Diablo 3

[Ash]

Has anyone gotten a chance to keep up with Diablo 3 news.
If you havent be sure to check out the site. LINK

I am confused. They had recently added the 4th out of 5 character classes. It was the Archivast. There were writings about it and even a gameplay video. I looked back at the site today and all the Archivast information is gone.

[Shayd]

Archivist was under news still.

[Ash]

I just looked deeper....I fell for it so bad....aparently the archivist class was an April fools joke. Well the rest of what they have developed looks great.

[Reoh]

Archivist was a funny April fool's joke.

This game kinda fell off my radar. Took too long to release anything and honestly, with mmorpgs to play now, I don't really see myself suffering all the bits of diablo I don't like to play the game just because it has better graphics now.

[Drac]

DIII looks a lot different from DII, I'm still pretty phyced about it. The combat in this one seem much more dynamic and fluid. I really liked that the designers name-dropped games like God of War when talking about the gameplay, gives me high hopes that they've got a good grasp on the concept of keeping it very action focused. Also, It's been 9 years since Diablo II and I'd say Blizzard have learnt quite a lot in that time. For instance, the design approach they've taken with this looks to be unearthing some really great action gameplay that I haven't seen done to this level before -- Just look at the awesome wizard trailer. Couple that with thier knack for sucking you in and staging epic moments in games like WoW and I'm fairly confident DIII will be yet another title that'll spawn generations of "me too" copy-cats.

Also, I play a lot of FPS games in TOG and I know how well TOGers flock to certain high-profile games and make them so much more than just what's in the box. I honestly can't wait to tear though this with a bunch of mates on a Friday night while polishing off a few beers!

[Reoh]

I mainly need to hear one thing from Blizzard...

YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE OLD DIABLO LOOT BAG SYSTEM EVER AGAIN

On a more serious note though, I've heard that a lot of the UI elements have been poached from World of Warcraft.

[Drac]

The loot bad system is defiantly out. They mentioned that at Blizzcon when they first announced the game I believe. Not sure where you're getting the WoW thing though. In some of the videos I've watched they've showed like 8 or 9 iterations overs something like "just" the abilities tree/selection UI, and say they still don't feel they have it right so they'll keep working on it. A lot of the iterations were also radically different so you can see they're testing out lots of different ideas to see what works and what doesn't, and they've been doing this with just about everything in the game.

They also have some nifty power mod system were something as simple as the wizards teleport can me modded to do AoE damage when you blink out and when you blink in, or when you teleport you leave a copy of yourself behind for a few moments that mirrors your attacks so if you teleport around lots in a small area you'll get lots of copies of yourself all attacking as you do in different locations. And they have these kind of mods every power in the game so even if you have two wizzard classes playing togther chances are you'll fight differently.

There's some very cool stuff going on in this game, seriously, don't dismiss it untill you dig a little deeper, it's a completly different beast to Diablo II.

[Reoh]

I think it was from a Kotaku article, or an article from somewhere *ponder* or maybe it was my friend who was at blizzcon? I can't remember for sure now. Hadn't heard about modding powers, thats kinda cool.

Although I might add, something similar is in WoW.

[Ash]

Originally Posted by Drac

I honestly can't wait to tear though this with a bunch of mates on a Friday night while polishing off a few beers!

I will be right there with ya for this one, I used to live, eat and sleep diablo 1 and 2. This looks so much better. I love how you can use the enviroment to your advantage. It looks like they have come along way from the old Diablo games.