Diablo 3 is a-coming?

[FeelTheRads]

I don't quite get it where you pulled out the hope of Diablo 3 having choice and consequence. Diablo was never about this and there is absolutely no reason to do it now.

I know Blizzard is cool and all that, but to see them as some sort of saviors of RPGs or gaming in general is kinda stupid.

Do you really think they'll make Diablo have choice and consequence just because they can? Pfyeah...

 

[Comrade Hamster]

What do you mean? I don't quite catch your drift.

There are several different "subjects" of choice and consequences, and different ways of implementing them. What subject(s) should the choice and consequence focus on? Quests affecting your reputation? A trite good/evil karma mechanic? What?

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

I don't quite get it where you pulled out the hope of Diablo 3 having choice and consequence. Diablo was never about this and there is absolutely no reason to do it now.

I know Blizzard is cool and all that, but to see them as some sort of saviors of RPGs or gaming in general is kinda stupid.

Do you really think they'll make Diablo have choice and consequence just because they can? Pfyeah...

Manager: Hey, Leo, come over here.
Boyarsky: 'Sup, boss?
Manager: I have good news for you. You have tons of experience, and the team seems to like you, so... Yeah. Diablo 3 is yours. You can do whatever the hell you wish, I trust in you and your talent.
Boyarsky: Why, thank you! I had plenty of neat ideas of how we could spice the setting up a bit.
Manager: Yeah, you do that.
Boyarsky: *leaves the room and talks to himself with maniacal sparks in his eyes* The industrial revolution has come to the world of Sanctuary! Steam engines! Guns! Flying machines! *Laughs madly* They called me insane and said that RPGs with meaningful character interaction and choices & consequences can't sell, but this time I have the motherfucking Diablo license. I'll show them, I'll show them all!

 

[Keender_surprise]

@FeelTheRads: I gave my reason for believing it in my original post. That is, that hopefully some of the realisations and design decisions that they have come to in relation to their next RTS game has a positive flow-on effect on the studio next door (assuming, of course, that D3 is actually being made). Go and have a look at some of the videos hat have been released in relation to Starcraft 2's single-player campaign. They're emphasisng a heavy element of mission choice as well as narrative interaction through various optional side quests. Of course, I could be acting overly optimistic in the spur of the moment. In that case, no bother. I didn't like Warcraft 3 and I wouldn't touch WoW with a 10 foot pole. If D3 turns out similar it just gets lumped into the same category.

@Hamster: I meant substantive choices and consequences. Not the basic karma mechanic or some other nonsense. I truly cannot believe that no company (to my knowledge) has tried to treat the original Diablo formula as something other than a monster killing simulator. Build a world, as well as some proper RPG elements around that basic hack 'n slash front end, so that it doesn't get so damned tedious after 20 levels of grind. This leads to - yes, that overused and yet most important of words in video games - immersion.

 

[VonVentrue]

Manager: Hey, Leo, come over here.
Boyarsky: 'Sup, boss?
Manager: I have good news for you. You have tons of experience, and the team seems to like you, so... Yeah. Diablo 3 is yours. You can do whatever the hell you wish, I trust in you and your talent.
Boyarsky: Why, thank you! I had plenty of neat ideas of how we could spice the setting up a bit.
Manager: Yeah, you do that.
Boyarsky: *leaves the room and talks to himself with maniacal sparks in his eyes* The industrial revolution has come to the world of Sanctuary! Steam engines! Guns! Flying machines! *Laughs madly* They called me insane and said that RPGs with meaningful character interaction and choices & consequences can't sell, but this time I have the motherfucking Diablo license. I'll show them, I'll show them all!

Nice one.

Frankly, I wouldn't get my hopes up as far as possible implementation of choices and consequences is concerned - Diablo is a pure hack&slash at its core, I seriously doubt Blizzard would risk changing the gameplay too much... Having said that - you never know.
If that game is indeed being made, I truly hope it will retain the sulky atmosphere of the original Diablo.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

...Azmodan, the Lord of Sin and Belial, the Lord of Lies and I believe the unofficial ruler over hell in the brothers' absence. My guess is the story will continue with these two trying to resurrect one or all of the other lords, primarily Diablo.

Okay, I will concede the point - that seems credible. I guess with the Worldstone destroyed, it is also possible that the world of Sanctuary (what a terrible name) could be easily flooded by either the forces of Heaven or Hell. Perhaps we might have to fight against invasion from both?

My thoughts exactly. When I watched the Worldstone crumble I thought "Wow! Everybody against each other and war on all planes. Awesome setting!"

And then came ... nothing.

Hope the geniuses at Blizzard are not prone to gay developments in game design and add a shit combat system like in Revenant, Die by the Sword, Severence-Blade of Darkness or (god forbid) Enclave.

