Yahoo Games on Diablo III Colour YahooGames posted a short video report on the D3 "too much color" controversy and the associated online petitions. Yahoo Games
Yeah, there were 2 Jalal's given away in the piles last campaign, I found one and I think maya found the other.
You did give me one on USWest, which I'm still using for the druid there. (Who is practically invulnerable thanks to that, Leviathan, Gerke's, a defiance merc, and the usual far-too-much HP.) On East, I'm mostly using what I found personally though.
I can't wait for diablo 3 The teaser movie and gameplay movie makes me think That the story is goin to be so sik.
Bashiok on Corpses in Diablo III The main reason for the corpses not being able to stay permanently is the potential number of them on screen at one time, and specifically that each corpse is affected by physics, allowing them to be blasted and thrown all over the place by the force of player abilities. It's one of the trade offs when integrating new technology, you can get really awesome effects, but they do have a cost. In a 2D world, a sprite of a dead creature doesn't really cost any more (system requirement-wise) than a sprite of something that's alive. Probably less. In a 3D world where a creature dies and then needs to have physics calculations thrown onto it so it can bounce and fall and fly around, they cost substantially more. We remember fondly those situations where you've just completely obliterated a camp of Fallen, and as you're picking up items - marvel in your destruction. That's a feeling and part of the gameplay where if we can realistically keep some of it without sacrificing features or having insane system requirements we'd definitely like to, but no promises. What about corpse related skills? We haven't announced any abilities outside of those listed on the website, so by discussing what is or isn't in the game I would be essentially making an announcement, which I'm not prepared to do. ------------------------------- Bashiok on 'Is Diablo III an MMO?' MMO's are generally categorized as being able to support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous players in a persistent world. While Battle.net can certainly support that many players at one time, the lack of a persistent world and restrictions on how many players can be within each "world" (game) would keep Diablo III from being categorized as an MMO
I want to see the look on an act boss' face when a druid rolls in there trailing a hurricane that has in it all of the torn up corpses of his minions, their weapons, and the components from all the traps in your wake ;D
hahaha Sadly we have no guarantee there will be a druid in Diablo 3. I do hope there is in at least some form though - they were kind of cool. A well-implemented werewolf could be as deliciously gruesome as the chainsaw from Gears of War.
Well thats true, but I always saw the werewolf as being very much underpowered in the PvM scenario because of the sheer number of units against you. Rabies is a def. solution but I don't really understand it's effect seeing as rabies IRL does not work anything like that and there's no real context behind it in the IG world. Swarm is much better graphically and contextually anyway. Bear on the other hand I would like to see opened up with an ability to wade through crowds of small monsters smashing them as he goes like whirlwing except it knocks back instead of simply using an overtake mechanic that makes the character not take up ground space like WW. I'd also like to see a flying/hovering ability in D2, but that's almost assured not to happen.
Not much DIII related news today, but some nice articles from 2002 were ressurected in regards to D2X The Ten Worst D2X Monster Types There are a lot of monsters in the five acts of Diablo II: Lord of Darkness. Or possibly Lord of Death. Or maybe Destruction. I can never remember. Anyway, there are a lot of monsters, but some are worse than others. Here are the ten worst types of monsters. These are monster types, not individuals. Look for a future list to cover SuperUniques and Act Bosses. Next week I'll list the Top Ten Monster Types. #10: Spike Fiends Dozens of these porcupine-like creatures can be found waddling around outside the Rogue Encampment, filling the same purpose for a new D2 character as spoonfuls of strained creamed spinach do for a baby; you don't want to eat them, and they don't taste very good, but you need them to grow up big and strong. These creatures are valuable teachers despite their annoying nature, for they quickly instruct the new player that he or she need pay no heed to earthly-physics. You can beat spiky monsters to death with your bare hands while taking no damage (really, hitting one should hurt more than their puny ranged quill toss does), and a monster the size of a ferret in a rain coat can drop a six foot polearm when it dies. In the early game versions (pre-release) there were much fiercer versions of these monsters in later acts, including a cool Miami Vice-colored one in early Act Three that was called a Jungle Urchin. Get it? "Urchin", like the spiky things in tide pools that you can poke and hope they aren't the poisonous kind that will kill you in under thirty seconds? Clever name. Jungle Urchins didn't make the final game though; they had to be removed to open up another slot for Fetish, I suppose. #9: Vampires This applies mostly to the Act One types, who can't do anything of use. They have Fireballs, and they move way faster than you'd like them to, especially when they have a sliver of health left and you're trying to get that last hit and whiffing like Michael Jordan at a Double-A curveball. But all they have are Fireballs. Fireballs that do about 3 points of damage. Did they leave their Firewalls and Meteors in their other pants or what? They are annoying, but not so annoying that you feel any real need to kill them, rather than just running past them as you try to find the damn stairs down. Once you get to Act 2 they have Firewalls in addition to Fireballs, but the Firewalls are barely hot enough to roast a marshmallow over. Plus they still don't have Meteors. They did pre-game, but Blizzard removed that since it would have possibly added some actual challenge to Act 2, and we couldn't have that. The only challenge allowed in Act Two is of the potentially instant death type, which comes in the form of the Summoner's frequently-invisible Firewall or Duriel's charge attack. Whee. #8: Fetish Depending on your character, these guys are experience pots, or a more annoying than fleas to a three-legged hound. Your first sighting of them is probably in the Act One Catacombs, where they go by the name of Rat Men. We're going to overlook those though, for they are too dark to see clearly in the perpetually gloomy Catacombs, and they move much more slowly, and lack shaman. Anyway, the first sighting of Fetish is sort of cool. These hordes of angry midgets with more teeth than a piano and butcher knives bigger than they are, charging at you with squeals of glee in early Act Three. And it's