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Diablo 3 Coming To Consoles

RobinEggs writes "After long speculation and a few affirmative hints, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 3 will have a console version. Responding to a fan who asked him to 'confirm or deny' a console version of D3, Blizzard community manager Bashiok said, 'Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.' Here's hoping Blizzard remains one of the few companies to fully develop both the console and PC version of their titles, rather than simply porting the Xbox version to PC. I think we've all had enough of bizarre scrolling, menus that can't be used with a mouse, and 'Controls' menus that don't even bother replacing the 360 controller image with an actual keyboard layout."

344 comments

  1. Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That would have been bigger news I think.

    1. Re:Release Date for PC by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Once the subscriber base for WoW starts falling off, they'll manage to pull the employees away from the giant cocaine fountain in the lobby and the omnihedonic stimulus cocoon in the break room.

      At that point, it should be the usual 3-5 years.

    2. Re:Release Date for PC by HBI · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, I got an offer in my email for a free copy of D3 if I buy a yearly pass for WoW. I cancelled my account a couple years ago. I wonder how many others got the same thing?

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    3. Re:Release Date for PC by Dyinobal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      everyone got the same thing. It's a deal blizzard ran once they realized that D3 was going to really cut into their wow subscription numbers. In some ways blizzard are their own worst competition.

    4. Re:Release Date for PC by Zenin · · Score: 0, Troll

      Well, it's not helping them at all that each WoW expansion and patch is more dumbed down then the last. It's so bad at this point you can pretty much just drool on the keyboard and you'll still be just fine "raiding".

      They've deliberately taken away any and all variables and variety, not just from the races and classes, but from the encounters as well. I look at other games and I'm sad when I see they only have 4 or 5 character choices...then I remember WoW only has 3...

      --
      My /. uid is better then your /. uid
    5. Re:Release Date for PC by Kenja · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I disagree. The announcement that the PC version will bite so they can release a console version is bigger news then when we can play the cash cow.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    6. Re:Release Date for PC by chill · · Score: 1

      I don't play WoW, but when I saw the latest expansion pack in the store and realized it was Kung Fu Panda, I knew the end was near.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    7. Re:Release Date for PC by rujholla · · Score: 1

      It's actually worse -- it is a combination of Kung Fu Panda and Pokemon

    8. Re:Release Date for PC by Supermike68 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      So after a complaint about removing 'variables and variety' you slam them for adding an entirely new feature to the game.

      As for the Kung Fu Panda comment. The 'Pandaren' race was in place before Kung Fu Panda was released.

      But who really needs their facts straight when bashing a game they'll never play.

    9. Re:Release Date for PC by Antony+T+Curtis · · Score: 5, Funny

      We have a cocaine fountain in the lobby? Why does no one tell me of these things?

      --
      No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
    10. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it's not helping them at all that each WoW expansion and patch is more dumbed down then the last. It's so bad at this point you can pretty much just drool on the keyboard and you'll still be just fine "raiding".

      They've deliberately taken away any and all variables and variety, not just from the races and classes, but from the encounters as well. I look at other games and I'm sad when I see they only have 4 or 5 character choices...then I remember WoW only has 3...

      There's 3 levels of difficulty. Blizzard doesn't force you to play it on the drooling zombie difficulty which was just recently offered. As of right now 635 out of 10 million players have beaten the hardest encounter in the latest content patch. Since you can't count classes (There's 10) I'll bet you haven't even beaten the content on medium difficulty.

      Parent should be modded as a certified Troll.

    11. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well... yeah....

      If you took your undead siege engines and cleared a path to the northwest corner of one of the 40 or so campaign maps, you'd find a little clearing with three Pandaren. You got a 30 second sound clip, then killed them for a medium grade item for Arthas.

      Might as well say that the Easter Bunny was part of the lore; after all, the Panderian were an Easter Egg...

    12. Re:Release Date for PC by xmousex · · Score: 1

      It's so bad at this point you can pretty much just drool on the keyboard and you'll still be just fine "raiding".

      Weren't most people in the mmo community saying this about wow before it even launched?

      This game took the whole genre and brought it to this lowest common denominator drive thru window mentality.

      And millions have rewarded them for doing exactly this.

      So why is it NOW wow players would be complaining, every expansion is just a logical follow up to how the game was built 'dumbed down' in the first place?

    13. Re:Release Date for PC by Calydor · · Score: 2

      In the store?

      Excuse me, but which store is already selling copies of an expansion that isn't even in Beta yet?

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    14. Re:Release Date for PC by jackbird · · Score: 1

      How abut the expansion, where the Pandaren brewmaster was one of the playable heroes?

    15. Re:Release Date for PC by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      It will be released when you BELIEVE in it enough.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    16. Re:Release Date for PC by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      Clearly it's time for the CEO to put a stop to employees wasting all day bathing in bathtubs full of $100 bills, at least until Diablo III is finished.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    17. Re:Release Date for PC by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      It's for everyone but you.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    18. Re:Release Date for PC by artor3 · · Score: 1

      In fairness to WoW (which I haven't played since 2007), they had the "Kung Fu Pandas" in WC3, back in 2002, long before the movie even started development. It's not like the idea of taking an iconic Chinese animal and having them fight in an iconic Chinese style is particularly innovative.

    19. Re:Release Date for PC by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Funny

      In the next expansion, you'll be able to play as a jumping shark.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    20. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      That's just putting lipstick on the shark they're jumping.

    21. Re:Release Date for PC by Talderas · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So it will go the way of Duke Nukem Forever? People believe and believe in it and it never comes and then when they stop believing in it they release a big steaming pile of shit?

      --
      "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
    22. Re:Release Date for PC by genner · · Score: 1

      We have a cocaine fountain in the lobby? Why does no one tell me of these things?

      Awww......man who told him?

    23. Re:Release Date for PC by scot4875 · · Score: 2

      I played it on and off for years; it was fun when it was somewhat challenging, but the story was always pretty weak. The world was well constructed, but particularly after BC came out everything really felt like it was just blatantly ripping off other sources for what passed as "story."

      I'm a huge fan of Warcraft and Starcraft. WoW was, indeed, pretty weak. But then, I'm one of those people who can enjoy something and still recognize the flaws.

      --Jeremy

      --
      Jesus was a liberal
    24. Re:Release Date for PC by CapnStank · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think its so much of an argument as to whether or not Pandaren were made up on the spot or not but more of an argument about whether that's the best Blizzard has to offer the franchise at this point. The last expansion was rehashing an old raid boss. Before that it was tieing off the ends of an old story arc. Now it seems they're forced to provide content that seems silly by the outside spectators and not those completely engrossed in the lore. I quit WoW shortly after the Lich King became an actual raid boss and I look at what content they've added and feel its become rather silly.

      Blizzard would be better off at this point to cut ties to WoW and help people transition to a new MMO with fresh start instead of attempting patches to WoW to make it flow better and *seem* original.

      Obviously just my opinion. I haven't marketed any multi-million/billion dollar franchises so my view is obviously skewed.

    25. Re:Release Date for PC by AngryDeuce · · Score: 2

      Great. Now we'll have to move it to sub-basement 3 next to the solid gold server farm...

    26. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since you can't count classes (There's 10) I'll bet you haven't even beaten the content on medium difficulty.

      He was referring to the Holy Trinity, but you can't expect WoW players of the latter variety to even realize this anymore it seems. Just shows you how little you need to do and know to beat the content now..

    27. Re:Release Date for PC by Endo13 · · Score: 1

      Parent isn't trolling. It's simple truth (granted, with a bit of exaggeration to make the point), as anyone who has been involved in end-game in each expansion should know. Here's the next stage in the devolution: In the next expansion they're doing away with talent trees all together (apparently it wasn't simple enough to force people to spec in only one tree). Now instead of talents and talent points you get tiers with 3 abilities per tier, one every 15 levels. You must choose one (and only one!) ability per tier. But don't take my word for it, go see for yourself. Here's the Death Knight "talent calculator": http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/mists-of-pandaria/feature/talent-calculator#d. I almost couldn't believe it at first, but there it is.

      If there was anything they could have done to ensure with absolute certainty that I will never return to the game, this is it.

      --
      There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
    28. Re:Release Date for PC by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually I'd say the bigger news would be how nasty are they gonna make the DRM. If they give it some nasty always on DRM that makes you jump through hoops i have a feeling it'll be pirated more than Spore.

      Why can't these companies just see the traincars filled with cash that Valve is making and jump on board? Gabe had it right when he said to the effect "Pirates are the competition offering a better product" and he has shown you follow the three simple rules, make it cheap, easy, and convenient and you can turn those pirates into money. Has Valve released the numbers on how much they made during the Xmas sale? because I bet the amount was staggeringly huge. steam has gotten so easy and cheap that frankly if it isn't on steam i don't bother, not even to pirate it, what's the point? I bet i blew through a couple of hundred there just myself because both my boys decided they'd rather have Steam games for Xmas as well as my personal buying. Frankly it was easier to pick up what we wanted on steam than to pirate the things!

      But if its one thing we've seen over the years its that the CEO of ActiBlizzard is a massive douchenozzle that happy to screw over his customers if he can "maximize profit potential" while letting him beat an IP into the ground so while i'm happy that there will be a Diablo III as i had a blast with Diablo II if they fill it to the rim with DRM and make you jump through hoops instead of just using steam frankly they can shove it. Its not like there aren't a wealth of Diablo clones out there, some of them quite good, so for me its gonna come down to how big a prick they are gonna be as to whether Diablo III is in my game collection or not.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    29. Re:Release Date for PC by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Yes the panderians where talked about(as a joke) before Kung-FU panda, but series consideration didn't happen until after the movie was a success.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    30. Re:Release Date for PC by geekoid · · Score: 1

      aka the cash cow level.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    31. Re:Release Date for PC by gknoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In many ways, the pandas were Samwise's pet easter egg. However, he was one of the lead graphics artists responsible with creating a LOT of the Warcraft concept art, and was very influential. Nearly every Warcraft nerd (which is not the same as all the players), when WoW first came out, knew of the Pandaren, and I recall people speculating and hoping that the first expansion (which brought us Draenei and Blood Elves) would give us Pandaren. Many people wanted to play a Brewmaster, even though they had only a faint idea of what that meant.

      http://www.wowpedia.org/Pandaren has a good deal of info on them, but the interesting section is the "History" one.

      The pandaren started as a creation of lead artist Samwise Didier and an April Fool's joke, but they got a massive response from Warcraft fans.[4] When the expansion to Warcraft III was announced, the Pandaren Brewmaster was added as a neutral hero, available and playable on nearly every melee map. One Brewmaster, Chen Stormstout was included as an optional playable hero in the expansion's orc campaign. Due to this popularity, pandaren were rumored to be the new playable Alliance race to be introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion

      The Burning Crusade expansion was released in 2007, a year before Kung Fu Panda, and a significant section of the population had a pretty good idea of who the Pandaren were, even then -- despite them starting as a "joke". Moreover, the World of Warcraft tabletop RPG has had the Pandaren race since 2003. Even at that time, elements of eastern philosophy and martial arts were intimately tied to the Pandaren cultural concept.

      I think it's safe to say that the Pandaren were well developed before Kung Fu Panda, even if they were not a playable race in the MMO yet. I'm sure that the success of the movie made it an easier decision to make them the next playable race, but they were certainly not designed in some copycat attempt.

    32. Re:Release Date for PC by n30na · · Score: 1

      Pandarens have been canon since Warcraft 3 (Well, Frozen Throne anyway), so this isn't really all that interesting.

    33. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I have heard a lot of people say they quit right after Lich King became a raid, and go on to dismiss Cataclysm.

      The truth is Cataclysm was a very impressive expansion. The question content was excellent. A huge step up from every expansion before it. And that is just the new zones... don't forget they completely revamped the old world.

      The dungeons were also much more interesting (bosses with real mechanics)... but the problem is they were too hard. Not too hard for a group of friends to do, but too hard for a group of randomly assembled players.

      Cataclysm was a response to accusations WotLK was "too casual", but you know what... casual is what most people want. I used to play EQ for 5 hours a day, or more, when I was 21... Now I am 30 I can't be stuffed. I just want a game I can jump on to with friends and have some fun. That is what WotLK offered, and that is what they seem to be returning to in the Pandarean expansion (people are making too big a deal about Pandas... the original WoW had Native American Cow Men for christsake).

      Cataclysm missed the boat because their audience is older now, with families and responsibilities... so the chances of get 5 (let alone 10, or 25) friends together is slim, so dungeons need to be doable with 1 or 2 friends and a bunch of randoms.

    34. Re:Release Date for PC by Macgrrl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I guess we won't be seeing you in Sanctuary then, because D3 requires an always on net connection. This has been debated here and other forums previously. This move is primarily (according to Bliz) to stop the hacking and loot dupping that was rife in D2. Your character data will be stored server side, as will all loot information.

      WRT to the summary comment about the PC game being a console port - you do realise it's been in Public Beta for PC and Mac for months?

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    35. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ...with frickin lasers

    36. Re:Release Date for PC by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Yeah and my left leg plays jingle bells if you jiggle it! I don't see anybody else having that problem so they need an always on Internet connection, do you? Valve solved that problem years ago with the banhammer. you pull shit in MP? enjoy your banhammering.

      i predict that Razr1911 or one of the other groups will have it hacked before release and the massive amount of piracy will be truly staggering to behold. nothing pisses off the hackers more than always phoning home DRM so they just painted a big ass bullseye right on their forehead. Me if it ain't on steam I don't want it, I'm sure as hell not having yet another service sucking bandwidth and calling home with God knows what information, no thanks. it isn't like there aren't thousands of Diablo clones out there to choose from and I bet we have a good 2 dozen released at the same time as DIII. Too bad ActiBlizzard as I'd like to give you my money but I don't pay to get kicked in the crotch, thanks ever so.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    37. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As talented as Razr probably are, it's not DRM, so they're shit out of luck. It requires you to be connected to the server to do anything. And I mean anything. Hit a mob? ask the server. Pick up coins? ask the server.

      It's as much DRM as WoW's always on connection. There is nothing to hack, aside from server emulation, and I don't think that's something the cracking groups can be arsed with.

      Some people have tried (and are probably still trying) to emulate the servers for the beta client, but haven't managed to get much further than 'you can walk around and press F1 to spawn a zombie that just stands there'.

      I'm sure they will manage eventually, but much like the private WoW servers, it's not going to be the same thing.

      You seem unnecessarily angry over a game you're not going to buy. Did WoW touch you in a naughty place?

    38. Re:Release Date for PC by Kvan · · Score: 1

      The problem with talent trees is that, counter perhaps to intuition, more talents mean less real choice. The more talents there are, the closer to impossible it becomes to balance them, especially when inter-talent synergies come into play. That leads directly to cookie cutter builds, where most of the choice is illusory, and you're only really distributing 2-3 points between situational/flavor talents. With a sharp reduction in talents, Blizzard has a chance to make each tier an actual meaningful choice. Worst case, they won't be able to balance it out, and we'll be back to cookie cutter builds. But at least then there'll be fewer points to copy off Elitist Jerks.

      --

      "A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
      - 'K' in Men in Black.

    39. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is modded troll, really? I guess WoW fanboys do read slashdot after all.

    40. Re:Release Date for PC by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 1

      We needed someone to man the phones.

      *Sniff*

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    41. Re:Release Date for PC by Alsee · · Score: 1

      I guess we won't be seeing you in Sanctuary then, because D3 requires an always on net connection.

      Right. I bought Diablo I and Diablo II. There is no chance in hell I'm buying this deliberately crippled crap until it's fixed.

      This has been debated here and other forums previously.

      You, and Blizzard, can expect this issue to continue to dominate any internet discussion even remotely related to Diablo III, up until the point that Blizzard fixes it.

      This move is primarily (according to Bliz) to stop the hacking and loot dupping that was rife in D2.

      You know what's worse than a company that lies?
      A company that insults our intelligence with stupid blatant lies.
      If someone is playing single player then who the fuck would care if they're hacking or loot duping?

      If they want to store online-character data server side to avoid duping and whatnot, sure. Just keep the same old offline single-player mode with the locally saved character data. If they want to get fancy they could add an the ability to download your online character for offline use, simply make it one-way with no possibility to upload anything back to the online multiplayer universe.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    42. Re:Release Date for PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're an idiot.

      The problem isn't that Blizzard ripped off Kung Fu Panda. It's that they have seen fit to include the stupid things in the game. As a playable race. As the focus of a major expansion.

      The problem isn't that Blizzard plagiarized -- it's that they're doing something stupid.

      The idea may be original, but still is colossally, titanically, enormously BAD.

    43. Re:Release Date for PC by bckrispi · · Score: 1

      The last expansion was rehashing an old raid boss.

      Ehh? The end boss of this expansion is Deathwing, who hasn't made a significant appearance since Warcraft 2. Perhaps you're referring to Ragnaros? Honestly, how many current subscribers were around to fight the Vanilla Ragnaros when he was relevant?

      --
      Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
    44. Re:Release Date for PC by bckrispi · · Score: 1

      Wrong.

      Pandarans were in the running to be the new Alliance race in Burning Crusade, but they were supplanted by the Draeni.

      --
      Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
    45. Re:Release Date for PC by bckrispi · · Score: 1

      Being ridden by a dinosaur, ridden by a mowhawked undead playing electric guitar.

      --
      Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
    46. Re:Release Date for PC by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      up until the point that Blizzard fixes it.

      Working as intended - whether you like it or not. They don't consider it broken, so they won't be 'fixing' it.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    47. Re:Release Date for PC by Alsee · · Score: 1

      They don't consider it broken, so they won't be 'fixing' it.

      Yeah, that's pretty much what I expect.

      And what they can expect is:
      (1) this issue to continue to dominate any internet discussion even remotely related to Diablo III.
      (2) someone else will almost certainly fix it, and when they do I will buy a copy from them. They deserve to get paid for their valuable work fixing the game, but they'll probably charge zero. Oh well. Bummer.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    48. Re:Release Date for PC by HBI · · Score: 1

      This post deserved an upmod, moreso than many others.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    49. Re:Release Date for PC by drsquare · · Score: 1

      Look at me I work for Blizzard!!!!!

