Diablo 3 beta to Begin Third Quarter 2011

During the May 9, 2011 Activision-Blizzard conference call Mike Morhaime stated that the Diablo III beta would commence during the third quarter of 2011, and that internal testing had already been underway for a week[3]. Bashiok further clarified the timeframe:

The 3rd quarter reference in the earning's call today was a calendar quarter, meaning that we're aiming to launch the Diablo III beta between July 1st and September 30th. Keep in mind that it's our current goal, and of course that can change as development continues.

Previously, an announcement about the start time for the beta test was expected in the Q1/2011 Activision/Blizzard conference call, scheduled to take place in early May, 2011.

Thomas Tippl:D3 development continues to go well, and we’re very excited about the game... I’m looking forward to sharing more news about the game, and our upcoming beta, during the next conference call.”

Diablo III to Require Constant Internet Connection - No offline mode in Blizzard's anticipated sequel. (IGN)

As the Diablo III beta nears, Blizzard announced its anticipated action-role-playing game will require you to be online at all times to play. The characters you can create in Diablo III, up to a limit of 10, will be stored on Blizzard's servers, and therefore require a constant internet connection to access. This applies to all modes of the game, from co-op to player-versus-player to solo play.

According to Rob Pardo, executive producer of Diablo III, this was done mainly to combat the style of hacking present in previous versions of Diablo. "In both Diablo and especially in Diablo II, I think the intuition for a lot of people when they're playing the game is 'I want to make my character offline away from that scary battle net environment. And then once I have this powerful character, I'll jump online.' But the problem with that concept is we can't really detect if they're cheating. They might have the capability to hack their character, things like that, so at that point we can't really allow that character to be in the battle net environment. Then they're going to have to restart their character, which is exactly what happened in Diablo II, which was really unfortunate."

"Your character will be online on battle net the moment you start playing," said Pardo. "You can play a solo experience like you would in Diablo II, it's just your character is on Blizzard's servers and authenticated." This character can then hop into multiplayer games and trade items with others through battle net.

This system functions essentially like an MMO, where if your connection is interrupted during a game you'll be dropped back out to the login screen. It differs from what Blizzard did with StarCraft II because though the Wings of Liberty required an initial online activation, the campaign could still be played in an offline mode.

What do think of Blizzard's announcement? Does the online-only aspect bother you, or are you connected to the web all the time anyway?

Diablo III: Fixed Camera All The Way - Hellforge

The Diablo series and other games like it (Titan Quest, Mythos, Torchlight) were always confined to a fixed axonometric camera. With the exception of Mythos, which allowed for WASD controls, Diablo’s fixed view was always one of its greatest strengths as it allowed for the designers to map out locations, pace encounters and design set-piece boss battles based on the confines of the fixed perspective.

Blizzard representative Bashiok addressed the forum’s question regarding the fixed view in Diablo III.

It's a fixed camera. Back when we announced the game we had our dialogue interaction set up where the camera would zoom in, and you'd see the characters up close and they'd talk to each other in this zoomed in view. We threw that out a long time ago though just because it was too intrusive, it stopped the game, pulled you out of the action, and just felt like too much. There was also a point where we zoomed in on the character in one of the videos to show some attack animations and item switches better, but that's not a feature of the game.

The camera doesn't zoom or tilt or rotate, it's a fixed camera.

It's kind of fun to watch people that have never played a Diablo game before, or it's been a long time. They immediately go for the WASD keys, and when those do nothing they then try holding down the right mouse button to rotate the camera. Sometimes by accident they're reminded it's click to move.

It's just not a control scheme and camera angle that are used a lot these days, there's maybe been a handful of games in the past five years that qualify as isometric arpg's? So anyway, props to all those games and the developers keeping the style alive. We're continuing the tradition, proudly, because we feel it's the best way to present a sequel in the Diablo franchise.

Bashiok on Class-Specific Drops - Hellforge

I was disappointed to not see this mentioned anywhere! Mostly because I wanted to talk about it


We don’t want to bias the drop system into only giving you items you want or can use, it would be a trading and economic killer. We want to encourage trading and encourage people to see worth in items even if they can’t use them - give them to friends, use them for other characters, sell them, trade them, etc.