sort of fun when you get huge mobs in the Flayer Jungle. but again, this depends on your character. A Bowazon with decent Multishot eats them up like popcorn. Any character with a single hit and no ranged attack, such as a pre-WW Barb or pre-Fury Druid wants to run far away, but there is no escape! They are faster than you, and swarm! Plus the one you target to hit will invariably run away, causing you to chase it through approximately fifty-seven of its closest friends. They don't do enough damage to be much of a threat, other than being so frustrating that you throw your monitor through the wall. And I haven't even mentioned the perpetually tormenting pinpricks of the blow dart variety. #7: Death Maulers A great name for a lame monster. "Death Maulers" sounds like a pair of Austrian pro wrestlers (who are actually two steroid-inflated guys from Iowa with bad fake accents). They should have long white hair and wear costumes with vague Nazi overtones, while always losing the Intercontinental Title bout at the last minute when their cheating backfires on them. As for the D2X monster, they are pretty lame. They look nifty, but they move at the speed of slow, and their big attack is some sort of hand tongue thing that goes underground and comes up to poke at your feet, sometimes dealing as much as 8 or even 10 points of damage. Plus they can shoot their hand tongue things through open space or magically over the pungi-spike pits all around the Bloody Run zone. Why don't they just walk up and shoot that thing right through you? Sorceress belly is softer than ground, after all. Wasted opportunity. #6: Fallen These guys are initially pretty cute. They make funny noises and talk to themselves (if you can refrain from killing them for more than a three seconds) and they die with an exaggerated spinning flop, like a stuntman pretending Steven Segal just smacked him with a flabby forearm. The problem is that there are approximately 17 varieties of them in Act One, all through the magic of palette-shifting, and every single kind does the exact same thing. Over and over again. By the time you get to the Catacombs you think you are clear but no, there are black Fallen, all the better to blend into the floor and walls so you can't even see the goddamned things. And then more Fallen, all over Andarial's Throne Room. What's the point in being the Maiden of Anguish if you've got to sit in your throne room all day with fricking Fallen "Rrrrakishu"'ing at each other 24/7? She's probably happy to get banished back to hell, by the time you arrive. #5: Lightning Spire/Fire Tower These animate inanimate objects are here to annoy. Their damage isn't enough to bother with, they are worth miniscule experience points, and they drop nothing. So why exactly are they here again? Other than to distract your minions in the Arcane Sanctuary, I mean. Once in a very long while you'll get a fire turret inside one of the Act 2 tombs, and that's sort of cool, for the five seconds it takes you to run past it. Note that this entry does not include the Gargoyle Statue Fireball things in Act One, since they look cool, and anything is an improvement over the Vampires, zombies, and black Fallen in the Catacombs. #4: Pain Worm These guys appear first thing in Act Three, summoned by the Dark Wanderer, and again in Act Four where they are shat forth by spawners. Those versions are cool, surprisingly-nasty and hard-hitting, plus they look like really skinny versions of the demons the Dark Wanderer calls forth in the cinematic. The Pain Worms are not cool. They are glowing versions that appear in Act Five, grown as parasites on the bodies of other monsters stung by Putrid Defilers. The whole concept is pretty clever, but they and the Defilers are so weak it's just annoying as they flit about during the battles in Act Five. And come on, "pain worms"? What the hell kind of name is that? It sounds like something you have to get your dog a shot for when he's been doing too much tootsie crunching. #3: Swarm These are undoubtedly the stupidest monsters in the game. Discrete swarms of gnats that buzz around and drain your stamina, along with almost zero hit points. More over, how the hell do you kill a swarm of bugs with a sword, or better yet, an arrow? Go outside on a summer night and try that one. Oh, I know, they're magic bugs, from a distant, fairytale land of giants and jackalopes and transsexual princes(ses). Any monster that could be more effectively disposed of with a can of Raid than a Windforce is an embarrassment to the game; end of debate. #2: Sand Leapers This has to be the most annoying monster type ever. Hopping little glorified crickets, they take one hit and bounce back, invulnerable for a moment. You either have to chase them around like a Vaseline-coated beach ball, or try to pin them against a wall and beat them to death quickly. Plus they're fast enough to pursue and annoy you with their squealing and tiny damage attacks until you are forced to kill them. Or just hit them with a Frost Nova and run for it. We won't mention the ones you often find in the first area of Act Four, since they are part of the "One ridiculously weak yet still annoying monster per area" pattern you see in so much of the game. #1: Imps No, I couldn't go the whole way without mentioning Imps. There is not a person alive who has played Act Five and not grown to hate these things. They pop all about, shoot squiggly sperm-missile things, deal almost no damage, and generally defy capture. Their one moment of glory comes when they spring to a turret or the back of a Siege beast (usually a boss imp you were chasing who had about two hps left) and spew forth a glorious Inferno, but their joy is generally cut short by the player running right past them as quickly as possible, wondering why he's in the Frigid Highlands or Frozen Tundra in the first place. You'll also find them on the Worldstone Three level, but there they are sort of useful since they teleport out of your way as you dash through, dodging Blood Lords on the way down to Baal. Diii.net
