Game News Diablo 3 update

[Fresh]

What kind of asshole names himself "Gaming Steve"? You have a shitty name, don't try to exploit it.

... from the fella named "S4ur0n27".

 

[Jason]

Susan didn't choose that name, it was earned in blood.

 

[Jon]

Starcraft's core developers left to create their own company, ArenaNet to develop Guild Wars. Guild Wars was always intended as a PvP game from the start but somewhere down the line, they implemented PvE to cater to the Diablo crowd and the implementation was just incredibly poor.

Blizzard North, on the other hand, went to Flagship Studios and a couple of smaller studios.

Ah. Thanks. Makes me wonder just how many staff are left at Blizzard who made any of the games prior to WOW.

 

[Atrokkus]

Starcraft's core developers left to create their own company, ArenaNet to develop Guild Wars.

Only *some* of Starcraft's core developers, namely:
Eric Flannum
Patrick Wyatt
James Phinney

I don't count senior programmers and other non-design related positions, as they are easily disposable and replaceable. So no, the bulk of SC's team is still at Blizzard, and I'm happy about it.

 

[kingcomrade]

If they're the turds responsible for Warcraft 3 I wouldn't be so happy.

 

[EvilManagedCare]

I like how this guy thinks he's being so funny by substituting the names. Retard. Nobody will ever crack that code.

That said, Diablo 3 wouldn't be so bad, but didn't they already make that with World of Warcraft?

 

[aweigh]

Not that I'm implying a game site journalist is above an 8th grade education, but I think he was plainly being cheeky with the name switching.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

He's a dick.
Anywho,Saint, would these soggy crackers be saltines soaked from home made chicken soup with big chunks of chicken and noodles? And a side dish of Orzo with bacon and onions and and cheese and such?

 

[Nightjed]

Interesting side note:

President of VoodooPC, Rahul Sood, has some exciting information from Geneva this week. Sood claims Blizzard just purchased 1,500 HP Opteron 64 servers specifically for World of Warcraft and Battlenet systems.

I am guessing Blizzard will combine the power of these servers to improve the gaming experience for World of Warcraft users worldwide – as well Blizzard may also be preparing for their next major online game. Perhaps they are preparing for the next generation Diablo or something of the like.

Blizzard anticipates releasing an expansion pack to the wildly popular MMORPG within the next few months. The company has come under continuous scrutiny after its servers have crashed due to end game content and increasing populations. It's still unclear as to whether or not Blizzard will adopt these servers to replace the existing fleet of several thousand machines world wide, or if the new servers will just host new content and worlds.

they are more likely to prepare for a new wow expansion than for an unanounced project

I loved Diablo 1 for both single and multiplay, the game didnt get boring even after hundreds of replays and you kept finding better items, books and elixirs, and the mp was extremebly fun

Diablo 2 however was a disapointment, the single play is extremebly boring, even with the randomize it still feels like the same level (it didnt in diablo1, maybe it was that the quest werent so static and linear), they completely screwed up the item system, after lvl 30 you hardly ever find anything interesting other than runes to make your own items or uniques but even those are rare or appear only at extremebly high hell levels once the game is no longer fun and sadly the item problem completely screws up multiplay where everyone keeps trying to pick up everything, not that it matters really, even at lvl 99 you still find elite weapons with "+1 to minimun damage" or "+3% to poison resist", wtf were they thinking... and of course because of bnet they can't cap the item lvl anymore because it would seriously affect the community balance, the skill system also sucks, it brokes down after lvl 50 or so when most builds dont really have anything else to put points into other than skills they never use, the sinergy system was an obvious fix for that problem but they managed to screw that up and didnt add enough of them so that some builds still dont have anything else to spend points into.

I dont really have any hopes for a team that barely knows anything about the originals development working for a company that started a starcraft spinoff for console while most sc fans are pc players(and now turning it into duke nukem forever the second) and gets more of its revenue from a mmorpg, they probably end making diablo 3 mmo looking with mmo camera and make most of the insteresting items "bnet only", bleh, i wish i could have hopes on HG london but ... fps-diablo .......

