Diablo 3 release announced - May 15th

[MrPopo]

It's been so freaking long that we've been hearing about this game, that it's almost a myth at this point. I really, REALLY hope it doesn't have the same problems Duke Nukem Forever did because they took so long to produce it.

Having played the beta, it's awesome.

[Ivo]

Having played the beta, it's awesome.

Cool! Have you also played modern Diablo clones like Torchlight? How does it compare?

I know I said I wouldn't buy it for a while (and I won't), but I'm really glad it got made and I certainly intend to get it and play a whole lot of it when I have a better internet connection.

It's one of few new games I even considered buying at launch.
There is one other thing I'll miss from it being online only even in single player - this will forever erase the original version of the game. Diablo 2 has several patches that changed the game quite a bit, and you can't play Battle.net with the earlier versions, but you can reinstall the game and if you kept the old patches apply up to a given version. I'm probably in a tiny minority caring about this sort of thing, would be cool if Blizzard enabled some kind of "legacy mode" for D3 so that you could play an older patch version but I doubt they will.

Ivo.

[MrPopo]

Torchlight was Diablo 2.3. Diablo 3 is way ahead of it. The big thing they did was make all the skills very satisfying to use. There aren't really any boring skills. So it's all about finding a selection of skills with synergy that fit your playstile.

[Ivo]

Torchlight was Diablo 2.3. Diablo 3 is way ahead of it. The big thing they did was make all the skills very satisfying to use. There aren't really any boring skills. So it's all about finding a selection of skills with synergy that fit your playstile.

That is a big improvement - v2 with patch 1.10 (or was it before) and synergies was already a step in the right direction, but I guess it still wouldn't make you feel good about having pumped too many skill points into firebolt or whatever. Which was a bit of a design flaw IMO as you shouldn't punish the players in ways that make them feel like suckers once they know the game better and makes them wonder if they should re-start (which is why there are skill reset features in many games).

Looking forward to the day I eventually play it!

Ivo.

[MrPopo]

Yeah, the nice thing about D3's skills is that you are free to swap them around until you find a set you like. The gating factor is that swapping a skill out in a particular slot puts that slot on a 30 second cooldown, so it's not something you can do mid-combat with any sort of effectiveness. Additionally, all skills can be tweaked with rune effects. These effects can be things such as changing the type of damage, increasing the area of effect, or changing the effect entirely (DH companion goes from druid-style raven to a passive familiar that restores resources). Each skill has 6 runes plus the base effect, so 7 effects per skill and 6 active skill slots.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian

It's fun to play around with the calculator and see what sorts of builds you might like. One thing you'll notice is all the skills are based on weapon damage. This includes caster classes like the Wizard, so equipping a two handed sword as a Wizard buffs your magical damage.

[diesel_dan]

Has there been any more news on a PS3 release? I know this was a possibility a while back, and it's something I'd definitely pick up if it were available. There's no way my laptop has the grunt to run the PC release.

[Ivo]

It's fun to play around with the calculator and see what sorts of builds you might like. One thing you'll notice is all the skills are based on weapon damage. This includes caster classes like the Wizard, so equipping a two handed sword as a Wizard buffs your magical damage.

That is like Hellgate: London. And perhaps WoW is like that as well? Makes sense though to make loot matter about the same for every class.

Ivo.

[MrPopo]

It's fun to play around with the calculator and see what sorts of builds you might like. One thing you'll notice is all the skills are based on weapon damage. This includes caster classes like the Wizard, so equipping a two handed sword as a Wizard buffs your magical damage.

That is like Hellgate: London. And perhaps WoW is like that as well? Makes sense though to make loot matter about the same for every class.

Ivo.

There are still items that are unique to a particular class, for example, hand crossbows or monk forehead gems. But it makes your damage scaling much more intuitive and makes it easy to balance between caster damage and fighter damage.

[Pulsar_t]

[Menegrothx]

It's been so freaking long that we've been hearing about this game, that it's almost a myth at this point. I really, REALLY hope it doesn't have the same problems Duke Nukem Forever did because they took so long to produce it.

If I'm not mistaken, Starcraft 2 is doing pretty well...

I've heard that many Diablo fans are unsatisfied with D3 so I'll wait and see what old timers think about it before making purchasing it too hastily. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/diablo-iii doesnt look very promising so far. But then again, metacritic is metacritic.