The Ten Best Monster Types Thanks to reader feedback from my last column, I'm now sure that D2X is actually called Diablo II Expansion: Lord of Darkness. Or possibly Destruction, no one was quite sure about the "D". I was informed that the game was sold as "Lord of Distruction" in New Zealand. But that's not important right now. What is important is this column, which is a companion to the last one. Last time I listed the ten worst monsters in Diablo II: Lord of Dark...striction. This time I'm going to list the ten best, determined just as objectively and rationally as the worst ten were. Again, these are types of monsters, not individuals. A future list will rank the SuperUniques and Act Bosses. Since most of the email confusion about the last column was due to my failing to define "worst", I'll get that out of the way right now. These are the "best" monsters, which means: Ones with cool features, cool looks, dirty tricks, and that I could think of something funny to say about. They aren't the easiest to kill, or the ones that drop the best items; they are the ones I like best, for whatever reason. Lethality is not a bad feature on a monster. Killing your smelly human *** is their whole purpose in life, after all. Should the very few who manage to occasionally do so be penalized for it? (Dis)Honorable Mention #1: Succubi They aren't actually any good in D2X, but they get an honorable mention since they were so cool in Diablo I, missing from D2C, and then returned in D2X... only to suck. They were ranged attackers of doom in D1, firing Bloodstars from miles off screen, and they had the most annoying habit of running (well, walking) away just as you got close enough to hit them. And they didn't stop, unlike the stupid ranged attackers in D2X; they'd keep going until a wall stopped them. This habit was only partially redeemed by them having the cutest butts yet sighted in the land of Sanctuary. (Yes, cuter than the D1 Rogue, or the Amazon in light leather, or even the Paladin in those tight green pants. *cough*) They were missed in D2C, and there was rejoicing when their D2X return was announced. Rejoicing that lasted right up until they were seen in the game. Talk about beat with the nerf stick. Bloodstar is negligible now, they are slow to fire them, they don't run, they have a ridiculously-weak karate kick to the head attack, and they aren't even hot anymore. The only improvement is their ability to use their wings for something more than a Victoria's Secret runway accessory. Not that they actually fly anymore than it requires to cross a frozen stream and get in range of your sword. Better they had remained dust in the catacombs beneath Tristram, than to return and suffer such an ignoble fate. Honorable Mention #2: Sand Maggot Young I'll admit that this one is probably open to debate. They were glorious enough in D2C that I want to include them, but they are much less interesting in D2X. You first see them in Act Two where they are pretty pointless, though occasionally you get a boss pack of Sand Maggots in a big game in such an egg-laying frenzy that their progeny become numerous enough to impress. However it's really not until Act Four that they come into their own. One of the great joys of D2C was the very early days when the young counted as real monsters, and were worth experience and dropped items proportionally. An MS'ing Bowazon could let them hatch, and then simply fill the screen with items in a moment of shooting. Of course that was back when bows did base +1 damage, no matter what the listed mods were, so it might be a rather long moment of shooting. Even after that, I have fond memories of later D2C days and River of Flame runs, heading for the Chaos Sanctuary where the hordes of HC Lancebarbs feared to WW, and finding entire pathways through the River of Flame Causeway that were literally paved with Sand Maggot Young. The strafe machine gun action there (this was long before the days of Piercing Guided or 10 shot Strafe caps) was glorious to behold. You could type out entire messages to other players and have a drink of Dr. Pepper in the time it took you to unload one Strafe. The Indians of their land, Strafezons use every part of the arrow. #10: Corrupted Rogues Not as fun in the game as in concept, especially in the tiggle-bitty concept art where you can see the glory of their mutated, spike-encrusted bodies clearly. They are the rogues of the Citadel, mutated into evil monsters by the power of Andariel. Odd that Andariel had all that power and slaying ability before you arrived, but once you're there she sits down in level four of the Catacombs and waits for you to come and kill her. At least continuity is preserved by her evil rogues being just like the good rogues you can hire; weak like kittens and about as difficult to kill. Pity there's no "tie them in a sack and throw them off a bridge" option, eh? No, I didn't really just say that. #9: Blunderbores These hulking punching bags first appear in Act Two, but in limited numbers. They don't have quite enough hit points, for as soon as you start pounding them they drop dead. But while they last, they are such fun to pummel. Fists, swords, maces, or arrows, pretty much any attack will tear them up in a flood of "Uuuhh!" sound effects. They even have a great jerking in pain animation as you slaughter them, and then when they inevitably drop dead, they go down with a crash and a glorious spurt of blood from their fat bellies. Plus their clubs are dead guys, wrapped in chains. You have to admire that sort of attention to detail. #8: Yeti These Bigfoot style guys first appear in Act One, where they introduce you to the exquisite pleasures of the "***** slap", delivered by their table-sized hands. They also have a big overhead two-fisted crushing attack, like a cartoon gorilla, but their main fun is the ***** slap. They have no weapons. They need no weapons. The Act Five variety have mastered the backhand slapping motion to the point that they can stun lock your merc pretty much in perpetuity. Ironic that they look like Bigfoot, yet are famous for their Bighand. A bonus point should be awarded for how much they look like comfy sofas once they are dead. Comfy sofas with tiny feet. You can tear through a huge pack of these guys and make the level look like a furniture show room. I think we all know what Anya's living room is carpeted with. #7: Tentacle Beasts These river dwellers were one of the most-anticipated monsters in the game, back in the pre-beta days. If you can believe it. We were all giddy to see them in action, picturing them leaping from the water in a mackerel-begging frenzy, like the star attraction at the Seal and Otter show. Or perhaps slithering up onto the surface and biting at our ankles, or dragging our hapless characters into the water where they'd crush us to jelly in their steely coils. Things didn't quite work out as hoped. They do have that cool dual tail feature, or possibly there is a another type of Tentacle Beast that has no head, just a tail. The fact that they don't appear to actually have any tentacles is a minor quibble. #6: Council Members Take a close look at these guys next time. They've got mutations that make Corrupted Rogues jealous. With their deformed half animal upper bodies, like look like they were grafted together from the top half of a werewolf and the bottom half of a linebacker. They have one huge horn, make great noises, and their one mutated animal arm is way longer than the human one. Pity you can hardly see the details in the few pixels allotted them. In action they shamble about hooting and snarling, and can run off and heal themselves in most annoying fashion, usually when they are Immune to Physical and you had them down to a sliver. Bremm was the terror of the entire game in D2, with his Lightning Enchantment and Conviction, so of course he changed to Cold Enchanted in D2X, making him a relatively easy kill most of the time. Not that anyone slows down long enough to do so, on their way to the item-o-matic that is Mephisto. #5: Overseers There's a lot to