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PC Games (Games) Games

Diablo 3 To Be Released On May 15th 246

Posted by Soulskill from the taking-their-time dept.
Blizzard announced today that Diablo 3 has finally gotten a release date: May 15th. "After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. This comes after significant changes to the skill and rune systems in the beta, and news that the PvP system would be delayed so that they could focus on finishing the campaign. The game will be available for Windows and Macs, either via a DVD or as a direct download through Battle.net. For those interested, a skill calculator is available to get a feel for what different abilities do, and many of the skills have videos showing how they work.
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Diablo 3 To Be Released On May 15th More

Diablo 3 To Be Released On May 15th

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  • So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:28AM (#39363025) Journal
    So am I the only one who read this as the PvP won't be ready at launch and the skill and rune system is so fucking annoying you have to watch a video and use a calculator to figure out how the damn thing works?

    • Nah, they just want you to drool for two months.

    • Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alen ( 225700 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:31AM (#39363073)

      they have to appease the spreadsheet warriors who will spend weeks learning this crap

    • Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:34AM (#39363091)

      As someone who has played the beta:

      a) PvP not ready at launch: correct

      b) It's easier to think of the skill/rune system as a single skill system where you have 210 skill choices for 5 active skill slots. The UI for selecting the skills/runes is annoying, however.

      On the plus side, most of the skills/runes have the required "cool" factor.

    • Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:41AM (#39363147) Homepage

      They had to redo the skill system because back when I played the beta it was fucking horrible. "Here's a ton of skills. Pick a couple. Spam them. You won't be allowed to use the rest unless you go back to town and we allow you to pick new ones."

      The whole game was incredibly disappointing.

    • Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:49AM (#39363227) Homepage

      The biggest complain for me is: When will it be available for iOS and Android?

      I mean, that's where many gamers are today. And frankly speaking, playing on a table is way more immersive than on a computer.

      • Re:So PvP delay and a new skill and rune systems (Score:5, Funny)

        by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:22AM (#39363633)

        playing on a table is way more immersive than on a computer

        I find a chair much more comfortable, though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          My proof reading skills are off today. 2.5 hours of uptime in the middle of the night does that for me...

      • you were probably kidding but:
        This [youtube.com] was announced at the same time as the new ipad. It played pretty much like a Diablo clone, except than instead of clicking on the enemies you would use gesture for swinging your sword... And here [youtube.com] you can see the gameplay being explained.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          I was not kidding. I've played a number of games like that on my phone / tablet and I find the experience better. First, you always have it with you so you can play whenever you want. Second, the controls are on the screen, making the whole experience much more immersive. It *is* a little awkward the first time getting used to the controls.

      • Awesome. Will it automatically spam all my Facebook friends every time I level up?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          If that's what you want, then yes, you will be able to.

          You know PC games also have this feature, right?

          • I absolutely do not want that feature.

            And no, I was not aware. I haven't bought a new PC game for about eight years. But since I was big into D2, I'm being tempted by D3.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ifrag ( 984323 )

          Awesome. Will it automatically spam all my Facebook friends every time I level up?

          I'd almost be tempted to enable it. Would be a small slice of revenge for all the other pointless junk on there. Bonus points if Facebook also gets DDOS'd as a side effect of everyone doing it.

          One of Blizzard's April Fools a while back was a Blackthorne sequel that would Facebook post (or maybe it was tweet) every single enemy you kill. That'd probably be enough to destroy either one of them.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:04AM (#39363415)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        So am I the only one who read this as the PvP won't be ready at launch and the skill and rune system is so fucking annoying you have to watch a video and use a calculator to figure out how the damn thing works?

        PvP not ready at launch? Fine, whatever. Go play in the arena in WoW or Starcraft if you want to have fun throwing yourself at other players. PvP not being ready tells me that they're concentrating on making a decent single-player/cooperative game. I do not want PvE to be neglected for the sake of making PvPers happy.

