Diablo III

Blizzard fans who had hoped to be rolling sevens and pulling on some one armed bandits in Las Vegas next year during BlizzCon can now hold off. Our sister site Wow.com is now reporting that their previous story of BlizzCon 2010 being held in Vegas in late July isn't happening after all.

The Las Vegas Convention Center's web site did indeed show that Blizzard's annual fan event was booked for their venue for July 30 and 31. However the venue's reps have now admitted that due to human error, they had listed the convention on the site when in fact no such confirmation had been made.

Interestingly the convention center rep did say they had one conversation with Blizzard about having BlizzCon come to their venue which may indicate that Blizzard might still move BlizzCon away from Anaheim, California to a new location for the 2010 event. Of course we will post up any BlizzCon news when it happens.

Last August at BlizzCon, Blizzard VP Paul Sams hinted that they might be changing the venue for future versions of their (sort of) annual fan convention. Since its start the event has been held at the Anaheim Convention Center (close to Blizzard's own headquarters) but the 2009 edition made it clear that the venue was close to its limits in terms of holding its over 26,000 attendees.

Now our sister site WoW.com has learned that the Las Vegas Convention Center has a new listing on their calendar . . . for BlizzCon 2010. According to them the show will be held at their venue in Vegas on July 30 and 31. So far Blizzard has yet to admit that they have made such a change, telling WoW.com that they are asking people to refrain from making any travel plans. However if it turns out to be true (and that's likely) it looks like Blizzard will be able to allow even more people to attend than in the past. The Las Vegas Convention Center is the home to tons of conventions every year including the largest trade show in the US, the Consumer Electronics Show, which has well over 100,000 attendees.

Update: WoW.com has updated their story with word that Blizzard is now flat out denying that BlizzCon 2010 will be held in Las Vegas even as the Las Vegas Convention Center's web site continues to show otherwise.

Games that are coming out soon have a lot of unknowns that the average person might not know. Who is this character inspired by? Is all the talk of volumetric fog or cel-shaded graphics really worthwhile? Do the game mechanics really seem solid, or are they lackluster? In All You Need To Know we provide information to help you fully appreciate what these upcoming games have to offer.

Feed your head after the jump.

Check out our collection of Diablo III related downloads here on Big Download!

Amazon.com has the occasional one day sale that might be of interest to our audience. Today their one day sale deals with the "Battle Chest" game collections from Blizzard Entertainment. For today only three of these collections are on sale for 50 percent off.

If you haven't bought these games already you can get the Diablo Battle Chest (Diablo II and its expansion plus strategy guide) for $19.98, the Warcraft III Battle Chest (the original game, the expansion plus strategy guides) for $19.98 and the StarCraft Battle Chest (the original game, the expansion plus strategy guides) for just $9.98. That's 50 percent off their normal price.

Sports fans, and we are taking die-hard sports fans here, always seem to have an opinion on how they should be running things if they were in charge of a sports team. Well, one of the executives of Blizzard Entertainment has decided to take some of his vast earnings and dive into the world of professional sports ownership.

Or at least a small part of that ownership. As revealed last week on the weeb site of the Pittsburgh Steelers, there is a new collection of 10 owners for the NFL pro football team. That includes the Sams family which has Paul Sams, currently the COO of Blizzard, as part of the group (along with his wife Susan and their three children). It's currently unknown exactly how much of a share the Sams family owns and how much it's worth.

[Via Joystiq]

As August comes to a close and we enter what is traditionally the busiest time of the year for PC gaming, we are looking back on the past 31 days to pick out what we believe were the top 10 news stories of the month for PC gaming. It was a time of new game announcements (thanks in part to Gamescom) but a lot of the news came from Blizzard's own event BlizzCon.

News stories we picked for the top 10 included the sad news of layoffs and even complete shutdowns of game developers, the release of a new version of a PC gaming client and word that a two year old console game might be released for the PC in an "AO" rated version. We also threw in a couple of extra news stories that, while big, didn't quite make the top 10 list.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top 10 PC Game News Stories For August 2009

BlizzCon 2009 happened less than a week ago, but the announcements still resonate among fans. Big premieres included revealing that the Monk class would be included in Diablo III. Longtime players or the series might recall that there was a Monk class included in the Hellfire expansion for the original Diablo. However, that wasn't a Blizzard-made expansion, and is therefore not included in the game's official canon or lore.

The new class will be a fast-paced melee fighter that can chain together moves into devastating combos. There's still no word on when fans can expect the game to release, but we're hoping it will come out sometime in 2010. You can see the Monk in action in the Diablo III gameplay video shown after the jump.

Download HD Diablo III Monk Trailer (64 MB)
Download HD Diablo III Monk Gameplay Video (354 MB)
Check out all Diablo III downloads

When we got a chance to go hands-on with the newly revealed Diablo III Monk character at BlizzCon this weekend, we go to see blood. Lots of blood. Blood in extraordinary quantities (to quote Alan Moore). Yes, the action-RPG sequel will indeed be a showcase for developer Blizzard to see lots of creatures blow up a lot of the red stuff.

But what about countries where the red stuff in games is frowned upon? Over at Wired, Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson states, " Definitely for regions like Germany and Australia, we will have to change blood if we're going to sell there." And its looking like the game may not be sold in China at all with Wilson saying, "Because a lot of the restrictions there are really... we may not be able to do them. It may not be possible." Wilson also says that Diablo III will have parental controls that will allow anyone to tone down the blood and change its color.

