I tried to make the whole article more readable. Someone can post this on the forums too if I get credit for it (my wrists hurt now. )

DS: Can you tell us something about runes and their use in the form of rune words in the game?

Wilson: We haven’t decided exactly what we want to do with runes, at least not so far. What I can say is that we don’t intend rune words to be back from Diablo 2. Rune words were part of Diablo 2’s crafting system. For Diablo 3, we have different plans, which we can’t give the details on right now. It does still use runes, (translation too shoddy to finish.)

DS: What effect does monster level have in regards to the type of health orb dropped?

Wilson: Health orbs heal a percentage of life, so the more health the character has, the stronger the effect of the orb. We’ve implemented a system in order to accomplish this. At the moment, we intend healing orbs to heal 15% of health. So if you have 1,000 health, the orb regenerates 150 health, and if you have 100 health, the orb regenerates 15. On the other hand, we can have it so certain monsters, like bosses, drop several orbs, or drop orbs as its own health dwindles. So for example, there can be a chance for an orb to drop every time his health drops by 5%, or force orb drops at certain points in the fight. There are also opportunities for orbs to influence objects or skills. Orbs don’t fill life instantly, they regenerate life.

DS: Health orbs seem primarily useful for co-op play.

Wilson: Yes, co-op play is an important reason we developed the orb system. In Diablo 2, we had a design problem with player challenge. In higher levels, there were monsters with several immunities to attacks, making them almost impossible to kill. The reason why developers elected to use such extremes was because the player was basically almighty and by that point had nearly infinite access to health. He was able to get through every situation by either town portaling or running away. The only thing you can do is have a player that deals tremendous damage, and even that isn’t challenging if you have unlimited healing possibilities. All that remains is the player simply has to charge in and kill. In Diablo 3, we’re trying to create a system where the player actually has to make challenging attempts. If the player, for example, meets up with a horde of enemies blocking him from getting at a health orb, he must say to himself "I’ll use my Teleport to get to the other side." Or "I’ll use my ability to paralyze the monsters, then run over and get my health back." The system is rooted in what we’re trying to do with everything in the game, and is important because we really wanted to change how we design monsters. We want them to be able to form a true barrier around players. These monsters will be very difficult to get around, don’t do much damage, but the fact that it requires thinking to overcome will provide a challenge.

DS: What function does shoulder armor provide? Are they considered an addition to defense?

Wilson: No, those and pants didn’t exist as armor in Diablo 2, so in order to provide more visual variety and more items, we’re including them. We’re already making sure that the objects have appropriate attributes, such as endurance on shoes, enhanced life on chest armor, but that’s more a matter of style, these attributes aren’t set in stone. We wanted a greater variety of items and the opportunities that come from being able to make a unique looking character. A few people expressed a fear that the shoulder pads would become oversized like in World of Warcraft, but if they looked at the Witch Doctor, they’d see that his shoulder pads are, generally, quite small. On the other hand, Barbarians are supposed to be physically imposing, so we’ve opted for a more traditional Germanic barbarian look. Some wore enormous furs, and we tried to imitate this style. So our decision had nothing to do with World of Warcraft, we just wanted to include more items.

DS: The Barbarian is indeed the exact same as the one in D2, only 20 years later. So what impact will it have on the story when I select a female Barbarian instead?

Wilson: I’m not sure if we’ve decided what we’re going to do in regards to that. In general, we want to make sure that each class has their own unique background and history, and should also note that these stories won’t differ between male and female versions. The Barbarians will of course have a few little things that need to be changed, but in large part, the genders are similar. We’ll probably only change small textual things about the female Barbarian. The Witch Doctor will be treated as an outsider, being from foreign lands, but the Barbarian is very intimidating because of his size and strength. We want him to have a stronger feeling as a roleplaying game character by making him have a unique impact on the world and not be so generalized.

DS: Are there any factions or political groups as there are in World of Warcraft?