      Please give me attention!!!!!!

  2. cool, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    when???

    1. Re:cool, but by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      Soon(TM)

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
  3. Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful
    Confirmed for shit.

    FACT: consoles retardify any gaming experiance.

    1. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      It was confirmed for shit when Blizzard went on record stating that weapon switching was an undesired exploit that gave non-retards an advantage over others.

    2. Re:Diablo 3 by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't forget the in game auction house, the lack of a real singleplayer game and that like SC2 there will be no LAN play option. I remember them rationalizing taking away the offline play as not requiring people to start over if they began a character offline.

      Personally, I'm glad that they didn't have anything better to do like making sure that the game is actually better than its predecessor so that they could tell players how to play. Personally, I'm glad I didn't waste my money on SC2, I'm guessing that I'll feel the same way about Diablo 3.

      Blizzard, what happened to you? You used to make such good games, but ever since WoW you can't seem to create a game that's worth paying for. Last good game you made was WC3 and that was nearly a decade ago.

    3. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gotta agree. Saints Row 2 on PC was ass on wheels with a rocket launcher strapped on top, full of menus that you navigated by pressing shift and other absolute complete bullshit.

    4. Re:Diablo 3 by dskzero · · Score: 0, Troll

      The games are still good. Nothing you've mentioned is actually a gameplay flaw. Lack of LAN is annoying, but hardly difficult. Diablo was always a retarded game. This is just a mainstream retarded game.

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
    5. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then you, obviously, must be a console gaming experience.

    6. Re:Diablo 3 by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.

      --
      Good-bye
    7. Re:Diablo 3 by dskzero · · Score: 1

      It might be missed, but you can always just get online in the same room.

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
    8. Re:Diablo 3 by Tyr07 · · Score: 1

      >

      Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.

      You can all sit in the same room, on the same network, and play Starcraft 2.

      You can just play with each other, you can play lan games.

      The only real complaint I'm seeing here is "It's not easy to download copies for all our friends and play together without buying the game"

      If you like it enough to have a lan party for it, you like it enough to buy it.
      If your arguement was 'I should be able to have spawn copies in the past like the original starcraft did to play LAN with a few friends' I'd completely agree with you.

      I think they should allow people to play games with spawn copies or something similiar so a few friends can get together to play.
      Other than that, you can 100% recreate the experience, as long as you have internet access.

    9. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After watching some beta play, it looks like pure garbage anyways.

      Interface for items is crap, less variety in bonuses than dungeon siege 1.

      Don't forget the stupid and boring spells.

    10. Re:Diablo 3 by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Yes, and you get basically no benefit from doing it. Part of the point of LAN parties is that you get to game with little to no latency and put people on a level playing field. Which you can still somewhat do with the current system, but you add extra lag so that Blizzard can be sure that you're not pirating the game.

      As for buying it, what was so brilliant about spawning was that you could actually spend time playing competitively with friends before having to commit to the purchase. The spawned copies were really just demos and you would be left with that when your friends went home.

    11. Re:Diablo 3 by hedwards · · Score: 1

      I'll probably try the demo at some point and I'll probably play the free to play option if Blizzard provides one, but I doubt it will stay installed for more than a few hours. At least SC2 didn't, and I took the unusual step of deleting the files. I don't normally do that with large install files as I often times reinstall later, but SC2 went straight in the trash upon uninstall.

    12. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is no one aware of the Starter Edition? It replaced the demo and allows some single player and multiplayer on a few maps. I agree that LAN play is not a problem. You have friends over and play in the same room, that is LAN play to me.

    13. Re:Diablo 3 by ndrtkr · · Score: 1

      If you think that SC2 was a bad game or a disappointing one because it didn't have LAN, you should google GSL or MLG ;-)

      --
      - live from Costa Rica !
    14. Re:Diablo 3 by Tyr07 · · Score: 1

      I guess it depends where you live.

      I don't have latency issues playing diablo 2 or starcraft, or world of warcraft. Actually, any game.

      So fair point if your internet connection generally has poor latency or the servers you can stuck on by location aren't very reliable.
      This mattered much more though back in the days of dial up internet. Most people's broadband connection will have no issues in many parts of North America.

    15. Re:Diablo 3 by black3d · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the lack of a real singleplayer game

      There is a single-player game in exactly the same format as Diablo 2. That is, the single player and multiplayer are the same game, but with multiplayer the difficulty is increased with each additional player. I guess it's a matter of perspective, the fact that there isn't a separate game for single-player and multiplayer, as in SC2. But with an RTS, the multiplayer component always focuses on player v player battles whereas the single player focuses on story missions - eg, the entirety of the Command and Conquer series, Dune 2000, the Red Alert series, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander 1 & 2, Warcraft 1, 2 & 3, etc - in all of these games, there's no multiplayer "story", it's just battles.

      Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty. Occasionally they add some multiplayer specific components, such as arenas, but what you're describing - "lack of a real single player game" is at best misleading. If anything, there's a lack of a separate multiplayer game, but as pointed out, this is the norm for the genre. Torchlight 2 multiplayer is going to be Torchlight 2 singleplayer + more difficulty. It's rare (I can't think of a single example, really) where an RPG developer has produced an entirely separate storyline for SP and MP.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    16. Re:Diablo 3 by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > but you can always just get online in the same room.

      Tell that to Ubisoft and RB6:LV2 (Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 2) You are ASSUMING the login servers NEVER go down.

      Why the fuck do I need to go online when I already have friends+family in the same room ??

    17. Re:Diablo 3 by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty.

      Uh, Diablo 2

      a) Uber Trist for Hellfire Torch
      http://extreme-gamerz.org/diablo2/viewdiablo2/hellfirecharmquest

      b) Diablo Clone for Annihilus Charm
      http://extreme-gamerz.org/diablo2/viewdiablo2/annihiluscloneguide

      c) Ladder only Runewords
      http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runewords-110.shtml

    18. Re:Diablo 3 by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 1

      But the company (THQ) learned from the blowback from SR2. They took extra care with Saints Row the Third, and it's a terrific PC game. All the menus, combat, and movement are optimized for the PC and function intuitively and smooth as glass.

      Games built for consoles don't have to suck on PCs. THQ has proven this. Blizzard is known for the polish they apply to their games, so I trust they'll take extra care in making the PC version great. It's the management decisions for D3 that I fear. (No LAN, no offline play, etc.)

      --
      Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
    19. Re:Diablo 3 by dskzero · · Score: 0

      Yup, I'm also assuming that Blizzard will eventually release server software or something similar once the game has run its lucrative course. This is Blizzard we're talking about, not Ubisoft. Please let's be serious here.

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
    20. Re:Diablo 3 by The+End+Of+Days · · Score: 0

      Your spittle-flecked comment missed one important point - you don't need to do any of this. This is entertainment, not food or oxygen.

    21. Re:Diablo 3 by artor3 · · Score: 1

      Starcraft 2 was fantastic. I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than the original SC. Take off those rose colored glasses.

    22. Re:Diablo 3 by hedwards · · Score: 1

      None of the ISPs around here give good latency to the connections. I'm glad that I'm not personally into online games that require good latency.

    23. Re:Diablo 3 by black3d · · Score: 1

      Right you are, except these aren't examples of games released with completely separate singleplayer and multiplayer storylines. These are simple mods for Diablo 2 multiplayer.

      As for Ladder only Runewords, I did explicitly state that sometimes developers add additional multiplayer content to the multiplayer version of the game, but overall - it's the same game.

      A 3rd-party multiplayer TC is hardly contravenes anything in my post as it's irrelevant. I can write a GTA3 mod that spawns clowns everywhere only when playing multiplayer with the multiplayer network mod.. but as this isn't how the game was shipped it means jack to any discussion.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    24. Re:Diablo 3 by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Rose colored glasses don't explain why SC2 was so ho hum and generally meh. Considering how much time Blizzard took in creating the game, the least they could have done was spend some time to make the single player campaign worth playing. Well that and implement proper LAN play and head to head modes.

    25. Re:Diablo 3 by zergl · · Score: 4, Informative

      >

      Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.

      You can all sit in the same room, on the same network, and play Starcraft 2.

      You can just play with each other, you can play lan games.

      The only real complaint I'm seeing here is "It's not easy to download copies for all our friends and play together without buying the game"

      [...]

      Other than that, you can 100% recreate the experience, as long as you have internet access.

      And that's where the trouble starts.

      Some of my favourite LAN parties in the last decade or so were done in places without direct internet access.
      - My parent's garage: Adjacent to the house, but no cabling there, 15-20m to the DSL modem and my parents would've killed me if I had to prop open a door for a LAN cable letting flies and mosquitoes into the house all night.
      - My cousin's garage: 10-20m away from the house and on the opposite side to the location of their DSL modem inside the house.
      - A mate's backyard party hut (complete with wet bar and pool table): 50+m from the house and any internet access.
      - A mate's deceased grandmother's vacant house: No phone or internet at all.
      A WiFi bridge can be dodgy (access points behind multiple walls) and cell phone reception is spotty at best at either of those places which rules out phone tethering and I don't know how well it would work either way, setting up NAT behind a tethered phone that is already behind the service provider's NAT or god forbid, the game wanting to download a patch over a volume limited phone contract with probably mediocre speed.

      Lastly, even if you have a place where you have no problems accessing your ordinary internet connection, ISP outages can happen, especially if you live in a rural area where phone cables aren't run underground (takes only one tree falling over during a storm or one drunk driver hitting a phone pole) or one construction worker to accidentally the whole cable if it is underground.

      If you don't think this is an issue, you've probably never been on the receiving end of an internet outage during your recreational time, as an internet outage is exactly when I tend to fire up a good singleplayer game.

      I'll take my classic LAN mode and offline single player every day and games that are not MMO but force you to be logged in/online even for single player or LAN play can fuck right off again and will not see a dime from me.

    26. Re:Diablo 3 by black3d · · Score: 1

      ps. Apologies, none of these are mods, I mis-read one of the links. These are all examples of some additional content added to the same game for multiplayer.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    27. Re:Diablo 3 by lgw · · Score: 1

      The single player campaign for SC2 was crap - clearly an afterthought. Since that's the only part of the game I care about, I was extremely disappointed, and I'll wait to buy D3 untrill I hear good reviews from those I trust. That's a real change for Blizzard.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    28. Re:Diablo 3 by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Yea, like they did for Diablo (the first one)?

      Nope. (they also still charge near full retail for it)

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    29. Re:Diablo 3 by a_mari_usque_ad_mare · · Score: 1

      A video game may be entertainment, but the money exchanged for it does pay for food and shelter. Blizzard does want our money, right? So why do they make their games worse on purpose?

      Also, by your reasoning we can't judge a non-essential product. This seems silly.

      --
      The map is not the territory.
    30. Re:Diablo 3 by Sir_Sri · · Score: 2

      You're assuming the probability of infrastructure failure on their end is higher than the probability of something going wrong with local LAN server software and infrastructure.

      And remember, they're the ones writing the LAN server software. They are the ones who have the biggest LAN party of all, which is the development team in the office. I'm working on a project where we have LAN support, and have for 10 years. It's still easier and more reliable for us to use the steam matchmaking service (since our game supports steam), while we're all in the office, than to use LAN networking code that was so lovingly crafted before I joined the team. Too many timing and sync issues, port opening/closing, performance issues, version mismatches etc. etc. etc.

      I'm sure Blizzard *could* try and make a LAN server option. I'm sure they have an internal LAN server. But building and deploying a public LAN server (and documenting it, and supporting it etc. etc. etc. all the crap that comes with consumer facing technology) is frankly not worth it when they have the battle.net infrastructure, which is far easier to make reliable, because they know what it's running on, and can actively work to fix it.

      Odds are, for the VAST majority of their playerbase, or potential playerbase, Battle.net is far preferable to a LAN server. You may think yourself some uber-nerd capable of small miracles in seconds to make it all work, I, getting a PhD in computer science make that mistake a lot. You have to realize they bear the support costs if the LAN server doesn't work, OR if battle.net doesn't work. Guess which is cheaper and more reliable for most computer users? The market, from 1997 when SC1.0 was printed onto disks, is far less tech savy, far less capable, and far more likely to call you up and yell if they can't figure it out. Battle.net is far more reliable than a LAN will be, and it's far easier to just use their service.

    31. Re:Diablo 3 by dskzero · · Score: 1

      I never said they would release it for free. I don't understand your point.

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
    32. Re:Diablo 3 by Ihmhi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm going to preface my reply by saying that I am a huge fan of Diablo 2. I didn't like Diablo 1 all that much (a classic to be sure, but a little too slow and clunky for me). I've put thousands of hours into Diablo 2 (a small portion of which is represented on my Xfire profile. I know the game inside and out. That said, while I was excited about Diablo 3, a lot of the stuff that has been happening has caused my interest to gradually wane.

      Don't forget the in game auction house

      Something I can understand. There are going to be items sold for D3 whether or not this exists. Any solution that *would* stop people from selling items will end up costing money as it would have to be either a very developed technology, involve a lot of people, or both. It's against the ToS of every nearly online game out there to sell items, accounts, etc. and yet you can readily buy them for all of those games.

      This way, Blizz makes some money and everyone's generally happy. Hell, there are people who are talking about the potential of making a livable income off of said auction house. How possible or not this will be can only be discovered once it's actually out and has been subjected to the usual balancing, but it may be a likelyhood to put in 40 hours a week and make minimum wage or something close enough...

      Moreover, occasionally people are hard up for cash and need to get rid of assets. In the digital age, a Level 80 WoW character with maxed out crafting and the best of the best epic gear is an asset in every sense of the word - yet we cannot legally sell them due to the ToS. If a similar case came up on D3, at least someone would be able to clear out a whole bunch of the items they've been saving for one reason or another and put some money in their pocket.

      the lack of a real singleplayer game

      Diablo 2 was fun single player, but I honestly always had more fun running it in groups. The lack of offline single player is, as far as I am concerned, the lack of a single player game though. I agree with you here.

      and that like SC2 there will be no LAN play option.

      This bugs me to no end, and for more reasons than you may think.

      Starcraft 2 came out. I tried it on a weekend while hanging out with a friend at a LAN party weekend at his house. I loved it.

      But I didn't buy it.

      The lack of LAN play is a deal breaker for me. If it turns out that I really, really want Diablo 3, I may buy a legitimate version and run the superior pirate version in a sandbox so I can have LAN play. In the digital age, there are people who are just as skilled as the people working for companies like Blizzard working to give the fanbase what they want. If the players want LAN play, they'll have it - just like they have it with Starcraft 2, just like they have it with games like Minecraft that don't really have an official LAN play system (via Hamachi), and just like they absolutely will with Diablo 3. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

      I remember them rationalizing taking away the offline play as not requiring people to start over if they began a character offline.

      Of course. This is marketing 101. "We're not taking something away, it's actually a bonus feature!"

      Personally, I'm glad that they didn't have anything better to do like making sure that the game is actually better than its predecessor so that they could tell players how to play. Personally, I'm glad I didn't waste my money on SC2, I'm guessing that I'll feel the same way about Diablo 3.

      I fear that I may feel the same way about Diablo 3. I have basically zero interest in buying Starcraft 2 until the full three games are out in a battle chest, and even then I might just not buy it. There's nothing so awesome in Starcraft 2 that I would be willing to put up with the garbage that comes along with

    33. Re:Diablo 3 by artor3 · · Score: 1

      The single player campaign was great. I spent more time on it than multiplayer, playing through three times (hard, insane, and speed run) and it was a blast.

    34. Re:Diablo 3 by Ihmhi · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Confirmed for shit.

      FACT: consoles retardify any gaming experiance.

      While I may not agree with your wording, I do agree with your sentiment to a degree.

      I loved Beyond Good & Evil. It was, in my opinion, probably the last good game that Ubisoft put out. A cult classic in every sense of the word.

      I noticed that there was a PC version and it was on sale on Steam for $5. I bought it right away... but I also regretted the purchase to a degree. The ability to change the controls was very, very limited. You outright couldn't unbind certain actions or movement axises. I ended up having to get a pretty awesome program called XPadder so I could just rebind the keyboard and mouse controls to a gamepad.

      So yes, I agree that consoles do often have an undue influence on PC games, especially when a console game is ported to the PC.

      As I said in this post just a little ways down the thread, I am a big fan of Diablo 2 and I'm not really too keen on a lot of stuff they're doing with Diablo 3. But when it comes to some of the "console-ization" they're doing with D3, a lot of it makes sense.

      One thing that I've seen decried since it came out was the removal of allocating individual skill points to skills. Rather than being able to raise any skill from Level 1 to Level 20, you can now only have that skill at one level. This makes sense, though.

      I'll use the example of a Bone Necromancer build in Diablo 2. 20 to Teeth, 20 to Bone Spear, 20 to Bone Wall, 20 to Bone Prison, 20 to Bone Spirit, 1 in Decrepify, 1 in Corpse Explosion, 1 in Bone Armor. The rest of the 110 or so total skill points were used for prerequisites. This is pretty standard fare for a build - you have 5 skills that are maxed out. You usually only use one or two of them - Bone Spirit in this case was the bread and butter in nearly every instance. Sure, you might use teeth or Bone Spear situationally, but you're going to be using Bone Spirit more often than not. Decrepify, Corpse Explosion, and Bone Armor were important enough to me to actually have the skills, but not important enough to get beyond Level 1.

      Most builds were basically like this - 5 or so skills maxed out to Level 20 and only one or two are really used most of the time. Removing skill points from skills makes sense to me because of this.

      Then, we have the bit with removal of health potions in favor of "healing orbs". This system is used in a few games. Every Diablo player worth his salt wouldn't go up against a boss like Hell Diablo without a belt full of Full Rejuv potions and a few extras in his inventory. Dying (and losing experience!) was a costly price to pay, and any amount of gold, gems, and runes spent to prevent this was almost always worth the price when the alternative is grinding out more Baal runs to recover levels or failing to win against a boss that took days or weeks to save up the items for.

