An interesting bit of video here from Blizzcon 2008. It’s a video report from the convention by the Girls Entertainment Network, and in addition to a number of interviews with convention-goers, there’s a bit of footage from the game that’s not previously been seen online. The tasty bit begins at 3:31, when the entire dialogue between the female Witch Doctor and Captain Rumford is heard.

Rumford was the NPC who greeted new characters in New Tristram in the Blizzcon demo. He had different dialogues for each of the characters (and genders, though they mostly just changed pronouns), and was full of attitude and realism. He reacted to the Witch Doctors as most people would, “Who are you in your ragged bikini and what do you think you’re going to do against monsters?” was his message, more or less. Watch the movie and hear it for yourself.

Thanks to ExtraCrispy for posting this one in the WD forum.

5 comments

Gamestar interviewed Leonard Boyarsky, World Lead Designer, to talk about Diablo III‘s Rune system, Battle.net 2.0, Inventory and item management, random quests in a static outdoor world, and why all of the classes have unique, non-overlapping skills.

Not much is new in this interview, but it does help some fans that may have missed previous interviews to get a grasp and catch up on certain aspects of Diablo III. You can watch the video interview at the Gamestar website in English. Click through to read the transcript of the whole 6-minute interview.

Update by Flux: This interview is from BlizzCon 2008 back in October. So 1) bonus points to Gamestar for sitting on the footage for four months thus giving themselves a news burst now, and 2) no wonder there’s nothing “new” covered here. Also, the initial transcript didn’t include the last two questions, so I’ve added those in now.

12 comments

While Games Radar might have been quite late with their preview, they are now officially beaten by Play.tm in terms of publishing content late. The gaming site managed to hold on to their Jay Wilson interview for almost 5 months, namely Games Convention Leipzig in August! Well, having said that, it's a quite interesting interview, and it's well worth a read. For one thing, Jay is answering a tiny bit more about the team exchange that took place when Blizzard North (mostly) left the company:

	Blizzard Quote: (Source)
	How long has the game been in the works? Almost six years. Although I've been working on it for almost three. In my team there are a few guys who have been involved the whole time, but the majority of the team has been involved for two to three years. Is this in part because of the creative issues that had to be resolved earlier in the project? Yeah. I think the first issue... I can't speak much about Blizzard North because its before my time, but one of the biggest issues was that because of the values of Blizzard in general its really hard to have an external creative group, separate from the core group. There's too much that's done; sound, cinematics and story - so much of its done at core Blizzard HQ that they learnt the lesson that all groups should be internal. That's the only way that all the philosophy gets passed on. That's the conclusion they came to when they tried to bring Blizzard North into the main HQ arena. I think they offered 46 of the 49 positions... to move down. It wasn't that they didn't want Blizzard North involved, it was that they said "you guys don't function well away from us". So a lot of the team came down. Since then, we've had creative struggles... trying to find a game worthy of the Diablo 3 name.

If you missed any preview, interview or video, check out the Media Coverage section!

4 comments

In an attempt to get the award for slowest preview of the year, Games Radar has released their BlizzCon 2008 Diablo 3 impressions. Not only that, but they seem to have turned down the press PC stations in favour of cutting the 2 hour queue lines on the show floor, having fun enraging some fans. On the other hand, it's quite quiet on Diablo III news right now, and they do apply decent writing to the article, so head over there for the full thing. Here is an excerpt:

Blizzard offered up a generous single dungeon demo at the event, which inevitably became a playground of charnel pursuits for the hundreds of attendees that managed to score a playthrough. It wouldn’t be Diablo without fully randomized dungeons. During our three playthroughs, the game generated a unique dungeon every time, with few reoccurrences. And just looking at the dozens of monitors around us, we knew immediately what everybody’s favorite class was. The Wizard, which Blizzard unveiled only an hour before…

You can find the full preview here, and if you missed any preview, interview or video, check out the Media Coverage section!

