Blizzard Announces Final Diablo 3 Class, PvP Arena Battles 187
Blizzard chose Demon Hunter because it filled an archetype for conventional ranged weaponry that wasn't filled by the other classes they’ve already developed. They favored the idea of a character like a bounty hunter – not necessarily somebody with a noble, honorable soul. This led them to bring in various gadgets and traps in addition to ranged weapons, as well as shadow magic. She’s more knowledgeable about demons than anyone else, and she’s got a decidedly unheroic attitude.
Their early concepts for the class involved a woodland ranger design, but they weren’t satisfied with a typical swift and deadly stalker. As they tried to twist the concept to fit the Diablo world, they found it turning into a character like the assassin from Diablo 2, which they didn’t really want. After the Monk was announced last year, they picked some key traits for the ranged class that they wanted to stick with: Dark, Mysterious, Medieval. They toyed with the idea of making the Demon Hunter an actual demon, but decided that didn’t fit with the Diablo story. They also had trouble making demonic art concepts fit the sleek and agile archetype. They settled on a dark-armored human with dual crossbows.
Lead World Designer Leonard Boyarsky said the Demon Hunter is “the most diverse class.” They are recruited from all walks of life, bound together by their hatred for demons and an obsessive, overriding desire to keep fighting and killing demons until they’re all gone. “She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty.” She doesn’t just want to kill them, “she wants them to know the terror of being stalked,” and Demon Hunters know better than any other classes the true stakes of the conflict in Sanctuary.
The first skill they demonstrated for the new class was Bola Shot. The Demon Hunter throws a bola, which wraps itself around the target's neck — and then explodes. Next came Vault, a shadowy leap forward that will take the character through enemies. Spike Trap is a gadget the Demon Hunter throws to the ground, which then explodes in fire and shrapnel when a monster walks over it. Along those same lines, the class can throw grenades, which will bounce and ricochet off walls, giving players some interesting new tactics that weren't possible in Diablo 2.
Diablo 3’s skill system has seen a lot of work over the past year. The skill tree concepts reminiscent of World of Warcraft was felt to be unwieldy. The UI is now list-based, using two separate windows, which makes picking new skills and deciding between upgrades easier. Skills have also been supplemented by a new system called Traits. Traits are passive aspects of your character that improve one aspect of it.
For example, Barbarians get a Trait called Inner Rage, which reduces the amount of fury (their resource for using skills) lost and increases the amount gained from attacks. Wizards have one called Prismatic Cloak, which makes all of her armor spells stronger. Blizzard added Traits to give the classes another level of customization, and to separate the fun choices (skills) from the math choices. You can pick a particular theme for your character and select traits that fit the theme. Each class has about 30 traits, and you’ll be able to spend multiple points to make a trait stronger. “I want to spend points in Whirlwind, I don’t want to spend points in ‘more armor.’” The design for Traits isn’t finished yet – Jay Wilson said we’ll likely see more changes to its UI, the rate of accumulating trait points, and how many you get total.
They showed off some new skills for various classes – Barbarians get a spear attack that grabs an enemy at range and pulls them close. Meteor is coming back for the Wizard. Witch Doctors get a skill called Spirit Walk, which phases him out so he can walk around without detection for a brief time.
Another new feature they announced is Talisman. It’s a dedicated inventory for Charms that grows as you level up. No longer will you sit with half a backpack worth of charms, wondering if some minor bonus is worth not being able to pick up an extra piece of loot while you’re slaying monsters. Charms themselves are also becoming more focused on particular attributes.
Skill Runes didn’t get much play last year, since Blizzard was in the process of overhauling the system. The idea is that you use runes to modify how your skills work, similar to the way gems modify what your armor does. It’s essentially another way to customize your character. This arose out of the tendency for Diablo 2 players to divide class builds into things like “Spearazons” or “Zealadins.” The skill runes, affecting only active skills, now provide 97 billion different permutations. Per class.
There are five types of runes. Crimson, Indigo, Obsidian, Golden, and Alabaster. Each rune type loosely follows a particular theme, and each color has seven ranks. To demonstrate the rank system, they showed the Wizard skill Magic Missile. With a first rank Indigo rune, it shoots two missiles instead of one. With the seventh rank rune, it shoots seven extra missiles. Another example showed how the Barbarian can use the various runes to modify a skill that throws his weapon. Different runes make him throw different weapons, with different effects – more damage, stuns, confuses, etc. The Wizard’s Hydra can swap to different elements, or can shoot fire walls instead of bolts. The Witch Doctor has an ability that summons frogs to attack monsters. A Crimson rune makes them flaming frogs. Another rune turns the spell into a rain of toads, and another will turn the little frogs into one giant toad which eats and digests monsters.
