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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."
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.
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
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.
HOw will they do that?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's not forget that Diablo had a Playstation version. The sky is not falling.
Lack of LAN IS a gameplay flaw. LANs create an immersion environment that cant be replicated any other way.
Good-bye
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!
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?"
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
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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 ??
>
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.
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=-
Make it so! There's no reason why not. Unless... They want to cripple players in the name of PVP fairness. /meh
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.
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
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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.
That's just putting lipstick on the shark they're jumping.
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
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
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.
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!
Great. Now we'll have to move it to sub-basement 3 next to the solid gold server farm...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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