recommend about these guys. They lack any practical attack of their own, but they spawn with hordes of minions, and can make them actually annoying if they get that swirly thing (Attract) over your head and they all decided to target you to the exclusion of your tanking minions/merc. Plus they have whips and super bondage gear costumes, and they die with that glorious "skin first, then bones" animation. They get a bonus point for making Minions, normally one of the more boring monsters in the game, momentarily terrifying. Providing you don't have a tank to hide behind. #4: Goatmen Goatmen! Goatman! Goatmans? Anyway, they're like goats, but they're also men. With bad posture. What do they use for weapons? Big damn polearms and mauls. I mean what else would a goat use? I personally would have given them "head butt" and "eat tin can" attacks, but that's probably why I don't work for Blizzard North. They make perhaps the best noises in the entire game when they're getting the crap beaten out of them, plus you can flash back to the ever-amusing "Something for you, I am ma-a-a-a-aking." Gharbad of Diablo I fame. I live to kill goatmen with my Hork Baba, and as I stand astride their corpse, watching the river of fleas crawling away I shout, "Something from you, I am ta-a-a-a-king!" and rip out their spleen. I realize that if you didn't play Diablo I single player any you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's your problem. I don't know why we let you dirty animals in here in the first place, frankly. #3: Corpse Spitters Big anteater looking things, these guys waddle around snorfing up monster corpses and spitting bloody chunks out at you. You just can't fail to appreciate that on some level. Unless of course you're a new parent, in which case you get to see projectile vomiting in real life a bit too often to enjoy it in a game. Pity Blizzard didn't make them emaciated, or I could insert some Ally McBeal diet plan jokes. Their best trick was back when they could eat your dead merc and render them impossible to resurrect, thus vanishing any equipment you'd put on the merc. There were brief "feature or bug" arguments about this when it was first discovered, though Blizzard soon admitted it was a bug and fixed it in the next patch. But for a brief moment, the Corpse Spitters had real power to frighten. Plus they make a lot of really gross sound effects, and occasionally eat an entire tortured soul lightpost, a meal several times the size of the Corpse Spitter itself. Gulp. #2: Hell Bovines Try and put their current exp-treadmill status out of your mind, and remember back when they were mythical and mysterious and new. Your first trip into the cow level was probably full of laughter and joy, like a three year old's Christmas morning. Cows definitely have the best sound effects in the game, and you can tell the Blizzard guys had fun crowding into a sound booth to say, "Moo" over and over again, in their silliest voices. Cows are somewhat like Goatmen in their weapon selection. Both like the huge two-handed choppers, and with cows there is the added absurdity of their lack of opposable thumbs. Go stick each of your hands into a pickle jar, and try to pick up a broomstick. You might want to remove the pickles and funky green water first. Now you're a cow. Moo, damnit. #1: Oblivion Knights The first two types, found in the City of the Damned and River of Flame are painful, with their elemental attacks. But they can't Curse. The third type, found only in the Chaos Sanctuary, have that rare ability, and it gives them the title for nastiest monster in the game, in the opinion of most melee characters. Their Cursing and homing projectile attacks are totally unique among monsters. There are rumors of a type of playable character with similar attacks, but since no one I know has ever actually seen one of these fabled "necromancers" on Battle.net, we can't really take the rumors seriously. Oblivion Knights, while frequently lethal and difficult to kill, were a great help to Amazons back in D2C, since only the threat of IM kept the hordes of overpowered WW barbs from overrunning the Chaos Sanctuary as greedily as they did every other area of Act Four. Several of my fondest memories from D2C involve seeing an item-hogging Lancebaba go down in one ill-timed spin, moments after screaming that anyone in the River of Flame was going to be PK'ed, because it was "his" area. My only real regret was that it was impossible to talk once you were Hardcore dead in D2C, so I didn't get to hear the IM'ed Babas blame their death on lag. De Seis is still the hardest monster in the game for most characters, and if you've been around a while you may remember when he had Thief as a property, and could steal potions from your belt. Now that was cool. So of course it was removed next patch. Diii.net
The Ten Worst Areas in D2X Having played the game as much as we all have by now, everyone knows there are good areas to play and level up in, and bad ones you want to just skip through as quickly as possible. This is not a list of those areas. As I learned from column #3, it helps to make it clear when you are and are not joking. This is (intended as) a humor column. This list is of the "Worst" Areas, ranked from 1 to 10.5. This is not in any way meant to be a scientific ranking of the best or worst areas in the game for MFing, or EXPing, or the hardest areas, or the easiest areas, or the ones that make Baby Jesus cry, etc. Ranking criteria include fun factor, level layout, monsters found there, and whether or not I can think of any amusing comments about them. And yes, I know you can just use maphack or have a friend turbo you, rather than actually playing the game. There's no need to point out how much faster/easier it is if you cheat; I think we're all aware of that by now. #10.5: Kurast 1-5 Kurast goes on and on, in the form of the most distinct levels in the smallest amount of space that you find anywhere in the game. You could easily put all of Lower Kurast, the Kurast Bazaar, Upper Kurast, the Kurast Causeway, and Travincal in one small dead end of the Great Marsh. Yet the Kurasts boast four waypoints, often so close that you can actually see two waypoints on your mini map at the same time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's sort of silly. Why not have an upper and lower Great Marsh, or East and West Flayer Jungle, or break those areas up into two or three sections to make for easier exploring, and just combine 2 or 3 portions of Kurast into one? Kurast 1-5 aren't actually bad levels, and the architecture is pretty cool if mostly repeated, but it's silly how small and packed together they are. The fact that there are six tiny sub dungeons, and that the Ruined Temple always has the quest item (Black Book), and is alwyas found in the Kurast Bazaar, thus making the other five temples entirely irrelevant, is cause for another point deduction. #10: The Secret Cow Level This is a debatable choice, since it's actually a really fun area for most characters. The problem comes in with how