Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Blizzcon Begins, Diablo 3 Wizard Class Unveiled

Posted by Soulskill on from the zap dept.

Blizzcon is officially underway today, starting with a presentation showcasing the Worldwide Invitational tournament held earlier this year. A company spokesman went on to talk about the tournaments being held for World of Warcraft 3v3 Arena, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 2, followed by word that Starcraft 2 was not yet ready for beta, but that Blizzcon attendees would be included in the first round of testers when the beta program starts. The big news of the presentation, though, was the unveiling of the Wizard class — the third such class to be announced, along with the previously mentioned Barbarian and Witch Doctor. Read on for some more details.

The trailer illustrating the new class showed actual gameplay demonstrating the Wizard's spells and abilities, some of which hearken back to the Sorceress in Diablo 2. Attacks such as Meteor and Chain Lightning seem to be returning, and several new spells were seen, including one invoking a spherical shield that seems to alter the flow of time within it, allowing the Wizard to dodge projectiles and approaching enemies with ease. Another spell sends tornadoes storming through the room. Here's Blizzard description of the class from their press release: "The wizard is a wielder of the elements and a master manipulator of time, who combats the hordes of the Burning Hells by launching environment-shattering lightning bolts, channeling explosive arcane energies, and creating pockets of space outside of the normal flow of time."

13 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Totally new - the Wizard! by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The wizard is a wielder of the elements and a master manipulator of time, who combats the hordes of the Burning Hells by launching environment-shattering lightning bolts, channeling explosive arcane energies, and creating pockets of space outside of the normal flow of time.

    Sounds a little like... I don't know... a sorceress? Except for that cute "pockets of space outside the normal flow of time". That sounds like Star Trek.

    I guess you can't really get away from the spell-flinger archtype in a fantasy RPG. I wonder why they're so keen on changing the classes?

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    1. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by internerdj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While Blizzard throws some new twists on occasion did you expect something far afield from the fantasy trope? So far we have the barbarian, the necromancer, and now the sorceress. Except the last two are a little different from their d2 counterparts. That said as long as the game is as fun to play and as addictive as D2 the next class could be the gold farmer for all I care.

    2. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by SwordsmanLuke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know, this is a gripe I have with the whole Action/RPG genre as a whole. Why do we even have classes? Give me some skill trees and skill points. Let *me* decide how my character should play. If I want my character to wield a sword *and* cast magic missile, let me! More choices are always a good thing.

      --
      Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
    3. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I believe this came up once when someone asked a Blizz person in an interview why they didn't have stat points in WoW. The answer was that the average player apparently has an outrageous tendency to nerf his/her character when allowed such fine control. Perhaps you shall find some quantum of solace in the notion that your suffering might be an extension thereof.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    4. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You know, this is a gripe I have with the whole Action/RPG genre as a whole. Why do we even have classes? Give me some skill trees and skill points. Let *me* decide how my character should play. If I want my character to wield a sword *and* cast magic missile, let me! More choices are always a good thing.

      Basically, it just boils down to game/class balance for a game that's played with multiple people. Single player games tend to offer more flexibility (like Oblivion).

    5. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by jlarocco · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you missed the point.

      The OP was complaining that the skills are carved up by classes at all. A necromancer can't put points in a sorceress skill, for example. So instead of 7 character "classes", each with 3 skill trees, just give every character 21 skill trees and let the player do as they please.

      The multitude of options might be a little overwhelming at first, but with as many players as a Blizzard game will have, I think a few stable, decent builds would emerge fairly quickly, while still giving enough variety for people to come up with viable alternative builds. One thing that disappointed me in D2 was the lack of viable character builds, especially for PvP. If you deviated very much from one of the dozen cookie cutter builds, you could almost count on having to leech in experience runs and getting owned in duels.

      The later patches of D2 actually explored it a bit, with runeword items that provided class specific skills, but could be used by any class. The items giving barbarian warcries and paladin auras were particularly popular, but there were a few items that would give necromancer and sorceress skills.

      --
      Maybe not
    6. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by Sparton · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The idea of the hardcore community finding the more optimized build with such a large array of options is irrelevant. With so many options, new players would become overwhelmed and have no idea how to make an efficient or useful character, and the chance of an inexperienced player creating a poor build increases dramatically.

