Blizzard Unveils Development Update for Diablo 3

[SuckRaven]

If they neuter this game as badly as I fear they might, I will be done with Blizzard. Actually, to clarify, Blizzard was great before Activision became involved. The following comments worry me:

There are some differences here and there, exterior environments are a little more diverse, dungeons are about the same," he said. "Even the way the Acts increase in length and then scale down. We intentionally did that again because we thought, some of that was done to ship Diablo 2, but we thought it had a good feel to it to reduce the length of later acts so that you feel like you're accelerating towards the finale.

So basically what work have they done? They have polygon-ized the hell out of everything so that it will look like WoW, they have drawn new images for items, redrawn the character classes, added male/female, and come up with new bosses/quests.

But is seems to me from Wilson's comments that the overall mechanics, even Act structures will be the same, as well as the overall length of the game.

Diablo was released in January of 1997. Diablo II followed in 2000, with the Lord of Destruction expansion pack in the summer of 2001. How much freaking re-tooling does Diablo III require, if from most everything we hear, it will simply be a graphical re-hash of Diablo II? I just don't get it.

I will buy this game regardless, because I was a huge Diablo II fan, but like I said, if they manage to hose this release, I am done with Blizzard. (I was pretty close to giving up with Starcraft II and all the crap they pulled with that.)

 

[tommyp81]

So.... in blizzard time, about 2015 or so.. gotcha, thanks.

 

[kingssman]

Sweet, now my grandkids can enjoy this game [playing the barbarian as we wait for an expansion to play the other classes] as i tell them of the old days when we played Diablo II on on my 500mhz machine decked out with 512mb of ram and that was high end at the time. Then they'll say "But Granpa, geeze, my cell phone runs at 2ghz with 2gb of ram, how did u guys do it back then?"
"well kids, let me tell you of a very special time when we just got done with windows 2000 and where XP was bright shiny and new"

 

[Jquarter00]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]The Median XL mod will give you something to do until then. Add a Glide3 wrapper to enable 3D effects and better graphics acceleration (you'll need it with Median XL). Diablo II works beautifully on Ubuntu Linux with Wine.[/citation]


I've played the median mods before and enjoy them. My current favorite would be the Hell Unleashed mod. It still has a fairly active, small, community. It takes the original game mechanics and severely increases the difficulty.

 

[kingssman]

"We're not in discovery mode anymore," he added

And to think, bungie came out with 6 games in the time it takes blizzard to release a sequel.

 

[Ciuy]

atleast their trying to make something good...

 

[rajangel]

It drives me nuts. The game looks fantastic now, yet it will end up like Starcraft 2. Sub-par and 3 years behind its time in that regard. Blizzard doesn't really get anything right. I'm excited but there will be no reason to shell out $100 dollars for this. It can wait until I can get it for $10.

 

[xnashx]

I think the reason for the long delay is because of their flagship products such as WOW and just released Starcraft 2. If they were to release it this year...who would be playing their most precious games?

 

[Stifle]

That clip of the interview came across like this to me...

"So we are kinda out of new ideas for the game... So we are starting to clone Diablo 2 quite heavily, even down to details such as act progression and game length....
What? You will still buy it."

 

[Darkv1]

At least if it takes awhile to come out it will give me plenty of time to accrue the massive amount of PTO from work I plan on taking when D3 finally does drop.

 

[Cons29]

the longer they take, the more the graphics might(probably) get outdated. the game play will most likely rock, but the graphics. c'mon blizzard.

well anyway lots of good games to be release oct-dec, so its ok

 

[doyletdude]

[citation][nom]myriad46[/nom]Who f'ing cares anymore. D2's expansion pack was released in 2001. Really? 10 years? They'll probably release it for PS3 (or PS4 for that matter), and then say, "Oh sorry PC fans who started the whole thing...we'll have your version out in another year or so." This whole thing is just pathetic.[/citation]
LOL have you been living under a rock all year? or maybe it was sarcasm and i didn't notice that but the recent and hugely successful release of Starcraft 2 seems to contradict your entire statement... come to think of it has Blizzard even ever made a console game? (not counting that silly n64 SC port... which i've played lol)

 

[pythy]

Work my Blizzard minions, work!! MWAHAHAHAHA >)

 

[eddieroolz]

I'd say give Activision another decade for this to come out.

 

[dEAne]

I'm quite interested of that too.

 

[theubersmurf]

[citation][nom]soccerplayer88[/nom]Omg...Are you telling me that Diablo 3 might be done before 2012!?Party at my place![/citation]Why? there's not going to be any lan capability.

 

[HappyBB]

The wait of Blizzard's games are just too long! I wanna enjoy Diablo III now!

 

[deividast]

can't wait.... i love all the products of blizzard.... 😀

 

[Ch33ky]

Can i has diablo 3 plz? I
loved me some diablo 2!
every single release by blizzard has taken
very long, so I don't forsee this coming out
even in early 2012. My guess would be
right at the end of 2012 Q3/4 ....

 

[Kelavarus]

"Some of the areas still haven't been built"

Erm... You haven't finished building areas in a randomized environment? Curious... You must mean some of the assets for areas.

 

[segio526]

[citation][nom]doyletdude[/nom]come to think of it has Blizzard even ever made a console game? (not counting that silly n64 SC port... which i've played lol)[/citation]
They also made WC2 for PS1 which was just as silly as SC64. Blizzard is def a PC developer through and through. So far all their original console titles get canned because they can't achieve Blizzard quality. Although there have only been two, WarCraft Adventures and StarCraft: Ghost, but that's like an eighth of all their games (not including expansions) which is pretty big.

 

[theoutbound]

I'll be happy with shorter acts so long as this doesn't get the Starcraft 2 treatment where they are separated into different games.

 

[nightcrawl3r]

Take your time Blizzard. I want this game to perfect like all your current and previous games

 

[danieth]

If only Blizzard were faster at creating there games... I would pay quite a premium to play a finished Diablo III, just as I really wanted to get into the Beta of Starcraft II. Thankfully Starcraft II is quite occupying.

 

[furylicious]

Back in the day of Diablo, I used to play Baldur's Gate, so I never really got immersed into the Diablo games, although all my buddies that did play it, loved it. Blizzard is still a great gaming company, although I feel like sometimes they move as slow as a snail to push out their games. But you have to admit, when they do, they are successful every time. The fact that they aren't in a hurry to push out a game when it isn't ready, for me, excites me, because they aren't going to make the same mistakes other companies CONTINUALLY make. I can wait.