablo 2, then most likely it'll get me away from WoW. :)

I say, "Bring on the Diablo 3!" no matter what it is. There will always be a place in my heart for Diablo 2, and if they want to bring back that love, I'm all for it. If they do, they better do it right, that's all.

[Doc]

I have a long history with games and have worked as a beta tester for years. This does not make me an expert, just opinionated.

If they wanted to make Diablo III and get it right, it would need to be a prequel. A multiple part prequil.

First Part. The Single Player Game. In SP, players would get to make their own character or play a Legendary Hero. Such as Sigon, Cathan, Irathra, etc. And flesh these characters out. From Hsaru to the Immortal King, flesh them out. LOTS of replay there, each one in a slightly different perspective and storyline in DHistory. The Immortal King might see the world very differently being a xenophobic barbarian then say, the mighty knight Sigon. To see the full story, players would have to play each character, gaining much in the way in playstyle and skill. Did I mention replay value? There's probably a couple of months to maybe over a year in gameplay for most folks.

Multiplayer. Stick with the D2 format. Keep player games down to a limited number of players. Ditch predetermined character templates. Check out the Avernum series from Spiderweb Software. (And see my name in the credits. Shameless plug) Character creation is totally open ended. You can make fighter mages, priests, warrior priests, mage priests, mage thieves, it's all open ended. You get a character you want. Just the way you want it. If you spread out, you pay for it. If you specialize, you become very powerful.

By keeping characters open ended, you would hopefully find balance. Most folks would probably Red Mage their characters, balancing out everything for an effective all purpose character. The system would also allow a good deal of variants. If somebody wanted an ubertough bare chested barbarian that feared and hated magic, they could do it.

Set the storyline to tell the tale of how the Horadrim hunted down and destroyed the Three. Have different acts. 3 acts for each of the Three, with one of the Prime Evils being destroyed in the third act of their set. For the first 2 acts, toss in the Minor Evils. Either in dealing with them to destroy the Three, or two thwart their plans to dominate the Burning Hells and the Earth.

In each of the acts, have a chance to learn special skills. Skills you can't add skill points to, skills you could only improve by paying for training. Skills that would allow you to parry, resist magic, attack with weapons or magic, powerful healing, etc. Everybody would start with basic skills, but these skills would be both hard to get, and take a great deal of difficulty and time to gather the cash and the experience to be trained in them. Skills would mean more this way. And make a skill more expensive to get for each level learned. For example. Hrothgar of Horrible Halitosis wants to learn how to parry. Now he is a dual weilding barbarian type character so this would be pretty handy allowing one of his swords to act like a shield. He is in Act I, part II, and has found a crusty old vet living in a hut high on top of a quill rat infested hill. It's going to cost him 5000 gold to gain a level of parry. After doing so, he finds he can't live with out the parry skill. To gain another point, it's going to cost him 7500 gold. And again, 10,000 gold. That's expensive. What does Hrothgar do? Does he buy more of the skill that keeps him alive or does he buy the ingredients to craft a better axe?

Tough call.

I'll post more ideas later if anybody has the slightest interest. Till then, don't want folks snoring.

[TaiDaishar]

Honestly, I do not like things TOO open ended, variants are excellent but I want classes to more or less draw the lines (sorc - Magic user, Paladin - Divine power user, etc') and within that class have some sort of open endedness, aka even a sorc could go melee, depending on magical buffs or short range offensives etc'

What you're describing is something that I fail to see Blizzard making, months or even years of single player time? That's a dream, no game to ever exist had such a huge amount of single player content, it'll take 4 times the time it took Diablo 2 to be develop to deliver such a thing with a half decent story, not that it wouldn't be incredibly sweet but I think it's just a sweet dream.

[Doc]

Not as tough as you think :D

How many sets are there?

I am not talking about the HC Diablo Junkie. We would spend a month on it and be done.

More for the casual user that might play single player for 2 or 3 hours on a weekend. The time frame I mean.

Not everybody has the sickness like us.

Open ended is good. See Spiderweb Software and how they did it to get an idea. Some skills are a great deal more expensive then others. To make a dedicated mage, you burn up your skill points quickly. You are rewarded for specialization but you are not badly penalized for being a jack of all trades. Not yet a perfect system for Diablo, but it's a good place to get fresh ideas.

[Artega]

You can make fighter mages, priests, warrior priests, mage priests, mage thieves, it's all open ended. You get a character you want. Just the way you want it. If you spread out, you pay for it. If you specialize, you become very powerful.

Just like in Third Edition D&D.

In each of the acts, have a chance to learn special skills. Skills you can't add skill points to, skills you could only improve by paying for training. Skills that would allow you to parry, resist magic, attack with weapons or magic, powerful healing, etc. Everybody would start with basic skills, but these skills would be both hard to get, and take a great deal of difficulty and time to gather the cash and the experience to be trained in them. Skills would mean more this way. And make a skill more expensive to get for each level learned.

Sounds similar to how Morrowind did it, though you could learn ANY skill out there - how long it took was dependant on if it was a Major, Minor, or Miscellaneous skill. You could also purchase training in a specific skill from various trainers, with the cost of training being proportional to the level the skill is already at. Of course, Morrowind was horribly broken, since you leveled up by increasing your Major/Minor (or a combination of) skills - put Acrobatics and Athletics as Major skills and you'll be leveling faster than the game can keep up.

What does Hrothgar do? Does he buy more of the skill that keeps him alive or does he buy the ingredients to craft a better axe?

Well, since he's using swords, I would wager he'd buy another rank in Parry. But humor aside, I really like your line of thinking - if properly balanced, I'd be unmercilessly addicted to that game :)

@Munk and JustAGuy: There are a few Starcraft units that made it into War3 - the Zergling and Hydralisk both got the 3D treatment (but the Hydra only got a partial soundset and the Zergling got none - I suppose it'd be pretty easy to import SC sounds, though), and the Marine and Firebat (though the Firebat is now a Fel Space Orc) also made it. No Protoss units, though. I would've loved to have seen a Zealot in 3D.