TWSK Episode 30 – Diablo 3 Media Event Show!
TWSK Episode 30 – Diablo 3 Media Event Show!
All the bits of the press kit are available for download in a package. This includes all the screenshots below, FAQ sheets in various languages, some concept art and the B-roll footage. All the images are in one pack and the B-roll footage is in its own download.
A huge thank you to Blizzard, especially Bashiok, for inviting us to this event!
Enjoy the bacon.
The Worldstone Keep 
August 1, 2011 at 1:47 AM
I really like the ui they came up with, including the banner screen.
Thanks for the show gentlemen.
August 1, 2011 at 2:13 AM
You’re very welcome! Banners are going to be pretty sweet, can’t wait for my CE banner crest!
August 1, 2011 at 3:35 AM
Could you upload the original B-Roll movie file to megaupload or something? Would really appreciate that, thanks.
August 2, 2011 at 7:20 AM
Just finished last night, you can find the link in either the Ep 30 or 30.5 post.
August 1, 2011 at 12:15 PM
I wanted to see a picture of the DH’s resource sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much,
August 1, 2011 at 12:18 PM
I can do a rough mock up from memory when I get home today if you want.
August 1, 2011 at 1:34 PM
That would be awesome!
August 1, 2011 at 1:59 PM
Kewl 😀
I think it was mentioned on the pod cast as well that Hatred was crimson red and Discipline was blue. Blue like the Barbrian’s Fury in WWI Gameplay?
August 1, 2011 at 1:16 PM
Another good ‘un gentlemen.
Though my initial HappyHappyJoyJoy turned into NotSoHappyHappyJoyJoy pretty quick after reading about all those questionable decisions/changes made to the game.
A quote that sums it up pretty well for me (at the moment):
“It’s pretty clear to me that the purpose of D3 is to generate a continuous source of income for bliz. They could care less about balance and player enjoyment. The real money AH and the lack of skill points both indicate to me that all they want is players grinding away for items to sell so they can get their cut. They have removed the need for multiple characters. All people need now is 5 character slots since all characters will have all skills, no need for more now. This will keep players in the end game more grinding the good gear that will earn bliz the money they so obviously desire. It is sad to think that I spent 3 years following this “game” only to find out that its not a game at all but just a means for bliz to milk idiots who want to buy in game items for cash.”
Absence of offline mode (and the bull and preposterous reasoning by R. Pardo) + the new oversimplified skills/passives system were the two other main things that made me a happy camper… NOT.
Anyway – thanks for bringing most of my questions to the table. Was satisfied with the answers though I hoped for some other revelations regarding the “has community feedback made it into the game” one.
I don’t know who of you guys it was, but the comparison of the barbarian’s impractical and disproportionate hammer in the B-Roll footage to something out of an 80s Conan The Barbarian-like flick was actually spot on:
And thanks in advance for making all the contents of the press kit available for download. This is indeed much appreciated.
August 1, 2011 at 1:37 PM
Hmm, I think people are getting stuck on the small details of the big picture. Most people are formulating opinions on what “might” come to pass. The way people discuss the RMAH is that everyone will turn into a farmer and flood the RMAH with tons of items that will sell like hot-cakes, raking in the dough for Blizzard while they laugh all the way to the bank. NOT TRUE. If everyone suddenly did become item farmers, and flooded the RMAH with items, one, this would drive prices down to dirt cheap since there would be an abundance of elite gear, two, no one would pay top dollar, or any dollar for that reason when they could obtain them through easier means.
Now it’s even harder for me to jump on board with the RMAH hate train when we could have gotten stuck with a pay to play model, or even a micro-transaction model. The way I look at this RMAH system, I have no problem with Blizzard making some coin off this, hell they spent the time and resources developing and supporting the game, why shouldn’t they get paid for their ongoing efforts? The thing I really appreciate is, I don’t have to spend a dime above the purchase price of the game to support them, or even make money from the game. I can tell you flat out I would have been bummed with a monthly fee, or a micro-transaction model (esp a micro-transaction model).