        And having a complex skill system is a good thing. Complaints like yours are the reason why we get systems like WoW's, where you can click on damn near any random combination of abilities and have a perfectly viable character, and all you have to do to win in combat is press 1-2-3-4. I will gladly take a system where I actually have to take time to learn how it works and then spend time evaluating how the different options interact, and then maybe I'll even have to crunch some numbers to figure out what the most efficient options are.

        In short, attitudes like yours are responsible for the decline of western RPGs. Stop it.

        Forgetting that this is Blizzard here and it's usually okay to rely on their promises, is it really best to accept and pay full price for an incomplete game expecting them to patch stuff in later on? It's a very terrible habit for a consumer to pick up especially in this age where expansions don't exist and shitty DLC is rampant.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • It's complete for me. I couldn't give less of a shit about PvP. I don't play Diablo for that and I don't think Diablo was ever really focused on it either. Single/cooperative play is where it's at for this game. Like the GP said, this signals that they are spending all their time on single and for me well...that is just fine.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guignol ( 159087 )
        I disagree, though I do understand and share the interest you have in the way you play an RPG
        But as much as optimizing the hell out of known combinations of well measured skills is fun,
        You also lose the having fun in chosing how you want to play a character necause of how it feels
        For instance, sometimes you will want to play a character that is plain evil, or good, and if you enjoy the story, you would like your character to be consistent, but that is alsmost always incompatible with total optimization o

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ildon ( 413912 )

        >Complaints like yours are the reason why we get systems like WoW's, where you can click on damn near any random combination of abilities and have a perfectly viable character, and all you have to do to win in combat is press 1-2-3-4.

        Unless your definition of "winning" is "reaching the level cap solo and quitting," then this statement is not, and up until this point, has not ever been true about WoW. In the current iteration of the talent system you can still fail to select absolutely critical talents an

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      I read this as a the fact that the last PC developer that had a policy of "release product when it's ready" has thrown in the towel and now releases when publisher wants it to be released just like everyone else.

  • Cool, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bhaak1 ( 219906 ) * <bhaak@gmx.net> on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:28AM (#39363027) Homepage

    ... but will it be as good as NetHack?

    • It would be interesting to have something like Nethack or zAngband but with graphics such as Diablo 3.

      It's neat and all in text mode, I love them - but sometimes you want the eye candy.

      (text over tiles any day, full graphics or none)

  • Worthy successor? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SJHillman ( 1966756 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:33AM (#39363085)

    I spent countless hours playing the first two games in the series, but I'm not so sure D3 is shaping up to be a worthy successor. D2 got annoying when they began tweaking things every patch so an awesome character with an amazing set in one patch is suddenly next to useless a patch or two later. Rather than just balancing, they mixed it up far too much. Hopefully the demo (I'm assuming there's a demo) will help me decide whether or not to buy it now or wait for the price to drop in a few years.

    • With the way the skill systems are, they at least won't be able to destroy your character build as far as skills go. With Diablo 3, you would simply start using different skills. The upshot of this, for me, is that I only need to have 1 of each character class in this game. I think I'll like that. :)

    • The endless tweaking was present in World of Warcraft as well and was one of the biggest factors that drove me out of the game. I was a PvE-only player, but my class was being constantly tweaked and overhauled to meet the ever-changing demands of PvP balance.

      With PvP being absent from Diablo 3 at launch, I would hope (probably in vain) that Blizzard might want to stop and think whether they could stick a few more degrees of separation between PvE and PvP play.

    • Re:Worthy successor? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:14AM (#39363525)

      I've been playing D2/D2X off and on for 10+ years. Have to agree about their attitude towards patching breaking [cookie] cutter builds / templates...