      I don't know how I feel about this - it makes sense in a way and it simplifies the game without dumbing it down. I'm against simplicity at the expense of versatility and customization. I am not against complexity for the sake of complexity or because "that's how the last game was".

      Lastly, there's the art style. Most people didn't like it right out of the gates. They said it looked too much like WoW and that it lost the feel of a Diablo game. Counter-arguments pointed out things like Acts 2 and 3 were pretty bright (as if anyone hadn't been rushed past those points straight into Act 4...). It is true in the sense of coloring that the entirety of Diablo 2 was not 100% gothic grimdarkness. But it is also true that Diablo 3 feels fundamentally different than its predecessor in an artistic and thematic sense. I look forward to player-created mods and texture packs (that we'll inevitably have to hack into the game somehow and get Blizzard all pissy) that will actually maintain the mood of the game better.

      That is, of course, if I buy the game - which isn't looking too good right now to be honest.

    35. Re:Diablo 3 by ElusiveJoe · · Score: 1

      Long long time ago Blizzard offered opportunity to play a single copy of Starcraft in multiplayer up to 8 times using spawn installations. But now everyone is required to pay for every bit of functionality of the game (think DLC and mappacks, campaigns in case of Blizzard), which is still not guaranteed to work.

    36. Re:Diablo 3 by peragrin · · Score: 1

      hahahahhaha

      In Rochester, New York I get all sorts of latency issues with game play. You see my only choice for broadband is Cable, and the cable is so over saturated by all the neighbors on the same circuit that I can barely get digital TV let alone decent low latency connections.

      The cable company doesn't care. I have the techs out twice a year to get them to make the same adjustments, they adjust me, then a month later adjust my neighbor, then adjust someone else, until they get down the block and 6 months later they start all over again.

      assuming an always on connection always fails in the USA. you can't assume it.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    37. Re:Diablo 3 by LaRainette · · Score: 1

      A] You didn't understand what he was saying : he meant there isn't any OFFLINE Solo mod like in D2. See in D2 you had 4 ways to play the game : offline solo, LAN, Open BNET, and Closed BNET.
      The actual Online experience was Closed Bnet, where you had to start dedicated characters for online playing, and the characters were not hosted on your computer so you couldn't temper with them, althought cheating was indeed quite endemic, but I never saw it as a problem.
      Now in D3 you will have 1 & half way to play : Online multi and some sort of mutant solo/online shit mode who's only purpose is that I don't cheat in solo and that people can see my achievements !
      Well I ask you WHAT THE FUCK do I care if 12 years old see my achievements or if other people use cheats on their solo mode ? I didn't pay $60 to wank on my facebook about what level I am and what mode I finished, I pay to have fun, play a great game, and be able to do so whenever I please, even if I don't have internet connection. SO Yes there is a big difference between solo in D2 and in D3 : Solo in D2 >>> Solo in D3.
      B] if you think it's harder to defeat the Uber Tristram Boss on closed Bnet than it is to actually finish the game in Hell mode in solo than you never played D2
      C] If you've never played D2 I don't think you must speak here, also I stopped regarding you as a valid human being 1 line ago.

    38. Re:Diablo 3 by lgw · · Score: 1

      Bleh - you actualy liked that? Man, I gave up after a handful of missions and re-learned SC1 - the enigne may be worse, but the mission designs were far better.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    39. Re:Diablo 3 by Tyr07 · · Score: 1

      Well put. I see your point.

      I've experienced outages but none while playing games that required internet connectivity as a LAN party.
      I suppose I'm also not looking at this from the correct point of view. I work in IT, I have wire cutters, crimpers, connectors and cat5 cable on a spool. When we have lan parties far from an internet source I'll spend five minutes and make a cable up to 55m long to resolve the issue.

      Not every has that equipment handy to do that or know how. Although I don't still consider lan features super critical, I appreciate your point of view and do think they should include it on games that are best played with friends.

    40. Re:Diablo 3 by black3d · · Score: 2

      I'm 48 and was publishing games before you were born (a presumption to be sure, but no worse than yours), but OK, I understand you're extremely angry about.. something. Blizzard I think. But no need to redirect your anger inapproriately.

      As far as my reply to OP goes, he may have been intending to say that there's no offline solo play in Diablo 3 (btw, this isn't necessarily true - although certainly if present it would require periodic reconnection as the offline mode in Starcraft 2 does), but that ISN'T WHAT HE SAID.

      He said there's no real single player game. By contest, I point out that as far as gameplay goes, there is an identical single player experience to Diablo 2, as compared to multiplayer. There is a single player game - it's the one you play on your own, not with other people. There's no permanent offline mode that there was in Diablo 2 (agreed, which was better), but if that's what OP wanted to elaborate on, he couldn't have chosen a poorer wording.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    41. Re:Diablo 3 by LucienChase · · Score: 1

      And of course, no one lives in any part of the world other than North America. Australia, where I live, usually gets left out in the cold in cases like this. Our internet connections aren't the best, plus servers are rarely if ever put in locally. This means that latency is a huge problem for all of us here.

    42. Re:Diablo 3 by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      My point is they never did release anything at all for the multiplayer servers. It's battle.net or nothing (yes, there's reverse-engineered solutions out there, but they are technically not legal).. though in this case there is at least a LAN component.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    43. Re:Diablo 3 by Toonol · · Score: 1

      So fair point if your internet connection generally has poor latency or the servers you can stuck on by location aren't very reliable.

      Replace 'poor latency' with 'typical latency', and you have a more accurate statement.

    44. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blizzard got eaten by Activision.

    45. Re:Diablo 3 by Endo13 · · Score: 1

      It's because the best of their devs who made all those good games left, shortly before WoW released. The alpha (or possibly early beta) build of WoW was the last work some of these guys did for Blizzard.

      Some of them formed ArenaNet and developed Guild Wars, which (unsurprisingly) proved to be a huge success. I'm not sure where the rest went.

      Blizzard is still making good games, but they're a huge step down from the great games they once produced.

      --
      There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
    46. Re:Diablo 3 by Tyr07 · · Score: 1

      I guess I'm spoiled. Highest latency is usually under 100 ms...

    47. Re:Diablo 3 by Tyr07 · · Score: 1

      Why would anyone want to live anywhere else in the world besides North America? :D

    48. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Back when I used to do LAN parties instead of just using the internet I remember how awesome it was that it always took about 3 hours to get the first game up and running in multi-player. Ahh how I miss those days. Now I'm stuck with just turning it on and having it work.

    49. Re:Diablo 3 by a_mari_usque_ad_mare · · Score: 1

      So you infer anger from Unknown Soldier's post, then infer from my post that I inferred anger into your post. Actually, Unknown Soldier's post doesn't seem especially angry to me. But what do I know, I don't have your apparently Deanna Troi-like empath skills.

      Like a post below says, try following your own advice.

      You can stop the name calling, also, it makes you look foolish.

      --
      The map is not the territory.
    50. Re:Diablo 3 by gknoy · · Score: 1

      And, as a corollary, what are the odds of Battle.net going away any time soon? They've had matchmaking support for Starcraft for twelve years. Comparing Blizzard to Ubisoft is a technically correct comparison that overlooks the history of Blizzard's support for Battle.net.

    51. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're assuming that he doesn't live in a country like New Zealand where ideal scheduled maintenance times for login servers (which are all located in the US and Europe for some reason) are almost always roughly 8-9 pm local time, which is peak game playing time. I'll take a local LAN server any day.

    52. Re:Diablo 3 by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      Blizzard, what happened to you? You used to make such good games, but ever since WoW you can't seem to create a game that's worth paying for. Last good game you made was WC3 and that was nearly a decade ago.

      Vivendi merged them with Craptivison, and put Kotick in charge. Now they exist solely to make ever larger income streams.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    53. Re:Diablo 3 by Kalriath · · Score: 2

      You're assuming that Blizzard will eventually release server software or something similar once the game has run its lucrative course. This is Activision we're talking about, not Blizzard. Please let's be serious here.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    54. Re:Diablo 3 by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      Bliz have gone on record saying there will be real local Oceanic services for D3, probably based in Au or Singapore at a guess.

      As someone who's been playing WoW since release, I rarely find the auth servers down for planned maintenance. Most weekly 'maintenance' these days are just a restart of the world servers unless there is a significant patch to be deployed or hardware changes to be made. In those cases the maintenance time generally cuts well into the US play time too.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    55. Re:Diablo 3 by dskzero · · Score: 1

      Well, the Diablo servers are still up and running. They must be getting something out of it. This is wishful thinking, but we've come to expect from Blizzard some sort of respect. I still trust them.

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
    56. Re:Diablo 3 by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      I don't believe it is scientifically possible (speed of light and all that) for my latency to drop below 190 (it's generally about 230) from eastern Australia to the Bliz West Coast data centres. Hearing US players telling me that anything over 50ms is unplayable makes me want to beat my head against a wall.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    57. Re:Diablo 3 by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      Bliz have stated there will be actual Oceania servers for D3 - as in located locally, as oppose to the WoW Oceanic servers which are located stateside with a different clock setting.

      I'm guessing they will be located in Sydney and hosted by Telstra, but that's based soley on their previous attempts to negotiage for local WoW servers.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    58. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After you go on a crusade on telling people to "tone back their excitement", you might start having a point.

    59. Re:Diablo 3 by arose · · Score: 1

      You're assuming the probability of infrastructure failure on their end is higher than the probability of something going wrong with local LAN server software and infrastructure.

      You're forgetting that a local failure takes out internet play as well, so any problem on Blizzard's end goes on top of whatever LAN downtime. It's not an either or scenario.

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
    60. Re:Diablo 3 by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      D3 is starting out as a PC game and being ported to console, not the other way around. The Diablo franchise has always been based around mouse play with minimal keyboard interaction.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    61. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A WiFi bridge can be dodgy

      Over 20m? I don't think so. Have fun missing out on a great game because it won't work in some retarded contrived situation you pulled out of your ass.

    62. Re:Diablo 3 by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      I never completed D2 single player. It felt more like it meaant something when I did it on closed BNet. And boy did I obsess with D2.
      It was nice to trade with other players. Especially since the higher echelon players liked trading perfect gems for stuff that never quite dropped for me. Also there were a lot of sites and communities dedicated to D2. You were missing out if you didn't play closed BNet. It wasn't always a nice experience but you could easily tag along on boss/cow runs. Even tho it became repetitive in the end having company was actually a nice thing.

      The thing that I didn't like was how rampant cheating was even in closed BNet. That I can easily do without. I never played the power classes but preferred playing fringe builds(like going lightly armoured elemental dual claw assassin or Zerker Barbarian or a healing Paladin) so at times I was not quite able to solo stuff especially after they did incease hell difficulty which indeed could be hell. So I won't miss offline play. If they can eliminate cheating then more power to them.

      What worries me a little bit is how much having a console port will dumb down the controls and what you can do within the game. A couple of builds actually took some skill to play. As in: not spamming the same skill over and over again. And I took great pride not to play that way. That's something I would miss.

      ...and in case D3 will not be my cup of tea there still is Torchlight 2. It's not as if there are a ton of other games out there so you are not forced to play D3 if it isn't your thing. I dunno if I wil obsess with D3 as I did with D2. Sometimes OCD kicks in with games and sometimes it don't.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    63. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it took you 3 hours to start a simple TCP/IP game on a local lag in Diablo then you should turn in your geek card.

    64. Re:Diablo 3 by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      One good thing about console ports to PC is that game controller support is actually more common nowadays. I really don't like moving with keyboard and looking around with the mouse. OTOH I REALLY do hate targeting with a game controller. And cycling through targets.

      Downside is:
      -no key rebinding
      -lousy UI(I'm looking at you, Skyrim)
      -no proper windowed mode
      -DirectX9(we've moved on ages ago even tho Steam statistics still claim that DirectX9 rigs are still in the majority)
      -bad performance due to compatibility layers so you don't have to rewrite the engine from scratch
      -less focus on pure more complex PC type games(I can't ever see something like SC2 or Heroes of Might and Magic being released on console)
      A port from PC to console might work for D3. If they get the controls right. I didn't play the beta but controller enabled gameplay with Bastion was great and D3 won't be that far away from that, I suppose.

      Kicking back and twitch playing with a controller in my hands and slaughtering hordes of monsters in D3 is something I'd quite enjoy. It's not as if that kind of games is rocket surgery. In case it doesn't work, well, there are plenty of other things to play. Due to the Steam holiday sales my gaming backlog is HUGE.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    65. Re:Diablo 3 by Cimexus · · Score: 1

      There will be Oceanic servers for D3, as there are for SC2. Based in Singapore, admittedly so still a way from Australia, but should give at least acceptable pings (keeping in mind Diablo isn't a twitchy game like an FPS that requires absolutely minimal latency). I get 103 ms from Canberra to the battle.net servers in Singapore currently.

      Oh and BTW, our internet connections don't suck as much as you think compared to the US. You might be surprised. I'm a US/Australian dual citizen and have places in both countries. And the connection I get in Australia kicks the hell out of what I can get in the US. Both in normal, suburban areas in decently-sized cities. You can get the 'short end of the stick' when it comes to geography/long lines/RIMs/availability of other options like cable in both countries - it's a lucky dip, and I don't think either country is, on average much better than the other. Oh and you often have no choice of ISPs in the US (it's the local telco monopoly, or the local cable monopoly), whereas there's at least 20 other ISPs I could switch to in Australia, so at least we have that...

    66. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are clearly from an uncivilised part of the world, the rest of us will enjoy our connectivity.

    67. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The really sad thing, though, is that it won't matter in the slightest to Blizzard's bottom line. Gamers and geeks alike are generally pretty bad at making a stand. Look at the outcry with Modern Warfare 2 and the lack of LAN play or dedicated servers on the PC. A game was absolutely gutted and "console-ized" and the outcries of gamers and geeks alike were loud. And when it came time to vote with our wallets, we did.

      Modern Warfare 2 was the biggest selling piece of entertainment ever on its launch day.

      Modern Warfare 3, with all of the garbage (no LAN play, no dedicated servers) of its predecessor, beat Modern Warfare 2's record.

      I doubt Diablo 3 will beat Modern Warfare 3's (or even 2's) day one sales records, but the same exact thing will probably happen. We'll bitch about it. We'll complain about it. We'll download the pirated version while flipping the bird to Blizzard. But enough of us will buy it that it won't matter to them.

      I think the one thing you're getting wrong here is: those of us that hate the game don't buy it; we either skip it altogether or pirate it. (AKA the true gamers and geeks) But we are massively outnumbered by the mouth breathers that have come to call themselves "gamers" ever since it went mainstream. You know the type: Facebook, Twitter, WoW, and Angry Birds are their thing.

      Games aren't the way they were in the 80s or 90s anymore. My rose colored glasses are off and I can still see it.

    68. Re:Diablo 3 by Alsee · · Score: 1

      But enough of us will buy it that it won't matter to them.

      In case anyone at Blizzard or any other game company reads Slashdot, I'll add my voice here.

      I bought Diablo.
      I bought Diablo II.
      I have towering stacks of other purchased games.
      I've had to throw out most of the boxes, just the naked CD cases stack a few feet tall.

      I am pissed off at the crapfest DRM that has been getting shoveled onto games. I am pissed off at games being deliberately crippled.

      No. I'm done with deliberately crippled crap.

      Under no circumstances am I going to be buying Diablo III so long as it has no offline single player and other DRM crap. I don't care if every review touts Diablo III as Must-Have-Game-Of-The-Century. I just don't fucking care. I'm sick of DRM-crippled crap. I won't pay fucking ninety nine cents for it from a bargain bin.

      Sooner or later someone, whether Blizzard or someone else, will produce a version with a properly function offline mode, with the DRM crap stripped off, and probably with a properly functioning LAN mode to boot. Assuming Diablo III is at least half as good as Diablo II was, then I'll buy that version. I'll buy it from Blizzard, or I'll buy it from whoever else does the work needed to repair the game. And if it's someone other than Blizzard who repairs the game, and if they insist on a price of zero, oh well. Somehow I'll manage to survive the sacrifice of having to pay that price.

      Too bad there's usually no way to pay the people who do the valuable work fixing Defective games.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    69. Re:Diablo 3 by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      Why the fuck do I need to go online when I already have friends+family in the same room ?? Because this is the year 2012? I mean, I played HoMM1 back in the mid 90s myself, but...this isn't the mid-90s anymore, Toto.

    70. Re:Diablo 3 by Sir_Sri · · Score: 1

      I don't think they meant permanently, more of a 'it's down for 4 hours' thing. But either way, Battle.net is relatively robust.

    71. Re:Diablo 3 by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty.
      > These are all examples of some additional content added to the same game for multiplayer.

      Thus, your initial assertion/assumption is invalid.

      In the future you might want to check your "facts" before talking with someone who has played D2 for 12 years.

    72. Re:Diablo 3 by Sir_Sri · · Score: 1

      That's not really arguing my point though. How difficult is it to get the LAN setup going? For one hour a week (or one hour every two weeks or whatever it is), compared to plugging into battle.net what's the tradeoff?

      I realize everyone in Oceania gets screwed a bit by having to talk to servers in the US right now, but you're a small market, developing a LAN server costs money, are you really worth it, compared to the cost of just using battle.net? I bet on average for users in Australia and New Zealand, with a LAN, it would be faster to just wait for battle.net to come back up, than it would be to figure out how to get the LAN going.

    73. Re:Diablo 3 by Sir_Sri · · Score: 1

      it was poorly phrased. I was thinking more the failure of Battle.net as a service (software or hardware, either way, if you can't connect, it doesn't work), vs LAN software and whatever the server is running on (which may not be able to perform the job properly, especially if its running a client too) rather than the actual networking itself.

    74. Re:Diablo 3 by black3d · · Score: 1

      Woah.. don't get ahead of yourself. Did you read the next sentence ahead of what you quoted?

