Forums | MacLife

Whee, more time-sucking-devouring-ness.

I'll bold a bit of this for obvious reasons.

With the bulk of the work on StarCraft II likely largely done, today Blizzard announced their next big project: Diablo III! Blizzard has setup a new Diablo III website complete with over 60 screenshots and concept art, a cinematic teaser trailer, and a gameplay video. Finally, Blizzard has also created a FAQ page, which states that a release date for the game hasn't been determined. Here is the official PR:
*************************************

PARIS, France - June 28, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today revealed Diablo® III, the newest entry in its critically acclaimed action role-playing-game franchise. The announcement was made during the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment® Worldwide Invitational at the Porte de Versailles Convention Centre in Paris, France. A cinematic trailer and an extended gameplay demonstration with commentary from the development team introduced the game to the thousands of players in attendance.

"We've wanted to expand on the epic story and gameplay elements of the Diablo universe for some time now," stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We know that players have also been long awaiting a return to the series, so we're very excited to be sharing this announcement with Blizzard gamers here in Paris and around the world today."

Diablo III will pick up the story twenty years after the events of Diablo II. Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal have been defeated, but the Worldstone, which once shielded the inhabitants of the world of Sanctuary from the forces of both the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, has been destroyed, and evil once again stirs in Tristram. Playing as a hero from one of five distinct character classes, players will acquire powerful items, spells, and abilities as they explore new and familiar areas of Sanctuary and battle hordes of demons to safeguard the world from the horrors that have arisen. The first two characters classes -- the barbarian and the witch doctor -- were shown as part of the announcement at the event today in Paris.

Diablo III will feature a custom 3D-graphics engine to render lush indoor and outdoor areas of Sanctuary with a high level of detail and vivid special effects. The game's physics-enhanced environments will be interactive and destructible, offering traps and obstacles that create added danger for players and monsters alike. These elements, along with a new quest system and random scripted events, will be integrated into the game's random-level generator, giving Diablo III the ultimate combination of dynamic gameplay and replayability. Cooperative and competitive play will be available online through an upgraded version of Blizzard Entertainment's renowned online gaming service, Battle.net®.

Blizzard Entertainment is developing Diablo III for simultaneous release on the Windows® and Macintosh® PC platforms. Further information about the game, including details on the other character classes, major new features for the single-player and multiplayer components, system requirements, pricing, and availability, will be announced as development progresses. To learn more about Diablo III, please visit the official website at www.diablo3.com. With multiple games in development, Blizzard Entertainment has numerous positions currently available. Visit http://www.blizzard.com/jobs for more information and to learn how to apply.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=20617

Blizz wouldn't release two RTS titles that close together; they'd cannibalize each other's sales. A fair amount of rumor has SC2 largely done and going thru fine-tuning. Maybe Xmas, tho don't quote me on that.

'Nother good summary here: Blizzard Entertainment Announces Diablo III in the Works

akb825 wrote:

Except Diablo III isn't an RTS, it's an RPG.

Yeah. I'm a bit fuzzy after poor sleep. Still, SC2, with its personalities, looks too similar to D3. Both look like clickfests. They'd compete for sales... and D3 isn't an MMORPG like WoW, it'll play over BattleNet.

Even FPSs have online 4-way+ co-op these days. Lines blurring... that's a good thing.

MacZiMiZer wrote:

From watching the video, it's everything I wanted out of WoW, though was it just me? or were most things really easy to kill?  Granted my memory on Diablo II is a bit hazy, and this having been a demonstration they would want to show more off rather than drudge through.  Looking freakin awesome though, I'm guessing this and Starcraft 2 are two years from now, just in time for Graduate school graduation, woot!

I remember the "Grunt" creatures being pretty easy to kill.

What I don't remember is:

PEOPLE HAVING THEIR HEADS BITTEN OFF BY GIANT DEMONS.

I thought it still had the feel of the Diablo environment, you must admit Diablo II was different than the first though, and so this one will take us to new places too.

But will it still be only five classes?  Or will they perhaps expand it?  Being that it's diablo there's only so much replayability from randomized dungeons (though I suppose in WoW people have plenty of fun running through the same map over and over).  So it would seem to get longevity out of Diablo III additional class choices would help, perhaps five old/revamped classes and five all new?

Though did the barbarian remind anyone else of Kratos at all?  (admittedly I only played Necro and Druid in D2, so perhaps I wasn't familiar enough with the Barbarian to notice similarities to his old counterpart)

MacZiMiZer wrote:

Though did the barbarian remind anyone else of Kratos at all?  (admittedly I only played Necro and Druid in D2, so perhaps I wasn't familiar enough with the Barbarian to notice similarities to his old counterpart)

Kratos pretty much bites the whole of D2 Barb's style.

Blizzard's FAQ says only five classes at launch.  Which means I would say the necromancer is out, he would conflict a bit too much with the Witch Doctor

I like User Friendly's take on the announcement. The link is to the first of (so far) 2 strips on this subject.

Hey, free is free.

MacZiMiZer wrote:

I have yet to take advantage of the free copies of Vista my school gives to CpE and CS majors, is DirectX 10 really that good?

Not only is it early for D3, already there's news and speculation.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a day makes.

Twenty four little hours in which we learned that, contrary to what we previously thought, Blizzard isn't out to rain on Nvidia's graphical parade. Far from it, in fact.

Yesterday, we suggested that Diablo 3, Blizzard's upcoming blockbuster, would not only run DX10.1 - favouring ATI hardware over the green team - but that it would also use Havok physics, owned by Intel, rather than the Physx owned by Nvidia.

Now it's safe to say that the green team is in a small tizzy at the moment, thanks to the fact that ATI has a competitive part for the first time in what seems like an epoch. But, we can tell you that Diablo 3 isn't one of the things they're worried about.

(On a separate note, we don't see them too worried about the 4850 either. Current expectation in the channel is that Nvidia will do "whatever it takes" to stay in the $200 game).

There's been no announcement on the physics engine yet - false alarm. And as for the graphics, it still seems a dead cert that the game will support XP, Vista and OSX.

But here's some interesting speculation. The game is barely up and running, with a full release certainly not on the cards until 2010. And guess what is due to arrive in 2010? That's right - Windows 7 and DirectX 11.

Can you imagine, folks, Diablo goodness - in a truly next-generation engine?

Now this is little more than barely informed speculation - Blizzard isn't talking, Nvidia isn't talking and Microsoft certainly isn't talking. In fact, there's no indication beyond some backroom chatter the matter has even been discussed.

But we do hear that Nvidia has gotten its man inside Blizzard already, working to optimise the 3D code being generated. If that's the case, you can figure that the game will rock on the green team's TWIMTBP label working rather nicely indeed.

Meanwhile, ATI's Havok-on-GPU deal is not looking like all it could be. With no code from the Red Team as of yet, it looks increasingly unlikely that Intel will allow them to pull out better performance from their GPU than Chipzilla can get out of the CPU.

So stay tuned - the battle for supremacy in what is sure to be the year's top game has only just begun. µ

It's also specualation that DX11 will arrive with 7. My bold.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ … -done-deal