      * First they nerfed the cow level because they didn't want people leveling up to 99 so fast. So basically the bots win, and the legit players get screwed. Real nice.
      * Then they added "synergies" in their lame attempt to re-balance skills that no one ever used. Idea: How about "fixing" the useless skills so they are actually _usefull_. When was the last time you actually say a barb use 'Grim Ward'? Yeah me neither.
      * The "high-end" sets are a joke, except for Tal Rasha's.
      * Meanwhile, they completely ignored all the hammerdins they made godly with Engima. I am still miffed that an pure Martial Artist assassin can't do shit in Hell even with Godly Gear compared to a hammerdin spamming hammers.
      * Thanks for fixing the charge-stun-lock after all these years. NOT.

      Other non gameplay issues:

      * Blizzard has done fuck all with all the spammers in the channels. Why the hell can't I report a spammer? If 500 people reported a spammer he should be either muted, or banned.

      * If I make a game why the fuck can't the host decide if PK'ing is allowed or not?? What, encourage people to play _together_ in hard-core mode? What a concept!!

      Runewords are gone in D3. The fact that we had 3 separate currencies in D2/X: pgems, runes, and rares, was a GOOD thing.

      Blizzard just doesn't give a fuck about its customers -- especially after the bnetd and WOW glider incidents. it remains to be seen if the game design of D3 is any good, or if Blizzard jumped the shark by trying to making everything into a dumbed down WoW.

      • Runewords are gone in D3. The fact that we had 3 separate currencies in D2/X: pgems, runes, and rares, was a GOOD thing.

        Runes and jewels weren't added until LOD if I remember correctly. I'm sure they'll add them again.. in the next expansion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Piata ( 927858 )

      I'm in the beta and I was highly skeptical when I first started playing but after a while the game really grew on me. It's still Diablo and the new skill system seems to be based more around people making well thought out decisions as to what skill to use rather than "what skills do I spend my points on and if I pick the wrong skill am I totally screwed?".

      There's less room for customization (you don't allocate your attribute points on level up) and you can't assign skills to any key you want unless you enab

      • unless you enable elective mode

        Does your NDA allow you to elaborate a bit more on that?

        • There's no NDA in the beta. Non elective mode has 'slots' and you pick one of a selection of skills for each slot based on it's type. For example, pick a rage generator for this slot (bash, cleave, frenzy, etc), this slot you have to pick a rage spender, and this slot is for a utility skill. Elective mode just lets you pick any skills for your bar and gets rid of the slots.

  • May 15th (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:54AM (#39363275)

    Please note: nowhere in the press release does it say may 15th 2012.
    Just saying :)

  • Comments from a beta-tester (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm in the beta, there's been a lot of tweaking of the skill system. In the current iteration its pretty straightforward, with the skills broken down into a handful for each spell slot. Runes aren't complicated, each spell has a few runes that unlock as you level and you can choose your spell power-up effect. What I'm seeing in the beta looks promising for the final game.

    You WILL have to be online to play single-player, which is annoying, but I'm getting the game for free because of my WoW subscription s

  • My beta impressions, as a major fanboy... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by netsavior ( 627338 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @09:59AM (#39363329)
    Let me preface by saying, I played D1 and D2 to the exclusion of most other games on the market for YEARS. Everything blizzard (not in the warcraft universe) has me from day 1 till long after the fervor dies down. D3 is horrible.

    They limited multiplayer to 4 players per game, 8 player just wasn't working. If that continues to production, wow, what a blunder.

    The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
    The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices
    The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt
    Gear is the only way to differentiate from one player of the same class to another (since you don't really controll stat or skill.

    So basically you are left with the late game of DIablo 2 from day 1: Constant item hunt/grind.

    Not to mention, if you ever start to forget you are playing a game, there is something blatant to pull you back out. In-line tutorial messages like"don't forget you have a right-click attack too!" to "You have found new lore!" the random floating health orbs from kills make it feel like either all players are soul eating demons, or you are playing an 80s platformer.

    It honestly feels like a browser game trying to mimic Diablo2 late game (aka once a character was no longer fun to play), except with really really good graphics.