      Conversely, I can't think of a SP/MP RPG where the multiplayer isn't simply the single-player game with increased difficulty. Occasionally they add some multiplayer specific components, such as arenas, but what you're describing - "lack of a real single player game" is at best misleading.

      I'm very happy to admit (in fact, I kinda pointed out) that there are frequently additions to the base game for multiplayer, but as I allude to repeatedly, there's no separate multiplayer and singleplayer game.

      If anything, there's a lack of a separate multiplayer game, but as pointed out, this is the norm for the genre. Torchlight 2 multiplayer is going to be Torchlight 2 singleplayer + more difficulty. It's rare (I can't think of a single example, really) where an RPG developer has produced an entirely separate storyline for SP and MP.

      I get it, you're a Diablo 2 fanboy. I love Diablo 2 as well and have been playing it since launch. I just did a complete bnet playthrough with two friends just over a month ago (from scratch, because we're crazy like that). I wasn't dissing Diablo 2. I was merely pointing out that they didn't create a separate game each for single player and multiplayer. They're the same base game. OP was complaining that there simply wasn't a single player game in Diablo 3. There is - in the same fashion there is in Diablo 2. AND, like Diablo 2, there'll be additional multiplayer-only content in Diablo 3.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    75. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Red Alert 3 had a 2-player campaign. A rare exemption to the rule but it was there and quite well polished too. In fact the single player version was a little worse because the change was only that the AI would control the second player's army.

    76. Re:Diablo 3 by salmanbaig0312! · · Score: 1

      GAMING NEWS [ TVOG ] gaming news posted about this thread that this is releasing very soon and the best game for all gaming experts

    77. Re:Diablo 3 by __aaaojf4823 · · Score: 1

      From your post, you didn't watch the last 3 GSL, the last 2 Blizzcups finals also. All of them had multiple "Waiting for server" and "Waiting for player" messages during their live broadcasts due to battle.net structure. Also, more recently this weekend, a whole tournament set to happen in Chicago had to be rescheduled, because despite filling the required for sc2 tournaments and arranging with blizzard employees, after half the players started logging in, the IP was blacklisted and all of the players that traveled from far away could not play and all of that was blizzard's fault. Here you can read about the tournament http://challonge.com/starcraftchicago http://www.starcraftchicago.com/EventsCalendar/tabid/81/ModuleID/428/ItemID/74/mctl/EventDetails/Default.aspx

    78. Re:Diablo 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not often done. But can be. Parallel/pre/post storylines.
      For example, Portal 2, or one of my favourites No One Lives Forever 2(NOLF2).

      NOLF2Brilliant FPS with great humour along the lines of 007 Bond spy storyline.
      Singleplayer has missions to advance the storyline. Things happen outside the player influence, IE end of the first mission you are knocked unconscious.
      Coop storyline fills gaps or plays out those items occurring outside singleplayer influence. IE rescue mission to save lead character from the end of the first mission.
      A lot of it was done with reuse of maps from the singleplayer storyline so MAYBE it didn't add that much overhead?

      My AC thoughts on the original topic: Meh. If reviews are good I might try it regardless of whether a console version exists. But I will almost certainly buy Torchlight2 if they have proper LAN play. The amount of times my internet connection flakes out would be so annoying with the Blizzard approach.

  4. PC first by Freddybear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given that the Diablo 3 beta has been around for a while on PC, I would expect that the console version will be ported from the PC rather than the other way round.

    1. Re:PC first by Slime-dogg · · Score: 4, Informative

      This isn't the case. PC Insider has an article interview with the lead on the D3 project, and he discusses the belief Blizzard has about ensuring that platform games are created from the ground up. They may share textures, sounds, etc, but the games will be developed separately.

      --
      You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
    2. Re:PC first by black3d · · Score: 1

      Indeed, and the PC version has no awkward menu scrolling or any other signs of console "taint". The only thing in the beta that appears remniciscent of console games is considerably lower difficulty than par. However this is likely solely due to beta tuning.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    3. Re:PC first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've played the beta, and the game play itself felt more like it belonged on a console. You can't swap spells on the fly or manage your character much at all, so you end up clicking a few buttons to cast what you have equipped and to move around.

      After 5 minutes of play I actually tried to get my Logitech controller to work for this game, to no avail. This might actually be one to get for the console if the control scheme stays the same.

    4. Re:PC first by arbiter1 · · Score: 1

      i just hope its not no console to pc port crap like most games have been, usually graphics get crapped on when they do that.

    5. Re:PC first by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      Which is a fine stance to take.

      Consoles have hardware from yesteryear. I'd imagine if you want to do really cool stuf thenn you'd have to be very clever and use features of the hardware in a way that wasn't quite intended by Sony/Microsoft/whatever. I have no other explanation why console games nowadays look and perform so much better on the same hardware specs than they did 3-4 years ago.

      I also firmly believe that the majority of work done isn't coding but art. There is quite a lot of coding going on for sure, but the amount of art in modern AAA games is quite astonishing. And that's what bloats games to an 8GB+ install on disk. If you can reuse that and focus on getting it to work on another platform coding from scratch then you'd already have quite a lot of work done already. You may have to automatically downscale your art assets so it can run on old hardware like current gen consoles, tho. But that shouldn't be an issue for Blizz since I can't recall when they ever made games that were really, really demanding on hardware. Or highly optimized.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
  5. Lets get it on Wii U by DeanCubed · · Score: 2

    With the tablet touch screen controller, Diablo 3 would be amazing, plus it could have graphics somewhat on par with the PC version. They gave the N64 Starcraft so anything is possible. Come on Nintendo drop a wad of cash off at Blizzard HQ.

    --
    Born to Play
    1. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by Moheeheeko · · Score: 4, Informative

      They gave the N64 An unplayable version of Starcraft .

      FTFY

    2. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by WillAdams · · Score: 1

      Actually, I want to see an RPG using full Motion Plus controls --- it was great that Nintendo added upgradeable items / crafting to Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, but I've beaten the game (twice! just finished Hero mode and only need to beat two more mini-games, then do boss rush for the Hyrule Shield) and would really like something a bit more involved than Red Steel 2 challenges, or mini-games in Skyward Sword.

      --
      Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
    3. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by dunezone · · Score: 1

      Real Time Strategy games do not transfer over easily to consoles mainly because the controls required are not there. Depending on how complicated the controls are for D3 will determine how well it can be transferred to console. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard drops console support if they cant get the controls right.

    4. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Real Time Strategy games do not transfer over easily to consoles mainly because the controls required are not there.

      The funny thing is, every RTS on the PSone supports the PSone mouse! Yes there was such a thing. They games didn't sell in blockbuster amounts, so as far as I know there aren't any for the PS2...on which controls wouldn't have been a problem at all, even if they wanted to keep them PC style (The PS2 has USB ports for a reason) I don't have Red Alert on the PS3 to see how it controls.

      Depending on how complicated the controls are for D3 will determine how well it can be transferred to console. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard drops console support if they cant get the controls right.

      They might want to take a look at this game for ideas.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltH5D5AzPic

      Or this one:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OOrDPou_Mg

      That last is a PS2 game from 2001 that D3 resembles doesn't it.

      Or this one:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suqacR6jU1U

      Or putting it in other words, controls simply won't be an issue, since Blizzard solved the basic problem.....14 years ago.

    5. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      ...and don't forget Bastion. It doesn't have a lot of different skills but it works best with a controller. It is more on the arcade side of things when compared to the behemoth that was D2.

      But I do hope they will keep the console players on their own bit of bnet. They don't have keyboards so they can't type in chat and I don't want to use any form of voice chat with complete strangers. I live in Europe and we have an awful lot of different languages over here and most of the people try to speak English with varying levels of success. And there's always the shrill voices of kids which I'd rather not deal with. That's not fair from me but that's why I prefer to get on Vent with friends.
      Also I don't think console players will be able to compete with PC players due to the limits of controllers. And to be honest I'm not too fond of console players. That's propably unfair, but hey, it's just my opinion. Not a big deal.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    6. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They gave the N64 An unplayable version of Starcraft .

      FTFY

      It was the N64, so that goes without saying.

    7. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      ...and don't forget Bastion.

      I've heard good things about it, but I haven't played it, it's not on PSN yet, probably not ever....bastards.

      They don't have keyboards so they can't type in chat

      They DO have 3 things....on-screen keyboards, phone style chatpads you connect to the controller....and support for USB (and Bluetooth) keyboards. It's not an issue at all. Any PS2/PS3 player worth their Dual Shock knows to hook up a keyboard for a game that really uses text chat.

      I don't want to use any form of voice chat with complete strangers. I live in Europe and we have an awful lot of different languages over here and most of the people try to speak English with varying levels of success. And there's always the shrill voices of kids which I'd rather not deal with. That's not fair from me but that's why I prefer to get on Vent with friends.

      In the console diablo-clones that I have played with network play, all used voice chat...but you could always set up private games with just friends, or mute people as needed. But I can understand how you feel.

      Also I don't think console players will be able to compete with PC players due to the limits of controllers.

      That might be the case for some genres, but for an action oriented Diablo style game...probably not. Even Blizzard themselves has been testing out controllers and say they work well, and that some of their testers prefer them to mouse and keyboard for the game. As I said, the "problem" of controlling a Diablo style action-rpg on the consoles was solved....14 years ago....with Diablo on the PSone.

      And to be honest I'm not too fond of console players. That's propably unfair, but hey, it's just my opinion. Not a big deal.

      It does seem a bit unfair, may I ask why?

    8. Re:Lets get it on Wii U by bfandreas · · Score: 1
      Bastion is as far as I can tell written in .NET. At least when I installed it I also got a huge .NET update. Was too lazy to investigate it, so I may be full of bull.

      If you have a netbook or anything then you should really give it a whirl. Its just a couple of bucks on steam so there is no real risk involved.
      Roger Ebert convincingly argued a couple of years ago that computer games never could be art. Bastion may very well be the game that proves him wrong. It's fun, too.

      And to be honest I'm not too fond of console players. That's propably unfair, but hey, it's just my opinion. Not a big deal.

      It does seem a bit unfair, may I ask why?

      .because I heard bad things about them and only play PC games so, as I said, that's unfair and most likely bs.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
  6. Android/Tegra 3? by symbolset · · Score: 0

    Want to see this on the mobile console of the future.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:Android/Tegra 3? by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't be surprised to see it ported to Tegra3 devices(I don't know if Apple hardware can compete...possibly).

      You can supposedly hook up game controllers to Tegra tablets. Or at least that's what I read in nVidia's own Tegra Zone or however they call it. If D3 works well over 3G and it is actually worth it and it synchs nicely with bnet then I might actually think about it. That's a lot of ifs but it does sound cool. Tegra3 should be more than able to run it and if you skip a bit of eye candy so should Tegra2.
      Funny how tablets suddenly compete with game consoles. You can hook up quite a lot of premium tablets to a PC screen or modern TV. If Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo don't get their act together soonish then they might find themselves cornered by mobile devices. This console generation was kept around far too long.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    2. Re:Android/Tegra 3? by symbolset · · Score: 1

      The iPod 3 and iPhone 5 will be right in there. The pace of progress is brisk these days, yes. There's going to be a $249 Tegra 3 tablet this summer. Software houses should be falling all over each other to get games on.

      Yes, there are wireless game controllers for Tegra tablets and phones.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    3. Re:Android/Tegra 3? by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      Aren't there even drivers for run-of-the-mill Bluetooth XBox controllers? Those things and the demo videos in the Tegra Zone are amazing! I don't know if they are as of yet on par with XBox360/PS3 but they sure aren't far away from these.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
  7. Duh..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any new IP or sequel or reboot of a old game having a console version is given.Nobody expects them to stay PC only.Ofcourse they're going to come where the money is

  8. On the fence by SJHillman · · Score: 1

    I loved the first two Diablo games and spent endless hours playing them. However, there's a lot of questions that they never answer or keep changing their answer to. Will it be pay-to-play like their WoW model or will B.Net be free like previous games in the series? Will there be a single-player mode? Will you be able to play on private servers or will you be stuck with B.net?

    If at least two of those three are not favorable then I probably won't be getting it.

    1. Re:On the fence by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      What answers have been changed?

      You will be able to play by yourself, but you will need to be connected to b.net. There will be no local storage of characters.
      It will be free-to-play.
      You will be "stuck" on b.net.

    2. Re:On the fence by hedwards · · Score: 2

      It will almost certainly be free to play, but not as free to play as their previous games were. There will be no spawing copies for LAN play. I'm guessing that the money they need to maintain the servers will in large part come from the auction house and people buying new copies in the future.

    3. Re:On the fence by Rotag_FU · · Score: 1

      Will you be able to play on private servers or will you be stuck with B.net?

      The B.net aspect of your post is interesting to me. With the exception of Sony's recent acceptance of Steam on the PS3, the consoles have been loathe to support a community system other than their own. For example, the XBox 360 never gives any indication that you are playing on anything other than XBox Live (aka XBL). Although, when playing many EA games you do have to at least link an EA account to your XBL gamer tag, so there does seem to be some connection, but everything about the interaction appears to be simply XBL.

      Since Blizzard was adamant about the tight incorporation of the new Battlenet when releasing the latest StarCraft, I'd be surprised that they would court consoles unless the console companies were willing to loosen their grip on the online experience. Perhaps that is an indication that Blizzard is actually targeting the PS3 rather than the XBox 360, even though the port work would likely be easier for PC->360 than PC->PS3.

    4. Re:On the fence by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is definitely MUCH stricter about XBox Live integration for all games/apps on the 360 than, say, Sony with the PS3. They made a "partial" exception for EA because without it they'd be missing online play for the majority of console sports games, etc. I'd imagine after looking at the insane profits WoW has been making in recent years Microsoft would be willing to work with Blizzard on some sort of B.net support as well...

    5. Re:On the fence by Dahamma · · Score: 0

      There are about a billion screenshots, video clips, and even an beta that has been going on for a while now. Troll.

    6. Re:On the fence by filthpickle · · Score: 1

      It will be free to play, Valve makes a killing off the in game store in TF2....and the items you will probably be able to get in the game store for D3 will probably be more helpful than anything you can get in the Mann Co. store.is.

  9. Will it require a constant connection to Blizzard? by metalgamer84 · · Score: 2

    Will the console version need a Internet connection to play single player though? Or can offline play finally be achieved? If it can be played offline, I would be tempted to buy it for a console.

  10. Re:Cover your ears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Now, now, they already did all that back when they learned the game would have actual COLORS in it. Besides "dirt brown" and "blood red".

  11. Battle.net by xQuarkDS9x · · Score: 1

    You have to wonder if the console versions will require a constant connection to blizzard's battle.net system along with a REALID registration? God forbid though if they allow voice chat in the console version. Who wants to hear little kids screaming all the time?

    --
    You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
    1. Re:Battle.net by hedwards · · Score: 1

      I think they dropped the REALID registration, or at least when I signed up for b.net they didn't make me give it up. At least I don't think they did, they didn't require me to use my REALID in any publicly viewable place.

    2. Re:Battle.net by xMrFishx · · Score: 2

      I believe they're adding a nickname system for replacement of the whole RealID thing for gamer friends that you don't know IRL. I think they called it BattleTag, read the preview a little while ago but here's what I remember:

      Essentially: battle.net account - account all your games are tied to, login for WoW, SCII, D3 etc.
      RealID - aimed at people you know, handles cross comms between games - you add them once and then you see/can chat with them in other games, lets you see friends of friends too.
      BattleTag - hand out to guildies and random gamers who you don't hate, to communicate without them knowing your real name, email etc. Should have been added with RealID communication stuff, still in testing I think.

      Some things might be a bit sketchy in explanation but that's what the bits are I think.

    3. Re:Battle.net by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Not that it really affects me as I'll just crack the games I've bought from them if they force it retroactively on me, but I definitely won't be giving them more information than they currently have and I definitely won't be buying any more games from them if they're going to insist upon this sort of silliness.

      I thought that they had given up on REALID, sounds unfortunate that I was wrong. This is just like that article from yesterday where Moglen took a reporter to task for using social networking sites. Everybody that buys into Blizzards rather extreme system is just fucking things up for the rest of us.

    4. Re:Battle.net by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      You can currently sign up for a BattleTag ID in the BattleNet account management system, it's being used for the D3 Beta. I think I signed up some time early December.

      At some point I need to post my BattleTag ID to my guild forums so I can hook up with my WoW guildies in D3 once it ships.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
  12. Called it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When they replaced potions with "health bulbs," it was pretty evident that they were going to target the console market.

    I'm not going to complain, but Blizzard definitely has changed their target market and I don't believe I'm in it any longer.

    1. Re:Called it by ifrag · · Score: 1

      There are still the usual health potions (in current Beta form) in addition to the "bulbs" or "globes". However, stocked potions do have an actual cooldown rather than instant in prior Diablo titles. In D1 & D2 it was pretty much possible to just spam potions to live. D2 made this a little harder with the way potions actually gradually filled the globe, but the purple potions were always instant.

      --
      Fear is the mind killer.
  13. A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by aapold · · Score: 4, Funny

    HOw will they do that?

    --
    "Waste not one watt!" - CZ
    1. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      HOw will they do that?

      with a mouse. duh!

    2. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Scared+Rabbit · · Score: 2

      Prior art: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197112-diablo/data I first played diablo on a ps1 before I ever played it on pc. The pc version was vastly superior, but the ps1 version was playable.

    3. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Petron · · Score: 1

      One thing I could of sworn I saw in a D3 demo is a "Loot all by keypress" that was meant to stop the hungry-hungry-hippo effect. With that they could allow character to move using the analog stick and have "B" be "Loot all".

      --
      if (it != oneThing) it = another;
    4. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      console trash button mashing.

    5. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      The way it was done in:

      PSone: Diablo, Darkstone.
      PS2: Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance I and II, Champions of Norrath 1 and 2, X-Men Legends 1 and 2, Fallout BrotherHood of Steel, Hunter the Reckoning, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 Justice League Heroes.

      PS2: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2, Sacred 2, Untold Legends

      PSP: Untold Legends 1 and 2.