BlizzCon 2009 held an open Q&A panel with a ton of Blizzard's team members from Diablo III answering questions about the next game in the action-RPG series. Here are some of the highlights:

• While the team is not talking about Player Vs Player gameplay in Diablo III at the moment they did say they want to avoid the "go hostile at any time" type of gameplay that was a part of the first two games in the series. The feeling is that kind of gameplay ruins the co-op modes.
• The new Battle.net system will allow for a more sophisticated matchmaking system for Diablo III.
• The designers do have plans for more variety in quests in the new game.
• The dev team have some long term plans for the Diablo universe's Paladins but they would not go into details (sorry, no word if it will be a playable character)
• They also want to support players who play the game "hardcore"
• There are no plans to support user interface add-ons.
• The gold system in Diablo III is planned to be improved and changed compared to Diablo III in terms of their use to buy items.
• Randomly generated items are at the heart of the Diablo universe, according to the dev team. Unique items may have some different properties in Diablo III but will still be prominent.

Check out even more info after the jump:

When it was revealed that the Monk would be the new playable character class for Diablo III, our minds went to thinking about one of our favorite TV shows: Kung Fu. Yes, we had the idea that we would be playing Blizzard's version of Caine, the Eastern monk who prowled the Wild West that preached peace but pretty much could kick everyone who tried to cross him

As it turns out, that's pretty much what the Monk is like when we actually got hands-on with a new build of Diablo III at BlizzCon 2009. His character look is both buff and also more serene than the Barbarian class. But he can also handle himself quite well with his various attack and combo moves.

We played the Monk in a desert setting in the game surrounded by monsters that wandered around above ground and, in one cash, below the sand as a lizard-like creature burrows around before jumping out to escape. The Monk is pretty powerful just on its own with its melee attacks. With swinging moves, fast fists and circular combos its clear that Blizzard has achieved its goal of making the Monk more of a fighting game character than we have seen before in a Diablo game.

Check out more info after the jump:

Big Download has been concentrating our BlizzCon 2009 coverage on StarCraft II and Diablo III, naturally, but our sister site WoW.com has a whole team working the show and covering all aspects of the just announced third expansion pack World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

The site has info on the plot of Cataclysm along with coverage of BlizzCon's first Cataclysm panel where more info on the new two playable races was revealed. They also have coverage of last night's BlizzCon costume contest where there were even a few Diablo III and StarCraft II entries. Another sister site Joystiq is over at BlizzCon as well and among other stories they have posted word that Blizzard just might bring the Diablo series to consoles. Of course you can still check out out site for continuing BlizzCon coverage today and tomorrow.

Today, Blizzard announced that the Monk will be the newest class addition for Diablo III. This gameplay presentation shown at BlizzCon 2009 shows the Monk in action as he uses fast moves chained together for devastating combos. One should also not that although the Monk is a melee character, it won't have the same toughness as a Barbarian, so the players who love fast paced combat will really want to give the Monk a try.

Download HD BlizzCon 2009 Diablo III Monk Gameplay Footage (354 MB)
Check out all Diablo III downloads

BlizzCon 2009 is in full swing and today members of the Diablo III development team talked more about the heroes and monsters for their upcoming action-RPG. Naturally a lot of time was given to the newly revealed Monk class, the fourth playable class that has been revealed for the game.

The panel revealed that there were several reasons to make the Monk class playable. They wanted a class that was more like a fighting game character and they wanted to make a character that was more inspired by pen-and-paper RPGs. Overall they felt that the Monk was different than the first three classes in the game.

The team showed off a number of the Monk's special combat moves including one, called Way of the Hundred Fists, where a ton of fists are activated at once. Another, called the Exploding Palm happens when a palm attack results in an exploding body. Like in a fighting game, special moves can be used in combos to perform truly lethal attacks.

Check out more info after the jump:

As expected, a new character class has been revealed for Blizzard's upcoming action-RPG Diablo III. This as you can see the new class is the Monk. The reveal was made inadvertently on Blizzard's Korean web site for the game. Obviously the reveal was meant for the BlizzCon 2009 opening ceremony which is going on right now.

We hope to get some playtime with the new Monk character and get a feel for its abilities alongside the three other character classes during BlizzCon. Stay tuned as we will continue to report on the opening ceremonies of the event that are happening as we speak.

Update: Blizzard is showing a new trailer during their opening ceremonies for Diablo III that focuses on the Monk. A second pure Monk gameplay trailer was also shown.

[Via WoW.com]

A massive wave of Blizzard fans entered the Anaheim Convention Center at 10 am PT today, officially beginning BlizzCon 2009. We have never attended the show before and we are amazed at how huge the show actually is in terms of sheer square footage. There are a number of exhibitors here, of course, but the majority of the space is devoted to PCs networked to play Blizzard games like StarCraft II, Diablo III and World of Warcraft and the stages where all the panels and big events are being staged.

Before the big Blizzard keynote address begins we decided to do a quick once over of the exhibit hall. The result is the gallery below where you can see statues, exhibits, lines of people, huge banners and even Felicia Day. Really.
Stay tuned as the keynote address is expected to begin at 11:30 am PT.