Blizzard Unveils Dev Update for Diablo III
Blizzard's Jay Wilson said that the Diablo 3 team is no longer in "discovery" mode.
During the Gamescom 2010 event held over in Cologne, Germany, Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson provided an overall development update for the upcoming action/RPG. Currently the team is taking a broad approach by building up enough content so that they can begin the "polishing" process.
"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," he said in an interview.
Presently the team is still adding monsters, working on bosses (some of which haven't been created thus far), and working on all the Acts. Wilson said that some of the areas still haven't been built, however the team is "building very fast."
"We're not in discovery mode anymore," he added.
The interview also revealed Diablo 3 will be similar in size to its predecessor, Diablo 2. "There are some differences here and there, exterior environments are a little more diverse, dungeons are about the same," he said. "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 2, 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."
To read the full update, head here.
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Just as i expected, another 2-3 years.
Omg...
Are you telling me that Diablo 3 might be done before 2012!?
Party at my place!
I'm not going to hold my breath on D3. I love the series and in fact still play a mod of D2 from time to time, but I feel like I've been waiting F..O..R..E..V..E..R (que sandlot).
Good to know that gameplay/game components won't deviate much from D2. Another year or two? Life is a waiting game... it sucks!
People are so negative. This game should hopefully be available for a Q4 2011 release if they stay on track.
At least Starcraft 2 was released this year. I fully expected to see nothing but WoW products this decade.
'discovery' mode must have followed after the 'forgotten' mode
Can't wait for this game. It's gonna be awesome!
I'm not going to hold my breath on D3. I love the series and in fact still play a mod of D2 from time to time, but I feel like I've been waiting F..O..R..E..V..E..R (que sandlot).
The Median XL mod will give you something to do until then. Add a Glide3 wrapper to enable 3D effects and better graphics acceleration (you'll need it with Median XL). Diablo II works beautifully on Ubuntu Linux with Wine.
Who f'ing cares anymore. D2's expansion pack was released in 2001. Really? 10 years? They'll probably release it for PS3 (or PS4 for that matter), and then say, "Oh sorry PC fans who started the whole thing...we'll have your version out in another year or so." This whole thing is just pathetic.
Coming Soon™
Nice, if they stay on pace I'll be able to play this and Duke Nukem Forever around the same time.
Omg...Are you telling me that Diablo 3 might be done before 2012!?Party at my place!
Well I hope it does get out before December 21, 2012.
Because if not, it will suck hard of the Mayans were right.
D2 had too many redundant characters -- monsters that were same as a few screens ago ...but now they're blue ...orange ...red ...
As long as the additional work on the acts doesn't include building a new version of the Arcane Sanctuary, I'll be a happy camper.
i kind of hated how the last act in d2 was so short, accelerating towards a finale. what a crap concept, the more content the better, going back after so many years playing diablo 2 it felt small. and short, hopefully this is much larger and longer.
Seriously though, when you think about it, isn't Diablo just a crappy version of WoW without the monthly fees and has single players and less social interactions? Having said that, D3 might be good for people really addicted to WoW and needs a stepping stone to quit...like chewing nicorat gum to quit smoking
Coming out sooner maybe? I just want my Epic story that hopefully will be even more evil and kick ass than the last.
Hopefully it means hundreds of hours of dungeon crawling with friends just like the last.
Because I kept losing serial codes, I bought the game ~5 times. I do not regret a cent.
Man, it was so satisfying to kill Diablo the first time. And so satisfying again we had 3 hammerdins do some bloody justice just to see how fast his body could hit the floor. And so infuriating when someone killed the cow king on you.
There is a resolution mod for D2 (because 640c480 and 800x600 is painful on a 2048x1152), but Blizzard really does not like people using it online (honestly, I can't believe they still bother banning people). Single player is only fun for so long.
I'll be waiting, cash in hand. You have a lot of expectations Blizzard, don't let us down (even if most, if not all, the original D2 devs are gone).
Man, I can not wait for this game. Sucks that they are leveling out the playing field for beginners to be able to build good characters. The whole point of D2 was to learn from your mistakes with your first character, test, iterate, repeat. Always repeat...
Seriously though, when you think about it, isn't Diablo just a crappy version of WoW without the monthly fees and has single players and less social interactions? Having said that, D3 might be good for people really addicted to WoW and needs a stepping stone to quit...like chewing nicorat gum to quit smoking
NO²
I was hopping for 2011...
I'm going to say either October or November 2011 for release.
Should I pre-order now or later..? Hmmm..
" 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.""
XD
WRONG! That makes us feel that you've been accelerating towards the finale...
If they neuter this game as badly as I fear they might, I will be done with Blizzard. Actually, to clarify, Blizzard was great before Activision became involved. The following comments worry me:
So basically what work have they done? They have polygon-ized the hell out of everything so that it will look like WoW, they have drawn new images for items, redrawn the character classes, added male/female, and come up with new bosses/quests.
But is seems to me from Wilson's comments that the overall mechanics, even Act structures will be the same, as well as the overall length of the game.
Diablo was released in January of 1997. Diablo II followed in 2000, with the Lord of Destruction expansion pack in the summer of 2001. How much freaking re-tooling does Diablo III require, if from most everything we hear, it will simply be a graphical re-hash of Diablo II? I just don't get it.
I will buy this game regardless, because I was a huge Diablo II fan, but like I said, if they manage to hose this release, I am done with Blizzard. (I was pretty close to giving up with Starcraft II and all the crap they pulled with that.)
So.... in blizzard time, about 2015 or so.. gotcha, thanks.
Sweet, now my grandkids can enjoy this game [playing the barbarian as we wait for an expansion to play the other classes] as i tell them of the old days when we played Diablo II on on my 500mhz machine decked out with 512mb of ram and that was high end at the time. Then they'll say "But Granpa, geeze, my cell phone runs at 2ghz with 2gb of ram, how did u guys do it back then?"
"well kids, let me tell you of a very special time when we just got done with windows 2000 and where XP was bright shiny and new"
The Median XL mod will give you something to do until then. Add a Glide3 wrapper to enable 3D effects and better graphics acceleration (you'll need it with Median XL). Diablo II works beautifully on Ubuntu Linux with Wine.
I've played the median mods before and enjoy them. My current favorite would be the Hell Unleashed mod. It still has a fairly active, small, community. It takes the original game mechanics and severely increases the difficulty.
And to think, bungie came out with 6 games in the time it takes blizzard to release a sequel.
atleast their trying to make something good...