Path of Exile is the newly-announced action-RPG by a new gaming studio, Grinding Gear Games. It’s an MMORPG, playable online by anyone in the world, for free. The game will feature six character classes, an innovative and very feature-rich skill gem system, large communal towns, instanced dungeon areas that are randomly generated (both surface areas and dungeons), a vast variety of randomly-generated items, a balanced PvP system with character rankings, guild support, and every other feature you might want in an MMORPG.

The team is planning to release regular expansions through the Path of Exile website, and they’re committed to supporting and developing the game for the long haul. They all loved Diablo 2, and that game’s long term success did a lot to inspire GGG to try for a similar run with their own. It’s also what caused them to invite me to see and play the game earlier this week, since they’ve been readers of this site since before Diablo II’s launch, and thought our readers would be very interested in their ARPG-styled game. (I think they’re right.)

Path of Exile is a horror-themed game, like the first Diablo. It’s gritty and cruel; the team is fond of calling their world “cut-throat,” and it’s designed with a high level of realism. As you can see from the screenshots and the gameplay movies, it’s not a lot of flash and style over substance. Armor looks like armor, there are no WoWish oversized shoulder pads or chain mail bikinis, and while PoE has plenty of fiery spell effects and magically-glowing weapons, it’s generally old school in appearance. It reminded me a bit of Titan Quest, in terms of the visuals, the size of the units, and the smooth animations.

Their financial model stems from what they’re calling an “ethical” item shop; they’ll sell name changes and realm transfers and such, along with bonus goodies like armor dyes, evil pets, and some graphic shifts. They will not sell any items or abilities that affect the gameplay, though. No super items, no armors, no double experience potions or +magic find abilities, or anything else that players are told are optional, but that turn out to be essentially mandatory in order to properly enjoy or compete on an even footing with others while playing the game.

PoE is well into their friends and family alpha test, and is rapidly approaching the start of a closed beta test. If that goes well, the team hopes to launch the game in early 2011.

From my play time on the demo, and a long conversation with the game creators, I feel confident in predicting that most Diablo 2 fans will want to take a long look at this title. The gameplay is fast and fun, reminiscent of Diablo 2’s, and it’s got surprisingly deep features and design plans. If you’re into RPGs, and you like the Diablo III runestone system and concept, you’ll be fascinated by the much deeper and more varied system of skill gems in Path of Exile. Plus it’s got all the vast item slot machine elements that make the Diablo games so long term addictive, a wide variety of areas and monsters, and detailed long term plans for expansions and added content.

Read on for more about my play experience, quotes from our lengthy conversation about the game’s features, and much more on this newly-announced title.

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WalMart.com has joined the ever-growing list of retailers who have posted an imaginary, overly-optimistic Diablo 3 release date in an effort to spur pre-sales. Like GameStop, they’re pointing to March 1, 2011. And look, they’ve got a whole seventeen cent discount off the usual $59.99 estimated price!

You can see a collection of other such retailer nonsense on the Release Date article in the wiki, and related release date screenshots in the D3 Misc gallery.

Thanks to Urymic for the tip.

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Last week we posted about a new Blizzard art show at a museum in Taiwan, and included a few photos. If you wanted to see more of the work on display, but can’t jet off to Asia for the experience, you’re in luck. A photo-happy fellow by the name of DDS Net has posted hundreds of photos from the show on his Flickr stream. Most of the artwork seems to be from the Starcraft or Warcraft artists, but there’s a fair amount of Diablo I, Diablo II, and Diablo III artwork on display along with lots of fan art and even some sculptures and other displays.

If you want to page through the whole collection, head to DDS Net’s stream and look from pages 14 through 34, where you’ll see hundreds of photos from the show, along with various pictures of plants from a botanical garden and even some lizards and parrots at a zoo. Just for bonus fun. I looked through all the shots myself, and grabbed the ones with Diablo artwork; check them out in the Events Gallery, along with other photos from this show.