    It's like they are trying their very hardest to be different from the core engagement of diablo 2 (aka building and experimenting, not late game item grinding), like they can't even remember that had something like 1.5 Billion in sales with that game.
    Granted this is beta, but I just don't see them changing the fundamentals by may.

    • Re:My beta impressions, as a major fanboy... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by QuantumPion ( 805098 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:32AM (#39363753)

      The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
      The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices
      The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt
      Gear is the only way to differentiate from one player of the same class to another (since you don't really controll stat or skill.

      -Neither did previous games. If you made the "wrong" choice, your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over.
      -This was the case with every previous game as well. If you made your stats "wrong", your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over. The only real differentiation between characters was who had the better items. Nothing has changed.
      -Runes are not items any more. It is now just a method of selecting different skill abilities.

      If you think Diablo 2 (the multiplayer community anyway) was anything more than a perpetual item grind then you are kidding yourself. There was no building or experimenting in D2 because there was no respeccing period.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 )
        I think it's a fondamental flow in all Multiplayer games with PVP... The powergaming factor.
        br> Technically there is a billion possible combinations of skills and stats to suit the need of every roleplayer. But as soon as you face someone, you realise that your two options are:
        1-Be a weakling and die trying. 2-Be a powergamer with the best combination and have a chance of winning (Ignoring items and such). This is what killed UO PVP for me, everyone was Dex-Warrior or Tank-Mage. This is what killed NWN

        • This is what killed UO PVP for me, everyone was Dex-Warrior or Tank-Mage. This is what killed NWN for me, everyone was Fighter-Mage. This is what will kill D3 for me, everyone will be

          I can't comment on Diablo or UO, but with NWN this problem is solved simply by playing on servers where powergaming is strongly discouraged by DMs and community. Generally it's those that advertise themselves as "RP" rather than "action".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by way2slo ( 151122 )

        FYI, a patch came out for D2 a few years ago that allowed for a free character respec. I believe there was also a way to get another one, via some items.

      • If you think Diablo 2 (the multiplayer community anyway) was anything more than a perpetual item grind then you are kidding yourself. There was no building or experimenting in D2 because there was no respeccing period.

        The only thing true here is the no respeccing. Prior to the expansion that ruined the game there were a dozen builds for each class that could solo Hell Act 4 without anything close to the best gear (which were Rare items, not Uniques, Runewords, or Sets). Only post-expansion is what you are saying true, when everything became immune to several damage types and when not immune was still highly resistant.

        You complain about end-game item grinding but that is exactly what respeccing promotes, yet you compla

      • The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
        The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices
        The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt
        Gear is the only way to differentiate from one player of the same class to another (since you don't really controll stat or skill.

        -Neither did previous games. If you made the "wrong" choice, your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over.
        -This was the case with every previous game as well. If you made your stats "wrong", your character was gimped and you had to delete him and start the game all over. The only real differentiation between characters was who had the better items. Nothing has changed.
        -Runes are not items any more. It is now just a method of selecting different skill abilities.

        If you think Diablo 2 (the multiplayer community anyway) was anything more than a perpetual item grind then you are kidding yourself. There was no building or experimenting in D2 because there was no respeccing period.

        Not my experience at all, but then I had no interest in playing on battle.net, let alone worrying about maxing a character for PvP. For MP I played LAN games with my brother and a couple of friends (or direct IP; I don't think we were actually all in the same place) and PvP was never really a part of it. The most fun was usually the first trip through the game, when you still had a reasonable chance of finding improved equipment without resorting to doing the same thing over and over and over and over. By t

      • Let's just add fancy graphics to this game [progressquest.com] and call it a day.

    • Re:My beta impressions, as a major fanboy... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:41AM (#39363907)

      "The (very simple) skill system doesn't require/allow you to make any hard choices
      The stat system doesn't allow you to make ANY choices"

      The only result of the "choices" in D2 was being penalized for making an error. Players knew in advance, through extra-game research, what builds they wanted to create. The only option you had was to screw it up and be forced to re-roll, or not. This is not meaningful, and not fun.

