Diablo 3

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Considering its still closed beta and theres been no word of it having gone gold, I'd say they're going to miss that Jan 17th launch date.

[Ddrak]

If they are going to console, they could easily hold it up until the port is done.

Dd

[Nadia]

game is expected in 2nd quarter

Diablo 3 Delayed: Release Date Slips To Second Quarter Of 2012
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1240083/di ... _2012.html

[Nadia]

d3 - no pvp at launch
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4574895 ... e-3_9_2012

Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve made the difficult decision to hold back the PvP Arena system and release it in a patch following the game’s launch.

After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete.

[Nadia]

not sure how accurate it is but amazon has D3 collectors edition listed
http://www.amazon.com/Diablo-III-Collec ... B0050SZC5U

image link to contents
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/9 ... A1500_.jpg

[Nadia]

release date announced, presales open
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4612389 ... _2012#blog

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/pr ... id=4606414

Diablo III will be available for Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 and Macintosh® at a suggested price of $59.99 USD for both the retail DVD-ROM version and the digital version sold directly from Blizzard.

A special alabaster-white Collector’s Edition, sold exclusively in retail stores at a suggested retail price of $99.99 USD, will include the full game on DVD-ROM, a behind-the-scenes Blu-ray/DVD two-disc set, the Diablo III soundtrack CD, a 208-page Art of Diablo III book, and a 4 GB USB soulstone (including full versions of Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction®) and corresponding Diablo skull base, as well as exclusive in-game content for Diablo III, World of Warcraft®, and StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty®. Diablo III has received a Mature rating from the ESRB.

System requirements
http://us.battle.net/support/en/article ... quirements

[Nadia]

probably unrelated but TWO days ago, GW2 announced Presales will begin April 10th https://buy.guildwars2.com/

today D3 announced allowing presales 3 weeks before April 10th

seems too coincidental

[Taxious]

seems too coincidental

Trollololol

[Nadia]

info about AH
http://lorehound.com/news/diablo-3s-auc ... f-profits/
Below are the changes that will soon be implemented in the beta:

Listing fee is being removed.
Blizzard Transaction fee is being increased to 1.25 Beta Bucks.
Minimum listing price is being raised to 1.50 Beta Bucks.
You will be limited to 10 active auctions per auction house.

[Kulaf]

Well the servers are clogged. Can't even get logged in. Strike 1 for Blizzard and D3.

[Ddrak]

/shock!

[Alaten]

Hiya Nadia and Dd
Looks like the servers have been down for over an hour. Interesting...

Miss you guys!
Alaten

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Servers have been up and down, but if you're on you've been consistent.

They just took all the NA servers down for emergency maintenance, so we'll see how they are when they come back online.

[Ddrak]

Emergency because giving a shield to the Crusader dude before he became a "proper" follower locked out your battle.net account.

Dd

[Nadia]

Blizzard Breached: 'Diablo III' Player Accounts Hacked, Items and Gold Stolen
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... ld-stolen/

The troubles continue for Diablo III, as reports are coming in that hackers have managed to compromise the accounts of many players. One Eurogamer writer had his account stolen and taken control of over the weekend.

That hack appears to be just one of many that have started being reported by Diablo III fans around the world. Hacking victims are reporting gold and items being looted as well as accounts simply being taken over. It has been alleged that the Blizzard Authenticator is simply ineffective at preventing the takeovers.

Reports are suggesting that hackers are using a security flaw in the Battle.net sessions identifier system. Hackers are able to 'jump into' accounts without alerting Blizzard authentication processes at all. This theory remains speculation, but is gaining ground by users on the Blizzard forums.

Blizzard has not yet confirmed any account hackings to date, and will not return any items lost to players who have had their accounts taken over. They are simply 'rolling back' accounts to a point before the event takes place.