Finally, they went into some details about Battle Arenas. Since dueling and PvP was so popular in Diablo 2, they wanted to support it much more in Diablo 3. It’s focused on team-based play. Since there are so many permutations for individual builds (and some are supposed to be better than others), they’re less worried about 1v1 balance than team balance — a philosophy similar to that for World of Warcraft arenas. Some player skills are designed specifically for PvP. Since the PvE game has a lot of skill focusing on monster control, and they didn't want PvP to be about taking away your ability to do things, they're designing class abilities to counter crowd control.
The arena matches will be played out with multiple rounds – best 3 out of 5 or best 2 out of 3. They’re also working on custom games, and making 1v1 dueling easy to do. There will be a skill-based ranking system, with titles, vanity rewards, achievements, and so forth for people who want to show off their PvP abilities.
A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone else miss the double unit production of the early SC2?
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just the fact that they can take away your game without providing a refund for things you do in single player games makes me really concerned about it.
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ooooh but there's a tiny chance you might be A DIRTY PIRATE!
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You do not need an internet connection to play SC2 in singleplayer you ignorant, gullible moron. You click "Play as Guest" from the Battle.net login screen and you are in offline mode. They are banning Battle.net accounts for cheating in online, SP mode. Having a banned Battle.net account still means you can play in offline mode. Get a clue before you spout crap like this.
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"no parental controls for SC2 at launch"
Uh, why would you need that in the first place?
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Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't justify locking someone out of a single-player game that they paid for.
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The existence of "legit" cheats doesn't change anything. Blizzard literally took away people's games for not playing them in the way they decided was right. This goes well beyond merely forbidding the players from playing on Blizzard's servers (which would be fine).
If someone's cheating at poker in your casino, you bar him from the casino. You don't go to his house and confiscate his cards.
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:4, Funny)
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GET IT?
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IS THERE?
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Maybe it's all just a slippery slope fallacy, but it's certainly less morally ambiguous than to develop a sliding scale of punishments that's always one step behind people who could potentially be ruining the game for your other customers.
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"Blizzard literally took away people's games for not playing them in the way they decided was right."
Businesses are tyrannies after all.
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>If someone's cheating at poker in your casino, you bar him from the casino. You don't go to his house and confiscate his cards.
You do in Soviet Russia, which is the natural conclusion of unlimited corporate power. Blizzard's -nothing- on the evil scale... Monsanto would warm Joseph Stalin's heart.
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Yea, because nobody ever plays single player...
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That's fine.
But I'll be quite upset should I find out I'm not allowed to play poker in my own home.
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"And your suggested response would be what then?"
Easy: leave people who cheat in single player alone.
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Lets make an analogy! (if you find shooting objectionable for some reason, pick any sport you can practice on your own in addition to competing)
Lets say you like to shoot competitively. Someone finds out that you've been cheating in order to get your trophies.
Exactly how would you feel if you were then disallowed from ever shooting at targets again, even noncompetitively (by yourself, aka plinking)?
That's essentially what Blizzard did, and you are saying you support.
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You can always buy a new game if you really want to keep playing.
Some things in life are simple, here the lesson is: Don't be a cheating dickwad.
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There is no shooting license.
The point is they took your gun, or your ability to use it. They should not be able to do that. In Blizzards case, they CAN, but they shouldn't.
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That would be like OnStar disabling your vehicle for going too high over the speed limit. They can do this if they choose. Seizing property is not the domain of corporations... that "right" belongs to the courts.
I totally support Blizzard banning cheaters from multi-player mode. But disabling the game entirely is draconian, and assuming someone rich enough (not us regular folks) sues them it will be shown to be illegal.
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So, you want the game but don't necessarily support their methods? Pirate it. Continuing to support these idiots will only make it worse to the point where even you might avoid their future games because of the terrible DRM that they may contain.
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"No, that's not right either."
Why not? You're not harming them (as you're not actually taking anything), you're just copying data while not rewarding them with your money. In reality, the general pirate doesn't hurt or help anyone because they don't actually take anything.