I want my Diablo as it always was - with less RAM issues in the release version :wink:

 

[Callaxes]

They are adding chooices and conscequences to Starcart 2's storyline, I'm guessing they'd go the same route with Diablo 3. Not Fallout, but definately something that can alter the storyline in 3 or 4 ways, plus maybe even some dialog chooices?

People aren't scared of the idea of chosing, they're afraid of losing, you take that conscequence out of the equation and you have tasty cake that puts a smile on both gaming audiences.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I actually just started playing Diablo 2 for the first time, as a powerful necromancer, potentially set to enslave whole planes.
Pretty fun game, actually, though not sure how much staying power it'll have. In any case, might keep an eye on this.

 

[elander_]

People aren't scared of the idea of chosing, they're afraid of losing, you take that conscequence out of the equation and you have tasty cake that puts a smile on both gaming audiences.

There is some reason to these fears. There are a lot of very bad crpgs that don't penalize the player for doing bad choices or do it in a drastic way that prevents him from playing the game. Implementing consequences well meens the player should always have a chance to role-play his mistakes. In other words he should see his doom approaching in small steps. Harsh consequences are good but don't throw the player out of the game for one bad decision.

 

[Xor]

I take it no one else listened to the Blizzard podcast? (http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode2.xml)

Chris Metzen: At the most basic level, apart from the story of it, in terms of just how the product came to be at a
publishing level, we were talking with our partners, PocketBooks, a couple of years ago. “Hey, let's do trilogies per license; for each of these
three licenses.” My first instinct was, “hey, killer! Let's use go back and those trilogies to really give people a sense of the origin of each of these series.” Thus, with Warcraft, we did the War of the Ancients which was the definitive, first conflict of Azeroth that really set the stage for everything happening in the current age. StarCraft as well, with the DarkTemplar trilogy, even though it was spun with the protagonist
kind of reliving history in his mind, it really gave you a sense of the mythology of the Protoss and the events that really echo in the current
day, in the pre-staging to StarCraft II.

With the Sin War as well, while we didn't want to get into ‘time-travel' or ‘character reliving history in his head' – it's more of a straight look at
ancient events – I think I may be roasted for this, it happened about a thousand years before Diablo I, and really, the Sin War trilogy was meant to take a snapshot of the Diablo world as it was and really show you the events and characters that set in motion everything that plays out in the present day.

Sounds to me like Diablo 3 will be a prequel.

 

[Norfleet]

I actually just started playing Diablo 2 for the first time, as a powerful necromancer, potentially set to enslave whole planes.

Are we talking about the same game here?

 

[Xor]

I actually just started playing Diablo 2 for the first time, as a powerful necromancer, potentially set to enslave whole planes.

Are we talking about the same game here?

Actually, Necromancers are one of the most powerful classes since 1.10.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Corpse explosion.

 

[inwoker]

What c&c and innovation in diablo 3? People, what are you smoking?
You do realize that starcraft will be about Jim Raynor collecting parts of bla-bla artifact to prevent ancient evil?
Diablo will feature some similar stupidness.
Don't be dissapointed.

Stay tuned.

 

[Kingston]

Necros got pretty pimped, corpse explosion/novamancer is quite a winner. But nothing can beat the overpowered hammerdin. :iknowd2gottashowit:

 

[JarlFrank]

Manager: Hey, Leo, come over here.
Boyarsky: 'Sup, boss?
Manager: I have good news for you. You have tons of experience, and the team seems to like you, so... Yeah. Diablo 3 is yours. You can do whatever the hell you wish, I trust in you and your talent.
Boyarsky: Why, thank you! I had plenty of neat ideas of how we could spice the setting up a bit.
Manager: Yeah, you do that.
Boyarsky: *leaves the room and talks to himself with maniacal sparks in his eyes* The industrial revolution has come to the world of Sanctuary! Steam engines! Guns! Flying machines! *Laughs madly* They called me insane and said that RPGs with meaningful character interaction and choices & consequences can't sell, but this time I have the motherfucking Diablo license. I'll show them, I'll show them all!

This is fucking genius

 

[Kingston]

Could be nothing.

Surprised Blue didn't mention that on the Blizzplanet site it says ...

The Church of Triune will be shaken in X days

I dunno, but I'm more inclined to think this is just a countdown to a mod. Blizz has been known to do countdowns, or teasers, but always on their own websites, but with something a little more interesting that just "text".

Edit: Actually from further review, the top story on the Diablo3.com site, they are talking about the 3rd novel of a trilogy, which the guy got an advance copy. 13 days is probably the release date for "Veiled Prophet" which one of the plot points is the Church of Triune, as mentioned on Blizzplanet.

I still don't see why half the web would link to a book release though.

 

[Norfleet]

Actually, Necromancers are one of the most powerful classes since 1.10.

Serious? How?

Corpse explosion.

I remember CE being godly in the old days, but wasn't it nerfed into the dirt during the 1.09 era? My test drive of it in 1.11 just a few minutes ago seemed to suggest that it sucked.