over-exploited this area is. At this point you're lucky to find a single hell game that isn't a mad rush of three twinked Javazons/Sorcies, four leeching Barbs/Druids/Pallies/Asns, and one or two leeching lvl 8 turbo victims who spend their time standing in a corner and announcing proudly how many levels they "earned" last game. Since after all, the only thing that matters in D2X is getting to lvl 80 as quickly as possible, no matter how you do it. Right? The fact that the most overplayed area in the game has "Secret" in the title is worth a bonus point. I strongly considered making this one #1, but since it's fun and actually quite dangerous for some character types, I didn't let the overplayed cheesiness of it weigh that heavily. #9: The First Two Areas of Act Four The Outer Steppes and Plains of Despair are huge squares full of nothing in particular. They are basically like any two random surface areas of Act One, but without the dirt brick road to follow. You often end up running around the entire perimeter of both areas, trying to find the stairway to the next area, and either kill about 500 monsters while you're at it, or just dodge through and leave a trail behind you for miles. The Plains of Despair add the fun of having to find Izzy out there. Somewhere. So even if you get lucky and bump into the stairs pretty quickly, you still have to run through the middle until your quest button pops up, letting you know that Old Frost Nova with Wings himself is nearby. Izzy is one of the dumber monsters in the game; possessed of obscene hit points yet dealing practically no damage, he's like gristle on the Easter Ham. Gristle that you have to eat for a nice quest bonus, not that that makes it any easier to chew. #8: Act Two Tombs Much like the Caves in Act One, there is just identical tomb after identical tomb in Act Two, with one acting as a bonus area/dungeon beneath almost every surface area. Even worse than the Act One Caves, you must enter most of the Tombs in Act Two, either on a quest or just to get from point A to point B. There is almost zero monster variety from one tomb to another, and what the Underground Passageway teaches you about stamina potions, these tombs teach you about cold damage. The Act Two Tombs are at least well-lit so that you can navigate them easily, and they can be sort of fun for certain types of characters. They're not really worth much exp though, with all of those skeletons, and it's a "fun while you have to be there" sort of fun, rather than a "skip killing the Summoner just to have an excuse" sort of fun. #7: Act Five Ice Caves The Ice Caves are actually pretty cool levels on their own. The weakness comes in with there being so many of them, all identical other than the monsters found there. (Not that those vary much either.) Drop a character down randomly anywhere in the Crystalline Passage, Frozen River, Glacial Trail, Drifter Cavern, Ancient's Way, or Icy Cellar, and there's no way they'll know which is which. The three main levels are all even the same size, though at least the two dungeon areas are smaller and sort of cute, and the Frozen River has a fixed target destination. Lazy Blizzard! #6: Act One Dirt Caves Starting off with the stupid Den of Evil, and continuing through The Caves, The Hole, and The Pit, almost every surface area in Act One has a caves dungeon beneath it, all of which are identical. Blizzard really broke out the thesaurus on those names too, huh? The Den of Evil is almost tolerable due to there being a nice quest reward and the fact that it's small, but the others are just redundant and almost entirely ignored. Perhaps the most annoying area in all of Act One is the Underground Passageway, which goes on seemingly forever, has more dead ends than a walk on a pier, and yet must be traversed to get from the Field of Stones to the Dark Woods. This is where most new players first begin to really wish they'd been picking up those stamina potions. #5: Act Three Dungeons And you thought the Jail and Catacombs were dark? The Swampy Pit, the entrance to which is always found near the Flayer Jungle waypoint, probably holds the title of "Least Entered Area in the Entire Game" and for good reason. The Flayer Dungeon is identical to this area, and the Sewers aren't a lot different, though they add the fun of open moats of raw sewage. Be glad there's not yet smell-o-vision technology with computer games. These dungeons are dark, twisty, full of annoying blowdart Flayers and multi-colored wraiths, and even boast infuriating barred doorways that you can't get through, forcing you to run all around to find a way over to those last two goddamned flayer blowdart guys. These dungeons would rank higher on the worst list if not for the fact that you don't actually need to enter any of them, with a little waypoint help. Say another thank you for the Durance 2 waypoint next time you get turbo'ed to it, and give a moment of silence for all of the single player fans who don't have that option. #4: The Worldstone Keep, Level Three While it's unfair to single out an individual level, I'm doing it anyway. This is the most annoying level in the game when you're running around in a hurry. Unlike Durance Two, there's no way to find the exit more quickly than just randomly hunting over the entire layout. Plus everything is a series of dead ends, so when you run to one and don't find the exit, you have to run all the way back past all of the Imps and Blood Lords you just ditched. Fortunately by the time you're in Act Five and doing Baal runs you generally have enough stamina to keep up your speed. There's an indignity to the whole thing also, especially if you're rushing down to Baal on hell while playing Hardcore. You've got godly equipment, huge MF, and are able to run about the hardest thing in the game. Yet you can't find the damn stairs while fricking Imps fire their crappy little sperm-missiles at you. The monsters here are annoying too. Imps were ranked #1 on the Worst Monster List for good reason, and Blood Lords are cool in concept and sort of scary, but they're somehow unsatisfying to kill. They don't grunt or moan or bleed much, so it's kind of like beating up a mime. No, I didn't say that. They're like beating a punching bag that dies, eventually, but hardly ever drops anything worth picking up. As I've long remarked, WS3 is like a three minute commercial for maphack. Which I don't use, even though my Bowazon has done hundreds of Hell Baal runs, and never gotten any better at finding the damn stairs. #3: Act One Jail and Catacombs These aren't technically the same area, but I defy you to tell them apart by the architecture, monsters found therein, level layout, or item drop quality. Well, the jail has more um, jail cells. But other than that! They are dark, too large and hard to find the stairs in, and absolutely choked with boss monsters. This is actually a good thing if you are strong, aside from the fact that the bosses in Act Five are actually easier to kill, worth 50x the experience, and can potentially drop far better items. In the D2C