Wilson: We’ve played down the idea a bit. It’s not something that’ll be unrecognized, but it won’t be like in World of Warcraft. We’d rather people join factions for role play reasons, so they can affect the world itself. We may also introduce things to give players a better relationship with the world, or to tell their story better, but we don’t want it to be as the result of a linear conclusion. But nothing’s really in the making in regards to this. There are lots of related ideas still on the drawing board, following the motto "Hey, that might be cool. How can we do that? I don’t know, let’s think about it again in a little while." That way, we still have a whole series of things on a long list, and with each milestone, maybe slip a few things from the list into the framework if it’s feasible.

DS: How big is the world compared to Diablo 2? Are there more quests and things to do than in Diablo 2?

Wilson: Well, we honestly don’t know exactly how big it is in comparison to Diablo 2. The goal is for it to be of a similar size, with a similar amount of content and over a similar time span as Diablo 2. During development, we were almost surprised how long the first Act took, we really thought it should have been shorter. So we played around with some settings and ran around the environments we’d randomly generated to get a feel for this. It’s easy to change the length of a given area so that it’s generated smaller, which will shorten the length of time it takes to complete it, so we still have a lot of fine tuning to do to make the length just right so that it coincides with our objective to create a game that is about the size of Diablo 2. We believe Diablo 2 was a very good size, even with the number of quests. In any case, more than in Diablo 2, Diablo 3 will have more quests and many of them have a much stronger tie to the game. Compare this to Diablo 2, where quests generally came in 6 per Act, but in Diablo 3 we have no quest limit. So we can continue to insert as many quests as we like, until we feel that we’ve got a good amount and there aren’t too many. We want to concentrate on quests that are really fun and contribute to the game. If I have to come up with a number, I’d say there’s probably twice as many quests, but I wouldn’t nail it down like that. It could still be more or less at this point.
Traveling is again handled by waypoints as in Diablo 2. We thought about mounts, but when we designed the world, we decided there wouldn’t be any need for them. The idea of town portals we wanted to reject, since from the viewpoint of being in the middle of a fight, it’s very easy to abuse, simply disappearing. It just goes back to being the kind of thing we don’t want. Players often go back to town more when they really need to. But if you give players the opportunity every two minutes to town portal, they’ll take advantage of that and carry every last piece of loot, even worthless things, back to town effortlessly, which isn’t very fun. That’s why we wanted to move away from that. We also looked back on the original Diablo to get a feel for dungeons being difficult to escape from, but Diablo 2 never balanced this very well like we have now. We want the player not to be stuck in a dungeon forever, we want to provide intervals where they can go back. We don’t want players to have to keep dropping items, but we also don’t want them to be able to go back as often as they want like in Diablo 2. There are a lot of pros and cons and we’re currently balancing it all. The removal of town portals is beginning to feel bad, because everyone was accustomed to it, but we’re trying our best to find the right way to do this so that the game doesn’t suffer for it.

An example of this, my favorite Diablo 2 example, Duriel, the boss of Act 2. He dealt massive damage, had huge amounts of health, inflicted freeze effects and is waiting directly at the entrance of an extremely small room. He’s very brutal, but the only reason he was so difficult was because the player had to use town portals constantly, was always running away, drinking potions, etc., and it was almost frustrating. This is why we’ve taken care in how the health system has been changed. We want to avoid situations where a player is repeatedly using town portals and coming back until the boss is killed. This isn’t a particularly fascinating way to do it. We want to create a system where the bosses are challenging without frustrating the player.

One thing we’re trying with our waypoints is adding a "town portal" like ability to it. Previously in a Diablo 2 game, if a friend wanted to catch up, he’d have to yell "TP! TP!" and wait until someone portals them to where they are. This isn’t a very good way to get players together, because it requires the other players to drop what they’re doing to summon a portal in a safe spot. That’s why we’re allowing waypoints to teleport you directly to other players. The player steps on the waypoint, clicks the function "Teleport to friend" (this won’t be the final name of the function, it’ll certainly change) and immediately a list of other players in the game appears and he can click to teleport to them. This takes the load off the existing players who are already out playing and might be in the middle of a fight, and it also allows everyone to catch up. I know this is a fairly long answer. For all these features, we’re just trying to decide whether the advantages of them outweighs any disadvantages, and then try and implement them.