 

[kingcomrade]

Diablo 1 was such an awesome game. I remember playing long into the night, on a 56k modem with a friend of mine. I would be a sorceror and she a warrior, and I would constantly be apologizing for killing her with spammed static charge. Static charge and Fire Wall in D1 are probably the spells I've enjoyed the most in any RPG that I've played. Except maybe when you use a calculator to cast Holy on every enemy on the screen, in FFTactics.


edit: I meant charged bolt, not static charge

 

[Nightjed]

static charge ? do you mean chain lighting ? i dont remember any static charge in d1

i used to kill my friends spawning fire balls like a machine gun, they didnt complain since i was the only one that could retrieve lost equipment from monster packs without dying :p

 

[kingcomrade]

No, the spell that's on your staff when you first start.

edit: charged bolt, I mean

 

[Sol Invictus]

Starcraft's core developers left to create their own company, ArenaNet to develop Guild Wars.

Only *some* of Starcraft's core developers, namely:
Eric Flannum
Patrick Wyatt
James Phinney

I don't count senior programmers and other non-design related positions, as they are easily disposable and replaceable. So no, the bulk of SC's team is still at Blizzard, and I'm happy about it.

What about Jeff Strain? He was the Team Lead for WOW for a large part of that game's development. He left, too. Disposable and replaceable? Hardly.

 

[Nightjed]

charged bolt ?

edit: didnt see your edit :p

 

[kingcomrade]

Yes. You know, it shoots about a bunch of little squares of electricity like a shotgun.

 

[Atrokkus]

after lvl 30 you hardly ever find anything interesting other than runes to make your own items or uniques but even those are rare or appear only at extremebly high hell levels once the game is no longer fun and sadly the item problem completely screws up multiplay where everyone keeps trying to pick up everything, not that it matters really, even at lvl 99 you still find elite weapons with "+1 to minimun damage" or "+3% to poison resist", wtf were they thinking...

No offense, but that's a noob approach. I mean, what do you want? Raining items with uber-stats everytime you kill a baddie? How fun would that be? It isn't fun when it's easy to get. The whole point of D2's item system is that you gotta fucking strain yourself to find something really useful. That's what has been driving me, prodding me to keep playing, to keep running bosses (and that's not easy on hell/8ppl sometimes), that's what made me trade extensively with other players.
I consider D2's item system clearly superior to that of its predecessor, and to any other action-rpg out there.

and of course because of bnet they can't cap the item lvl anymore because it would seriously affect the community balance, the skill system also sucks, it brokes down after lvl 50 or so when most builds dont really have anything else to put points into other than skills they never use, the sinergy system was an obvious fix for that problem but they managed to screw that up and didnt add enough of them so that some builds still dont have anything else to spend points into.

Character is not all about char. skills, it matters also what gear you're having and your personal tactical/reflex skills. Plus, you can't really make a good skill-build on lvl50. Most builds are totally finished only after lvl70, no less. So you're assuming out of your ass here, sorry.

All in all, D2 was much better than D1 *in terms of MULTIPLAYER and game mechanics*.
However, I think that D1's style and atmosphere was MUCH better. Too bad they switched to amore cartoony art-style...

 

[kingcomrade]

The classes in D1 were a lot better as well. The ones in D2 were boring and gimmicky. The only one that I can ever stand to play as is the paladin. And even with that, the only build I would play was the Freezealot.

I didn't like D2's item system. There was just too much shit. I don't want to have to go kill the same boss over and over for a 1% chance of something good. Set items were cool but in the, what, six years I've owned this game, I've never completed a set.

 

[Atrokkus]

The classes in D1 were a lot better as well. The ones in D2 were boring and gimmicky. The only one that I can ever stand to play as is the paladin.