Along those lines but somewhat off-topic we do now have some restrictions on weapon types usable by each class. It’s been part of the game for a while now. Allowing every class to use every weapon type was actually going to require a huge amount of time and effort and it would have meant cutting out or cutting into other features. We evaluated really how often people would want to have their class holding a weapon type that (traditionally) contradicted their class-style versus that work going in to other features - specifically having a lot more skills and a lot more skill-rune effects. We made the obvious choice which is making sure there are a ton of awesome skills and rune effects to choose from.

Because I can see the conclusions being jumped to RIGHT NOW in my old cranium - let me state that weapon types do not dictate stats. At least not wholly (barbarians can’t use staves so there’s no point in allowing fury related stats on them). We understand that the game is about variation, customization, and experimentation in class builds. We’re not World of Warcraft, we’re not looking to make weapon stats “optimal” for the types and classes that will use them. Which is to say, we’re not going to put specific stats in specific amounts on each weapon of a specific type because we’re making assumptions about what each class wants out of their stats. We want variation, and experimentation, and all that good stuff. These restrictions don’t affect those goals, it really just means you probably won’t see a wizard lugging around a two-handed axe. Kind of a bummer, but then think about what it affords us to work on with more and better looking skills, a more robust rune-skill system, etc. We want to spend our time and effort on what makes sense to making the game better.

I'm going to be blunt here, I'm really not a fan of how some of these changes are shaping up. D2X Class specific items were one thing, they were fairly limited and more of a flavor addition than a restriction.This just seems like an unnecessary restriction based on the fact that, according to Bashiok, it would've "required a huge amount of time and effort".

For me, the main thing that made D2 one of my favorite games of all time was the character building. Getting that stat allocation just right. Finding that perfect weapon to support an off-the-wall build (bear sorc, shout barb). Well, now that stat allocation is gone completely, and classes are flat out restricted out of using items 'not made for their style of play'.. where is the flavor? The disparity between builds, the unique characters? According to Bashiok it is going to come through the trees and skill runes, which to me sounds an awful lot like the talent trees and glyph system in World of Warcraft. And we all know how much creativity that brought to the table.

Diablo III Quickies: Weapon Switching, Ambient Creatures and Gold - Hellforge

Blizzard's community manager for Diablo III, Bashiok, posted a few quick replies over the past week, addressing little concerns voiced by the community.

When asked whether Diablo III planned to include weapon switching, which was initially unavailable in Diablo II but later added into its Lord of Destruction expansion pack, Bashiok replied:

Just like Diablo II we’re saving secondary weapon/shield slot and hot key for the expansion.

Kidding! ... probably. We don’t have it now, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be one. I don’t think it’s an irrelevant question, maybe just not the most pressing one.

I don’t think it NEEDS to be there. It’s not really an iconic part of the game. The gameplay dictates its necessity, and if there’s no reason to hot swap weapons mid-fight, then having it there just clutters the UI.

Personally I just used it in Diablo II for extra item storage.

Players of the previous game may recall the presence of little snakes, grubs and other squishy critters that populate the world's vast dungeons and caverns When asked whether there would be any helpless animals to crush underfoot, Bashiok responded:

There are a lot of squishy critters, more of them and more types, and it’s still just as fun to run them over.

Adventurers are certainly a depraved lot.

Last, but not least, a question was asked of Blizzard on how gold would be handled in the upcoming game with the new loot system that allows players to only see the loot that belongs to them, and whether the same would be applied to gold.

Bashiok wrote: Yup, gold is also an item drop.

Blizzard Explains Map Randomization in Diablo III - Hellforge

Randomized levels are the epitome of good dungeon crawls. With the element of unpredictability, adventuring becomes a risky and capricious prospect for any would-be hero; one will never know whether a treasure chest or a giant behemoth may lie beyond the corridor ahead.

The implementation of randomized levels in a game is often a tricky thing to accomplish. With too much randomization, most levels end up looking like British hedgerow mazes, each one indistinguishable from any other. Few people spend any time exploring the entirety of each randomized map and seek only a way to discover the exit at the other end of the map. While randomization may be good in theory, the execution of this feature has been far from satisfactory in the numerous games which have attempted it; including Hellgate: London and even certain parts of Diablo II, like the Jungles and the Durance of Pain in Act 3.

