Yes, I am. I absolutely cannot stand the game engine of WarCraft 3. It's cartoony, it looks like the game was created for a child instead of making it realistic. A game being cartoonish ruins the entire game for me. It is hideous, which is why I think their company is bullshit since then. 'tis why they're just becoming another Electronic Arts, they don't give 2 shits about their old games anymore. Diablo 1 has been that best example for years (even in the early stages when Diablo 2 was finished). I'm pretty sure they'll never fix their "color issues" with Windows 7, claiming it wasn't made for Windows 7, and that's their basic excuse of refusing to fix it. (talking about SC there.)

And yes, the original creators of SC, StarCraft and Diablo1&2 left the company pretty soon after LoD was finished. They made their own company: Flagship Studios, but they went out of business, and some Korean company bought them out, I'm told. Though I have to say that Hellgate was under rated by a lot of people, I enjoyed it.

 

So, I've dropped off on attention to the game lately, but they just recently released a skill calculator on their site, including all skills, passives, as well as ruenstone effects for every skill.

It looks pretty diverse, and I've only really done a somewhat looser concept of:
-Select complementary abilities
-Select complementary passives
-then select complementary runestones
to simulate a somewhat more natural skill choice progression based upon what seems fun, but is still effective, without necessarily going for 'super-optimization'.

Anyway, here is the official Skill Calculator from the Diablo 3 site:
Diablo 3 Skill Calculator


p.s. I'm still looking at the game in a sense of 'is it fun to play?' rather than, things like the RMT Auction House, which doesn't influence me overly much, since I never bothered with trading beyond my close circle of friends(more like mutual gifting). In that regard, it does still appear to have entertaining core gameplay... but I won't get into that argument. I just wanted to share this, since I randomly visited their website this evening.

p.p.s. For those interested in the game, but not up-to-date on recent news, they are in the Friends-and-Family Beta right now, and are scheduled to start the public Closed Beta by the end of this month. While I'm not necessarily hoping for it, it is actually possibly for a Holiday Season release.

 

Are they still saying there's going to be only multi-player playing ability?

 

You can always play alone. Just no off-line gaming.

 

Why was Xipho talking about there being no single-player available then? Or was that only in the Beta?

Edit: Even if there was single-playerability in the game, I'm still not buying it. Their DRM is crap.

 

From what I understand, you have to make a private game in order to have single player.

 

Because Single player isn't available.

Single player = being able to play by yourself, offline, at any point. In other words, you will have to be connected to battle.net in order to play.

I like the skill calculator design on the surface. But it looks too similar to World of Warcraft when you get into the meat of the class design. Especially the Barbarian class, which, depending on the skill set/runes/etc you choose, you can either be a tank barb, single target barb, or AE barb. Runs very similar to Warriors in World of Warcraft in that respect.

I'm going to end up buying and playing this game quite a bit. But I'm not sure of the game balance (PvP especially) or the feel of the game yet.

Here's hoping I get a friends and family beta and can find out.

 

Not buying it then.

 

Okay, so they're basically copying some spells from warcraft and adopting here, though they seem to trade spells between Warcraft and Diablo pretty easily.

They're not allowing single-player, which I never played anyway.

They're replacing your merc with person that adds flavor to the plot and is customizable in their spells. You have three people you can choose from to aid your style of fighting, instead of four from the D2 and XP.

You can only have six spells active at once it seems, and only three from passive. Not sure how I feel about the passive stuff, never did like the Amazon in D2 for that. The six spells I can easily live with, considering I never used more than four or five while playing D2. Save for when I had a Druid or Assassin.

Pluses and minuses, but I'm still going to buy the hell out of it and play the hell out of it. One thing I loved about D2 was you could customize your character, to a certain extent. Here it looks like you can go even farther. Doesn't mean the character will be viable, but half the fun for me was figuring out a unique build. Bow and Arrow Enchantress FTW.

Thankfully, I've played some WoW, so the descriptions aren't too hard to figure out. Some do have that clunky wording found in the WofLK talent trees.

 

Hokay, so I just got an email about beta testing, but I'm not sure if it's trustworthy or not. It says it's from noreply@blizzard.com, but then in the body of the email it says to reply with information:

Greetings from Blizzard Entertainment!
We’re gearing up for the forthcoming launch of Diablo III and would like to extend you an invitation to participate in the beta test. If you are interested in participating, you need to have a Battle.net account, which you can create on our Battle.net website.
We will flag you for access to the Diablo III beta test when we begin admitting press. You do not need to go through the opt-in process.
To secure your place among the first of Sanctuary’s heroes,Please use the following template below to verify your account and information via email.
* Name:
* Battle.account name:
* Password:
* Country:
* E-mail Address:
Thanks and see you all in the Burning Hells!




Sooo, I noticed a few errors and such. What do we think? It seems like a really good way to just get someone's account info. :/

 

Definitely fake.

 

The bolded is all you need to know its fake, if it was actually from Blizzard they wouldn't need your password. Blizzard themselves say everywhere all over their website in big bold letters "We Will Never Ask You For Your Password."

 

He's 100% right. I've played on Bnet a long time, and they never asked me for a password.

 

Asking for your password is to your game accounts as nigerian princes are to your bank accounts.

Would that everyone realised this, the gaming world would be a better place.

 

That was my favorite part of D2 as well. As as it stands, this is still the most impressive thing I ever saw done with unique builds. Pure genius really.

Check the video on the page. He literally just stands there and takes no damage.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=550206

 

There will never be anything to fill out if it comes to beta testing any Blizzard product.

The only way beta invites are given out, is you have to opt in for beta testing. Then, if you are chosen you will get an email stating that you are in the beta test. From there, you simply go to battle.net, and the game will be attached to your account.

You will never have to fill out any forms, give out any information that Blizzard technically always has.

 

Just a quick update for you guys.

Remember all those protections Blizzard put on the game?
Guess what, they've managed to crack it in two days flat. :facepalm

It seems that all they had to do was to simply simulate the Blizzard servers, by making the game recognize their PC as a server, and therefore gain access to single player and possible multiplayer. It's sad how they spent so much time making this game "Pirate-proof", only to fail this hard.

 

...what?

As far as I am aware, the only thing that Blizz has done is require an active connection to battle.net. For the purposes of achievements and keeping track of account details in the cloud etc. It's not like blizz puts crippling limitations on their games in order to try and make pirating them harder.

Where is this "massive amount of time trying make their game 'pirate-proof' that you are talking about?

 

Why do you think they made it strictly online? Keeping account details in the cloud is only one reason.

 

Part of me is tempted to buy Diablo 3 - another, larger part is not.

I do not like the art direction, nor the game design direction - it feels too similar to World of Warshit in too many ways.

Back in early history, Diablo was to Warcraft what apples are to carrots, but now it's simply a carrot that looks and tastes like an apple.

Ever since World of Warcraft took off, they have steadily been going downhill; it's not so much their technical skills or any decisions regarding 'cuts' in games, but more to do with their overwhelming sense of arrogance and self-importance.

I won't list the arguments here, as they've been done to death on the internet already, but a prime example would be Battle.net 2.0, and the restrictions placed on Starcraft II's custom map authoring community.

A community that was essentially still-born, with most amateur level designers either sticking to Warcraft III's more 'primitive' but more versatile game engine/legal areas, or ditching Blizzard in its entirety, and going for other game engines.

I was greatly let down by Starcraft 2, and I get the feeling I'm going to be let down by Diablo 3.