New stuff:

• The heads in the lower left of this image. Male Barbarian studies? An NPC? Unknown.
• The second from the lower left in this one is a new piece. It appears to be a humanoid monster, wielding two huge, curved swords.
• You might think some of the pieces hardly visible in this dark image are new, but only if you’ve not been attending to our fan art updates. All of those shots are D2 and D3 fan creations.

 

 

Thanks to Popez for the news tip.

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IGN has posted a good write up (but no actual video or transcript) from their conversation with Jay Wilson at Gamescom. There isn’t any *new* information,but they have some nice quotes from Jay about game building, overall progress, multiplayer compatibility, and more.  A couple of quotes:

“What we’re doing right now is going broad across the whole game,” said Wilson. “We’re trying to build up all the content to enough of a point where we can get into polishing. We have good examples of what does it look like for monsters when we’re at ship level, what does it look like for classes, what does it look like for items, we have the answers to those questions, but there’s still some story and questing stuff that’s not hitting the quality level that we want, so those are the things we’re working on.”

For anyone curious about exactly how long they may have to wait for the game to be ready to ship, Wilson provided more specifics about the production status. “We’re still adding monsters, we’re still working on bosses, we have some that aren’t made yet, we’re working on every Act but we’ve got some areas that haven’t been built yet. We’re still building, but we’re building very fast. We’re not in discovery mode anymore.”

...“Honestly, it’s similar size to Diablo II. There are some differences here and there, exterior environments are a little more diverse, dungeons are about the same. 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 II, 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.”

Thanks to Bad Ash for the news tip.

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A fan sought some hints about Blizzcon info from @Diablo today. And was firmly repelled.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Any hints as to what the major D3 news might be during Blizzcon 2010 apart from 5th class reveal which everyone knows is coming?—RageBar nope!! —Diablo

Happily, @Diablo isn’t our only source of info for what we might learn at Blizzcon. A good place to look is all of the Jay Wilson interviews from Gamescom, when he regularly replied to questions about various matters by saying that he couldn’t get into details on that yet—but that he would soon. There’s no guarantee that BlizzCon = soon in regards to every type of info, but… could be?

Here are a few things Jay said “can’t talk about yet” during the Gamescom interviews:

• NPC details. Including Hireling info.
• PVP details. Of any kind.
• Diablo III’s online financial model. (Won’t hear about this until shortly before release, ALA SC2.)
• Special player rewards, including B.net Achievements.
• Stats and character customization systems. (The Talisman?)
• Trading and selling item system. (Auction House?)
• Diablo III’s backstory and plot and lore remains almost entirely undisclosed.
• Item Sets and ideas to “fix” them in D3.
• Character non-mana resource systems.
• Diablo III’s release date. (When it’s done.)

All of those are literally taken straight from Jay’s interviews; I skimmed over our transcripts to compile this list. So, which do you think we’ll learn more about at BlizzCon? Which are you most interested in? And what knowledge do you covet that Jay wasn’t even asked about at Gamescom?

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Blizzard Entertainment is looking forward to fill up two job openings for the Diablo III team which are critical for the development of quest content. If you got the skills, and wish to be part of the best gaming studios, know your share of Diablo lore, feel free to apply:

• Quest Designer/Scripter
  
• Senior Quest Designer/Scripter

	Blizzard Quote:
	The Diablo 3 team is looking for a talented and experienced quest designer/scripter to join our crusade in developing top-quality computer games. Duties will include the creative design and technical implementation of quests and events. The ideal candidate will have proven experience in game design, a strong aptitude for critical thinking and analysis, outstanding people skills, boundless creativity, a strong visual aesthetic, and a longstanding passion for playing games. Requirements A minimum of 3 years scripting/quest design experience on a shipped product Implemented gameplay content using high-level scripting languages such as Lua or Python Ability to understand and communicate with programmers, artists, and other designers Excellent written and verbal communications skills Absolute passion for playing and making computer games Ability to work well in a team environment Pluses Bachelor's degree, or equivalent experience Experienced in designing, playing online role playing games Programming degree, or equivalent experience

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Here’s another hands-on play report from the Warcraft 3 tournament event in Austin, Texas, last week. This one comes courtesy of myketuna, who waited in line enough to play all four characters once each.