Diablo 3 Accounts Getting Hacked, Steel Yourselves
http://geek.pikimal.com/2012/05/21/diab ... ourselves/

[Nadia]

Sales
http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/23/diablo- ... -24-hours/

Game Design Update
by Blizzard Entertainment May 28, 2012 7:00 AM PDT
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6018173 ... _2012#blog

goto link for full article

interesting stats we've collected since Diablo III's release:

On average players have created 3 characters each
80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30
1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty
54% of Hardcore players chose a female character
The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal
The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity)
The most used runes for each class at level 60 are Barbarian: Best Served Cold, Demon Hunter: Lingering Fog, Wizard: Mirror Skin, Monk: Peaceful Repose, Witch Doctor: Numbing Dart

Inferno is intended to be extremely difficult, but with some specific skills, a few classes were simply able to progress far more easily than intended. This made the classes, which were about where they were supposed to be, seem very underpowered. It also created the perception that the classes doing well were intended to rely on specific runes in all their builds, and the other classes were just broken.

This is the opposite of what’s true. If any single skill or rune feels absolutely required to progress, it means that skill is working against our goal of encouraging build diversity -- and those “required” skills need to be corrected.

we’re keeping a close eye on Inferno. The intent of incoming damage is that it should be a very consistent drain on your health, and mitigating that drain is a major part of what makes Inferno mode difficult. Right now, there’s a lot more damage “spikiness” occurring than feels right, and that’s one major area we’re looking to adjust in patch 1.0.3. While we don’t have any specifics yet, our design goals are to support and promote build diversity; continue to ensure that a mix of champion packs, rare packs, and boss fights are the most efficient way to acquire the best items in the game; and ensure that all classes are viable in Inferno.

We've also seen some people saying our intention with Inferno is just one-shot you to make it difficult. While damage is a bit spikier than we'd like, we're actually seeing a pretty significant number of people attempting Inferno without sufficient gear. There's a good chance that returning to the previous Act to farm upgrades will do the most to help you survive. That said, we’d like to shift some of the focus away from survival and more toward using a variety of offensive tactics to succeed

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I'll buy Diablo 3 maybe in a year or so, after all the bugs, nerfs, hacks, cracks and other assorted dramas play out.
Oh, and after they take out that obnoxious single player DRM. Besides just plain not liking that sort of thing, I have my practical reasons; lots of time spent off the grid.

IIRC, Diablo 2 had the single player DRM where you had to insert the CD to get it to play. I did that for a while before finding a crack. I think the CD got damaged or something. At least we could play on the LAN or when the Internet went down.

Everyone I know who bought it was pissed about all the problems the first few days.

Also, I remember a couple people scoffed when I suggested that you'd see an anti-DRM D3 emulator fairly quickly. It turns out that one existed even before my post, going all the way back to early beta. And a couple more new ones have cropped up recently. I have no idea of the scale of those projects, but that wasn't my original point. The point was that an emulator would crop up quickly, and that Blizzard would be alienating a large part of their player base with that type of restrictive DRM, which only really penalizes the actual paying customers.

I would rather buy the game though, so we will see how all this stuff plays out.

[Ddrak]

The emulators (mooege) are much like very early MMO emulators. All the maps and mobs are server-side so the emus still have a lot of work to do anything remotely interesting.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

The emulators (mooege) are much like very early MMO emulators. All the maps and mobs are server-side so the emus still have a lot of work to do anything remotely interesting.

Has that been established? Again, I am mostly talking about single player mode. I haven't really looked at mooge other than noticing other people talking about it, and reading a few forum posts.

[Ddrak]

The emulators (mooege) are much like very early MMO emulators. All the maps and mobs are server-side so the emus still have a lot of work to do anything remotely interesting.

Has that been established? Again, I am mostly talking about single player mode. I haven't really looked at mooge other than noticing other people talking about it, and reading a few forum posts.

That was the impression I got reading around the mooege wiki, but it's kinda hard to tell. Might be some combination of client/server cooperating on mobs. True to developer form, they aren't documenting anything about where they're at - too busy coding.



Dd