      In fact, D3 looks pretty much just like a Snowblind Engine game...google footage of BGDA or Champions of Norrath and you'll see the resemblance right off. In fact PS2 owners played a game very similar to D3....9 years ago.

    6. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Slime-dogg · · Score: 2

      This is a decent explanation. Torchlight is probably the best Diablo style game I've played recently.

      --
      You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
    7. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by ElusiveJoe · · Score: 1

      I bet on QTE and "Press X for awesome". Just joking. I hope I am.

    8. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by damiangerous · · Score: 1

      Of course it is. It was created by the people who created Diablo.

    9. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      From memory you no longer need to click on something to loot it - you run across it. You can also have temporary companion pets which will loot for you. In multiplayer mode, each player gets a unique loot spawn for each mob killed, which they can then choose to drop and becomes visible to your team mates, if you want to share something you got with someone else.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    10. Re:A Diablo with no mouse clicking? by Dal+Platinum · · Score: 1

      walk-over pickup and the loot-pet only work with money, actual items still need to be clicked. Or they did in the last iteration of the beta I played.

  14. Hack and Slash by harpake · · Score: 1

    The fan outrage continues: first rainbow colors, now console retardation. Hack and Slash already is dumbed down, porting it to consoles is really not a big deal.

  15. Re:Will it require a constant connection to Blizza by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yes. Diablo III is using the new B.Net 2.0 which requires a constant login to play, even for single player. It's the same with Starcraft II, and I'm not going to fall for that trick twice...

  16. PC gamers don't need to be worried by Pluvius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Blizzard is pretty PC-centric, so if anything it will be the console versions that will be shitty ports of the PC version, not the other way around.

    That said, there's no reason why both versions can't be good. Torchlight was a Diablo clone made by an indie developer that was praised for the amount of work put into making the console port just as playable as the PC version. There's no reason why a big company like Blizzard couldn't do the same... other than greed and laziness, I guess.

    Rob

    1. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 5, Informative

      But Torchlight was made by the people that made Diablo 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is created by a completely different team.

    2. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      There's no reason why a big company like Blizzard couldn't do the same... other than greed and laziness, I guess.

      Blizzard is owned by Activision, so greed and laziness should probably be considered the norm at this point.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Kenja · · Score: 1

      Blizzard is long gone, the people who made it great no longer work there. It is now Blizz-ivision. Which isn't to say they cant produce good games, but you can no longer predict the game quality based on past efforts.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    4. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Purity+Of+Essence · · Score: 1

      That said, there's no reason why both versions can't be good. Torchlight was a Diablo clone made by an indie developer that was praised for the amount of work put into making the console port just as playable as the PC version.

      Where they failed is making the PC version as playable as the console port.

      Torchlight begs to played with a game pad, but that's not an option on PCs ... as usual.

      --
      +0 Meh
    5. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by netsavior · · Score: 1

      Controllers for PC are cheaper and have more variety than controllers for console... I played torchlight on a ps2 controller with a usb adaptor for my laptop, just to see if it would work, but I vastly prefer the mouse/keyboard configuration.

    6. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Purity+Of+Essence · · Score: 1

      Of course you preferred mouse/keyboard, that's the only interface option of the PC version. No amount of controller remapping will ever change that. That's like putting pontoons on your car and expecting to enjoy your drive across the ocean.

      The console interface doesn't work anything like the PC interface because it was designed with game pads in mind. The Torchlight developers themselves believe the console interface is superior, but they refused to consider it for PC users because it is apparently too much work for them. Options frighten developers.

      --
      +0 Meh
    7. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      The console interface doesn't work anything like the PC interface because it was designed with game pads in mind. The Torchlight developers themselves believe the console interface is superior, but they refused to consider it for PC users because it is apparently too much work for them. Options frighten developers.

      Blizzard stated a some months ago that they've been testing gamepads with the D3 builds they have and were surprised how well it worked... Which seems rather dumb, don't they remember D1 on the PSone or ever play ANY PS1/PS2/PS3/xboxfoo Diablo-clone? They also stated that some of their testers actually preferred the console style controls and that it was more fun that way. (and more comfortable than hours upon hours of mouse clicking)

      Ascaron, the Sacred 2 developer said pretty much the same thing, that PS2/360 pads just suited the game better and it was more fun that way.

    8. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wasn't the console port of torchlight given a new interface to better suit the controller?

    9. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      No, Blizzard is Activision. It's owned by Vivendi.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    10. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      Actually, Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard which is in turned owned by Vivendi. Blizzard however is considered a separate entity which is run by independent management. So it is far more accurate to say Blizzard is owned by Activision than to say they are Activision. Both are, in turn, owned by Vivendi. It was the merger of Activision with Vivendi Games (which owned Blizzard) that created Activision Blizzard, the holding company for Blizzard. Activision and Blizzard themselves never actually merged, Activision only merged with the holding company for Blizzard. See Wikipedia

      Video game companies are a bit of a mess to sort out.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    11. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      ...and I would totally agree with that.

      Kicking back and playing with a controller is actually quite relaxing if it fits the game genre. Hack-n-slash is a genre lifted from the arcade machines so I'm not surprised by that.

      I wouldn't want to play a first person shooter with a controller, tho. Aiming is atrocious with a fidlle stick. I wouldn't want to play SC2 or HoMM with a controller because, well, my mind would simply implode.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    12. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      ...and tweaks to some skills, targeting and how potions work. It's not just interface overhauls. They want to do this properly.
      At least these are the stated goals.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    13. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by J-1000 · · Score: 1

      As much as I like Torchlight, it's not as good as D1 or D2, same team or not. The atmosphere, the weapons and spells, the music... none of it is quite as good. Still very good though.

    14. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't want to play a first person shooter with a controller, tho. Aiming is atrocious with a fidlle stick.

      It seems to depend on the game, though I am not a big FPS person. Given the choice in my console FPS's I use a hybrid control system: My left hand holds the left part of the Dual shock for analog movement. (I can't stand WASD, not even in non-FPS games), but my right hand is on the usb mouse. The problem is, a bunch of games don't support that. HL on the PS2 does, but Orange Box on the PS3 doesn't, which pisses me off to no end. It's okay in portal, but not in HL2.

      I wouldn't want to play SC2 or HoMM with a controller because, well, my mind would simply implode.

      Controlling an RTS with a pad is actually easier than using a pad with an FPS. Sure if the game has mouse support that will work mostly better, but the game will be playable with the pad. It won't be like games like the PSone version Alien Resurrection which I consider unbearably unplayably difficult without the PSone mouse. Of course, I may just have sucked at the game, others might do better with the standard dual shock.

      And it also pisses me off that Sony hasn't ever created a method to emulate the PSone mouse with a connected USB mouse for PSone games. Because the PS3 doesn't have old-style Playstation controller connectors you can't use it with the PS3 (or the BIG ass dual Analog flightstick thingy with the PSone version of Mechwarrior 2)

    15. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      Meh, Kotick's in charge so it's all the same to me. That guy is like the anti-Midas, turning golden game franchises into shit with one touch.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    16. Re:PC gamers don't need to be worried by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      I usd a game controller with Deus Ex: Human revolution(even tho I played it through on "Tell me a story mode"). Aiming a gun for a quick head shot was bad. I'd be in cover, aim while in cover(which took ages), pop out and pop a cap in EVERY F*CKING BELLTOWER OP because mercs need to die.

      Since that that was a bit tedious and inefficient I thought I could aim with the mouse and if needs be move with the controller. Nope. Didn't work.

      I would even be prepared to re-learn using a trackball for aiming. Moving with keyboard is bad. Aiming with a thumb stick is bad. Could we please combine the best of two worlds? Pretty please?

      --
      20 minutes into the future
  17. Actiblizzard by Dyinobal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How long until Acitvision/Blizzard get enough money that their bank account collapses into a black hole, under it's own mass? Seriously, I'm sure Diablo 3, will be fun to play but the whole real money market place and lack of LAN/always on connection requirement really bothers me as a consumer. I think I'm going to pass on Diablo 3 myself, and just buy Torchlight 2 when it comes out.

    1. Re:Actiblizzard by amicusNYCL · · Score: 0

      What's the negative aspect of the auction house? From what I see there's one auction house that uses in-game gold and another that uses real currency, and as far as I can tell neither of them are required for a player to use.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    2. Re:Actiblizzard by Baloroth · · Score: 2

      Right, neither one are "required."

      Unless you want the good weapons, of course. Or the gear good enough to get the good weapons.

      Note: I don't actually know this, it's just an educated guess based on the fact that it's Blizzard/Activision and not just Blizzard.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:Actiblizzard by demonbug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's the negative aspect of the auction house? From what I see there's one auction house that uses in-game gold and another that uses real currency, and as far as I can tell neither of them are required for a player to use.

      Well, for one, it gives them an incentive to design the game and item drops to maximize trading at the (real money) auction house rather than making it the most fun. Not that they will likely do that from the outset, but the promise of getting a portion of all trade at the auction house can't help but be a driver as they tweak item drop rates - once they have that ability, at some point a manager is going to point out that they could extract $x from the community by just doing this or that minor tweak. Activision won't be able to help themselves, even if Blizzard resisted initially.

      There are other arguments, but to me that is the main one. It gives them an incentive to tweak the game to drive profits rather than just make the best game they can.

    4. Re:Actiblizzard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The point Blizzard made: The people who want to buy weapons with real money will. Usually through shady sites which use game hacks, hacked accounts, and credit card fraud.
      So Blizzard(/Activision) cuts out the crooks and takes a small fee to cover the cost of resolving the inevitable disputes while saving the cost of recovering compromised accounts.

    5. Re:Actiblizzard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Right, neither one are "required."

      Unless you want the good weapons, of course. Or the gear good enough to get the good weapons.

      Note: I don't actually know this, it's just an educated guess based on the fact that it's Blizzard/Activision and not just Blizzard.

      All auction house items will only come from players. Items will not be bought from Blizzard directly. Therefore, all items on the AH must have been obtainable... without the AH!

    6. Re:Actiblizzard by forkfail · · Score: 2

      What scares me is that it's another step on the road to the Zynga-ification of all games.

      I don't mind DLC so much, at least that tends to be like mini-expansions, or even cheats. But what happens when the core items/content of a game become for-sale, where it is absolutely no longer adequate to simply buy the game in order to play it, but your enjoyment / ability to partake in the content is driven by how many dollars you put into the game?

      Also, note that games like this need to be "balanced". The real money AH acknowledges the gold farmers, and in fact, embraces them. They are now an official part of the balance of the game. How many super rate items show up is now absolutely driven by how many hours the gold farmers log. And given that ActiBlizzard profits from the gold farmer activity, they will tweak the system to encourage their continued and active presence.

      --
      Check your premises.
    7. Re:Actiblizzard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Items will not be bought from Blizzard directly.

      Yet.

    8. Re:Actiblizzard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google for wow gold. If Blizzard can't keep bots and gold farmers out of wow, they definitely won't be able to keep them out of diablo iii.

      Botting was a problem in diablo ii. I remember when the pindle bot first came out. So many people were using it that the battlenet servers were overloaded and the legit players couldn't even login.

      I am looking forward to playing diablo ii single player and with friends. I am wary of the auction house.

    9. Re:Actiblizzard by Talderas · · Score: 2

      Since there is a separation between the two AHs it means that anything worthwhile will be only available on the money AH and the regular AH will be littered with trash items that people are hoping to pawn off.

      So to use D2 terms. You'd find mostly magic items and a few rares on the GoldAH. Sets and Uniques would only show on the RealMoneyAH. All runes and gems would show up there due to the conversion mechanic to upgrade. The low level stuff would be cheap as hell but with enough you can get the top end stuff. Anything which is a consumable will gravitate towards the RealMoneyAH.

      --
      "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
    10. Re:Actiblizzard by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      Unless you want the good weapons, of course. Or the gear good enough to get the good weapons.

      So you're just assuming that the best items are going to be listed in the auction house, presumably sold directly by Blizzard, and will not be obtainable in the actual game? That's some pretty serious speculation.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    11. Re:Actiblizzard by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      There are other arguments, but to me that is the main one. It gives them an incentive to tweak the game to drive profits rather than just make the best game they can.

      I'm pretty sure that any developer not releasing everything for free has an incentive to drive profits. Most developers do that by making a quality game, and based on previous versions of Blizzard games I would imagine that they would also strive for that, regardless of any other profit makers.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    12. Re:Actiblizzard by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      But what happens when the core items/content of a game become for-sale, where it is absolutely no longer adequate to simply buy the game in order to play it, but your enjoyment / ability to partake in the content is driven by how many dollars you put into the game?

      Ah, answer a question with a question. I don't see how that relates to single-player gaming though, I'm not competing with anyone else.

      And given that ActiBlizzard profits from the gold farmer activity, they will tweak the system to encourage their continued and active presence.

      Again, I don't see how that negatively affects the single-player experience. Frankly, I don't see how it negatively affects the multi-player experience either. I've never run into a game where a "continued and active presence" by the community is considered a bad thing.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    13. Re:Actiblizzard by amicusNYCL · · Score: 0

      Since there is a separation between the two AHs it means that anything worthwhile will be only available on the money AH and the regular AH will be littered with trash items that people are hoping to pawn off.

      Not if what the person with the "worthwhile" things only wants is in-game gold.

      I guess, in conclusion to my own question, all I've seen from people are speculation that the auction house is going to be either bad or really bad, but a bunch of normal, casual gamers using it in a casual way is apparently not one of the possibilities. I don't see any negative effects of the existence of the auction house on a single-player game, and any negative effects on multiplayer are pure speculation instead of specific grievances. It seems like it would only enhance the game if my character has a bunch of gold and I decide to browse the auction house to see what I can use my gold for.

      Anyway, I guess that answers my question. Most of the criticism has been the always-online connection and the auction house, but I don't see any reason why the auction house would be a negative. I seriously doubt that Blizzard would allow the thing to become the den of iniquity and corruption that people automatically assume it already is. Regardless, the lack of offline play is enough to make me look elsewhere for my games.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    14. Re:Actiblizzard by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      Yes it is speculative. But this is the company that also added restrictive DRM to SC2, removing Lan play, and is doing the same thing to Diablo 3 plus removing single-player entirely and forbidding mods. I've honestly never been a huge fan of Blizzard, but those kinds of actions make me lose all the respect for them that I had before. Hell, the only reason I ever played WC3 was the custom maps (DotA in particular). I don't play WoW (not since before Burning Crusade, anyways) but I've heard that their expansions now tend towards the money-grabbing variety (this is hearsay only though). But as you say, I am engaging in speculation. I just mean that it would be perfectly in line with the trend of their current actions.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    15. Re:Actiblizzard by scarletkrystal · · Score: 1

      I don’t believe that Torchlight 2 will be comparable to Diablo 3. Although Torchlight 2 has good graphics and a good design, personally, I think Diablo 3 will have a richer storyline and better graphics.

  18. Re:Cover your ears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So what do you call your sort of flame, then? Preemptive douchebaggery?

  19. Re:Cover your ears by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would except that Blizzard has pretty much admitted to fucking things up, i haven't been interested in Diablo 3 in quite a while because of all the "features" they've put in to prevent people from playing in unapproved ways. Any hope of me buying it evaporated the moment that I found out that there would be no singleplayer game and that there would be no LAN play either.

  20. Hmm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's only thing that really annoys me about this. There is no way they would make this game "online-only-even-for-single-player" on a console.
    I understand the need for 24/7 connectivity on pc under their game mechanics, but it still doesn't make it any less frustrating.

    Also curious to see how that auction house turns out on console. If it will even make an appearance.

    1. Re:Hmm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they can't make the console version 'always-online', then they will not release a console version.

      This whole thing isn't a 'WE ARE RELEASING A CONSOLE VERSION', it's 'we're looking at a console version'

      I don't mind the always online thing if it reduces the amount of cheating and increases the cost of getting caught.

  21. Original Poster Here by RobinEggs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As the OP I'd like to acknowledge, before any lifelong Blizzard fanboy bawls me out, that sometimes the game masters, forum moderators, and community managers at Blizzard can be full of shit. If it was just that statement I quoted in support of a console release, I might be at least skeptical myself.

    This story, however, has much more to it than just that final acknowledgment; from the directness of the reply, including naming the project lead, to the stuff in the extra links soulskill was kind enough to add for me, there are many credible indicators of a console Diablo 3.

    1. Re:Original Poster Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    2. Re:Original Poster Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They announced the console version last year at Blizzcon.

      There is absolutely nothing "new" about this story.

  22. Re:Will it require a constant connection to Blizza by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    SC2 has offline mode.

  23. Not Enough Manna... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    in 7.1 surround sound..Epic!

  24. Saves me $60! by Zenin · · Score: 1

    Thanks Blizzard, this news saves me wasting $60 on yet another crippled game.

    --
    My /. uid is better then your /. uid
    1. Re:Saves me $60! by Mike+Mentalist · · Score: 1

      Diablo is just a slightly fancier take on Gauntlet. Where does the notion that it is deep and complicated come from?

      --
      I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
    2. Re:Saves me $60! by lgw · · Score: 1

      Diablo is a rogue-like. A bit dumbed-down, but the best graphics of any of the them at the time. D2's addition that not every creature moves at exactly rthe same speed was actually pretty novel in the world of rogue-likes.

      And if you scratch the surface, there is a lot of depth there - it just doesn't start to get interesting until nightmare difficulty, by which time I'm already bored with it.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Saves me $60! by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Diablo is a rogue-like.

      No, it's not. Roguelikes are by definition, turn based. Now admittedly D1 was inpired by roguelikes, and they played around with making it turn based, but decided not to.

    4. Re:Saves me $60! by lgw · · Score: 1

      Well, I can't argue with your personal definitions, but boring sucky turn-by-turn advancement is not core to the rogue experience.The devs chose realtime because it was better, and it didn't suddenly stop being roguelike as a result.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:Saves me $60! by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      but boring sucky turn-by-turn advancement is not core to the rogue experience.The devs chose realtime because it was better, and it didn't suddenly stop being roguelike as a result.