The thing I’m more focused on, is the actual gameplay and story-line of the game. I know it’s hard to think about this stuff and visualize it since the game isn’t out yet, and its easy to speculate doomsday with what they’ve announced. But given the track record of Blizzard, I’m willing to bet the fears of the masses will never come to pas, and Diablo 3 will be enthralling and enjoyable for damn near everyone that buys a copy.
It’s also not really a matter of simplifying the skill system by removing skill points, it shifting customization to, in my opinion, a better way, and more enjoyable way of doing so. Again, the rune system is kind of hard to grasp without getting your hands on it and playing around. But let’s remember to how awesome customization with skill points and stat points were in D2, how many skills did you actually end up using? Runes really opens the door to a wide range of experimentation with different skill combinations and the rune effects on each of these skills.
I guess bottom line is, reserve judgement till after the game ships and you get some hands on experience with it.
August 1, 2011 at 1:38 PM
[…] The Worldstone Keep […]
August 1, 2011 at 1:49 PM
Thanks for the link love! We’re getting lots of traffic from you guys today!
August 1, 2011 at 2:03 PM
Hey! I want some internet glory too 😀 I originally made a topic on DFans collecting the sites that attended the press event and I made a repost on the battle.net forums.
With that said, I am glad that MD choose to list them on BlizzPlanet too even adding some additional sites. Props to him ofc.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27822632286&postId=278201085104&sid=3000#0
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27822632286&postId=278201085104&sid=3000#0
August 1, 2011 at 2:10 PM
You’re the man Doomscream!!!! Thank you!
August 1, 2011 at 3:22 PM
Since it seems that I have too much free time I made another topic on DFans, listing exclusive interviews with [b]Blizzard Devs[/b].
Although I mentioned that I have too much free time I am still too lazy to make a new post here so I will just provide you with the link.
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/26370-exclusive-interviews/#entry622456
August 2, 2011 at 7:22 AM
Ooooo, excellent stuff, thanks Doomscream!
August 1, 2011 at 3:04 PM
Epic Sword of Ultimate… Cutting
August 1, 2011 at 10:06 PM
I’m in the middle of moving house (and continents!) atm, so I have to put off listening for a while, but thanks for posting all this info! I’ll have to content myself with looking at the pretty pictures for the moment, but I can’t wait to give the show a listen.
Looks like they gave you a fair bit of info and a good bit of hands-on experience with the game as it stands though, which is good to see.
August 1, 2011 at 10:28 PM
Where are you moving to Motorskull? And when will you return? We always value your feedback on the show!
August 2, 2011 at 12:00 AM
I am moving from Australia to the US of A, so I’m without my proper computer and have to be very careful of bandwidth used at the moment as well 😦 I get to the US on the 9th of August so *hopefully* I’ll have the comp up and running soon after (assuming it survives the trip >.>).
Why in hell would I want to move from Australia to the US? To get married! That happens at the end of August 😀
After that, I just have to adjust to life as an American. This should prove little obstacle, since, thanks to my fiancee, I already own a cowboy hat. 😛
August 2, 2011 at 7:23 AM
Hahaha, that’s awesome man!!!! So many questions, I’ll spare you… for now 😀
August 5, 2011 at 7:26 PM
I was out of town since Sunday, and I just got back and listened in.
Ugh. I am not sold on the skill point / trait point elimination thing. Are the character levels being rescaled along with this change?
I don’t think you guys brought this up, but one huge advantage to making PvP more of a deathmatch style than a last-man-standing (LMS) style game is it seems to make long-cooldown skills naturally better balanced. If you have a 2-minute cooldown skill in a 5-minute deathmatch, you’ll get to use it two or three times. However, I was worried those long cooldown skills would have been OP in a LMS PvP match.
Also, is anyone else bothered by the chest clipping the railing in the Diablo III_beta_Wizard is rewarded.jpg file in the Press Kit gameplay images? I would expect a little more Blizzard polish than that, even if the other images are sweet.
August 23, 2011 at 12:45 AM
Interesting note, and this is ONLY if you cannot take money out of the game and deposit it into your real life bank account.