A gamer, whose views very much reflect that of my own put the question to Blizzard. Blizzard's community manager, Bashiok, responded:

We definitely agree randomized levels have some key issues with them, but they are a big part of what makes a Diablo game, and how could we not have them? The Diablo franchise is built on randomization in all forms.

You bring up some good points though, but I don't think they're issues that are insurmountable.

Randomized levels can indeed create a very generic feeling if not done well. We're working really hard to ensure that doesn't happen though. It's actually one of the reasons why our exterior layouts aren't randomized. It's extremely difficult to have wide open areas be randomized as well as interesting. Instead we have static exterior zones where the roads, towns, and edges are always in the same place. To keep some bits of random in there though we have a bunch of small, medium, and large pieces cut out of them. In those cut out pieces the game can then place the randomized "adventure" sets. They could be artistic in nature (a fountain, an abandoned cart), they could spawn extra enemies, or they could spawn quests.

Our interiors are randomized, but we do some things differently that help make them more interesting. I think we accomplish this mostly by using our interior jigsaw pieces more intelligently, building more and different types of jigsaw pieces, and also because our artists are amazing. I don't think anywhere in Diablo III are you going to think "This place is not visually interesting". The types of interior pieces do make an enormous difference, and I think we're pretty good at it now. In Diablo II for example you pretty much had a few standard square set pieces, and then a bunch of hallways. We still have those in Diablo III but we're mixing it up a lot more with more intricate and interesting 'showcase' pieces that make it seem like they're not even randomized levels.

Anyway, that's all just something you have to see to believe.

Your other point was that randomization doesn't really matter because you're just essentially rushing from the start to the end. I think you're mixing in some specific Diablo II issues with randomization issues. Without hacks (like maphack) and some unhindered mobility skills (teleport), being able to just rush through the dungeons would be considerably hindered. So I think those are really non-issues when we're talking about a different game. They're things we have to be prepared for of course, but they don't mean that randomization is a waste of effort.

All that said there are a lot of things that you can do to entice a player to be invested in each and every trip into a dungeon. Rewarding them for exploration and perseverance. It could be something as simple as having chests spawn that the player actually cares about finding! (gasp) or something as complex as an entire game-wide system based around dungeon exploration. Either way or somewhere in between, we aren't looking to create a game where rushing from entrance to exit is the most rewarding way to play.

Bags! Blizzard Discusses Inventory in Diablo III - Hellforge

You may have understood the reference in the title, but the Sword of Truth is a terrible series.

Diablo III's new bag system has a number of players up in arms over the lack of the 'tetris inventory' that graced previous Diablo games, Titan Quest and Hellgate: London. Far from being regarded as a pain in the ass, these players see it as a 'minigame' of sorts, as if the game itself didn't have enough to offer.

As you may or may not know already, Diablo III features not a Tetris inventory like the previous games but an inventory identical to World of Warcraft's bag system. Every item takes up a single space, while certain items (such as potions and gems) may be stacked to specific limits.

Blizzard's community manager for the game, Bashiok, recently chimed in on the usage of bags in the upcoming game and explains how, like in World of Warcraft, players will start off with a small bag that they can gradually upgrade and fill more bag slots with by finding new bags that drop from monsters as loot.

He begins with an explanation on the importance of creating a user interface an accessible learning curve.

Upgrading storage size is a great reward, and can be much better than any incremental weapon/armor upgrade. (Kills/min could easily calculate out to be much greater without having to stop to clear inventory as much with a bag upgrade as compared to a damage increase from a weapon upgrade.)

Building off the last point, it helps add the sense of your character becoming more powerful and gaining more from the time spent playing.

Increasing the storage size over time/play experience is a great way to scale the player's sense of the game's complexity.

Beginning with a small and limited amount of space teaches the player early on that inventory management is an important part of playing the game - and sometimes generating income.

Making and keeping the player aware of their limitations can also help keep a better sense of structure and focus. Being overwhelmed is sometimes as detrimental to a play experience as being bored.

Also keep in mind that while we're obviously dropping bag upgrades off of monsters now, we could choose any number of alternative ways to get them to the player. Or maybe a combination of different ways. Whatever, I just wouldn't focus on the 'how' of them being delivered right now.

Some people have jumped to the conclusion that the "alternative ways" to which Bashiok refers can only mean acquisition through real money transaction-based system. This is highly amusing because Blizzard has mentioned nothing of the sort.