The first time I got on, I played the Monk out of curiosity and I died around 3 times. After my playtime was over, I was thinking the Monk wasn’t very good, but after watching others play him while in line, I must have been playing him wrong. That’s fine. I’ll try to figure him out when the game is released.

The second time, to make up for the shame that was my first, I played the Barbarian. This was my favorite class in Diablo II and continues to be my favorite according to this build of Diablo III. I just like his style. Cleave reminds me a whole lot of a similar skill in Torchlight and I love that they incorporated it into D3. I wasn’t sure what Howl did, even though I used it here and there for good measure, but Ground Stomp was very effective. I would just do the one-two combo of stomp-cleave for a lot of the demo. I found that to be the best way.

After another minimal wait in line, I played the Witch Doctor. This guy is also really fun to play. I played Necromancer in Diablo II and caught flashes of him while playing as the doc. The zombie hounds were pretty cool while the Poison Spiders weren’t as much. Horrify looked nice graphically, but I’d forget to use it since I never really got swarmed. And I never got swarmed because of the Fire Bombs. These things were really fun to use and powerful as well.

Finally, I played the Wizard. The wizard was also really fun, but I found out quickly that it’s better to stay farther away from enemies than get up close. The ice burst skill was really fun to use as well as the magic clone skill. By far the best thing the wizard has going for it, is the Arcane Orb skill. From far away, I would pelt these things in clusters and kill most of the swarms of enemies before they got to me. Ultimately though, I’m more of an up close melee guy and the Barbarian suits me well. If I had to create a personal ranking (based on this build), it’d be Barb > Witch Doctor > Monk (if I learn to play correctly) > Wizard.

That’s it for the hands on reports from this year’s Gamescom and the Austin War3 event. Thanks to all the readers who posted their impressions and observations; most fans seem to really enjoy hearing what other fans thought, especially if it was their (your) first time playing. Keep in mind that all of these reports are from a build of the game that’s a year out of date, and that much in Diablo 3 has changed since then. As we’ll soon see at Blizzcon! 

For those of you who are going to BlizzCon, please do plan to post some observations about your play experience. We’ll have various ways for you guys to help us report on all the new info, come late October.

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Blizzard has added a page to the official Diablo 3 site with info about the Artisans. There’s not any art or info on it we didn’t get from the video or Jay Wilson’s interviews from Gamescom, but it’s a nice presentation, with the video, the FAQ, and the screenshots all in one location.  Check it out.

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@Diablo got busy first thing Monday morning, with a few replies on varied subjects. These aren’t new info to any of us, but this is Blizzard’s whole point in having easily-accessed social media like @Diablo or a Facebook page. They can reach people who don’t follow the game closely during development. Obviously they would be far more informative if they issued links to fansites, say to transcripts of Jay Wilson interviews from Gamescom, but their web policy is pretty clearly against that, these days.

	Blizzard Quote:
	DEFCON the game had a soundtrack with People CRYING in the background… Think about putting something like that in D3.—thRobHimself It was definitely very subtle and moody! Thermonuclear war may not be far off the tone of Sanctuary… —Diablo in official site is write:” The mystic can manufacture a diverse array of scrolls, potions, RUNES” What kind of item are these runes?—hebertbortolini Runestones can be inserted into skills and provide anything from bonuses to completely altering their mechanic.—Diablo Will there be something like deposit available to ALL your on-line chars in D3? Transfering items between chars in D2 is horrible.—Venator We’re looking to include some kind of system to allow for easy sharing between characters. Probably a shared stash or mail system.—Diablo

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The artwork of Haedrig Eamon, the Blacksmith Artisan isn’t the most amazing piece of Diablo III concept art we’ve ever seen, but it’s the first new artwork in months, and it’s complicated enough to generate some humor. So here we go, with another Caption This!

Submit your most amusing, descriptive, or baffling caption for the amusement of others, and when you’re reading them, be sure you vote up any that you find specially amusing; that’s the closest thing to a prize the entrants are likely to receive.

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