Blizzard will eventually take all money, even if it is at 10c incriments. Once that money gets put into the system it will go to blizzard, no matter how long it takes.
Example: Put in 1 dollar, and buy an item for 1 Dollar. Now the person who sold you the item has 90c and blizzard has 10c. You are now stuck with 90c forever until you spend it in the auction house, which if you do, 10c of that will go to blizzard. Eventually leading to no money left for the players and that 1 Dollar to blizzard until you put more money into the system and so on.
Blizzard is intentionally using words to cover up the system if my first statement is true. Like you folks said in the podcast blizzard has no intention of making money which is 100% false.
Now, if you never participate in this system, more power to you. But people will and this trend will continue onto other games. If this works out how blizzard wants, we will see a new form of greed in video games.
August 23, 2011 at 10:19 AM
You can’t take money out of your Blizzard e-balance, but you can choose to have the profits you make from selling an item go to your Blizzard e-balance or cash it out for real world currency. If that option didn’t exist, then I would see your point in saying Blizzard is just being greedy about it. If it were just the Blizzard e-balance system with no option to cash out, then your theory would be correct and Blizzard would end up with every dollar used in the RMAH. Even if that were the case, I still wouldn’t be mad at it, you can choose to use it or not to use it. It’s really up to you, same with playing the game in general.
I’m not sure exactly what we said in the podcast, but I apologize if I said Blizzard has no intention of making money. I knew from the second they explained it at the media event they were going to make a truck load of cash and more from this system, and to be completely honest, I was happy about it and thought it was brilliant.
What I believe I actually said though, was making money was not their primary goal in creating a system like this. I specifically asked Jay if it was, and he said when the idea was being pitched, it was more about what was best for the game and not about making money. Some people will choose to not believe that, but I believe Jay. He said something along the lines of, we’re not sure how much we’ll make, but we’re pretty sure we won’t lose money off of it.
Robert Pardo was more forthcoming and flat out said, we hope this will be a viable and sustainable way to make money. Again, I have nothing against that in the slightest. They are a business and do have shareholders to answer to. But the heart of it comes down to the games they make, the atmosphere and energy around that place, it all goes into making incredible games with the game experience first. Now if they figure out smart ways to make money off their games, so they can continue to support and develop for that title, with little to no negative impact on the community (no impact in my opinion), how can you bash them for that?
I do believe Diablo 3 will be an incredible game, and the things people are all up in arms about now won’t really be that big of a deal in the end product. I think it’s just easy to focus on those things while the game is still in production.
Hope this clears some things up.
August 28, 2011 at 3:24 PM
What I get from your post is that money = polish.
I still refuse to believe this, if a game sells well it sells well. But for their words to hinge on the fact that if we make more money the game will be more polished is pretty rubbish. Indie game developers have been making some amazing games on very low budgets.
Your quote “we’re not sure how much we’ll make, but we’re pretty sure we won’t lose money off of it” Of course they will. It’s just interesting the way he words things. How can they lose money on a virtual system? They can write code to basically generate cash. Video games have turned from an art, or escape to a job. Masterfully so in the sense that they are marketed perfectly to keep people playing and paying.
I actually believe that this system is taking away development time that could be allocated to other useful systems. Someone is getting paid a lot of money to spend their time on this I’m sure. (Speculation) Would you rather have this development time spent on a new class, act or set of armor instead? Time = money no matter how you look at it and I think this is such a huge waste of it.
It seems as if blizzard has convinced you that since their time as a company, they cannot sustain themselves without a regular cash income. Where as previously (Diablo 2, starcraft) they gave regular patch updates consistently without anything in return. If they wanted more money, they would make a huge expansion pack or get started on the next game. Why has this changed? Are they unable to do so anymore or is this just greed.
What are your thoughts on money = power? Do you think people should be able to pay their way through a game like diablo just to make their character more powerful.
Again, if this works successfully it will most likely be implemented in other games aswell, which is not a trend I would like to see happen.
Thanks for replying to my first post, I listen to your podcast as much as I can and its great free content, you guys are great entertainers and I hope you keep on discussing these important issues.