Slashdot Mirror
Diablo 3 To Be Released On May 15th
Blizzard announced today that Diablo 3 has finally gotten a release date: May 15th. "After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. This comes after significant changes to the skill and rune systems in the beta, and news that the PvP system would be delayed so that they could focus on finishing the campaign. The game will be available for Windows and Macs, either via a DVD or as a direct download through Battle.net. For those interested, a skill calculator is available to get a feel for what different abilities do, and many of the skills have videos showing how they work.
yes
As someone who has played the beta:
a) PvP not ready at launch: correct
b) It's easier to think of the skill/rune system as a single skill system where you have 210 skill choices for 5 active skill slots. The UI for selecting the skills/runes is annoying, however.
On the plus side, most of the skills/runes have the required "cool" factor.
They had to redo the skill system because back when I played the beta it was fucking horrible. "Here's a ton of skills. Pick a couple. Spam them. You won't be allowed to use the rest unless you go back to town and we allow you to pick new ones."
The whole game was incredibly disappointing.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It's a lot better now, I got into the beta in the latest rollout and since then it's changed a couple times - mostly minor tweaks. Now you level up (wherever) and assign skills to slots as they become available. You can swap skills whenever you want with possibly a short cooldown period after swapping. I didn't notice the cooldown last time I played so that might have changed in the last couple weeks.
I'm in the beta, there's been a lot of tweaking of the skill system. In the current iteration its pretty straightforward, with the skills broken down into a handful for each spell slot. Runes aren't complicated, each spell has a few runes that unlock as you level and you can choose your spell power-up effect. What I'm seeing in the beta looks promising for the final game.
You WILL have to be online to play single-player, which is annoying, but I'm getting the game for free because of my WoW subscription so I can't really complain except for when our connection goes down. I guess with the quick switch from single into multiplayer as well as the access to the Auction House and chat channels this makes some sense.
Torchlight 1 scratched my Diablo itch in such a perfectly and satisfactory way that I now find myself looking forward to its sequel more than Diablo 3. And I'm not the only one. I doubt the makers of Torchlight will require me to have a constant internet connection just to play a single player, offline game.
If the production is anything like the beta, it's even worse than you think. Yes, you have to be constantly connected and you sign in with your Battlenet account. This has obvious disadvantages, but it has the advantage of carrying your characters and settings around with you when you switch systems. I don't mind this so much. What really eats me is the fact that not only do you have to be connected to play, your actions in the game are communicated to and from the server. In other words, every time you press a button, there's a transaction with the server, just like in World of Warcraft. So unlike Starcraft where you could connect on any old shitty connection and then play single player just fine, in Diablo III you will lag even in single player if your connection is poor. It's been a huge problem for me during the beta. It's possible there's something that I don't understand about how to set up my game. Maybe I can avoid this somehow. But if you log in and hit "Start Game" on whatever character while your connection is poor, you'll find the game pretty much unplayable.
"The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices"
The only result of the "choices" in D2 was being penalized for making an error. Players knew in advance, through extra-game research, what builds they wanted to create. The only option you had was to screw it up and be forced to re-roll, or not. This is not meaningful, and not fun.
"The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt"
Your info is outdated. Runes are no longer dropped items, but unlock as you level.
"So basically you are left with the late game of DIablo 2 from day 1: Constant item hunt/grind."
Diablo games are by design a giant slot machine. Many people find this entertaining. Perhaps this genre is not for you.
Much the same can be said of a post starting with ProTIP:
Adding "Thanks for playing" falls into the same category.