      Blizzard wants their games to be appreciated by as many people as possible. Making their game more intimidating by having so many options from the get-go (instead of saying "your this class, you get to choose from these skills"), goes against their core belief of accessibility.

    7. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by Miseph · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Dude, multi-class, it works. Or you could go for one of the multi-purpose class like monk or paladin that already does that... or even go ranger and have all three branches covered!

      That said, I do agree that the rogue/fighter light infantry build is so unbelievably broken as to make nearly all other possibilities a waste of time, and that this somewhat deadens the ability to make any character one wants.

      --
      Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
    8. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by jlarocco · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The idea of the hardcore community finding the more optimized build with such a large array of options is irrelevant. With so many options, new players would become overwhelmed and have no idea how to make an efficient or useful character, and the chance of an inexperienced player creating a poor build increases dramatically.

      You're talking about people buying the third game in a best selling series that's been around for a decade. At this point Blizzard doesn't care about the casual, "inexperienced" gamer; they already know they can sell a boatload of games to the hardcore players. Their target audience is the person who doesn't mind playing for a while.

      Also, I suspect they've learned from WoW and will charge for network play, so there's even more reason to draw out the time it takes to learn the game.

      Oh, and failure to immediately create a decent build? That makes the game better. I could install Diablo 2 right now and have a fairly powerful, high level character in a couple of days because I know the basic formula characters. All the possibilities have been explored, and there's little point in searching for any new builds. Actually having to find a decent build, or being able to come up with a new combination that surprises people would be a lot more fun.

      Ultimately it's up to Blizzard, but I think it'd make the game better.

      --
      Maybe not
    9. Re:Totally new - the Wizard! by Sparton · · Score: 2, Insightful

      At this point Blizzard doesn't care about the casual, "inexperienced" gamer; they already know they can sell a boatload of games to the hardcore players.

      [...] Also, I suspect they've learned from WoW [...]

      You says Blizzard has learned something from WoW, but ignore the disproportionate ratio of casual to hardcore players who subscribe to it?

      There are a couple of game developers that are dense enough to cater to the hardcore audience at the expense of the more lucrative and larger casual audience, but I don't count Blizzard among them.

  2. Re:Oh boy! by rotide · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Worlds largest game developer (arguably) throws a convention where they are profiling their biggest titles (starcraft/warcraft/diablo). Yes, this gets attention.

    Quick math:
    10,000,000 world of warcraft subscriptions equals:
    10,000,000 copies of wow @ $40 a pop = $400,000,000
    10,000,000 active subscriptions @ $15 a pop = $1,800,000,000 per year.

    We're over 2 billion dollars for 1 game for 1 year (it's been out for 4 years now AND has 1 expansion out with another releasing).
    This isn't some rinkidink little company, they ARE the mmo scene AND the RTS scene (arguably).
    It makes news, sorry.

    P.S. Did you not get to go to Blizzcon? If that was just a rant, there is still time to fly down for tomorrows show.

  3. Re:How much for a Starcraft 2 beta seat? by rotide · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He's AC for obvious reasons.. But food for thought. People paying money for something they want isn't a new concept. Some people spend wayyy more than that a month on booze and/or cigarettes.

    Why bash someone for paying a nominal amount of money for entertainment?

  4. Re:Here you go: by Rakishi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you really want to look at magic look at the research behind antidepressants, particularly effexor. Some studies not done by the manufacturer show a ~22% improvement compared to 20% placebo, and while statistically significant, isn't really applicable to the general population. To me, that isn't much better than homeopathy. /no I'm not looking up the studies, if you care enough search pubmed

    Saying "some studies" isn't that much better than saying "well it didn't help my cousin bob." Welcome to statistics and randomness, if you do enough studies then they will cover every single possible result. Show me a proper meta-analysis and I may consider what you said but otherwise it's just hot air. That's not even counting the tons of lovely ways you can fuck up a study.

    That said, unlike various other drugs specific antidepressants aren't used alone, aren't expected to cure every single case of depression and don't have as much of a time crunch (ie: the patient probably won't die if you give them a useless drug at first). If a drug is better for some subset of people compared to other drugs then it's a useful drug even if you don't know what subset it's better for. This also means that certain types of studies are useless for evaluation such drugs.