      I wouldn't go around saying any of that to Nethack players if I was you, especially the "boring sucky turn by turn" bit. Bui let me point you to wikipedia:

      "The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. "

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

    6. Re:Saves me $60! by Toonol · · Score: 1

      Well, I think going from turn-based to real-time was a pretty big variation from the typical rogue-like. Also, as rogue-likes go, it's very, very simple. I would like to see a diablo-like treatment done to a real, in-depth roguelike (like realtime nethack). It does bring back memories of "Sword of Fargoal," though.

    7. Re:Saves me $60! by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      Gauntlet is what defined the genre. The only thing those games have in common with rogue likes is that they are set in a dungeon and you have character advancement. Which of course will also make Skyrim a rogue-like. And Orcs Must Die.
      Nope, I'm not buying the gp's claim either.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    8. Re:Saves me $60! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not all creatures move exactly at the same speed in nethack. Some get turns more often than others.

    9. Re:Saves me $60! by lgw · · Score: 1

      The game was design as rogue with graphics. It wasn't inspired inany way by Gauntlet. But haters gonna hate.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  25. Not surprising at all to those with memories. by Beelzebud · · Score: 3, Informative

    Let's not forget that Diablo had a Playstation version. The sky is not falling.

    1. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nor the version of Warcraft 2 for the Playstation nor the version of Starcraft for the N64.

      (posting anon as I already moderated)

    2. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by Ihmhi · · Score: 2

      It also had local multiplayer. I wonder if Diablo 3's console version will have it? PC surely won't have anything of the sort.

    3. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      And let us not forget all those Diablo clones on the PS2 that D3 resembles, and borrowed ideas from. BGDA had ripply water in a Diablo clone on the PS2...nine years ago. Health orbs? Marvel Ultimate Alliance. PS2/PS3. You might have read they thought of implementing combo character attacks, like a barbarian throwing a monk, fastball special style......that was in X-Men Legends on the PS2.

      There's not much new in D3 to us console folks, and them hemming and hawing on doing a version for us....is insulting, especially since Blizzard was once a console centric dev house. .Personally I believe the reason that D2 never got a PS2 port was that Snowblind's first PS2 Diablo-clone, released only 1 year after D2...showed up Blizzard tech-wise. They simply couldn't release D2 on the PS2, looking like that after BGDA came out.

      This is BGDA, a 2001 PS2 game:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8IJusEkQi4
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxizxHvQNT0

      The cutscenes...use the actual game engine....zoomed in.

    4. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      Diablo 2 came out in June 2000, and DA came a year and a half later in December 2001. I'm not sure why you're comparing the engines, as they didn't even come out on the same generation of graphics hardware... Diablo 2 was also a much better game than DA, and people actually still play it, so they must have done something right.

    5. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure why you're comparing the engines, as they didn't even come out on the same generation of graphics hardware..

      So you're telling me that the PS2, which came out in Oct of 2000 was more powerful than a PC that came out in that same year? You might not want to tell that to the console haters commenting on this article. Need I remind you of D2's minimum system specs?

      Windows:
      Single-Player System Requirements:

      - Windows® 2000, XP, or Vista*
      - Pentium® 233 or equivalent
      - 32 MB RAM
      - 650 MB available hard drive space
      - 4X CD-ROM drive
      - DirectX compatible video card that supports 640 x 480 resolution (800 x 600 for the expansion)

      Multiplayer System Requirements and Options:

      - 64 MB RAM
      - Open Battle.net game Creators and TCP/IP game Hosts: 128MB RAM recommended (256MB RAM in games with over 4 players)
      - 950 MB available hard drive space
      - 28.8 Kbps or faster modem
      - Up to 8 Players over TCP/IP Network or Battle.net® (Requires low-latency Internet connection with support for 32-bit applications)

      So you're basically telling me that Blizzard couldn't do what BGDA did on the PS2 in 2001, on the PC in 2000?

      Diablo 2 was also a much better game than DA,

      It was? Have you played both? ,quote>and people actually still play it, so they must have done something right.

      One of the reasons people still play it is because it's still available on the retail shelf, even at Wal-Mart, and the fact that there is no sequel yet, because Blizzard is a bunch of lazy fools who STILL won't directly admit that D3 would make a very good console game and until VERY recently, bashed consoles any chance they got, even though the company's origins were in console development.

      If you could still find BGDA 1 or 2 (or CoN 1 or 2) on the retail shelf, (Or PSN) I bet you people would still be playing them.

    6. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      Look, I know you're proud to have worked on BGDA, but those game were mediocre slash fests that watered down the D&D brand. *That* is why no one plays them. D&D fans didn't want a Diablo clone with better graphics.

    7. Re:Not surprising at all to those with memories. by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Huh? I don't know how you got the impression I work for Snowblind, I don't.

      And nobody cared if BGDA cleaved exactly to the ruleset, only anal-retentive basement dwelling D&D nerds care about "watering down the brand" It wasn't intended for just D&D fans, but for also for people who had never played tabletop D&D at all as well.

      D&D fans didn't want a Diablo clone with better graphics.

      That was my point. Snowblind made a more technologically sophisticated game than Blizzard did on the PC, on a "weaker" platform.

  26. I'm just waiting for the console version... by forkfail · · Score: 1

    ... of "Pokemon Pandas: Farmin' the Grind".

    --
    Check your premises.
  27. Command line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Who will want to play Diablo on the command line?

    1. Re:Command line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike and filled with demons all rainbow colored.

    2. Re:Command line by BlackSnake112 · · Score: 1

      Actually there was a diablo mud for a while. The Cane there was not little kid safe. It got shut down. Seems someone didn't like it too much even though it had a few hundred people on it all the time. Remember this was a mud. Long before WOW came out.

    3. Re:Command line by xmousex · · Score: 1

      i would gladly play that right now if it were still going.

  28. Ahh! Save me! by RobinEggs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But Torchlight was made by the people that made Diablo 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is created by a completely different team.

    I found both Torchlight and the D3 beta totally awful.

    Maybe I'm just outgrowing hack-n-slash, along with every other mainstream category. God knows I hate 95% of shooters these days.

    I swear to god, I hate indie game hipsters just as much as indie music hipsters and Linux prophets, but I haven't played a good AAA game since New Vegas, whereas indies are putting out dozens of kickass titles per year.

    God help me I'm becoming an elitist. Get me some non-ironic domestic beer and a copy of MW3, stat!

    1. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But Torchlight was made by the people that made Diablo 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is created by a completely different team.

      I found both Torchlight and the D3 beta totally awful.

      Maybe I'm just outgrowing hack-n-slash, along with every other mainstream category. God knows I hate 95% of shooters these days.

      I swear to god, I hate indie game hipsters just as much as indie music hipsters and Linux prophets, but I haven't played a good AAA game since New Vegas, whereas indies are putting out dozens of kickass titles per year.

      God help me I'm becoming an elitist. Get me some non-ironic domestic beer and a copy of MW3, stat!

      You're just growing up is all.

    2. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Ihmhi · · Score: 2

      God help me I'm becoming an elitist. Get me some non-ironic domestic beer and a copy of MW3, stat!

      Nah man, you're not becoming an elitist.

      Mainstream games are constantly getting dumbed down and coming bundled with garbage like DRM and stuff that we don't want. We've finally reached the point in the gaming industry where a small team can put out a really good game. We don't have to buy the big budget stuff anymore, we have options and so we go for what we see as the superior product - the one that doesn't treat us like a criminal. The one that doesn't treat us like a child that can't understand a complex rules system. The one that knows we want more in our games than simple twitch play (although there are always times for twitch gaming for the sake of twitch gaming, and that is why the Lord God Carmack saw fit to bestow Quake Live upon us.).

    3. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing wrong with loving games that have some soul in them. Hold your head high, fellow elitist gamer. Give me Dwarf Fortress and Amnesia over the latest Sim City clone and Fear title any day. I'll play an AAA title the moment the design is controlled by devs, and not marketing robots. That and the fact that(for the pc at least) most games are generic console ports that show clear signs of hasty conversion. I'm going off on a tangent, but it frustrates me that pc gamers are willing to accept the half assed hacks that don't even have their own control scheme and show all the symptoms of translation from a console. Even games like Skyrim, which are universally praised had some of the most blatant console port bullshit you could imagine like hard coded memory caps, and the oh so obvious console port of the HUD and menu system. Can't get any more obvious that PC gamers are being given very little thought, yet we keep begging for whatever scraps we can get. /rage

    4. Re:Ahh! Save me! by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

      You're not becoming elitist, what people who say "you're just getting old" are missing is the generational turnover. New kids did not grow up with 8-bit NES games many of them started on ps1/xbox1 or xbox360/ps3/wii so they don't have 20-25 years of gaming history of games played under their belt. It's not just you. The entire industry is in a creative funk because AAA game dev costs are through the roof and publishers are hyper controlling and hyper conservative.

      The real issue is game devs don't know what makes for satisfying combat and that's why torchlight was 'just ok' not "OMG this is diablo 1 good'.

      The real issue is game developers have stopped understanding why their games were fun and are just pushing clones. Starcraft 2 is a case in point - SC2 had to be the MOST CONSERVATIVE sequel in all of gaming history. I was so underwhelmed by the sequel to one of the greatest games of all time and it's not just getting old. It's the fact that developers don't understand the spirit of the game themselves because many of them weren't even on the original team that made starcraft 1 to begin with. People come and go in the game industry. That and the marketing and exeuctives has pushed 'streamlining' and 'chain games to online'. (No LAN in starcraft 2). They' are trying to slowly turn games into services (ala MMO's). Trying to monetize them in sick and unfun ways, witness diablo 3's auction house. Horrible idea but the modern game industry is a mafia like entity now and gamers are idiots for not caring and buying their games anyway.

    5. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Omestes · · Score: 2

      I'm on the same boat... But I think there are other factors involved beyond hipsterism and age, though... Games these days are like movies these days, you have the big AAA blockbuster titles which are massive, expensive, and epic, but ultimately safe and shallow, and then you have a thriving indie market which spawns tons of terrible crap but also manages to come up with some really good (better than the AAA titles) experiences. For some reason the indie scene has completely exploded of late, probably thanks to Steam and the various console marketplaces, and thus there is a constant stream of high quality indie games.

      I personally think that this might be the golden age of gaming, not because of the big studios or AAA titles, but because of the huge glut of "must play" indie games. Back in the 90's there was one or two games you had to play a year, usually by one or two studios consistently (Interplay and Blizzard, for me), now I'm actually overwhelmed by the amount of games I want to play, and most of them are so cheap I have a hard time not getting them. I'm probably wasted more time in Minecraft, Dungeons of Dredmor, and the Binding of Issac (and the excellent but unknown Tales of Maj'Eyal) than I've wasted on any AAA title in the last couple of years, and together they cost less than half of buying Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.

      Sure, there still are some good AAA titles out there, both Skyrim and New Vegas were awesome, and epic enough to be worth $60. But they seem to be getting rarer, and tastes have changed with newer generations coming into gaming. I can't stand stealth or squad based shooters, they are all the same to me. I didn't even like the new Deus Ex since I had to spend half the game hiding behind cover, even if it said it could handle any play style (if any play style is stealth shooting). I find all the various MW games to be boring, slow, and ugly, and would trade them all in for something as much fun as UT2k3 or Quake 3 Arena was (the new Tribes game looks promising, though). But even a new UT2k3 would die quickly, since fragmentation has become a big issue. How many servers can you find for a game thats only been out for six months? Everyone moves on fast these days since there are more choices and more platforms.

      Meh, I'm ranting...

      --
      A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
    6. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll play an AAA title the moment the design is controlled by devs, and not marketing robots.

      AAA game development is in a pretty shitty place right now, and it's gonna be that way for the foreseeable future. Each development discipline has its head up its own rear end. Game designers, in particular, are much more about refining the designs they know and love rather than experimenting and looking for new fun. Game artists view games as vehicles for showing off their creations. Software engineers are not interested in pushing any envelopes and will sacrifice the spirit of a game on the altar of undiminished framerate.

      So, yeah, indie shit is where it's at. To me, Minecraft is the best thing to come along in quite a while.

    7. Re:Ahh! Save me! by artor3 · · Score: 1

      I've got to disagree with you. Games aren't any more dumbed down than they used to be. Individual franchises get dumbed down (e.g. Supreme Commander 2 vs the original, Dragon Age 2 vs the original, etc.), but as a whole there have always been good, deep games scattered amidst hundreds of crappy shallow ones. We just remember games like Baldur's Gate and forget "Generic Dungeon Crawler #87". Likewise, nasty DRM has been around for a long time. The Interplay LotR RPGs were great, but I can't go back and play them, because half of the dialogue was hidden in numbered paragraphs in the manual, which my late cat took a piss on years ago. At least modern DRM is urine-proof.

      I wouldn't call the GP elitist though. Maybe he's harder to entertain than he used to be, but what makes that a bad thing? You don't expect to watch the same movies and TV shows you did when you were younger, so why expect to enjoy the same games?

    8. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Ihmhi · · Score: 1

      You don't expect to watch the same movies and TV shows you did when you were younger, so why expect to enjoy the same games?

      Oh yeah? Then explain why I sit in my underwear watching Stargate SG-1 re-runs!

      Check and mate.

    9. Re:Ahh! Save me! by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      I'm with you on the indie titles. Bastion took me totally by surprise. As did Orcs Must Die, Trine and quite a few others. There are also some actually free games like Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole which I would have bought for real money. The Indie scene is currently thriving in a way it never had before. Even if you take the old shareware scene into account.

      Just watch a couple of the WTF Is... series by TotalBiscuit on YouTube to just get an inkling HOW creative and awesome the indie scene has become. There are quite a few pearls to be found there and some of them come in pay what you want bundles or are on sale on steam or from the developers directly with a $5 to $10 price tag. That's amazing.

      I spent more time with Bastion than I did with any Assassin's Creed title and I enjoyed it much, much more. According to some this is the game of 2011, not Skyrim. Which of course is a matter of taste and opinion. Yes, some indie titles are THAT good. And I even picked it up for $5 dollars on steam. Thats value that boggles the mind.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    10. Re:Ahh! Save me! by Dripdry · · Score: 1

      It appears you have a check, sir, though I'm not entirely sure any mating will ever be involved.

      --
      -
  29. Re:Will it require a constant connection to Blizza by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's no way for you to know the console version won't be able to play offline, they've only stated that the PC version requires a constant connection. It would break precedent if a console game need an always on connection.

  30. Facepalm by FranktehReaver · · Score: 1

    This makes me extremely nervous for this game. I was already feeling a little meh about them taking out certain other aspects like potions and trading them in for health orbs. I would rather not loose some in game depth or functionality because PC can do it but consoles can't so lets take it out of the game altogether. This is one game that they are changing so much stuff on I won't preorder it but rather wait and see how it turns out and wait for it to go on sale after I read reviews and what not. Don't hate what they are doing yet but I feel unsure... and scared... someone hold me...

  31. First Pandas by Carnivore24 · · Score: 1

    Now this shit? WTF is Blizzard doing?!?!?!?!

    1. Re:First Pandas by black3d · · Score: 1

      Because no Blizzard games ever got released on console?

      Oh, except for:
      RPM Racing
      The Lost Vikings
      Rock n' Roll Racing
      Blackthorne
      The Death and Return of Superman
      Justice Leage Taskforce
      Warcraft 2
      Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal
      Diablo
      Lost Vikings 2
      Starcraft
      And the never-finished Starcraft Ghost..

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    2. Re:First Pandas by FranktehReaver · · Score: 1

      Diablo, Warcraft 2, and starcraft were pretty bad on consoles then. Had a friend who got them and saw me play on PC and was like "WTF this sucks" and bought a PC to play games on. Hopefully they learned some lessons and with the advancement of consoles they can do something good. Still an overhead RPG with an analog stick makes me cringe.

    3. Re:First Pandas by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      PSone Diablo doesn't suck...the default controls suck (and some people don't know you can change them. Simply change movement from "Absolute" to "Relative" then enable "Combo Button"...that'll do the trick.

      Did your friend have the PSone mouse? Warcraft II was designed to be played with that.

      Besides...there have been an absolute horde of Diablo clones on the various consoles over the past decade. The gameplay works and controls are not an issue.

  32. d3 controls from beta by forkfail · · Score: 1

    up - jump
    down - duck
    left - move left
    right - move right
    A - shoot current object (e.g., throw a turtle at a demon)
    B - strike (punch a demon, or break a brick in front of you. if hit at same time jumping, breaks a brick above you)

    unlock super secret key combos for special super moves!

    --
    Check your premises.
  33. Console's are for satan by Coolhand2120 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Look no further than the sad evolution of TES. Back when TES4 came out the Bethesda said they had to dial back the graphics so it would run properly on an XBOX. So no distinct shadows, no huge preloaded areas (E.g.: open cities) even though the PC hardware could handle it without choking, they really didn't give a rat's ass about how much PC hardware could handle. Then enters TES5 and it's like the consolization of this game has grown by orders of magnitude. Now you can't change the default WASD keys for some aspects (e.g.: map), no more modding!

    From: Bethesda To: Huge rich TES4 modding community: "Fuck you".

    They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users. That's like removing the bullets from a gun to make it safer! God damn idiots! That's he whole reason people play RPGs!

    It's always a epic laugh to watch a "expert" with a console controller to try and control a player character in a FPS style game, like watching Helen Keller race the Indy 500. Or try and play a RTS game. To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS. Some serious lowest common denominator shit.

    Another good example of the destruction of an empire is Total Annihilation. Released back in the '90s for the first time, it was the first RTS with polygonal units (as opposed to sprites) where you could both create hundreds of units and select and control massive armies. One of the most significant perks of the game was the ability to create new construction prior to being able to afford it, like if you had half the bricks you needed to create your house so you got started before you had the rest of the bricks. If you run out before you're done, that's your problem. For the last 10 years that was fine, then Supreme Commander 2 came out (the 4th iteration of TA) and they removed this keystone element from the game to help simplify the game for console users.