beta these were sometimes referred to as "The Braille Levels" since they were so dark that most players had no way to find the doors other than bumping into the walls and trying to navigate by squinting at the map, which was itself almost too dark to read. Levels like this illustrate the problem with giving all of your game design employees top of the line monitors and video cards, and not including those in the game itself. #2: The Great March This enormous Act Three surface area can devour your entire play session as easily as having to mow the lawn vanishes your Saturday. Adding to the maddening fun of "The Great March" is the fact that you sometimes must go through the entire thing to reach the Flayer Jungle, and other times don't need to enter it at all, if the Spider Forest connects directly to the Flayer. While it's not such a bad level design-wise, the Great March is just so damn annoying. It also gets bonus point for boasting really annoying monsters. Wisps popping about with their lightning attack, jungle buzzards who are too stupid to fly over a tiny canal, Fetish blowdart guys always running just out of reach and being resurrected by an unseen Shaman. Ahh, I'm getting nostalgic just writing about it. Or do I mean "suicidal?" #1: The Bloody Foothills This proto cow level is a nice area, and the first one you encounter in Act Five, but just like the Cow Level, it was designed to be so pathetically easy and predictable that it came to be grossly-exploited by the 98% of players who care about nothing but reaching their next level as quickly as possible, and are quite happy to leech to do it. It's also the first sign you get that Blizzard North really had zero time to actually play test Act Five in their hurry to get the Expansion Pack released by the "first half of 2001" deadline (AKA June 30th, 11:59pm), since they forgot to include any monster variety. Playing this area in any mod is amazing, since you see what a cool level it can be if the monsters that spawn there have some variety, come in boss packs, aren't all slow melee victims, etc. Shenk and his mob are cool, the rest of it is silly, and the "fish in a barrel" nature of it, assuming you can kill the PI Maulers, is poorly-balanced. Diii.net
The Ten Best Areas in D2X After last week's list of the Worst Areas in D2X, here follows my list of the Ten Best Areas. The rankings take into account level layout, architecture, monsters found there, originality, and general player tendencies in those areas, and are frequently leavened with an unfortunate tendency towards retention of my first impression of an area. Hence all of the Beta references. My mother used to say "First impressions are lasting." but I thought she was lying, like she did about Santa and buying me from the gypsies. As with the worst areas, I'm commenting from a Bnet perspective, with some consideration of single player. How much easier various cheats (such as maphack) make a given area isn't a strong consideration in my rankings, and is less relevant in this list than the one last week anyway. #10: The Canyon of the Magi This level has always been more popular than I thought it deserved to be. It's sort of a low-rent, desert-based, non-Secret Cow Level, or at least that was the purpose it served in D2C. Early Javazons used to level up here, practicing a type of proto-herding (difficult with Sand Maggots) and enjoying the wide open area, as they attempted to get enough targets in sight to throw one Lightning Fury and bring every computer in a two-state radius to a complete 1 FPS stand still. The greatest improvement to LF in D2X was not in terms of damage or function, it was cutting the graphics enough that you could play a Javazon on less than Deep Blue. One of the other fun aspects of the Canyon of the Magi is the high likelihood of spear-throwing Kitty Legionnaires. These cats in hats ('n boots) were one of the most-anticipated monsters in D2C, based on early screenshots. Somehow in the actual game they are utterly forgettable, but the javelin-chuckers in the Canyon can momentarily rise above their usual level of mediocrity when they get a small blizzard of sticks flying. Slow Missile can make for some fun here. #9: Tristram While Blizzard's idea of a return to Tristram was very clever, the actual execution of it was pretty shoddy. The first thing all D1 players noticed when entering the D2 version of Tristram was that someone appeared to have moved the buildings around. Also there must have been some sort of tremendous flood, because the little trickling streams are now ruler-straight rivers, and each of them have washed away miles of countryside as well as Wirt's and Adria's islands. Perhaps D1 was set in the summer, and in D2 it's now spring, and the mountain snows are melting? The lack of a dungeon level is a real missed opportunity, as is the entire cathedral and cemetery just being gone. On the other hand, the whole "return to" concept is brilliant, and we're all ungrateful Philistines for not appreciating it more. There are some nice touches, with the well much the same, Wirt's corpse (if you didn't play D1, you can't begin to understand the hatred most players felt for that little bastard) and the wooden peg leg, and of course the zombie Griswold. Which is why this entry is on this list, rather than last week's. #8: The Zombie Garden This area is technically called "Nihlathak's Temple", and it's reached directly through the red portal by Anya in Act Five. You may know it better as "That place with the dead zombies that I run through on the way to Pindleskin." I've always called it "The Zombie Garden", since after all, Zombies grow there. When you make your own list, you can call it Bobo's Happy Funland, for all I care. The layout of this area is cool, and the first time you get there and see all of the zombies suddenly rise up and start shambling towards you there is a definite thrill. Of course those zombies are always pathetically easy to kill; slow and weak, and the way they keep getting back up can be very annoying if you aren't just playing for experience, but let's not get into that. Whether or not Pindleskin waiting inside the temple is good or bad is open to debate. He's not an especially interesting monster, though he does at least keep the Zombie Garden uniformity of monster theme going. The fact that he's able to drop any item in the game, is an easy kill, and can be reached from town in about 5 seconds is not exactly the brightest bit of level arrangement Blizzard North has ever come up with, unless of course they wanted us to all end up playing the same few areas over and over and over again. #7: The Cathedral This Act One area is found between the Jail and the Catacombs, and is one of the best looking set areas in the entire game. This area had a lot of effort put into it. The desecrated altar, the toppled pews, the great artwork in the form of murals on the walls in the side rooms, the stained glass and nicely-detailed columns, and more. True, it could have been better, and there really should be some sort of evil priest