DS: Is it possible to play the game alone? Does it make a difference whether or not I play in a group or solo? Are there better drops, are there more monsters? Is there any special incentive to play one way over another?

Wilson: We’re trying to make the game slightly more attractive to play cooperatively. When you play in a group, each player gets maybe a little bit more loot, but not necessarily any better loot than you’d get in a solo game. The drop system in Diablo works like a slot machine, the more drops you have, the greater chance you have to get something better. So the co-op situation is fine-tuned so that the chances of monsters appearing are higher. Let’s say we’re playing with 3 people, all together, and we defeat a skeleton. The skeleton drops something for everybody, but your drop can only be seen for you, nobody else. So we no longer have to fight with others to get our fair share of drops. We don’t want players to be alone, we’d rather they be in a group. You might be at a slight disadvantage playing solo, but not enough that you won’t want to play. We adjust automatically whenever players join or leave. You likely won’t see any loot changes from boss kills, and it’s not necessary, since when he dies everyone will get their own loot, which is the biggest change from Diablo 2. This can become advantageous if you exchange and trade your drops with theirs and is another way to bring players together. It’s also one of our main objectives, we want players to be level with each other and we don’t want them to be discouraged to overcome obstacles together [at the risk of maybe not getting any loot]. We don’t want people to be like "I don’t want to play with you because you steal all the loot." So we remove the possibility to do this, so the experience can be positive for every individual who decides to play.

DS: If there are different characters of different classes, do they get loot drops geared towards their class?

Wilson: No, all loot can drop for all players. We have the opportunity to generate specific objects, and sometimes we do, but usually as a quest reward or a special boss. The first time you kill a boss, we might try and provide him with something he can use, but in most situations, all items drop for all classes, which will further encourage trading.

DS: So there’s no way to see another player’s loot?

Wilson: No, and it’s intended this way. When people see what everyone got, they’ll get irritated if they didn’t get something someone else did. This goes back to World of Warcraft. Superficially it sounds negative, because someone could receive an item that you need yourself, but if you don’t know what they got, it doesn’t really bother you anymore. [In most cases this is beneficial because when a backpack is full, rather than return to town, players will trade with each other or drop things on the ground they don’t want for others to pick up.] Once an object touches the ground, anyone can have it. [The rest is kind of illegible, sorry.]

DS: Will there be Open Battle.net and LAN play?

Wilson: Currently we plan to allow everyone to play, even offline. What we’ve done though is changed the menu to encourage Battle.net play. In Diablo 2, the first option was Single Player. You click it, playing the game in normal difficulty, and think "Hey, now I want to play with my friends." Because if you look at Battle.net, you can’t bring your single player character over. There’s still a separation of offline and Battle.net characters. We want all to know that it’s better to play on Battle.net. You can play with others and if they want, they can password their games and play alone. But should you decide to play offline, then we want the player to know that he is absolutely not required to play online. We have no intent to support LAN games, because we focus on Battle.net, where we have the ability to keep everyone in contact with the Blizzard community.

DS: Will there be new features in Battle.net? StarCraft 2 is talking about new Battle.net features, but they aren’t announcing any details.

Wilson: We’re working on a new version of Battle.net, and there is a major revision in how it works. The goal is to simply provide the best online experience that you can find in any game. If you’re playing a Blizzard game, we want you to be part of the Blizzard community. We want people to find their friends quickly, to communicate with them, and to play together. And we focus on that, but I cannot be specific, that’s up to Battle.net to announce.

DS: Are these updates applicable to all Blizzard games, or only StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3?

Wilson: We’re focusing on StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, I don’t know of any plans for the older games. I don’t really have the opportunity to talk to [the Battle.net team] to talk about it. I think currently they’re focused on StarCraft 2. I go to the meetings and give them our criteria, but a lot of the features are similar [to what we’ll get in Diablo 3]. StarCraft 2 pushes these features a little further than we do. But I’m certain that when StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 are completed, they might find a way to integrate older games, but I can’t say.