    (mini-rant: They made the game more like starcraft, which cannot hold a candle to the TA franchise IMHO, I mean you can't even select more than a dozen or so units at the same time, what the fuck good is that? Can you imagine the U.S. armed forces telling the JSTARS commander "sorry sir, you cannot command more than 12 soldiers at the same time, select fewer units".)

    No longer can you have engineers assist other engineers to speed the construction process, no longer can you build before you have all the resources. All in the name of the console. The game's ability to be modded was removed, the game's ability to have user generated maps was removed. The game basically sucks, and anyone who loved TA either kept playing Supreme Commander 1 or switched to TA Spring (which you should check out if you like RTS games! Open source and pretty amazing.).

    Perhaps the greatest demonstration in a single player game of how much superior PC gamers are to console gamers is the shooting range in GTA Vice City. If you're a mouse keyboard user you ace the contest every single time with flying colors. Then you begin to wonder, "why was that so damn easy" then you realize that they made the same test for console users and they wanted to allow them to pass the test so they had to lower the bar so low that it made PC user's breeze though the test. And don't even get me started on "Shadowrun" the only (as far as I know) FPS that allowed XBOX gamers to play with PC gamers. So sad that story, the poor console gamers never had a chance. I could be half asleep with two broken fingers, being actively stabbed by a knife, and partially on fire and I could still beat the crap out of a whole room full of console gamers. And I don't think th

    1. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well you certainly are full of yourself. Keep fueling that nerd rage buddy, maybe one day it will matter.

    2. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sucks for you pc gamers then that developers go where the money is then hey?

    3. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lighten up Francis.

    4. Re:Console's are for satan by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      Awwh, cannot get your ship out.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    5. Re:Console's are for satan by forkfail · · Score: 1

      Fear not. Soon the warm cocoon of mediocrity will envelop you in its loving embrace, and all your angst will be washed away in a bath of Jersey Shore, Farmville and Twilight.

      --
      Check your premises.
    6. Re:Console's are for satan by blahplusplus · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Problem is publishers and developers know that ALL gamers are idiots generally speaking. If you do not believe this consider steam and online DRM that you find gamers defending time and time again. You can go see the gabe newell lovefest on reddit if you disbelieve this.

      Lets face it here also - because console gamers have lower standards then PC gamers they will buy anything even if it sucks. Where as PC gamers (generally speaking) trend towards not putting up with bullshit and hence lower sales.

      The worst part about all of this, is just sheer lazyness, entitlement and bad management of game developers by both developers themselves and publishers. Publishers have single handedly ruined PC gaming by being cheap and unwilling to commit money to make the PC version a proper PC version instead of just a lazy farmed out port.

      Just look at what square did with Deus Ex: Human revolution, they out-sourced out the boss fights and that's why they feel so forced and out of place. Modern game companies just cover up shit with bling and if it sells they won't mend their ways. Game developers have figured out the secret to sales success - stuff hollywood movie in a game (call of duty , mass effect, and now skyrim) and loads of people will buy your dumbed down game.

      High fidelity attracted the wrong kind of audience - people who don't really like VIDEO GAMES to gaming. They typically want story, characterization and all sorts of other fancy bling instead of - you know satisifying and deep gameplay. When I read game dev articles on 'making characters more emotional' I want to puke. How about exciting and satisfying combat and things to do in the world first guys? lol.

    7. Re:Console's are for satan by Ihmhi · · Score: 1

      It's always a epic laugh to watch a "expert" with a console controller to try and control a player character in a FPS style game, like watching Helen Keller race the Indy 500. Or try and play a RTS game. To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS. Some serious lowest common denominator shit.

      I really wish someone would do a study on the science of this.

      I know intuitively that you can get finer control with a mouse than with your thumbs. A thumbstick just cannot keep up with the same level of precision. That said, there are also situations where a joystick (not a thumbstick) are better - flight sims and spaceship games, for instance. You can't really do a steady banking turn for a few seconds straight with a mouse.

    8. Re:Console's are for satan by Rennt · · Score: 1

      Okay, I hate console ports as much as the next guy, but you have to be pretty jaded if you think vanilla TES5 is a horrible experience on the PC to begin with. The UI is a mess and the textures could be better quality, but mods are already starting to address both problems (no modding for TES5? You tripping, bro? They designed the freaking thing as a mod platform, and the new scripting tools are much more powerful then anything available before). And I really don't believe that the experience system was "streamlined" for the sake of console players, but was just natural evolution - the new system still has heaps of depth and at least feels fresh.

    9. Re:Console's are for satan by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Then enters TES5 and it's like the consolization of this game has grown by orders of magnitude. Now you can't change the default WASD keys for some aspects (e.g.: map), no more modding!

      Well console players have nothing to do with them making WASD unchangeable since we don't use it. And I do believe that TES5, usually called Skyrim, already has mods.

      They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users.

      They took the visible stats out, because too many people were gaming the stats and not playing the game organically, and letting their character develop naturally as they played. Which was their goal with TES4 in the first place. They didn't want people bunnyhopping everywhere to raise their athletics, repeatedly stealing an item and putting it back to raise theivery or finding an NPC that stands still, crouching behind a hedge and then walking back and forth to raise stealth. In other words, they did what they did to discourage the anal retentive min-maxers, not to "dumb it down" for console players.

      There have been plenty of console RPG's with tons of stats so don't blame us for Bethesda finally cracking down on stupid basement dwelling RPG min-maxers.

      To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS.

      Might have been me, but what I actually said, that analog stick was better than WASD for movement, and that while mouse aiming makes headshots easy, it's also very unrealistic. Also I said that given my druthers, I'd play with analog stick in the left hand, mouse in the right, which is how I played quake II on the PSone, Half-Life on the PS2 and Deus Ex on the PS2. That way I got the best of both worlds.

    10. Re:Console's are for satan by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users. That's like removing the bullets from a gun to make it safer! God damn idiots! That's he whole reason people play RPGs!

      I'm an absolute RPG nut, and the incessant focus on stats drives me up a tree. I think my perfect RPG would actually hide most or all game stats. I know the min/max type players would hate it, and I'm certainly not saying it would appeal to all players. In the same vein, please don't presume to speak for me either. I play RPGs primary for the immersive experience in fantastic worlds, and the interesting story / narrative it provides. The mechanics of the game are actually of secondary concern to me, except when they're stupidly broken (i.e. Oblivion - which Skyrim appears to have mostly fixed, btw) to the point where you have to actively fight against them.

      Personally, while I play both console and PC games, I chose to purchase and play Skyrim on Xbox. I develop PC games for a living, so I certainly don't have anything against that platform. However, at the end of the day, I tend to appreciate sitting back on a couch and using the Xbox controller, which I find fairly comfortable for long gaming sessions.

      Also, most rational people would never argue that a mouse isn't far superior for FPS aiming, or selection and clicking, like for RTS games or the classic Diablo style control. That's why it's important for game designers to avoid a simple "port" of a game and design the game with the platform in mind. Far too many PC games get substandard user interfaces and have their controls dumbed down. This isn't the fault of the consoles - this is simply lazy development, and unfortunately, PCs tend to get the raw end of this deal, simply because consoles are a more lucrative market.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    11. Re:Console's are for satan by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1

      They've removed all the complex "stats" that made the game too difficult for console users who can barely figure out their power button and lame ass controller. THATS RIGHT they removed the damn stats from an RPG to make it easier for console users. That's like removing the bullets from a gun to make it safer! God damn idiots! That's he whole reason people play RPGs!

      Skyrim's skills & perks system creates incredible depth and customizability.

      No, you don't have simple INT score anymore. You have five magic skill trees instead. So really it's more like you have *5* INT scores, plus a shitload of perks to go with them.

      No, you don't have a simple DEX score anymore. Instead you have relevant skills like Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak, etc, and your own physical dexterity with the controls. When you spring a trap, you jump out of the way! You'd really prefer a stat-based saving throw or something?

      No, you don't have a simple STR score anymore. Instead, you have Stamina which determines your carry weight, and all the weapon skill trees to determine your combat effectiveness.

      No, you don't have a CHA skill, you have the Speech skill tree.

      Etc etc.

      Skyrim's "you are what you play" design is flat out brilliant, it's both accessible (just dive in and play however you want) and incredibly deep.

      The only "consolification" crap in Skyrim is the menu system, and it's really not that bad.

      And Bethesda is not mod-friendly? Now you're just smoking crack. Skyrim Nexus already has over 4000 mods available, and Bethesda hasn't even released the Creation Kit yet.

      I do agree that SupCom2 was an epically awful dumbing down from SupCom1. But Skyrim is a GOOD example of streamlining game mechanics without sacrificing depth.

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    12. Re:Console's are for satan by Whorhay · · Score: 1

      I wasn't aware of the crappy things done to Skyrim because of the console development being primary, other than the menu/inventory system. So far as the story goes though I've got probably 50 hours in the game and have barely progressed the main story at all. And so far it's been a lot of fun. I just explore and kill stuff. Not that it couldn't be better in some ways but the only console issue that bothers me is the UI stuff.

      I do have to say though that my sessions of Terraria have been just as fun recently. I killed the Eye of Cthulu for the first time a few days ago and that was a lot of fun and a challenge.

    13. Re:Console's are for satan by bertok · · Score: 1

      Another good example of the destruction of an empire is Total Annihilation. Released back in the '90s for the first time, it was the first RTS with polygonal units (as opposed to sprites) where you could both create hundreds of units and select and control massive armies. One of the most significant perks of the game was the ability to create new construction prior to being able to afford it, like if you had half the bricks you needed to create your house so you got started before you had the rest of the bricks. If you run out before you're done, that's your problem. For the last 10 years that was fine, then Supreme Commander 2 came out (the 4th iteration of TA) and they removed this keystone element from the game to help simplify the game for console users.

      This! A thousand time this!

      I can still hardly believe that they started with one of the best RTS franchises out there with the vastly superior gameplay mechanics, took it outside into a dark alley, and shot it in the head.

      The sad thing is that SC2 added queuing, probably as a copy of the feature from the TA/SC series, but it has the same problem -- it spends resources immediately for everything that is in the queue.

      In both games, you are penalised for thinking ahead! If you want to win, you have to keep your "queue depth" at or near 1, otherwise you're tying up resources that won't be used till much later.

      It's one of the few times I've seen a "major feature" in a game that is actually actively detrimental to your chances of winning. It's ridiculous to me that two companies with a long history of RTS game design have made the exact same mistake.

    14. Re:Console's are for satan by Coolhand2120 · · Score: 1

      That said, there are also situations where a joystick (not a thumbstick) are better - flight sims and spaceship games, for instance. You can't really do a steady banking turn for a few seconds straight with a mouse.

      That is true, however even then it is a sorry substitute for a flight stick or a yoke, or when racing a racing wheel. Mouse/keyboard is the racing wheel of FPS games. Until a better control surface comes out that will remain the best. A pad is best for platform games and maybe street fighter type games (perhaps a full size joystick is better).

      As far as the "science" of keyboard/mouse vs. thumbstick in FPS, besides establishing the quantitative difference it would really be telling us something we already know. Sort of like studying "why skunks smell worse than roses". They do smell worse, that's not the question, people just want to find out how much worse.

    15. Re:Console's are for satan by SleazyRidr · · Score: 1

      They took the visible stats out, because too many people were gaming the stats and not playing the game organically, and letting their character develop naturally as they played. Which was their goal with TES4 in the first place. They didn't want people bunnyhopping everywhere to raise their athletics, repeatedly stealing an item and putting it back to raise theivery or finding an NPC that stands still, crouching behind a hedge and then walking back and forth to raise stealth. In other words, they did what they did to discourage the anal retentive min-maxers, not to "dumb it down" for console players.

      There have been plenty of console RPG's with tons of stats so don't blame us for Bethesda finally cracking down on stupid basement dwelling RPG min-maxers.

      A) Unless you're talking about an MMO or similar, if someone wants to do something retarded with their game then that's totally their decision.

      B) Taking the stats out doesn't stop people doing stuff like that, if anything it makes them do it for longer to make sure they really have made it up to the level they want. (This part is where I start making assumptions about a game with which I'm only marginally familiar) The numbers are still there, they're just hidden from the player, so people will work out a way to back-calculate them and do exactly the same thing.

    16. Re:Console's are for satan by DeadCatX2 · · Score: 1

      "Louis, if you don't stop being positive, I'm gonna sink the boat just to make you sad."

      "Thinking positive got me where I am, Francis."

      "About to die in a brick factory? Cause I'm about to do that too. And I got to complain about shit the whole time."

      --
      :(){ :|:& };:
    17. Re:Console's are for satan by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

      "I wasn't aware of the crappy things done to Skyrim because of the console development being primary, other than the menu/inventory system."

      The combat in skyrim is horrible compared to what we had ages ago. It's been 20 years since such combat styles have existed and we haven't moved on. That's the real problem. If you haven't played older games you need to because your lack of gaming history is really showing. The way the character controls and the combat animations are downright amateur and tacky compared to what is possible on a PC.

    18. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being allowed to start buildings in SC2 that you can't afford would be devastatingly unbalancing. That's because the emphasis on buildings varies by race in SC2. A half-completed building is a very different value proposition from a half-completed technology or unit.

      Another reason is that it massively increases opacity. Instead of managing two resources, suddenly the player is individually managing resource _consumption_ by lots of separate processes. Lots of weird questions arise. Could chrono-boosting suddenly be a bad idea because it'll burn resources faster? Would the game choose to stall all of my 99% complete marines rather than give up on the building I can't quite afford? Or will everything, across the map, instantly cancel (making a sudden income crash an instant game loss and thereby violently altering the game) How will I know which will happen? Can I control it? Does it make sense to try to, in the heat of an already complicated battle?

      Don't think of the queues as somehow a "penalty for thinking ahead" but instead a choice between flexibility and reliability. Unless you're super-human, the queue will execute on time more reliably than cycling through a hotkey watch list. But it costs resources that you'd be able to spend elsewhere, making you less flexible. Way up into masters league you will see macro-execution mistakes, and you will also see smarter players using queues in the end game when their money is no longer tight enough that eight marines queued now means an opportunity to expand is significantly delayed.

      With experience of the game two races are beginning to see value in sometimes not only not queueing, but in fact leaving unit production at tickover even when not at maximum food. Terrans are still very macro driven, but you will see burst warp Protoss played at high levels, a wave of units suddenly reinforced by twice its number and then nothing for several seconds, sacrificing pure macro for the flexibility of choosing where & when to warp in units. Equally you will see devastating Zerg strategies that convert all the available lava only at the last possible moment so that an apparently weak Zerg is able to comfortably hold off a force that previously seemed overwhelming, yet, if that force never arrives they have the money in the bank to tech up or expand massively.

    19. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A few people I know who play FPS drag the mouse sensitivity all the way to the bottom and do most of their shooting by moving the character rather then the weapon. They were some of the best players I've played against too, back when I could still tolerate FPS games to a small degree. I think if you played like that a game pad might not be so bad to use, but I don't know because I don't think FPS's are what consoles are for. On the other hand I'd like to see someone play SoulCalibur with a keyboard against someone with a game pad and see how long the keyboarder could keep it up before he threw his mouse across the room.

    20. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the greatest demonstration in a single player game of how much superior PC gamers are to console gamers

      SUPERIOR? Have you ever fired a real weapon? It has _nothing_ in common with either control scheme.

      Why is that important? You design a game around the controller, be it absolute, or continuous input, or gestures, or whatever comes next.
      Which maps to more functions in the real world?

      By the way, Supcom 2's economy was nerfed because the RTS genre is gasping for air. Spring sucks donkey balls, TA is available at gog.com for less than the time it costs you to get Spring+mod working. Who wants to bet the top 1% whiniest prick elitist gamers comprise about 50% of the PC gaming population? That's why the whole PC gaming platform is gasping for a breath of fresh air, IMHO. People vote with their wallets, and you've been left with the ugly, viscus bottom of the barrel deciding which way things go.

      Steam and an army of indies cannot recreate the golden age of Doom, Quake, Descent, Mechwarrior, Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabit, King's Quest, OMF, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, etc.

    21. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Freelancer fixed this problem about banking and I'm sure more games have as well but that's the only one that comes to mind at the moment. When you move the cursor slightly off center it starts to move the spaceship in that direction, the farther it goes to the edge of the screen the faster you turn. It worked perfectly. More flight and space sims should follow this model.

    22. Re:Console's are for satan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's always a epic laugh to watch a "expert" with a console controller to try and control a player character in a FPS style game, like watching Helen Keller race the Indy 500. Or try and play a RTS game. To help elucidate the level of intellect we're dealing with here, last time I went on this rant, some little wet-behind-the-ears over eager console-tard tried to argue that his xbox controller was superior to keyboard/mouse for FPS. Some serious lowest common denominator shit.

      I really wish someone would do a study on the science of this.

      I know intuitively that you can get finer control with a mouse than with your thumbs. A thumbstick just cannot keep up with the same level of precision. That said, there are also situations where a joystick (not a thumbstick) are better - flight sims and spaceship games, for instance. You can't really do a steady banking turn for a few seconds straight with a mouse.

      Can't remember the name of it right now but there was an FPS game that had PC->Xbox360 play that allowed the console players to play against PC players.

      The feature had to be removed because the console players lost almost every game during play-testing, even the best pad players were destroyed by average PC players.

      Personally, I'm not as militant about this as Coolhand but, when it comes to FPS, it really blows on a pad. Driving games? If you can't have a wheel, use a thumbstick. Flying? Thumbstick/Joystick. 3D Platforming? Definitely (WASD doesn't cut it for precise 3D jumping). But anything that requires precision aiming and/or lots of fast distinct actions (FPS, RTS) does not play well on a gamepad.

    23. Re:Console's are for satan by Cimexus · · Score: 1

      I ended up using the Xbox controller, on a PC, for Skyrim. I'd prefer to use keyboard and mouse still (finer control when picking objects up and much easier combat), but:

      - Menus system is freaking awful to use with a mouse. Nothing behaves intuitively. Screen elements give no indication whether you can click them or not, whether you can use 'Enter' to select or half to click etc etc.