      "The rune system provides the illusion of skill choices in the form of yet another item hunt"

      Your info is outdated. Runes are no longer dropped items, but unlock as you level.

      "So basically you are left with the late game of DIablo 2 from day 1: Constant item hunt/grind."

      Diablo games are by design a giant slot machine. Many people find this entertaining. Perhaps this genre is not for you.

      • The only option you had was to screw it up and be forced to re-roll, or not.

        That may be the only option, but thats not what made it fun. What made it fun was the challenge of getting from your level 1 character to that final stat setup you have in mind. If your final setup requires heavy investment in level 30 skills, for instance, then until level 30 you have a steep hill to climb. Builds like the enchantress in D2 were an achievement in-and-of-themselves, unless you were getting rushed by higher level characters which moots your point (you can hardly complain about a lack of res

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Let me preface by saying, I played D1 and D2 to the exclusion of most other games on the market for YEARS. Everything blizzard (not in the warcraft universe) has me from day 1 till long after the fervor dies down. D3 is horrible.

      Well, I was the same. Then I had the misfortune of getting Starcraft 2. Ignoring all the crap about 3 campaigns I'd have to buy and such... let's just say the game was good, but the crap around it, like B.net 2.0, sucked balls.

      You can clearly see where the execs at Activisio

  • Torchlight 2 (Score:5, Informative)

    by amaupin ( 721551 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @10:30AM (#39363719) Homepage
    Torchlight 1 scratched my Diablo itch in such a perfectly and satisfactory way that I now find myself looking forward to its sequel more than Diablo 3. And I'm not the only one. I doubt the makers of Torchlight will require me to have a constant internet connection just to play a single player, offline game.
    • This. Truth. It was hard to find a bigger DII/LoD fan than myself ... kept the games (and played them) on my hard drive longer than any other title I've ever owned. Now? Couldn't care less for D3 at this point and anxiously await Torchlight II and it's non-DRMed goodness. Buying two copies of T2 to play locally, and still will have $ left over from the price of D3, I'm sure.

    • I know it's cool to like small development houses, but I really don't understand the massive love for Torchlight. It was a cute game with a decent concept. The skill system, however, which is absolutely fundamental to ARPGs, was generally lackluster and without any depth or "wow" factor. Itemization was SO random that it became a massive headache just to sort through the hordes of affixes to find out what was good and what wasn't.

      Torchlight was a not-bad-enough game that I'll give them a second chance on th

      • Torchlight definitely wasn't as good as Diablo 1 or 2, but for their budget I think Runic Games did a good job. One big thing that I really enjoyed with Torchlight was the modding (something that Blizzard will never allow with Diablo 3). With Torchlight you could download new heroes, pets, items, quests and countless other enhancements. Torchlight 2 will also have mod support and you can use those mods in online co-op games (as long as everyone is using the same mods).

        Also, the guys at Runic Games are prett

  • I will be happy to see the 'd3 release prediction' articles end. What a cluster-chuck...you would think they have been 'raising Cain' for the last 3...4....12.... years. I hope the impending, requisite articles by the many apologists and shills telling the suckers how good online solo play is for their ultimate gameplay experience will be entertaining, not just ubiquitous. Haven't playedSC2, will be reloading D2 for entertainment fix b/c I'm no their data whore 'John' and don't need another moocher BFF.

  • The biggest thing about this game I think is the pay real money for items AH.

    If this is as big a success as I think it'll be, this'll open it up for a lot of real cash for items - and for mandatory pay to get the end game gear.

  • but the ribbons sure are cheap.
  • If I read that right, it sounds like they're actually rushing the game out the door!? Multi-player isn't ready, so instead of delaying another 3-6 months to get it just right, they're releasing it anyway. That would be unthinkable with the old (pre-WoW) Blizzard. But I think this is a different company, where a lot of the originally great designers and decision-makers have been replaced by people who are... less great.
  • See subject and mourn the loss of a once great company.

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