2 comments

Did you ever watch slides of family holidays as a kid? Sitting in a dark room seeing your grandfather and grandmother strolling the streets of Cuba, buying you that hollow coconut that’s supposed to be an instrument of some description when used with a stick? Well, if you didn’t you’re probably better off, but Diablo III is different though! Even in stills you have strong poses, powerful impressions and lots and lots of gore. If only I could replace all those hours wasted with Diablo III footage, how my life would have been more… Bloody…

The Diablo 3 gameplay video from BlizzCon 2008 is full of new interesting details about the game and we have taken the time to snap the most important shots from the clip, adding descriptions of what is actually going on (just like we did with the WWI gameplay and cinematic videos)! A few of the shots are multiple shots of the same spell, chosen to give anyone with limited bandwidth an idea of the spell or effect animations. On that note, I recommend that you use the “Sort By Filename” functionality we have in the gallery, so you can see all the pics in sequence.

Some of the pics from the new gameplay are really something and I recommend everyone to take a look even if you have seen the video to get a a more detailed description of what is actually going on. You’ll find all the pictures in the BlizzCon 2008 Diablo 3 Screenshot Gameplay Gallery. Below are a few examples:

 

 

9 comments

Later than I wanted it to be, but quite long and details, here’s my Wizard gameplay report, based on my Wizard playtime at Blizzcon. This report covers the basic gameplay style (kinda Sorceress-y), has a bit of discussion of items, and goes into great detail on the lower level active spells, most of which I was able to test out. There are links aplenty in this piece, pointing to the various Wizard skill tree pages in Diablo Wiki, all of which add many more details, stats, descriptions, and screenshots of the Wizard’s leet skillz. Refer to them as you read, and you’ll gain considerable knowledge of the character you know you are simply itching to get your hands on.

Read on to see the full report…

3 comments

• Diablo III looked great at BlizzCon, but we know that there’s still a great deal of work to be finished on the project, a point driven home by the fact that Blizzard’s employment page still has a considerable (worrying?) number of key jobs open on the D3 Team. They’re not just “3rd assistant programmer” type openings either; 4 of the positions begin with the word “senior” and Blizzard is still actively looking for a new art director, a position which opened up back in August when Brian Morrisroe left the company.
• GamerZines are free, downloadable, .pdf format gaming magazines. They look like any other gaming magazine, with short game bits, feature articles, and ads, but they are digital, so they have animations and trailers embedded in the pages, along with other nifty features. The latest issue features Diablo III on the cover, and has a lot of post-Blizzcon info about D3, as well as SC2 and WoW. There are numerous Diablo 3 screenshots (none are new, despite the “exclusive” tags on most of them), some good info about the game, and even a short interview (text or audio) with Jay Wilson. Download the 30meg file here.
• The SF Examiner’s games blog has a post about the high standard D3 has to meet, illustrated by the Seven Reasons why Diablo II Kicked Butt!

 

2 comments

If you enjoyed the hilarious first part of the BlizzCon 2008 dance contest, you’ll be happy to know IncGamers have just put up part 2! Check it out below:

7 comments

IncGamers have posted the first half of their BlizzCon Dance Contest, so if you haven’t seen it, make sure you take time to give it a watch. They had guts to get up there in front of all those people and do that, good on em!

The /Silly contest is also available for viewing as fans come up with funny jokes to win stuff. Put the kettle on then sit back an enjoy.

2 comments

Our week of Blizzcon demo articles continues, today with coverage of that Necromancer usurper, the Witch Doctor. I had a chance to play through the entire Blizzcon demo with this character, and have written up the general play style, the strengths and weaknesses, and included some coverage of the skills, the overall character design, the structure of the skill trees, the WD-themed items I saw, and more.

In conjunction with this report, the Witch Doctor skill trees have all been updated with the most recent info from Blizzcon. Unfortunately, unlike the Wizard and Barbarian, who had more than 50 skills each on display in the Blizzcon build, there were just 11 Witch Doctor abilities enabled. All were active skills and all could be used, but without any of the passives and masteries listed, or any skills from further down than the second tier, it’s hard to do more than guess at how the character will play in the full game.

The full skill trees can be seen here, and click through to read the detailed gameplay report.

• Plague Skill Tree
• Spirit Skill Tree
• Voodoo Skill Tree

3 comments