DS: What’s your long-term motivation? Will there be new items in patches, or [will the game include enough dynamic content to not really get boring]?

Wilson: One of the keys to fun in Diablo is its randomness. We generate random areas, and have difficulties of Nightmare and Hell that we will maintain. We have a few other systems too, but they aren’t known yet, and are specially designed to keep the game interesting. These aren’t patch-based systems, they’re integrated into the game to try and make the game experience dynamic. We have nothing against Mephisto or Pindleskin runs, it’s just they were fairly monotonous. So we want to motivate players by providing an incentive to create a broad range of gameplay. We have no plans announced for content updates, we’re focusing on getting the final game out first. We have always supported our titles long after release and an extension is as good as guaranteed, and we will try them in a reasonable time frame. I’m sure that even after launch we’ll still add things to the game, as with every game, but we also want a game that can stand by itself and doesn’t require content updates like World of Warcraft.

DS: So no monthly fees for Battle.net?

Wilson: I can’t say 100% that there will be no charges, but our goal is to sell a boxed product. The problem is we’re multinational, so each individual market is different. The boxed model works in Asia for example, but not everywhere. If we publish a financial model then we have to do it simultaneously for each region [in Asia], and it’s hard to say what each will look like. What I can say that a boxed game is our goal, not a subcription game, though I can’t say for absolute certain that there will never be any fees. Just that it’s not our goal.

Great translation, CaptainDingo. It really helps clarify some points that weren’t clear from the original Google translation.

Very interesting that they’ve dropped (or are considering dropping) Town Portals. On the one hand, part of me is screaming "Noooo! Heresy!" but the other finds the idea quite intriguing. Certainly, in Diablo II, was often way too easy a way of escaping from a dangerous situation. The Duriel example is a great one: it defnitely becomes laborious having to TP out every now and then to refill your globes, stock up on potions, etc.

Really interesting interview. Jay gives a lot of (background) infos.

The google translation is more suited for a comic read than an informative one imo. (especially for someone who knows a bit about translation)
Kudos to CaptainDingo for doing a good job. One which a computer will never be able to produce.

My biggest disappointment was swallowing down and typing out the part about no more LAN. Basically confirmed there will be no LAN option, which probably also means no TCP/IP games either. Not sure how I feel about that.

No LAN Play… I guess us poor guys on 56k connections will just suffer then… ?

Yep.

Good work Dingo. I don’t like reading the word "teleport" but I’m sure they won’t make it game-breaking like in d2.

I really like how they are thinking about this. They will try to make a better game than Diablo 2, not just uptading it a bit.
And its all focused on fun play. Thats the biggest and most important thing. Removing frustrating situations from diablo 2 and improving the action game play and coop abiity. Still giving the game more deapth and replayability.

About TP I find it kind of obvious it wont be in the game. It just doesnt fit with the gameplay they are trying to create, with removing potions and making it more fight instead of flee type gameplay. Otherwise the TP had to be on a cooldown, that could work to.

For me LAN play is like whatever. I pretty much dont know anyone who doesnt have broadband, and if so they arent playing computer games. In all fairness I saw that disscussion in Hellgate London too and was thinking it was a good choise focusing on interet play. This game will be relesed earliest 2009, I just cant see why people wouldnt go online if they are playing computer games.

I am disappointed to hear that Lan will no longer be an option, with D2 we used to get together at someones house for big session of D2, much more fun to be in the same room yelling out for help… also always found that online there would be lag and could sometimes find yourself dead before you saw what was actually attacking you. I do admit though it has been sometime (a few yrs) since I tried it online….

Thanks CaptainDingo!

I’m shocked at the news of no LAN support. That’s where my friends and I spent most of our time. Getting together for a LAN usually meant playing Diablo II for 80% of the time.

I’m not happy to hear that at all! :(