http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

First StarCraft II, now this... The next few years are going to be very unproductive.

*changes signature to reflect the gag image hidden in the teaser-pages leading up to this bold announcement*

Wow. Just...wow. Not only does it look dripping with pure awesomeness, but the announcements are full of taglines made of pure win. Honestly, SC2 only got "Hell, its about time!".

But seriously, I can hardly wait. This looks worthy indeed.

Dang. Well it makes sense. The Diablo people were never really involved with the xcrafts, and with the money pouring in from WoW, they could certainly afford to hire a whole new team if that wasn't the case. I'm sure it'll come out they've had Diablo 3 in the works for at least a couple years, at least in some form or another. My guess is they've only just gotten Diablo 3 up in some kind of publicity-friendly form now (enough content to show off, even if the code is still well under development), and so it's time to let it see the light.

Only JUST saw this.

First SCII, and now Diablo III? Blizzard keeps outdoing itself!

Hopefully, online play will be FREE, instead of a monthly fee we'd have to pay...

...coming up next, World of Diablo!

Is there a place where I can get a non-flash version of this site?

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

Better subtitle: EVula soils himself.

And Blizzard could announce something I'm interested in, like the release date of SCII, but nooo, they had to go with Diablo 3. Why, Blizzard? Why?

Because they like causing peoples heads to explode from anticipation?

...and then delaying it them until Kingdom Come?

After being severely addicted to the D2, this game looks like it's starting out down the right path. I will second the notion that online play would be better if free, but I won't hold my breath, either. It wouldn't surprise me either way.

I can say that I'm eagerly awaiting more information about all of the character classes and the new skills and, well, everything.

(although, with this, Spore, and Starcraft 2, I'm going to need some kind of hardware besides this GMA 950 )

With the 260/280 gtx recently released, I think the answer is staring you (and me) in the face.

This just looks like a game that'll get me fired because I haven't slept in 8 weeks and keep thinking people are the undead. I can't wait!

It will be free. If you read through their website, they talk about Diablo III will use Battle.net which is a free service. They would not mention B.net if they would charge monthly.



Corpse pop!


As for calling Diablo III "D3", I shall abstain. To me, D3 will always be Descent 3.

I... I just soiled myself.

It kinda looks like its using the same engine that Starcraft 2 is using. I never played either of the other Diablos and I don't think any of them run on my MacBook so I'm honestly not all that excited about this...

Un surprising. That said i tried to play diablo II but eventually lost intrest and later the disc. My view of it always seemed to be single player MMO/not as Massive MMO for online. Is this basically right? I'd like to get excited, but i feel like i missed something. Same, pick 1 of x builds, same we give you multiple ways to GO! but only 1 or 2 are really any good and the rest your just gimping yourself for no reason, and finally Yeah, it'd be cool to do some new stuff, but you're going to be grinding for about 3 hours now so you can kill the next level. Enjoy those bland NPC mobs.

Basically what made Diablo different other than a decent singleplayer aspect.

That was kind of my perspective of this game as well, and I had to quit about half way through the gameplay video because the speaker kept saying stuff such as "this is a bigger and better weapon" or "these enemies are tougher and there's more of them" or "now I can take on the zombie army". This game concept is OLD! They need to do something new with it, not simply add more onto it.

sig test

So they're randomly announcing sequels now? Why not announce that they were secretly developing Starcraft: Ghost while they're at it?

Sure. The one FPS I actually have some interest in, besides a remake of Dark Forces.

I know! Blizzard should just can Starcraft 2 as well since it is just more Starcraft! Its an old concept. We should of just stayed with Age Of Empires or the original Command & Conquer!*


*Note: I love the Starcraft and the Diablo franchise both. I am merely playing devils advocate to point out that more powerful monsters and more powerful weapons does not mean a boring game.

I guess I'm just peeved because I never really liked the Diablo franchise and this means that StarCraft II is getting delayed that much longer. Blizzard needs to focus on one thing, not try to develop 3 different things at once.

Why do you assume Blizzard cannot deliver all of these without this type of delay in the first place?

You do realize that Blizzard isn't some five-person shop, right? They've got plenty of money coming in from WOW that they can afford to have completely independent staffs for each game. There's no reason to think that Starcraft 2 will be delayed for Diablo 3.

This is cool.

I think Blizzard should release Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 on the same day, just to be able to say they caused the immediate collapse of civilization.

IIRC, they mentioned that they have one graphics team, one internet team, etc. so by putting more projects out there, it ties these teams up more and slows progression on all sides.

I have a 10 year old mac lappy that can run both...
Or is yours really new??

Either way, you should be excited (though I'm more excited about Starcraft 2)

It might have something to do with that his Mac has an Intel processor. I don't know how well Starcraft or Diablo 2 runs on a Mactel.

I can tell you that StarCraft runs just fine, save for the point that it doesn't work on the newest OS version, 10.5.3, which makes me really angry.

Like StarCraft, Diablo II ran just fine prior to the 10.5.3 update on most Intel Macs. I thought I heard something about Blizzard working on a patch, but I can't find anything about it.



Judging from old articles, it appears they formed a new team just for Diablo III. Blizzard North, the team that originally handled the Diablo series, was different from the team that handled the *Crafts anyway and a few of those people left a while back, if you recall. According to Rob Pardo, development began when Blizzard North was still around, presumably meaning before Bill Roper et all left in 2003 (as opposed to Blizzard North's disbandment in 2005) since the team had two unnamed projects going at the time, one of which was canceled. This would place Diablo III's development beginning somewhere between 2001 and 2003, before development of StarCraft II even began over at Blizzard's main division.

