Jay Wilson Answers Items Questions
Posted 12 May 2012 by FluxFans have been peppering Jay Wilson’s twitter with questions (complaints) about the legendary items revealed by those photos of the official strategy guide. When the pictures were first revealed, some fans refused to believe that they were accurate or complete, since those fans had come to expect hundreds and hundreds of legendary items in Diablo III, and there were *only* 226 listed in the strategy guide.
Jay’s responded by saying they have about as many legendaries as there were uniques in D2 + D2X. To which fans have replied that D3 has far more types of items which means there are a lot fewer legendaries of each type, and there are fewer Item Sets in D3, and there aren’t Runewords in D3, which were essentially DIY uniques in D2X. To that Jay has replied… well, just read his tweets as quoted below, with one added in from @Bashiok that bears on the issue.
Over 200 legendaries sounds right. This is more than D2 had at ship, and not much lower than D2 has after 10 years.
To Renos’ point, there are only 2 Mighty Weapons (1h and 2h) that are level 60 in the game? 
— murphydandan
Again, this does not differ greatly from Diablo II. Also, rares and crafted are end-game competitive. Our goal was to balance, not dominate with legendaries –Jay Wilson
Then Bashiok was lying… He said there were a lot more items in the game than in the guide. These have all been seen before.
Do not be so quick to call people liars. –Jay Wilson
You said there are “far more” items in the game than the website shows but the strat guide suggests there are only a couple more? –@firatb84
Because items in Diablo are random. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4887629121#3 –Bashiok
How about that being much less than D2 lod and Titan quest (without the expansion pack) –FrankRenos
How about both the examples you just used were a game + expansion. 
–Jay Wilson
Can you confirm there are only 226 legendary items in the final game as the strategy guide suggests? –firatb84
I have not cross-compared the strat guide with the game. Items were one of the last things, so there could be differences. –Jay Wilson
I have to side with Jay’s logic on this one, though I don’t think he or Bashok have done very well explaining or defending it. As they say, there were a comparable number of uniques in D2, and they’re clearly leaving room in D3 to expand and deepen and improve things in the expansions (just as Blizzard North did with D2X, when they added charms, jewels, runes, runewords, elite items, tons more uniques, elite Item Sets, etc). That’s why the D3 devs removed several item features during development (
Charms, the Talisman, the Mystic‘s item enchants, only 4 types of gems with bland bonuses when socketed, etc) all of which we’ll likely see in improved and polished form in D3X.
Also note that while D3 has a lot fewer uniques of each item type (since there are so many more types of items in D3) the uniques are clustered at the high range, with 1 or 2 lvl 60s in every type, and others in the mid or high 50s. Also every single item in all 13 found and 3 of the 9 crafted item sets are lvl 60, which adds 16 item sets made up of 61 set items, all at level 60.
Plus, Item Sets and Legendaries are much more variable in their stats than they were in D2, and they’re not balanced to be way better than rares, which means that found and (especially) crafted lvl 60 rares will be as good or better than legendaries and sets, in many cases.
I’m sure we’ll find balance issues and other problems with end game play in Diablo III, but I don’t think lack of item diversity at level 60 will be a major problem.
I think there is no difference if there are 200 legendary items and 400 rare items that are usable and very desirable, or 400 legendary and 200 rares. What is the difference? If the item is good, does it really matter if it is rare or legendary?
Legendary looks shinier, has unique art and in-game apperances. That’s why it matters
Plus, if they limit the number of legendaries available to each class, then the more reason for us to fight for it (also known as RMAH, tadaaa!).
It is legendary because, well, it is legendary! If a certain class can use about 50 different “legendary” weapons, then it is pretty common right? Might as well make it a white item.
@hellfurion no because there would be 50 unique items with there own art vs 100th random axe with the same art.
i like how the crappy axe on that character has a tier 14 gem
I wanna know how this build gets to a 3k dps.
Assuming, the stat screen is directly correlated to this item set up.
“This is more than D2 had at ship, and not much lower than D2 has after 10 years.”
The only answer you need. It’s hilarious how wrong raging fanbois are when they remember Diablo 2.
its actually a really stupid answer
what exactly has Blizzard done with D2 in the last 9 years ?
How many items have they added ? How many expansions have they done ?
But D3 has more than D2 has after 10 years
what a joke
Troll harder.
These numbers may be slightly off, but…
At release, D2 had 123 uniques and 62 set items.
LoD added 157 uniques and 65 set items (plus elite base items, class-specific items, runes, jewels, charms etc)
Patch 1.10 added 100 uniques (and removed one)
The original game was released June 30, 2000. The 1.10 patch was released on October 23, 2003. So, it took Blizz over 3 years to make the game what it is nowadays.
I’d be surprised, if D3 expansions and patches didn’t add as much new things to the game. Just play the game (on Tuesday) and stop worrying! :D
And the development time for diablo 3 was more than diablo 2 with lod combined.
One is not wrong to expect it to carry much more legendary items d2:lod has to offer, and even then they would not need much more effort to design new legendaries, they can rip off the names of most of them diablo 2, or even the stats itself with modifications to suit diablo 3.
I don’t see how that’s a measure of game quality. And to see the complete picture you have to know the number of affixes and consider how many uniques and sets were never even used in D2.
Games take a lot longer to make now than 10 years ago… Some full-on sequels took less than a year to make back then (Fallout 2 for example), yet to do that now, you have to have two studios working on the first game and the second game at the same time, like they do with Call of Duty.