      - With Vsync on (which is necessary since you get Havok physics bugs and awful screen tearing otherwise), there's very disconcerting mouse lag. Doesn't matter too much in general game play, but it makes navigating menus an exercise in frustration.

      So sigh, I'm using a console controller, on a PC, for an RPG game. Never though I'd see the day. But the UI is ~much~ nicer to use with a controller since it was designed from the ground up for one.

    24. Re:Console's are for satan by artor3 · · Score: 1

      The only reason a half completed building has value in StarCraft is because it can be used to block chokepoints, which is kind of a silly mechanic in the first place. It would make more sense, and still be balancable, if buildings could always be squeezed between, and there were wall buildings available to the Terran and Protoss to completely block areas.

      The system worked extremely well in SupCom1, though it is admittedly a very different game than StarCraft. For both of the game's resources (energy and mass), you had an income and a certain amount of storage. Anything you try to build has a total cost (say 100 energy) and a rate at which that cost is spent (say 10 energy per second). If the total cost per second of everything you're building is less than your income, the excess income fills up your storage. If you're spending more than you're taking in, those savings get depleted. If you hit a point where you have no more savings, and your spending exceeds your income, all your production slows down proportionately (e.g. if you're spending 100 energy per second, and making only 50, then all production will be slowed by 50%). If you want to rush one thing through, you can pause everything else.

      It's all extremely intuitive, and doesn't involve any of the sudden crashes you worried about. I don't know that it would work in Starcraft (it would be a major change that a lot of people would oppose simply for it being different), but it is a damn shame that they took it out of SupCom2.

    25. Re:Console's are for satan by Ihmhi · · Score: 1

      I heard about this myself. I think it was a study where they just hooked 360 gamepads up to PCs running the game and did 4 v 4 matches. It might have been HALO or Call of Duty, I can't remember.

    26. Re:Console's are for satan by P-niiice · · Score: 1

      If the games were more profitable on PC, the PC gaming situation would be better. Until then, game makers make their money on console games sales to enable PC versions of games with little to no enhancement. Why spend the money to properly customize a PC version when that effort gets eaten up by piracy? So be happy that console versions aremade - it's helping PC gaming survive.

    27. Re:Console's are for satan by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's really annoying. I really, really wish that game developers spent more time on creating UIs better tailored for the PC experience. Unfortunately, the PC is becoming more marginalized as a platform, with the exception of MMOs or other always online offerings.

      I have a feeling Blizzard won't make the same type of mistakes. At least not yet. I have zero faith that Activision won't push them toward more expedient development cycles and try to start cutting quality eventually, but hopefully that won't happen for a while.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    28. Re:Console's are for satan by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      It's pretty simple:

      Analog tilt works best when the thing you are feeding input to is something that is an analog tilt mechanism (Flaps, ailerons, wheel tilt, etc)

      Point and click (mouse) works best when you are feeding input to a primarily point and click mechanism, and firearms are pretty much the pinnacle of 'point' and 'click'.

      It's not that your thumbstick can't keep up with the same level of precision, its that the thumbstick is forcing you to control something with a behavior that isn't inherent in the object you are controlling.

      With a firearm, you typically don't need to control the rate at which your barrel traverses from point A to point B, you want it to exist at point 'B'. However with something like a car wheel, you don't want it to go from 90 degrees to 45 degrees in 0.01s, that would cause you to lose control. You want it to traverse from 90 to 45 at a limited rate of degrees per second. In essence, the traverse IS the important part, not the final location.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    29. Re:Console's are for satan by Kid+Dork · · Score: 1

      I could be half asleep with two broken fingers, being actively stabbed by a knife, and partially on fire and I could still beat the crap out of a whole room full of console gamers. And I don't think that's an exaggeration.

      That scenario would make one helluva movie starring Jason Statham.

    30. Re:Console's are for satan by Whorhay · · Score: 1

      Not that I'm a true old timer so far as gaming goes, I didn't have money to spend on them myself until the mid 90's. But what games in a similiar style are you thinking of that have drastically better combat? (not trying to be confrontational here just curious)

      The only changes I can see being made to the melee combat that might be worth the effort would be real hit detection for attacks and blocks, being able to control the direction and type of attack, and maybe allowing for damage to specific areas so that wounds matter instead of a big health pool. But adding all of those things would be impractical in terms of how on earth would you manage to control it as a player in real time or anything close to it, let alone whether or not standard consumer hardware could keep up. Maybe a motion capture system like MS's Kinect could do it, but that's not very practical for a game you are marketing so broadly.

      Basically how far into a realistic simulation do we want to go before the game ceases to be fun for most people?

  34. Re:Who Cares? by bxmnky · · Score: 2

    So on the reverse it is fair to say that PCs are for grown-ups who couldn't find the stairs up out of their parents basement.

  35. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Corporate sellouts!

    Oh, wait...

  36. Battle.net and the real money auction house by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the interesting part of this announcement is seeing how Battle.net and the real money auction house interface with Xbox Live and PSN. Are Microsoft and Sony really going to let their customers access Battle.net and use monetary transactions on their service without taking a cut as well? I know that Microsoft has been resistant to the idea of Valve connecting Steam to the Live Network, and I really don't know anything about it's Playstation integration. Are there any other console examples of games using a third party service for direct, real money transactions?

  37. Guy's, it's 2012... by Supermike68 · · Score: 1
    This being 2012 it should come as no surprise that games require constant internet connections. First, if you're any type of gamer then you'll have your very own constant internet connection, just like my grandmother. Second, its the easiest and most cost effective way to get more people paying for your product.

    I plan on playing this on my PC. The same PC that's always on and connected to the internet. There will be no change between me playing this and me playing Skyrim.

    1. Re:Guy's, it's 2012... by netsavior · · Score: 1

      I have never felt the need to activate starcraft 2's "Offline mode" because even when I am at my grandmother's house or the dentist, or even camping in Texas state parks, I have a constant internet connection. If I didn't have a constant internet connection I would be too busy fixing my network equipment to play a video game.

    2. Re:Guy's, it's 2012... by Toonol · · Score: 2

      Conversely, I have never bought and never will buy a single-player game that requires an internet connection. This is 2012; we should know by now how companies will abuse that.

  38. Re:Cover your ears by xmousex · · Score: 1

    Nearly the day it was announced they let everyone know necromancer was not on the menu. The next day I forgot this game was even going to happen. Seems like.... that was a long damn time ago.

  39. Re:Cover your ears by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 1

    You guys seem to give up on potentially cool games really easily.

    --
    Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
  40. Mouse/Keyboard support for PS3 by Holammer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Make it so! There's no reason why not. Unless... They want to cripple players in the name of PVP fairness. /meh

    1. Re:Mouse/Keyboard support for PS3 by Tukz · · Score: 2

      Blizzard said Diablo 3 is PvE focused and they will not balance to PvP.
      But they said a lot of things...

      --
      - Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
  41. Re:Who Cares? by lgw · · Score: 1

    Finding the stairs is easy - it's climbing the stairs that defeats most of us!

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  42. Re:Cover your ears by xmousex · · Score: 1

    I know i should have kept on playing it but ..... wait a minute.

  43. Re:Cover your ears by Hatta · · Score: 2

    There are enough potentially cool games that we can afford to be picky. I'm not missing out on anything by not buying Diablo 3. Any time I would have spent with Diablo 3 will be spent with another potentially cool game, and I'll have just as much fun.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  44. And of course for true nerds by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

    Ranma 1/2, has the titles hero father be a martial artist who turns into a panda when wet. So the idea is hardly new even back in the days of WC3 (Unless you believe Blizzards people aren't nerds)

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  45. Can you blame them? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

    Blizzard got a 100 million reasons for going online with Diablo. It is the 100 million dollars coming in each and every month for WoW for year after year. 10 million subscribers x $10 bucks.

    Oh the actuall amount might be slightly different depending on actual subscription costs around the world and the income from other services related to WoW but still, that is more money then most game companies make on a full single player release. Star Wars The Old Republic is rumored to be the most expensive MMO ever, with a budget of 100 million. 5 years of developer. For Blizzard, in those same 5 years they took in 5 BILLION.

    And piracy? Not an issue for Blizzard at all. Every WoW player payed them for it. Can you say the same with Diablo 1-2? Star Craft?

    They got two models, one which made them a lot of money in the past but they also found another model that them a shit load of money and keeps on making it long after anyone would be able to expect any money from a single player game that old.

    100 million dollars each month. That is a powerful incentive to get rid of offline single playe games. Don't like it? Then don't buy it. I am sure other companies are just dying to make single player games designed for the PC. Oh wait.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  46. Re:Cover your ears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Um excuse me, it is flameBAIT, not a flame.

    Also, the truth hurts. Read some of the discussion threads and you will see that my point is proven.

  47. Re:Who Cares? by genner · · Score: 1

    Finding the stairs is easy - it's climbing the stairs that defeats most of us!

    They make climbable stairs now?

  48. Re:Cover your ears by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 1

    That's a fine stance to take, although I hope I never work for someone who feels that way about his employees. But why the hell do you care about this article, then? You've dismissed a game whismically, confident that another game will suit your fancy... there's no information relevant to Diablo 3 to be gleaned there that makes any discussion interesting.

    --
    Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
  49. Re:Who Cares? by Toonol · · Score: 1

    Consoles are for children and people who like to wave their wand around.

    "Despite the facts, I will insist..."

  50. Diablo 3 alternatives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There are couple of games one can play to cut the wait shorter, some are listed here:
    http://www.gamestiq.net/2012/01/best-alternatives-to-diablo-iii.html

  51. Re:Cover your ears by DeadCatX2 · · Score: 1

    It is a violation of federal law to play this game in a manner inconsistent with Blizzard's decisions.

    --
    :(){ :|:& };:
  52. Re:Cover your ears by sd4f · · Score: 1

    Yea i agree to this, my backlog is so large, that it ultimately doesn't matter, cool games can keep on coming, but i've got plenty of cool games already, and i don't mind playing a few ps2 games (although some of them look really good at 1080p on the pc emulator), or the isometric rpg's, in spite of the current gen graphics.

  53. No wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That I thought the beta was shit... As much as I liked the first Diablo and the second+expension, I just couldn't bring myself to like the third installment from what was available in the beta, the way it controlled and all that... it was plain shit to me. I'm more excited for torchlight 2 than D3...
    So I guess here's my answer, because it was made with consoles in mind.

  54. Re:Cover your ears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've read all of the threads here and many elsewhere, and your point lacks an iota of factual support.

  55. "Diablo Console Project"... by cyberfunkr · · Score: 2

    Because I don't like reading anything into anything...

    He didn't say the "Diablo *3* console project".

    This could be a case where there is Diablo 3, for the PC, Diablo: Return to Sanctuary for Xbox360, Diablo 2:Cow Wars for PS3, and Nintendogs: Duriel Edition for the 3DS, and Horadric Cube Simulator for the Wii.

  56. No worries by jweller13 · · Score: 1

    Although incredibly secretive Blizzard has a track record of incredibly high standards for their game releases. I'm very confident the console version will be excellent and not merely a cobbled together port.

  57. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  58. Blizzard have responded by trawg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Blizzard sent us through a response to this story:

    Bashiokâ(TM)s response on Twitter was intended as a confirmation that weâ(TM)re actively exploring the possibility of developing a console version of Diablo III, as weâ(TM)ve mentioned in the past. This is not a confirmation that Diablo III is coming to any console platform. Our focus right now is on finishing the PC/Mac version of Diablo III and making sure itâ(TM)s a worthwhile successor to the Diablo series.

    1. Re:Blizzard have responded by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      So in typical Blizzard style they'll confirm it once they actually have a beta or at least an alpha release.
      Say whatever you think about those guys: they won't be rushed.

      I remember the amount of complaints when they pushed back what was speculated the release date for D3. If it makes the game worthwhile and it doesn't require day one patches to even get you past the menu screen then all power to them.
      I'll be busy playing something else due to a huge gaming backlog.

      I'll file this possible console port under mildly interesting and be done with it. As long as it isn't a port FROM console I couldn't care less.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    2. Re:Blizzard have responded by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      God I hate Blizzard! Just quit "exploring" and do the damn port.
      We know Diablo style game play works because of 14 years of Diablo-clones on the consoles, we also know controls won't be an issue for the same reason....just do the damn port. And quit insulting us!

      And for god's sake, hurry up already...you lazy incompetent bums. If you ever hope to be a console developer like you used to be, you'll have to learn again how to work hard, and NOT goof off and actually finish the damn games on schedule and on time. That means, a sequel takes 2 -3 years, maybe 5 if you really want to push it. Look at Bethesda:

      Oblivion: 2006
      Fallout 3 (using a modified Oblivion engine, and sometimes referred to as Oblivion with guns): 2008
      Skyrim (using a modified version of the Fallout 3 engine and sometimes called Fallout 3 with swords) 2011

      That means if you do release D3 in 2012...D4 should be out in 2014 or 2015, just modify the D3 engine....that's how you get things done.

    3. Re:Blizzard have responded by trawg · · Score: 1

      That's how you make sequels - it is not how you make good games. Blizzard make good games; their policy of releasing games "when they're done" is much better than their competitor's policies of releasing sequels simply because they know people will buy them regardless of quality.

      You know when you buy a Blizzard game it will be supported for many, many years - they are still releasing patches for the original StarCraft!

      I would rather they never bother with console games and stick to PCs, because there are too few developers like them left on PC any more and for those of us that prefer the PC for our gaming... we can't afford to lose them.

    4. Re:Blizzard have responded by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      That's how you make sequels - it is not how you make good games.

      Sequel does not automatically mean "bad game made only to cash in on yearly roster updates, like sports games" Each of those Bethesda games wone various game of the year awards.

      I would rather they never bother with console games and stick to PCs, because there are too few developers like them left on PC any more and for those of us that prefer the PC for our gaming... we can't afford to lose them.

      You do know that Blizzard was once originally a console centric developer: Lost Vikings, Rock n Roll Racing, Blackthorne? Why they went all PC snobby I'll never understand.

  59. Re:Cover your ears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You need to work in "express written consent" somehow.

  60. Re:Cover your ears by bfandreas · · Score: 1

    D2 was quite a mess at release. The game got better and better as the years went by. So not immediately hopping onto the bandwagon and giving it time to ripen might be a good choice.

    I wonder how representative the beta actually was. From Blizzard's statements I'd say it was akin to Stony Field on normal level in D2. There was precious little challenge there since the difficulty level then was not more than a tutorial level. As a fresh graduate from nightmare level not quite being able to wear all the gear you had acquired for that character, Stony Field on hell difficulty could be quite daunting.

    We shall see.

    --
    20 minutes into the future
  61. Re:Cover your ears by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't worry, the millions of the rest of us will still enjoy playing the game without you.

  62. Re:Who Cares? by FranktehReaver · · Score: 1

    My parents installed an escalator and put pie at the top... When I arrived at the summit to my chagrin pie was not waiting for me but a job and a college education... life sucks...

  63. Hurry UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I pulled out my old dusty copy of DII/LODEP, and played the spit out of it, AGAIN, in anticipation of the release of DIII. If they don't hurry up and release it soon, I may get so tired of Diablo in general, that I stop playing it altogether, uninstall it from my computers, and go out and get laid instead, opting to spend the money I WOULD HAVE SPENT buying DIII instead on a hooker! The thrill may not last as long, but hey, it's almost certainly more fun! In fact, I think I'm just going to pass on DIII, and go get some nookie instead.

  64. PC version? by kamapuaa · · Score: 1

    Why would anybody release a PC version when almost everybody will just end pirating it anyway, and then rationalizing that it's too expensive or they just wanted a try or that copyright is morally questionable? Honestly I don't even understand the rationale of putting out a quickie XBox port, even if it was absolutely free to do so. They're just going to cannibalize from the sales of XBox360 and PS3 versions of the same game.

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    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  65. Re:Cover your ears by CCarrot · · Score: 1

    There are enough potentially cool games that we can afford to be picky. I'm not missing out on anything by not buying Diablo 3. Any time I would have spent with Diablo 3 will be spent with another potentially cool game, and I'll have just as much fun.

    That's a fine stance to take, although I hope I never work for someone who feels that way about his employees. ... You've dismissed a game whismically, confident that another game will suit your fancy...

    Wait, what?? In what way is a gamer/producer relationship like an employer/employee relationship? Even if it were, why in hell would you put up with an 'employee' that basically dictated where and when they would work, and who may decide to go drop everything and go home for arbitrary reasons unrelated to their 'job'? (Yeah, I gotta go now, there's a transit strike going on. No, I don't take the bus, but I'm going home anyway. Bye!) In any workplace I know of, that would be grounds for dismissal.

    This is a sales relationship, and what Blizzard/Activision (and yourself, apparently) don't seem to realize is that there are plenty of other, much tastier fish in the sea, ones that won't leave you with a bad taste in your mouth if your DSL goes down or you want to play them at the cabin with friends. Yes, I played Diablo (1 and 2) and Starcraft, and yes, I enjoyed them immensely. Past enjoyment of their products will not make me knuckle under for their bullying tactics in SC2 or Diablo 3. It is a betrayal of their core userbase, and it steps waay over the line, IMHO.

    It's too bad, because in other ways they do make a great product. Buying SC2 or Diab3 would be like buying a brand new set of Calvin Klein underwear with a great big shitstain in them. Nice product, other than that one little flaw...

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    "I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
  66. Stephenson's Reamde and D3 RMAH by ZoneKagen · · Score: 0

    Two major players in geekdom have visions for our future here, which is all about mixing paying and playing. I like the idea, because it elevates gaming from pass time to work time for some, and eliminates tedious grinding for those with the cash to spend. All in all, Reamde was kind of disappointing as a novel, but the ideas are interesting. I think Blizzard has been thinking along the same lines and I would not be surprised if D3 real money AH is a test bed for the MMORPG in development.

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    - Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?