superunique here, rather than a SuperUnique skeleton. It's not that BoneAsh is a bad monster, it's just that he could appear anywhere. The Cathedral and the brief moment of sunlight in the Inner Cloister provide the only break between the dark slogging monotony of the endless Jail/Catacomb levels that make up the last 1/3 of Act One. #6: Baal's Throne Room This whole level isn't real impressive, and like all of Act Five there is no variety in monsters. You will get Witches, you will get Blood Lords, you will get no variety or bosses or champions. The nifty part is at the end of the level, when you get into Baal's room, and have to deal with his minions. I'll admit that my first time through this area was a disappointment. It felt like every crappy side-scrolling arcade fighter I'd ever played, with the big boss laughing and summoning up new enemies for you to fight before you eventually got to take him on personally. Remember Double Dragon or Zero Team? Plus Baal looks ridiculous, the whole "baby head on a cockroach carapace" thing was cool for the evil neighbor kid's creations in Toy Story, but once was plenty. Most people seemed to share my hope that he'd look different than that squatting bug thing when they found him in the final dungeon, and therefore spent most of the final battle wondering what Bliz North was smoking. While the "spawn progressively-harder bosses in order of act) thing isn't original, it is a nice concentrated battle, and can often be very difficult, depending on what mods Baal's Minions spawn with. The fact that his final team of minions are actually called "Baal's Minions" makes it sound like a placeholder name was forgotten into the final cut. What if in the Chaos Sanctuary the Seal Bosses were all actually called, "Seal Bosses"? It would be dumb, therefore so is this. It's also sort of silly that Baal doesn't fight himself, and calls them out one at a time, making sure every last one from the previous batch is dead/parked before he summons more. I mean it's not as if he wants to win the battle or anything. #5: Travincal While the monotonous temple after temple after temple architecture of late Act Three can get tiring, the heights of design reached in Travincal deserve special notice. This level sort of begins with the Causeway leading up to it, where you encounter totally paved ground for one of the first times in the game. The lack of greenery in the previously-lush Act Three is a visual treat, and once you get into the middle of Travincal, with the steps in all directions, cute little platforms and walkways, and huge buildings, all of which you can run inside of, it's like a McDonaldsland playground, and you're like a seven year old all full of Coke and oversalted, undercooked French fries. Though hopefully you're less likely to spew it all from the top of Mayor McCheese. Travincal also holds the greatest Horking ground in all of D2X, and at the feet of the motley crew that is the high council and their assorted boot-licking lackeys, all proper Hork barbs must worship. As the screenshot attests. #4: The Secret Cow Level Yes, it was also #10 on the Worst Levels list, but it's got good and bad points, much like that neighbor's dog that might try to bite you, but at least doesn't crap in your yard. The level layout is boring, aside from the little cow king fortress (why the hell bipedal cows have a wooden log fort like something out of a Davey Crockett movie is open to debate). Okay, so Blizzard was lazy and reused graphics they'd already done for the Rogue Encampment. There, I admitted it. Of course it's the cows that make the level, with their comical sound effects and amusing appearance. It would be nice if they had a variety of colors, some variety in their foot speed and or resistances, and especially if the king looked different, in any way whatsoever. Would a crown be too much to ask for? Bonus point for him dropping a bunch of Stamina potions when he dies for the quest credit, ALA milk bottles. And of course bonus points just for doing a secret level of any kind, thus getting our hopes up for one with D2X. Thus setting us up for another crushing disappointment. #3: The Arcane Sanctuary An acquired taste, but this area is one of the best in the game, in terms of design. It looks like nothing else, and is a very clever homage to the physically impossible artwork of M.C. Escher. Most players zoom right through it without noticing, but next time you are there compare the wing of the Arcane that has those annoying merc-trapping cut backs to the way the way the supports and higher/lower levels are in an Escher image such as Waterfall. The one thing that lacks in the layout is the starry background. It's supposed to be an Astral Plane, not a space station. When we got out preview of the game at Blizzard North in December 1999, we were told that this level was still undergoing debate, and that it would probably have an opaque cloudy background added before the final game, since the stars looked cheesy. Alas. Aside from the lovely layout, the monsters in the Arcane are fun. Well, fun if you like goats a bit more than you should. *cough* Yes the weak non-Meteor firing Vampires are pointless if you have any fire resistance at all, and Wraiths are very annoying to physical damage characters, plus they live to die over the edge of the walkway and therefore drop nothing. But come on, there are goats there. Goats galore! It's like an MC Escher petting zoo. #2: The Chaos Sanctuary A few people suggested this be added to last week's Worst Areas list, but they're just letting the high probability of instant death from an Iron Maiden curse by an Ob Knight you never even see prejudice them. I love this area, at least when I'm playing a Bowazon or other character who can handle it. You don't see Ob Knights of this Cursed variety anywhere else in the game, and there's a nice variety of other monsters, all of which seem appropriate for the area. No silly spawning weasels, or crawling ankle biters, or mutated vultures. No, all the monsters here are big and hellacious beasties, and they will gladly kick your lily white ***. The architecture is very cool, with all of the stained glass and pits of fire, Diablo's huge pentagram is the most Satanic thing in the entire game, and even the seals look cool. Plus their function is great, like evil urns with more style. They were even more fun back in D2C when the monsters from them could appear just about anywhere, rather than in the set locations they know now. You didn't know fun until you had to click the damn De Seis seal 17x before it would work, worrying with every click that you'd get an MSLE De Seis appearing directly top of you. #1: The Arreat Summit I seem to like the smaller, non-random levels, and this is the coolest of them all. It's got a great look with the small pillars all over the place, and the cool Barbarian god statues. Even the entrance and exit level opens are nice, with the way the bars close over them to trap you once you are in the level. Of course the best part is the huge panoramic view off the back