If you say that they take "potential profit," then you're just as guilty as a pirate of doing that (even though it's likely impossible to take profit that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made m
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"I agree that by pirating software you weren't going to buy anyway you do not harm the company you pirate from."
Piracy never harms anyone. Unless of course you're going to use a "potential profit" argument, in which case I answered that in my previous comment.
"However, you ignored my other point."
I didn't ignore it. I was merely saying that when media is pirated, nothing is taken and no harm is done. The pirate uses their own time to copy data that is in an infinite supply.
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But it's certainly no Diablo III.
I bought it and played it for a while and haven't gone back with the same level of addiction I did with the old Diablos.
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Same here. Blizzard-DRM, phone home, and no cheats? Do not want!!1!
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Hell is other people."
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PvP would be fine if we were dealing with people. However if Playstation Network is anything to go by, listening to a bunch of 12-14 year old kids yapping about fucking each other's mother all day long gets old quick.
I play games if i don't want to deal with people, or MAYBE to play with a select group of friends. Global PvP against a bunch of kids who have 10 hours a day to spare on learning maps, etc holds no interest.
Re:A shame I won't be playing it. (Score:5, Interesting)
For all the people out there who haven't played Diablo II in a while, I suggest you patch to 1.13 and try it again. You can respec your stats and skills after completing the den of evil quest (once respec allowed per difficulty level). This is every bit as money as it sounds; it's way easier to power through normal difficulty and then respec to make your character more robust in nightmare and hell. Game on!
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that actually got me - went back to do a replay through a month or so ago. i thought my computer had bugged out when i killed the Ancients and didn't get anything.. although i did find 2 area's where they fudged up the drop rates for set items in act 5.. quite nice and quick to farm too.
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Zero is a remarkably small (and, as it turns out, incorrect) number. I don't really have the ambition to find a list of everyone who is on D3, but Chris Metzen is involved, and he was involved with D2 as well. So in short... you're wrong.
And even if what you say were true, so what? Not being on the original staff does not mean that the team can't understand what made the original great and work to iterate on it. It happens all the time in the industry.
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I've purposely not bought any DRM'ed games since the EA three activation stunt so forgive my ignorance. Can someone expand on the Blizzard DRM issues?
The Diablo sequel was the one game I've been looking forward to. If it has anything like the activation limits or constant internet connection crap, etc., then I'm out too.
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Skip Diablo 3 and go straight to playing Torchlight. It's made by the original developers of Diablo and if you buy from their site doesn't have DRM.
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Thanks, hadn't heard of it and it looks reasonably priced. Definitely going to give it a try.
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"I realize that I'm merely purchasing a license to play it"
This right here (aside from DRM) is another reason I don't even buy games anymore. If they're going to treat their customers like this, I'm not going to reward them with my money.
I will (Score:2)
Yeah I know, the bogeyman is under the bed. Still the DRM that Blizzard has employed has never interfered with my games from them. I guess I am just too damn boring. I live with Steam DRM and see people bellyache about it as well. You can't win them all. The few games I do have without DRM seem to come from companies with games I find myself not playing long. So I take the bad with the good and go on with life. It is just a game and honestly taking a stand on DRM is about the least of my concerns.
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The game looks like it's going to be awesome, but considering the DRM and bad behavior by Blizzard, I'm not going to be playing. I hate going without, but when a company can ban accounts for what one does during single player gaming and isn't even required to give a refund, that's not something that I'm willing to be a part of.
As we've seen with numerous games where the vendor attempts to lock them down...there's always someone out there just as or more smarter than the company and will break/disable to DRM. It's just a matter of time and we'll all be enjoying the game.
On the other hand...if they come out with either a PS3/360 version...might not be worth all the trouble to screw with the PC version and just play it on my 360.
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bnetd was a battle.net emulator that was permanently shut down by lawyers.
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Ouch, thanks for the reminder. I read that tibit a while back but I haven't been on Steam in a long time as HL2TFC bored me. Figured I was aiming to rejoin with D3 but no more. I totally agree with you. No problem banning cheaters in MP games but if I want to cheat in SP that my business and my alone.
Sorry Bliz that two fewer sales for you.
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Who cares about achievements? Achievements are cosmetic at best, and nobody really cares about them. Why are you supporting what a company tells you you can do with your software? Oh, ACHIEVEMENTS, IS IT? Well guess what, it was Blizzard's own choice to require that you have an account with them and check in every 30 days. You've drank the fanboy kool aid.
The real reason is that Blizzard wants money from rebuyers.
