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Skovos wont be at Diablo 3 launch According to various rumors around the internet the Skovos area wont be a part of the Diablo 3 launch, it will probaply be in the expansion. This will probaply leave out the famous amazon class from Diablo 2, but who knows its blizzard, and they can change there minds in the last minute.
Blizzard Quote: (Source) It is Skovos, and I think this piece was something that Leonard showed and discussed at the WWI Lore and Environment Art panel. It isn’t a location that you’ll visit in Diablo III, but the artwork is a good example of the work and thought going in to fleshing out the world of Sanctuary. It’s already a very complex world with a lot of locations and events, but a lot of it still isn’t visually or contextually realized. As we want to create the feeling of a world outside of your immediate view it’s important to create or expand upon the locations and stories of that world. As we’re working to create Diablo III we’re also working to create a more visually complete Sanctuary.
GB: There’s a strong sense of closure at the end of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. There may be a few openings, like the destruction of the Worldstone, but how are you transitioning from such a climactic conclusion to a whole new adventure?
Leonard: I don’t really feel that the end of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction had as much closure as it might have seemed at the time, if you look at the storylines that have been going on since the first Diablo game. There are still quite a few unanswered questions in terms of the characters and events in the world of Sanctuary. What happened to Tyrael? What’s happening on Sanctuary now that there’s no Worldstone? What have the angels and demons been up to in the 20 years since Lord of Destruction? I could go on and on…
Bashiok answers:
I’d say that was already a hint , but no I can’t really go in to it any more than that. It’s something we’ll touch on at BlizzCon though
BlizzCon 2008 now online with live contest submition
We are now accepting entries for our BlizzCon online contests, including our Diorama, Motivational Poster, and Movie contests. Whether you have tickets to BlizzCon or not, your application is welcome. Simply fill out the Submission form and be prepared to demonstrate your creative talents! For more contest information visit our BlizzCon Contests page. For those BlizzCon attendees looking to show off graceful dance moves, fill the convention center halls with laughs, or come dressed as your favorite Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo characters, the Submission form for all applicants is now available! For more contest information visit our BlizzCon Contests page.
DIRECTV BlizzCon Package Availability
DIRECTV has just announced further details for their pay per view package of BlizzCon coverage, and that the special promotion offering it free with a new subscription is now open. New DIRECTV subscribers in the US who sign up for DIRECTV by September 30 through www.blizzard.directv.com or 800-728-9375 will receive the package for free, while existing DIRECTV customers will be able to order it for $39.95 beginning on September 28. For full details, check out the official announcement, or head over to the BlizzCon site.
Crispy gamers new interview with Jay Wilson Wilson:
Yeah. It’s probably one of the biggest challenges we’ve made. But you got to take it on because it’s Diablo! There’s like seven things that we’ve identified — replayability through randomness was one of them. Absolutely everything that we can do to improve the randomness. But we looked at the exteriors in Diablo II and realized, the fact that the layouts were random actually didn’t improve the game that much. If anything, it hurt the look of the game, because organic environments don’t lend themselves to being randomly generated. You end up generating an outdoor environment like you’d generate a dungeon. So you create a room-like outdoor environment that also has no permanence to it. The world feels very transient. We decided to change that but add in things like the adventure system. On top of all that, all of the monster encounters are randomly generated. The rares and champions — which are the mini-bosses — are randomly generated. The items, and attributes on the items, are randomly generated. Essentially we’re trying to match the amount of randomness you see in Diablo II.
Blizzard soundtracks on Itunes
IRVINE, Calif. — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that a wide selection of music from its popular games has been added to the iTunes store. Much of this music was originally available only in collector’s editions of the games, or at special events such as the company’s BlizzCon gaming convention. Six Blizzard Entertainment: soundtrack albums are currently available:
- StarCraft: Original Soundtrack
- Diablo? II Original Soundtrack
- Warcraft? III: Reign of Chaos? Original Soundtrack
- World of Warcraft: Original Soundtrack
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade? Original Soundtrack
- World of Warcraft: Taverns of Azeroth Original Soundtrack
The albums have been placed on a new Blizzard Entertainment hub page within the iTunes store. This page also hosts content such as the BlizzCast™ podcast and trailers and gameplay footage from upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games, with more material to be added in the months ahead. In addition, the “Diablo III Overture” from the company’s recently announced action role-playing game, Diablo III, is available as a single and has been highlighted as a Discovery Download, making it free to download until Tuesday, September 9.
Players in the regions iTunes serves (North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan) can purchase the music at standard rates for each of those regions. For more information, please visit www.blizzard.com.
More leipzig Diablo 3 interview from Jay Wilson:
GI: Obviously, Diablo II was huge. When you’re working on the next installment, how do you prioritize what you keep, what you scrap, what you revisit?
Jay Wilson: Well, the big thing is identifying what are the core goals of the Diablo series. What were the things that made it successful. Generally, those things are very high level—when you start to get specific, you’re generally doing something wrong. Things like the approachability of the game, and then you ask yourself why. Why was it approachable? Well, it was an isometric camera, it offered very unique gameplay that nobody else offers that was very easy to get into. It had an easy control scheme, things like that. That starts playing into the decisions that we make—if we add something to the control scheme, we have to take something else out, because you can’t ruin the approachability factor. Co-operative play. Replayability through randomness. The item game.
All of these things—there are about seven things we identified that are really, really important. And a lot of those, for us, don’t matter that much at all. They’re much more malleable. That was one of the things that we, us working on the project, had those core competencies that we can always look back and say, whenever we wanted to make a decision, was it part of one of these? And if it wasn’t, throw it out. If it is, then you have to ask, “Is there another way that we can accomplish the same goal then?” That’s always the key. I thing it’s also always approaching the game from the standpoint of, “Does that really make the game better? I know it was there before, and I know the last games did it, but did it really make the game better or does it not?” And sometimes you just have to try it out.
GI: People who played Diablo II obsessively acquired a Pavlovian response to ounds—are you keeping those effects, or are you rerecording them?
Jay Wilson: We’re probably going to rerecord them, just because the quality isn’t as high, but the guy who’s doing them is the same person from Diablo II. He’s going to do them justice, for sure. The main thing I actually want to get is a little more distinction, where higher-quality magic items have a more distinct sound.
Diablo 3 Boss drops
There’s an inherent issue in Diablo II, where the game is degenerated to a task of getting to point B as quickly as possible, spinning the wheel, and then you rinse and repeat. While a lot of people obviously take advantage of it, and it sort of becomes a game in itself to see how fast and efficient you can be, it’s not necessarily engaging. You could also say it detracts from the feeling of being immersed in an entire game experience. Regardless of what happens or changes in Diablo III there are always going to be the min/maxers that game the systems to be more efficient, but as a goal we want to encourage players to experience the game as a whole or at least to a larger degree than an end-game that devolves in to just killing a single boss over and over. A lot of those ideas and details are obviously still under wraps but it is something we’re aware of and thinking about. Elsewhere, someone asked about yesterday’s new artwork; specifically about the map-like view of the tropical island city.