Hmm.. it's just that you don't like other clasees, personally. I mean, how does Paladin really differ from other classes in terms of design and style consistency? Classes are not sucked out of ass, they have connection to the gameworld, to the history, factions etc.

There was just too much shit. I don't want to have to go kill the same boss over and over for a 1% chance of something good.

But hey, is it fun to get all the uber-goodies from every single rat? Doesn't it feels kinda cheesy to get good items easy?

 

[kingcomrade]

Who said anything about rats dropping King's Swords of Haste or Godly Plates of Whale.

 

[Blacklung]

Oh man, those items bring me back. I used to play that game a whole bunch. I never much played past the first difficulty mode though. There was nothing else to really see except grind grind grind. This went for D2 as well, even though I enjoyed it much more. There was nothing like playing a barbarian and jumping around like a crazy man, smashing your foes with a giant maul and spinning like a bezerker. Good times good times.

 

[LlamaGod]

I'm glad they improved on the simplistic gameplay by upgrading the visuals and having weapons that change color.

 

[Nightjed]

No offense, but that's a noob approach. I mean, what do you want? Raining items with uber-stats everytime you kill a baddie? How fun would that be? It isn't fun when it's easy to get. The whole point of D2's item system is that you gotta fucking strain yourself to find something really useful. That's what has been driving me, prodding me to keep playing, to keep running bosses (and that's not easy on hell/8ppl sometimes), that's what made me trade extensively with other players.
I consider D2's item system clearly superior to that of its predecessor, and to any other action-rpg out there.

what do i want ? i just want my lvl 50 character to find 50lvl able items, instead you find items that wouldnt even be good for a lvl 1 char, It works only if you play mp and "trade", it DOES NOT work if you play single player only like i do.
Straining yourself to get something good is ok, but in diablo 2 you can strain all you want and still not find anything useful for your char, at most youll find something for another build, they almost force you to use bnet.
as for d2's items being better than d1, look i played d1/hellfire a lot of times with new chars and always found lots of items for my char and i also played d2/d2xp a hundred times with new chars (and for a much longer time than d1 chars) only a few times i managed to find 1 good item for each (now that i think about it, it was much easier to find good items in d2 initial versions, when gamble rocked)

Character is not all about char. skills, it matters also what gear you're having and your personal tactical/reflex skills. Plus, you can't really make a good skill-build on lvl50. Most builds are totally finished only after lvl70, no less. So you're assuming out of your ass here, sorry.

I dissagree on that, most builds are "finished" after lvl 50, they might still have things to put points into that barely make a difference (like necromancer's choice golem or maxing out amazon/assasin's passives), even builds that have lots of things to max out like any sorceress one requiere a level of micromanagement (as in recasting crap all the frigging time) so that even ppl that have the skills dont use them

All in all, D2 was much better than D1 *in terms of MULTIPLAYER and game mechanics*.

Thats only because lots of d2's skills are for "party backup", everything else was better in d1, items, quests, even dungeon layout, try playing those maggot caverns in act2 with other ppl

 

[EvilManagedCare]

Diablo 1 was such an awesome game. I remember playing long into the night, on a 56k modem with a friend of mine.

My wife lovingly bought this game for me, not knowing it would serve to drive a wedge between us. I played D1 religiously, often accompanied by a six pack of Pete's Wicked Pale Ale or the oversized cans of Sapporo in the summer for hours on end. Then the dupers and haxxorz ruined it. Morons.

 

[Atrokkus]

equiere a level of micromanagement

And that's VERY good. It's an action game, ffs.

those maggot caverns in act2 with other ppl

Touche. Those were fucked up indeed.

for your char, at most youll find something for another build, they almost force you to use bnet.

That's right. You can't find all the uberness in singleplayer games, even if you run 8ppl baal all the time. If any person can get everything from just running stuff, what's the point in trading then?

 

[Shevek]

I smell a Guild Wars clone.