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I hate to break it to you, but more people care about achievements react negatively to Blizzard trying to stop people from cheating (as they would see it.)
That's not you, that's not me, and that's probably not even a majority of /., but Blizzard didn't to be a company that sleeps on haybales made of money by alienating a significant percentage of their actual customers.
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Riiight... Just about every major multiplayer game has introduced Achievements in the past two years. And all the game designers do this in light of the fact that "nobody really cares about them"? You don't find value in them? Fine. But it's pretty much a foregone conclusion in light of the facts that you don't speak for the other millions of gamers out there.
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Doesn't matter at all, the fact is is that blizzard deliberately set up such a system with their DRM.
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I think they appeal to some small subset of gamers, it's more that achievements in general don't bother those who don't care except the occasional "achievement unlock" popup. I don't think *most* people care, it's just something they could add to please another group of players without pissing off anyone else.
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Who cares about achievements?
The people banned for cheating in single player obviously care about achievements. Otherwise they would have used the blizzard-supplied cheat codes. Using those codes does disable achievements though. I guess if hadn't cared about achievements they wouldn't have been banned.
http://cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/850/850126.html#81970 [ign.com]
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That was their choice. They should not ban people from a fucking single player game for cheating in it.
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Ah, sorry. I was busy wading through replies that were similar to yours but appeared somewhat serious.
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They only response that would have been acceptable in that situation would have been disabling achievements for the account. That was the only online component of the single player game.
sure thats cool (Score:2)
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You think 40 dollars for the battle chest is too much? That comes with Both the first and second Diablo, Diablo II's Expansion pack, and strategy guides.
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So let me rephrase, you think 40 dollars is too much for Both Diablo 1 and 2 and the Expansion?
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You can get Baldur's Gate+expansion, Icewind Dale+two expansions, Fallout, Fallout 2, and Betrayal at Krondor all together for less money than for Diablo, Diablo 2, and expansion. Or get Baldur's Gate+expansion and Icewind Dale+two expansions for same price and have (much) more content for games as highly received as Diablo 1/2.
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Magic Missile, eh? (Score:2)
I wonder how many people will create Wizard characters named "Galstaff, Sorcerer of Light"?
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Okay, but if there's any GIRLS there I wanna DO THEM!
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I'm not sure that you can change the eye color to gray though.
And the Mouse Manufacturers Rejoice! (Score:2)
so this is due out when? (Score:2, Troll)
You don't know? Then fuck off with the Diablo 3 'news' until you do.
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They announce the final class and some details regarding it and you don't think it isn't news - but you'd think the release date WOULD be news?
Are you a fan of the series or not?
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They can announce all the great things it's going to do, but if there's no release date, no hint of a release date, it's just another in a long line of vapor announcements. Do you remember when Diablo II came out? What year was that again?
I think this isn't news, but a news release by a company that has no idea when their product is going to ship, and wants to keep it in the public consciousness until they have some real news, like a release date or a beta or SOMETHING of substance.
And yes, I'm a big Diablo
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They announced a new Diablo and a new Starcraft at the same time, then followed it up saying that Starcraft would come first.
Given enough time, it has come out. If you seriously think Diablo 3 is going to become Vaporware then I think you're a fool. They may change the DRM scheme if the next 2 Starcrafts don't do well, but I don't see them Cancelling D3 for any reason - it's got even more steam behind it than SC2 had.
The thing is - you can't just set deadlines and assume things to be proper. Valve has gotte
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It's not something you can say "Will be done by Christmas" - they obviously just finished fleshing out the last class, so now the whole motion of implementing it is under way, and then you've got scores of beta testing to go through.
I don't think that's obvious at all. For all we know, they fleshed out the class a long time ago and have just been drip feeding information to the public. Why would they reveal all their cards in one go when they don't know when the game will ship?
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Seriously. I don't think I can tolerate slow trickle of news that leads up to the 2016 release date.
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Seriously. I don't think I can tolerate slow trickle of news that leads up to the 2016 release date.
Anything that takes THIS long to come out has the potential to go all 'Phantom Menace' on us. :(
"Our worst mistake was PvP" (Score:3, Insightful)
Blizzard's design staff recently, famously lamented: "Our worst mistake was PvP"
And yet...
Since there are so many permutations for individual builds (and some are supposed to be better than others), they’re less worried about 1v1 balance than team balance — a philosophy similar to that for World of Warcraft arenas.
...they're ripping their Arena system from WoW?