of the level, showing miles of open land below you. During the beta we'd all gather in this level and just stare off the edge, debating whether or not it actually represented any areas of Act Five, and squinting to see if we could spot Imp corpses. Ahh, to be young and naive again. This level was stocked with monsters in early play testing, since there are a number of screenshots of characters battling Succubi and other such creatures here. I think it's better with just the Ancients, and not a bunch of lesser monsters hanging around and peeing on their statues. Speaking of peeing on the statues, how do you suppose pigeons fair in this area? The final version of the level is awesome, with the area totally deserted, save for the scary statues, just waiting for your click, while you enjoy the view. This area was unbelievable in the Beta, before Blizzard limited monsters to just one or two immunities each on Hell. You would regularly get every one of the Ancients with at least three immunities, at least two of them Immune to Physical, and trying to get organized to kill them in a big party game without some silly goose hitting a town portal with the last Ancient down to about 10% hps was enough to drive you insane. But when you finally get the kill, there's always that "Whang!" as you gain about 5 levels at once, which makes it all worth while. Diii.net
Bashiok on "Do they even care?" Aw, of course we care! A large part of my job is specifically to ensure that the valid concerns, comments, and critiques are brought to the appropriate people's attention. That doesn't mean that every idea or suggestion is something we agree with, or are going to base changes on though. There's a point where, as a game designer, you have to stick to your guns and know that your choices and direction are what's best for the game and ultimately those that will be playing it. There's a point where you have to be confident that you're making the right decisions. So at the end of the day you're staying true to your vision and design, and doing what's best for the game. A good example of us paying attention though was the concern and thread about corpses not sticking around long enough. I read that thread, brought it up, and some discussion was happening on it. Later our lead tech artist Julian was reading through the replies, and got some ideas of how we may want to keep corpses on screen a little longer. Now we're playing around with some changes that shouldn't have a huge performance hit, while still keeping the corpses on screen for variable amounts of time. Hopefully it works out. Would any experimentation for corpse decay have happened had it not been brought up on the forums? I don't know, maybe, but we're not just dismissing good, valid, and well reasoned concerns. As I said not every suggestion, comment, or idea is going to be considered, but we're definitely watching and reading. Battle.net Forums
I found this interesting. I do not remember reading it here. http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=d3-general&t=304483&p=1&#post304483 The 3rd post has the Bliz guy.
Bashiok on....Fucking everything While the crumbling bridge could be taken quite literally, it was intended to get the idea across that Diablo III will have more interactive and responsive environmental hazards. Of course if such obstacles existed in the way they were displayed every class would need some way to proceed. At this time we aren't announcing any additional class abilities though. It used the same "tile set" as the Tristram Cathedral dungeon including a specially made entry room. It was a static and specifically crafted dungeon especially for the demo, so yes it includes the look for Tristram Cathedral, but it's not a true piece of the game as you would play through it. Hey, are you kind of kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Who pesters the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents? Nooooo... of course you're not. That's why I'm noooot goooonna teeeeell yoooou! What I said was: "... we don't plan nor have any armor items at the moment that are class specific - although the bonuses and stats may be better suited to a certain class - anyone can pick up any chest/shoulder/leg/etc item and wear it. However, there are some weapons/off-hand items that are class specific." No changes to this yet, there just weren't any drops that were class specific. We essentially "hand placed" every drop that happened in the video. We knew people were going to dissect and scrutinize every detail, and everything that drops in that video was purposefully and specifically chosen to be dropped... everything. Fun fact: I played as the female barbarian for the recording. Well the way we imagined the final fight going down when thinking about the flow of the presentation was to have a few heroes killed off, and thought it would be cooler to see someone get ripped in half by a giant demon than just fall down. While it was an event made for the presentation it could definitely be worked in to the actual end-product. We try not to spend time on anything that can't be incorporated in some way. If there's a mockup or some cool flavor added in somewhere to show something off, we want to build it so that it can actually be used. They're for the most part static. With the outdoor environments we felt we could get a lot more out of them by crafting large and visually impressive scenes, which random map generation really just doesn't allow for all that well. By that same token one of the main goals with Diablo III is to flesh out Sanctuary, to make it feel more like you're in this living and breathing world. With towns shifting around everywhere you do sort of lose a sense of cohesion, and an attachment to the places you're visiting. On a very slight technical note - for random map generation you're essentially creating a bunch of rooms that can all fit together in various ways. It works quite well for a dungeon which is essentially a series of rooms any way. For an outdoor environment though it tends to make it either fairly bland, or fairly linear just by how the edges have to line up. You're either running zig-zag patterns to find the map edges, or you're running down a narrow pathway. Neither are extremely compelling, and at the same time you're losing the visual grandness that could come from a fully hand-crafted and artistically realized environment. That said, the outdoor areas aren't completely static. Battle.net Forums
Yea it's later on. PDog, You should post the 3rd one in here keeping the format you have. That way people can just read here instead of jumping links. Still I think its good to know you'll be able to kill fluffy critters...
Burn the defensless creatures!! BURN THEM ALL!!!! *laughs maniaclly* Ahem, excuse me... On topic: I hope they keep the decapitation in-game for big bosses (or even better something unique for each boss depending on their characteristics). It definitely makes death more interesting. If I am going to die I want it to be EPIC damnit! Even death would be entertaining. : P