diablo-iii posts

Blizzard is currently targeting the release of StarCraft II for the first half of 2010 and their next World of Warcraft expansion pack, Cataclysm, is due out sometime in 2010 as well. But what about Diablo III? Blizzard first announced the action-RPG sequel nearly 18 months ago but has yet to give any hint on a ship date for that highly anticipated game.

The newly launched Techland web site (run by Time magazine) has posted up some quotes from Blizzard exec Rob Pardo on that subject. He admits that Diablo III " . . . is not going to be out next year." So why announce a game that is going to take so long to develop? He also admits. "We always announce all of our games too early. We realize that and go, 'You know what? Next time we're not going to do that.' And then we always fail at that." However he says Blizzard would rather be late in releasing a game like Diablo III than releasing a game on time that just doesn't work. In fact going forward Pardo says their attitude when revealing a new title is, "Here's the game we're working on, we're going to start talking about it and who knows when it ships."

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!

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.

Well, BlizzCon 2009 is winding down for this year and Big Download has been very impressed with how Blizzard has handled the event. Having 26,000 Blizzard fans gather in one place but everything seemed to run like clockwork. All the panels and events started on time, the lines were full to play the new and upcoming games from the company and lots of unique stuff was sold at the Blizzard story, with lots of sell-outs of items

We have some pictures we took from today's events at BlizzCon to show you and that will in fact be our concluding port directly from the event. Make sure you check out WoW.com's continuing coverage of BlizzCon 2009 (including photos from Sharon Osbourne's husband's concert).

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.

Even as Gamescom gets ready to start in Germany tomorrow, many eyes will also be over at Anaheim as Blizzard holds its latest BlizzCon. Today the game's official web site posted up the events schedule (briefly) and the exhibit hall map for the August 21-22 event.

As you can see (kind of) it looks like the map shows areas for Diablo III and StarCraft II which likely means attendees will get the chance to go hands-on with the upcoming RPG and RTS games, respectively. The events schedule was posted up earlier today but as of the writing of this post it has been taken down. Before it was removed it shown panels for StarCraft II and Diablo III gameplay events along with other panels for Cinematics, sound and more.

Update: The BlizzCon schedule has been posted back up and heavily updated. It looks like there will be a ton of Diablo III and StarCraft II panels, including one that will most likely give up more info on Blizzard's plans for Battle.net.

We know that Blizzard's upcoming BlizzCon event is going to be a huge affair. The (sort of) annual event about all things Blizzard Entertainment is going to be held once again at the Anaheim Convention Center in California on August 20-21. However it's now clear that if Blizzard ever wanted to expand the event, it would have little trouble in doing so.

During Activision Blizzard's conference call with investors this week, it was revealed that 20,000 tickets for BlizzCon 2009 were sold. Keep in mind that each ticket for the two day event cost a whopping $125; that's in comparison to a four day ticket to this year's San Diego Comic Con (which cost $75) or a three day ticket to this year's Penny Arcade Expo (which costs $50). While 20,000 tickets were the upper limit for BlizzCon, they could have sold a lot more. The conference call stated that the tickets sold out in a mere eight minutes. We assume that's a total number since BlizzCon tickets this year were sold on two separate days. Of course, Blizzard gets even more money from the DirecTV pay-per-view coverage of BlizzCon along with their own streaming Internet coverage.

Gamers around the world are naturally disappointed that today the release of StarCraft II was pushed back by at least a few more months. However the good news is that we could (and we emphasize the word "could") see both the sci-fi RTS sequel and Blizzard's action-RPG Diablo III in 2010.

During Activision Blizzard's financial conference call today (you can listen to the repeat at the company's official web site), Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said that the delay of StarCraft II " . . . does not affect the release schedules of any of our other games." During the conference call's Q&A session an analyst asked if that meant we could see both StarCraft II and Diablo III released next year. Naturally Morhaime didn't directly answer the question. He did say," . . . it would be correct to conclude that you could expect two releases of Blizzard next year. But I will not make any conclusion as to what those titles will be."