I would have like to have seen more information about _why_ they think this is a good idea...
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The biggest mistake in the arenas was that you got better gear for winning, immediately giving you further advantage. Equivalent gear was not always available via other methods or required 10 - 40 people to co-operate over the internet on a often timed exercise (raiding) and usually had lockout timers. If you were a decent player and got started early in the arena it was easy to stay ahead of even a dedicated raiding guild. and you were usually acquiring better gear for PvP. I enjoy casual PvP as I like to
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PvP is pretty essential to MMOs. You can't just leave that out.
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Because their aren't as many balancing difficulties with Diablo. WoW had it added without considering the incredible amount of options people could be wearing, and the characters in WoW where not designed and balanced to fight each other, but to balance a team formula.
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Blizzard's design staff recently, famously lamented: "Our worst mistake was PvP"
Generally when you put quotation marks around a phrase it's meant to signify that someone actually said those words. You're referencing WarCry's 2009 interview with Rob Pardo [warcry.com], wherein he expresses his feeling that adding arenas was their biggest mistake. However, it's not because arenas were a bad idea, but because he felt it was tacked-on.
Blizzard these days is heavy into e-sports, which is why Diablo 3 will have PvP, and why they'll focus as much energy as they need in order to make it competitive.
It's a good thing (Score:2)
I am NOT impressed. (Score:2)
I played the PSone version of Diablo 1, and it was good. I even tried out the PC version, which was much harder on my wrists, and slightly less fun to play. Every Diablo III article we see has folks drooling over every tiny little bit of info on the game that Blizzard leaks out. But as the Rogue from Diablo 1 says when she defeats Gharbad the Weak: I am NOT impressed. Why not?
Diablo III isn't doing anything that different from the various Snowblind engine games on the PS2...years ago.
http://www.gamespot [gamespot.com]
One thing I'd like to see (Score:2)
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They've already announced that all of their classes will be playable as either male or female.
It's one of the first questions in their FAQ [blizzard.com].
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Will Diablo 3 be sticking with the new model of requiring people to use real names to interact with other players significantly, or are they introducing some kind of way for people to pick a nickname?
Blizzard actually just barely released changes which makes Real ID optional [battle.net]. I got an email yesterday from Blizzard explaining the change and showing how to make changes to your profile so that Real ID is disabled, or to prevent friends of your Real ID friends from also seeing your full name.
I was happy to see the change, but two things still bother me about it. Why did it take them months after the retail release of the game to implement this? It should have been clear from day one that such a feature h
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As long as you don't explicitly enable Real ID for any of your regular friends no one can see your Real ID.
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Yeah, but I saw a bug with that, when someone gives you access to it`s real id, you see the real id of his friends. Don't know if it was corrected, but i was able to know the name 2-3 person from my work who were playing this game when I made real id friend with a co-worker. It's surprising how some people really don't look like they would be sc2 materials ;)
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Huh, I'd heard some complaints about it being used more heavily, maybe they were confused.
In WoW, it's not "required", but it's the only way to get access to decent friend functionality (say, being able to track a friend across multiple alts).
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What about if we just concentrate on the actual game and its gameplay?
Because the real gameplay is being hindered by an always-online Battle.net system. Let's not forget a complete lack of LAN games, which was a primary path for many gamers of the original two titles.
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Since about the time Gygax and Arneson published first ed. D&D, in the dawn years before the net. Minimaxing set in pretty quick when you had to have ability scores that could only be rolled 1 in 1020 times to play certain classes to their max levels. A lot of players took the rules apart with a fine tooth comb, and it got to where 'math' meant "I'm going to start an hour long argument with the DM over whether his epic final villain exceeds the predicted frequency of non-skeletalform undead of that leve
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Re:PvP Arena = wary player (Score:5, Insightful)
We can look forward to PvE nerfs that hurt classes because of PvP whines. Gentlemen get your cheese knives ready!
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Yes, this pretty much guarantees that the Wizard will now be hopeless, since to make it good enough to work in PvE, it will be overpowered for PvP and people will whine that they can't kill them in one hit with their warrior.
cf. the Mage class in WoW.
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We can look forward to PvE nerfs that hurt classes because of PvP whines. Gentlemen get your cheese knives ready!
It was stated the the PVP mechanics and the PVE mechanics are separate. While not modifying the talent to make it unrecognizable, there would be some changes to the PVP talent to adjust mechanics for balance purposes.
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