I use game development time as a counter to Jay Wilson’s arguement, because apparently he thinks that so by arguing about how much more diablo iii have comparing to diablo ii classic but yet argues diablo iii is ok with lesser items than an expansion game.
(by using development time of diabloii+diabloii:lod > development time of diabloii =? more items for game+expansion).
So following the same reasoning, I would suppose I would expect diablo iii to have more items because it had more development time than both of them.
If he brought up other arguments rather than just comparing numbers with diablo ii classic, then I wouldn’t compare it to diabloii:lod too. He should have come up with other arguments that are unique to diablo iii itself such as unique artwork of legendary weapons etc.
Coming up with the items themselves doesn’t take much time, it’s just about editing the attributes and the names of the items. I suppose only the work of balancing all of them and creating unique artwork for all of them will take much of time.
Like this?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Picture_2_c.jpg
I think they mentioned aiming for a good mix of legendaries and rares (and sets, but those are legendaries as well now) when it comes to high-end character equipment. Not having legendaries (at this point) for pretty much every single desirable affix combination means that rares can have a place in best-per-slot scenarios as well.
This statement, of course, comes from deeper into the D3 developement process than 2 hours ago, so the complete opposite might already be the case by now.
Not to mention that D3 has random affixes on Legendaries, so instead of asking for a 138+ Shako in D2X you could have a Shako thats perfect for a WD but useless for a DH and vice versa. The random factor is amazing and will make the time we spend with the game MUCH longer.
Yeah, I think a lot of the complainers here are failing to realize how much random properties on legendary items will mix things up. I’m sure some of them will complain about that too though, e.g. “Omg why does my windforce have intelligence on it??? I want dexterity instead!!!”
Edit: I see below that people have already started complaining about this. Good grief.
only 226? wtf any more and I cba to even browse through them all in the website
I’m more into rares anyways than legendaries that are always the same or maybe with couple variable stats.
Who cares about the exact number of legendaries, why doesn’t anyone ask about their (assumingly boring) properties?
Exactly. Here’s hoping for some turning into a vampire, % to cast X, adding glow, aura when equipped, etc.
You likely won’t see “% to cast X”. They’ve fairly consistently said that they’re reluctant to give the skills from one class to another.
They have however mentioned that most legendary items have unique art (so your unique helm won’t just be a blue-colored normal helm), which I think is pretty cool as far as aesthetics go.
I’d be down with a skill you already have…but that would get tricky. Class only stuff…
It’s the third time Bashiok fail to explain something. First one was about the group play and drop, he said when you play in group you get more loot, we understand that the drop rate was better but no, what he meant was “you kill faster then you drop faster”.
Second one was about dual wielding and damage : “skills use main hand only, with a few exceptions” and right after his post a lot of beta players came to say otherwise and then no more explanations (or I miss something maybe)
Finally there is “The database on the website is far from all the items in the game” and this ? Sure they’re not at the level of dice and bf3 when it comes to lies but you can’t they say they did a great pr job.
Or is it just me being hateful because I’m really disappointed? I mean, I was looking forward to the update of the website on monday and see a bunch of new items inferno only, talk about a let down !
“Or is it just me being hateful because I’m really disappointed?”
Yeah, that must be it.
Dont forget when he said the game was being changed to show character names in game instead of battletags…which was a lie.
You clearly don’t played D2 classic at start. The was much more fun because best items are rares with random properties. I’m glad they back again.
Bashiok is the worst and sadly the most active CM. Fire him please.
Because he’s said a few wrong things? He’s been our link to the development the entire process. You’ve got to give him way more credit than that.
believe me, bashiok is about 100000000000x better as a CM during diablo3′s development time than karune ever was during sc2′s development time
thank the gods, excuse me, thank diablo that we didnt have HIM as our CM
god no kidding
At first, I have to say, that I LOVE Diablo 3 and can’t even wait for tuesday.
But: Didn’t Diablo 2+LoD have about 380 Uniques? That would me 50% more, than D3 has to offer.
I wouldn’t say that 50% is “not much lower than Diablo 2 had in 10 years”. But I hope for one or more expansion packs, with even more items, because playing Diablo just for Items, is what kept me 4 years in a row at bay with Diablo 2
372 in LoD, but D2 had much less then that, and most of these were crap ( if you play Classic, you’ll know that Rares are the only items that matter ).
I’m guessing the “true hardcore fans” who started playing after LoD ( and after patches, like the one with synergies ) are the majority of the whiners, couse if someone has seen the early times of Classic, they’ll know that this is plenty.
Except that this isn’t D2. There is no reason for it to be very similar to D2 in this regard. They could have and should have greatly improved on legendary items, otherwise what’s the point of even having them there?
what about the hipster nerds walking around with occy rings? O)
To be honest, I’m not worried at all about items/legendaries.
Adding those requires just a small patch. Blizzard ain’t stupid, they’ll add this sutff over time, to keep the game interesting and economy flowing. Same as affixes.
I’m more pissed the affixes for skill improvements are boring and rune levels being gone, which also makes rares very primitive. But once again, im sure this will al return over time
Blizz already stated there will be no additional content updates post release.
I don’t think that Blizz ever said that. Rather, Flux said that Grug said that Bashiok told him in real life…
By “content” they mean areas and monsters. I’m sure i read somewhere that new items still will be added
And affixes.
I agree, if there are no cool skill modifiers like I think they said there will be (adding number of poison darts for example) than i am really disappointed.