Also, Diablo3.com: Fake.

bnet and blizzard.com, both registered at netsol, both registeed to blizzard, in Irvine, CA.

Diablo3.com is registered to some dodgy-looking monkeyass outfit in Richmond VA. Doesn't look to be associated with Blizzard at all. In fact, it's been registered there for nearly 10 years and LOOKS like some manner of domain squatting.

Given the origin date I've heard for this rumor, namely, Apr 1, I am inclined to suspect this is a joke that has gotten way out of hand.

 

[Brother None]

They will have at least fixed the genre if not improved upon it, and in my opinion - made traditional RPGs completely obsolete if you're not a die-hard rollplayer.

Huh?

Considering Diablo and traditional RPGs are fairly unrelated genres, how does that make any sense? It's basically the equivalent of saying GTA or Paper Mario makes traditional RPGs obsolete.

Genres can be made obsolete by further evolutions to a "next stage" of the same genre. But Diablo's not the same genre.

 

[denizsi]

Also, Diablo3.com: Fake.

bnet and blizzard.com, both registered at netsol, both registeed to blizzard, in Irvine, CA.

Diablo3.com is registered to some dodgy-looking monkeyass outfit in Richmond VA. Doesn't look to be associated with Blizzard at all. In fact, it's been registered there for nearly 10 years and LOOKS like some manner of domain squatting.

Given the origin date I've heard for this rumor, namely, Apr 1, I am inclined to suspect this is a joke that has gotten way out of hand.

No shit, Sherlock! Redding is teh hard:

Diablo3.com and related site Blizzplanet are offering mysterious countdown timers that currently stand at 13 days and counting. It is important to note that neither site is owned or operated by Blizzard

 

[SkeleTony]

As for TWD, Diablo wasn't THE ARPG, although did make way for clones. Secret of mana used a fusion between action and RPG elements, even then it wasn't as button mashy as Diablo was.

Secret of Mana sucked though. Diablo didn't.

Exactly! Secret of Mana wasn't even an ARPG. It is concole styled crap. Console styled RPGs are basically platformers that borrow a very few stats(HP and MANA and sometimes "attack" adn "Defense") from the turn-based strat genre(ala Warlords and HoMM).

 

[Keender_surprise]

They will have at least fixed the genre if not improved upon it, and in my opinion - made traditional RPGs completely obsolete if you're not a die-hard rollplayer.

Huh?

Considering Diablo and traditional RPGs are fairly unrelated genres, how does that make any sense? It's basically the equivalent of saying GTA or Paper Mario makes traditional RPGs obsolete.

Genres can be made obsolete by further evolutions to a "next stage" of the same genre. But Diablo's not the same genre.

In what ways would they be different genres once you mixed and matched elements of either? Don't you have to have a sufficiently high enough attack rating in the Diablo games to hit anything at all? Apart from the faster paced and more personal feel of arpgs, how are they distinct, especially once you throw in the element of narrative choice that is present in (but nowadays often very poorly done by) traditional rpgs?

 

[Brother None]

In what ways would they be different genres once you mixed and matched elements of either?

Mix and match? I can mix and match elements of bikes and cars, that doesn't mean they're the same type of vehicle.

It's like Oblivion, GTA and - say - Realms of Arkania. Two of them are RPGs, but it's not the two that share the most elements. If I put a list of gameplay elements side by side, Oblivion and GTA are most alike, and Realms of Arkania is the odd one out. But GTA is not an RPG, Oblivion and Realms of Arkania are.

Now, without getting too anthropological or bringing in the topic of discourse and the like, it's a simple truism that all the parts do not make a whole. jRPGs, cRPGs, aRPGs, Hack and Slash RPGs, MMORPGs, they all share parts. But that means nothing other than that they all fall under one umbrella term, the All-RPG or whatever. It does not mean that they become interchangeable within that umbrella.

And in that sense, saying hack 'n slash RPGs will make cRPGs irrelevant is exactly as likely as saying MMORPGs will make cRPGs irrelevant. It's true that with our current publishing model one or two forms will always squash out the rest, currently all we have are aRPGs like Oblivion and Mass Effect and MMORPGs, with hack 'n slash and cRPGs marginalized. But does that mean one form replaced or made the other irrelevant? No. They can't. Because they're distinct. It's like saying grass will make flowers obsolete.

 

[Keender_surprise]

Of course, rpgs won't become 'obsolete' in the sense that no one will play them or be interested in them - there are always going to be people who enjoy that style of play. You'd be fooling yourself however if you were to say that there weren't elements of traditional rpgs that some people (perhaps many or even most people) would rather see being lifted and placed in a slightly different genre. It is in that sense that I meant that arpgs have the capacity to make more traditional rpgs obsolete.

 

[kingcomrade]

platformers

wut. Final Fantasy games are adventure games, it's just instead of clicking on widgets and tools you click on people. It's got a combat minigame too. Secret Legend of Mana doesn't really belong in the pigeonhole. It's more of a fagtacula.