My expectations for StarCraft II's release date have not changed; I'm betting late 2009 to early 2010. Or hoping, since I won't be able to play it until mid 2009 at the earliest.


This would be coolest thing any game developer has ever done.

I'm hoping it's out before I graduate next year, but I really doubt it'll be out by the (unofficial) expected date of December 2008.


While I think this would be cool, I think it would mean a big delay for one or the other, and a rush to complete the other.

That is absolutely hilarious.

..and I hope they do it.

For one, they wouldn't do it since one release would cannibalize the others sales, therefore making less money for Blizzard in total. Also, I would be totally conflicted on what to play first/most!

What would be better is if they use similar 3D models, so you can swap the files back and forth. Instead of a Zergling rush now you could have a wave of the new Witchdoctors hunting down your enemies. Or transfer the Zealot file over in place of the Barbarian.


[/stuffthatwon'thappen]

That would be really cool. They did say that they're using the same engine for both products, and considering that they're being worked on around the same time would suggest that perhaps they are using the same methodologies and that one could replace the other, with some good Map Editor skills.

Finally got around to watching the gameplay demo ("finally" because it took forever to download).

...wow. Fantastic extension of Diablo, and the ending battle was incredible. I loved when one of the players was killed by being picked up and having their head ripped off. Just... damn.

I'm certainly looking forward to it. Of course... who knows how much time I'll have to play it when it comes out. Loved the gameplay demo, though. It looks like they've taken out the annoying parts of Diablo II (mainly potions) and added in more extra good stuff. And, of course, Blizzard is masterful at making fun of themselves, such as the play on Deckard Cain's "Stay awhile and listen!"

Yeah that reminded me of DoW's sync kills. I'd love it if they included those for both baddies and players. It would go a long way toward getting rid of the hit hit hit hit spell hit hit monotony of such games.

A great announcement to come back home to. WoW all but killed my faith in Blizzard, but Starcraft 2 and now Diablo 3 are rekindling the fire. I guess it remains to be seen whether this is a short lived leaf fire or becomes a blaze again.

Nice, I'll likely play it after it comes out, but I will also likely keep playing Diablo II on battle.net.

Indeed, that would be cool, but also heavily detrimental to gross sales. I expect at LEAST a year between the two games.

Anyone get wind of the protest a lot of hardcore Diablo fans are voicing as a result of the gameplay demo? Basically, the argument is that the new Diablo looks like another version of WOW, and consequently looks nothing like the older Diablos.

An example : http://i31.tinypic.com/2zta5o7.jpg

I gotta say I didn't notice it at first, but I agree now that the gameplay preview looks a little too whimsical and over-saturated:

http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=m...warcraftzs3.jpg

Another argument is that Diablo 3 seems to be following the path of stylization that Blizzard seems to be heavy on in the WOW games, and less toward the literal realism of previous Diablos. I kind of agree here, I'm not thrilled at the prospect of bucklers the size of a coffee table.

That being said, I did thoroughly s### my pants when I saw the previews

Ugh, people need to realize that it is still Diablo. They need to stop complaining about it being too much like WoW.

It's gonna be one of the best games coming out that year.

Diablo 3 is going to be pretty awesome.

Eh... I look at those pictures and like the "over-saturated" versions better. The others look like everything is the same shade of the same color almost, which I'm getting dang tired of in new games.

From the little bit of WoW I've played, the preview didn't even remind me of that MMO.

I dunno, I kinda like the WoW look better. It has a lot more color.

One of the reason blizzards games have been so enormously popular as well as withstanding the test of time, is that their artwork doesn't conform to realism restraints and thus fall into the "uncanny valley" that a lot of other games do. The slightly cartoony look sets the games apart from the average.

I personally despise Blizzard's art style. I find it exceedingly ugly. I admire the fact that they use a cartoon style, I just wish that they'd do it right.

And I don't like the way those people look at all, so I guess there's no accounting for taste.

I would love to see something a bit more realistic, but come on, there's only so much realism that can be done with stuff that's so incredibly unrealistic.

Don't argue about the art. It's seriously the most pointless whiny thing to take the internet by storm in a long time. That said, I've never liked the huge shoulder pad aesthetic at all, but :shrug: I didn't get that WoW vibe (though WoW is quite a pretty game) from the gameplay video at all, just a whole lot of AWESOME. It looks like they're really taking to heart the need to improve the actual interest level of combat encounters and exploration from D2, which was mainly why I always played the most complicated classes in D2 - so I would have something to do while playing my slot simulator.

Also, Diablo 2 1.12 now runs awesome on an Intel Mac. (You people complaining about 10.5.3 might want to try updating to 10.5.4.) First off you don't even need to have the CD in anymore, and secondly, they finally fixed OpenGL mode. (Diablo 1 not so much though.)

In addition, it is now available for digital download if you put in your CD key!

Surprised at all the haters on this forum though. WAH PUT DIABLO PEOPLE ON SC2 WAH. I want to play both games, which may be a novel concept I know. (And whoever said they were using the SC2 engine in D3 is wrong.)



The Diablo people mostly left Blizzard and made Guild Wars and Hellgate.