Diablo 3 Announced

[Bosh]

Diablo makes my wrist hurt...

[Patroklos]

Awesome

I am so glad all those rumors about Hellgate:London being the sequal were wrong.

[Snotty]

clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick loot

wicked, cant wait

[Patroklos]

OMFGD it is yet another piggish cartoony WoW clone

[UnOrthOdOx]

While my computer is unlikely to be capable of playing the thing, sadly, there was nothing there that made me consider purchasing a new one to be able to play it, either.

Graphical upgrade at best, based on those gameplay footages. Barb is a direct port of the barb in DII, and the "WitchDoctor" seems to get some beefed up necro skills.

I also sure hope some cheats were enabled in those videos, or the mana ball serves no purpose.

I am so glad all those rumors about Hellgate:London being the sequal were wrong

You read those rumors wrong. Hellgate:London was made by the people who were originally working on DIII, but left for form their own company. Reasons of said leaving are dependant on which version you hear.

I see nothing to dispell any DIII rumors I've read.

[Patroklos]

You read those rumors wrong. Hellgate:London was made by the people who were originally working on DIII, but left for form their own company. Reasons of said leaving are dependant on which version you hear.

No, I heard right. With all of the development team working on DIII leaving Blizzard and no announcemet of the project it was assumed Hellgate:London was the spiritual successor with DIII abandoned by Blizzard of at least seriously delayed.

[Patroklos]

Alright, I just got a chance to watch the trailer and it doesn't seem nearly as cartoonish as the screenshots did. I am impressed so far.

I do hope they didn't get rid of the potion bar entirely. I like the skill bar idea but I can't see not having a potion bar as well. If they reduced heath recovering to only that drop orb thing I will be disapointed.

[Asher]

You're both wrong. The Hellgate London people never worked on Diablo III. Some of the people who made Diablo II left to make Hellgate -- not all, and Diablo III work hadn't started yet.

Diablo III was never delayed or abandoned, they hadn't started.

[FrostyBoy]

But wouldn't that assume that Diablo 3 has been in development for quite a short time?

[LDiCesare]

If they reduced heath recovering to only that drop orb thing I will be disapointed.

There's a potion in the video, somewhere early in the barb part. It's just some text that tells you it's there, but there seem to be health potions in.

[Asher]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
But wouldn't that assume that Diablo 3 has been in development for quite a short time?

By "short time" you mean about two years now?

Probably, yes.

The Hellgate London team and company was founded in 2003. Diablo III hasn't been under development since 2003...

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
You're both wrong. The Hellgate London people never worked on Diablo III. Some of the people who made Diablo II left to make Hellgate -- not all, and Diablo III work hadn't started yet.

Diablo III was never delayed or abandoned, they hadn't started.

They never announced it. Doesn't mean they never started work on it. The rumors were Blizzard North was working on Diablo III prior to the exodus of the Flagship folks. Then, shortly later, Blizzard North was disbanded. Some claim that disbanding was due to Diablo III not being up to par, and needing to be rebuilt from the ground up.

The nature of that leaving, and the comments from folks who left when Blizzard North was disbanded, and the folks that left Blizzard prior to that certainly flat out state there was SOME project going on they felt they didn't have enough say over.

Now, since the Blizzard North division was not working on WoW, Warcraft III, or Starcraft II, the logical assumption would be it was either something entirely new, or Diablo III. If you're claiming they were sitting around doing NOTHING (for DII:LOD had been out for years) prior to that disbanding, I would find that to be a difficult leap of faith. If you think the entire team was working on the 1.09 patch, you have a humorous misunderstanding of how Blizzard works.

Many of the execs at Blizzard North left to form Flagship Studios. As for Hellgate being a spiritual successor to Diablo II, I don't know where that comes from. From many of the interviews I've seen, both Bill Roper and Max Shaeffer were very conscious of attempting to distance the game from Diablo to avoid any potential lawsuits from Blizzard.

I personally think some of the decisions there led to Hellgate being less than stellar, but I also believe there was a funding issue that made it a bit more rushed than they would have liked, but these are only uninformed opinions at this point.

Now, most of the people who did the actual WORK on Diablo II ended up forming Castaway Studios when Blizzard North disbanded, which was in turn eventually disbanded, but most the Blizzard folks ended up with L5 Games, which is making Requiem. Since I don't care about MMO's I can't even comment on whether it looks all that good. But, judging strictly by the people working on it, if MMO's are your thing, it might be worth a look. I'ld be skeptical though, since MMO's are a whole different beast to create than what those folks have experience with. I'ld expect some growing pains.

So, since Diablo III was never announced, no it was never abandoned or delayed. That does not mean, however, work had never occured on it until 2 years ago.

[FrostyBoy]

For the record, Hellgate sucked balls. I hated it the moment I played.

I enjoy Diablo not for the fighting but for the story and atmosphere.

[Asher]

So, since Diablo III was never announced, no it was never abandoned or delayed. That does not mean, however, work had never occured on it until 2 years ago.

It may've been 3 or more. But there's no evidence at all to suggest work on Diablo III had started before Hellgate started development just 2 years after Diablo II's expansion came out. In fact, starting development immediately after Diablo II came out is not Blizzard's MO at all. They intentionally space out sequels to their games so as to not milk them dry.

So in the absence of evidence of Diablo III dev work starting in 2001, we must resort to past performance by Blizzard and logical analysis. In both cases, it doesn't make sense for Diablo III to be in development in 01 or 02, prior to Flagship Studios' founding.

[Asher]

I had a total blast with a close group of friends in Diablo. We played the hell out of that.

Actually, 6 months ago most of them started playing it again.