Posts Tagged ‘Diablo III’
All Access Preview: Diablo III gameplay and discussion of abilities auto assignment
Here is a new video from x-play that shows some new gameplay footage, and a interview with Jay Wilson.
Highlights:
- How close is it to completion? Core systems are designed but some big game play announcements are coming.
- Group composition isn’t that important. Every class is a dps class.
- New leveling system. Talk about controversial auto assignment of skills and abilities. They didn’t like how Diablo II had a “right answer” for a skill path.
- Runes allow you to completely change a skill. Runes and loot are what allow you to customize your character.
- Everyone gets their own loot drops. This stops people from fighting over loot.
Subscribe to the comments for this postJay Wilson interview from 1up.com
Here is an interview from www.1up.com with Jay Wilson. Jay discusses how his style has changed (and stayed the same) since joining the Blizzard team.
Some of the highlights:
- How they develop the classes. They focus on one class at a time and adjust the others as they make changes to the class they are working on.
- Diablo II players could use potions and run faster than monsters so class specific evasion abilities didn’t matter as much. Classes were too generic. They have created enemies that are difficult and each class has specific abilities that allow them to deal with the situations that the enemies create. Diablo is about combat and not crowd control but elements of light crowd control have improved the feel.
- A crafting system or something like it is likely. Rune words are gone so they are definitely replacing that system with some sort of light crafting.
- Legendary items will have a chance at having gem slots. This allows higher level items some diversity.
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pager.offset=1&cId=3172030&p=1
Diablo III will use battle.net instead of including DRM
- Image via Wikipedia
Executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Rob Pardo says that Blizzard has “no particular plans” to institute DRM verification checks for Diablo III for piracy prevention. He states that their protection is “more similar to Steam than EA”. Great news considering the DRM screw ups we’ve seen lately.
Blizzard’s will use battle.net to stop pirates. If you want to play online you will have to use battle.net. I wonder how they will prevent open source battle.net clones though.
The rune slot system lets you choose how you play your class
Diablo 3’s rune system looks cool. Basically every class has rune slots that allow you to add effects to your class abilities. An example would be the witch doctors flaming skull. With the multi rune the skull bounces and destroys everything in it’s path. This allows you to customize your class and play it in the manner that you want it to be played.
Examples after the jump:
Diablo III’s wizard class with gameplay video and abilities
Mike Morhaime CEO of blizzard introduced players to the new class for Diablo III: the Wizard. Very similar to a mage in World of Wacraft the wizard uses ice, fire and well…explosions. The wizard disturbs the laws of the universe in order to cast spells.
Abilities and gameplay video after the jump.
Diablo III will not be the end of the Diablo universe
Lead designer Jay Wilson had this to say:
We’re not saying this is the end of the ‘Diablo’ universe, but we are trying to bring this storyline to a close. It’s not just ‘Diablo III’ — we’ve got plans beyond.
Wilson also went on to say that characters would be returning from Diablo I, Diablo 2 and some of the books that focus on the universe.
Can’t say I blame them. Diablo is one of the reasons Blizzard is who they are today.