I like the new art direction, but then again I love WoW's art direction/style and it seems D3 is heavily influenced by it. Smart move on there part IMO. WoW has such a huge fan base and it will make marketing easy to WoW players who never played a Diablo game to try it.

What annoys me is the way they're trying to squeeze money from the playerbase in a really backhanded sort of way.

There's a difference between providing an additional quality-of-life service for a charge, and charging you extra for the basics. Paid character transfers are fine. Paying $25 for a non-existent horse? That's just penny pinching. And there's always a kicker too. It's not just $25 for a horse, it's that you then have to wait in an artificial line to even get the privilege to buy it. It's a digital piece of information! why is there a line?

Then the same thing with SC2. You buy the game, and obviously the 3 armies are in it. But you only get to play the campaign as one of them, and then guess what, you have to buy two more "expansions" to get the full access. But as with the horse, wait there's more! When those expansions do release, they'll come with additions to their focused race which the people who don't buy them won't have access to. I just don't get that.

LOL Eld you lose all credibility in your argument from here forward for choosing those images as an example of how the art should be...

Eld was being sarcastic.

and he did it well

I was hoping if someone missed the necromancers choice hint, or wow gayness, they'd atleast notice the peak at the horadric crafting cube.

:P

haha good! i have seen much worse from diablo fanboys, you never know!

Originally Posted by Slum

haha good! i have seen much worse from diablo fanboys, you never know!

Yeah, I know.

It's a bit sad when all they see is "world of warcraft!!" whenever someone does a diffuse-textured game, when torchlight is ten times the more stylistic "cartoony" style compared to diablo3 and still manage to pull of a fantasticly dark and broody world.

To me, the oppressive atmosphere is still there, in Diablo 3. The world was changed when the earth stone was destroyed, and it's been a while since then as well, so of course there's changes, but it still has the things that made Diablo 2 great (at least to me it does). Killer monsters, killer loot, good but not overpowering storyline, an amazing look to the design of everything, and amazing blizzard art. The one and only thing I'm a little disappointed by is the lack of the assassin class, cause I LOVE dropping traps, and killing huge numbers of baddies. That was my favorite class to play. But that's it. I'm loving the art direction, and everything else I've seen so far.

On the cinematics complaints, they don't really hold water. The "class" cinematics are just introducing you to the class, that's it. They're not supposed to be full-fledged, high res cinematics, like the announcement cinematic. It'd be bad ass if Blizzard made high res intro cinematics for each class, I'd absolutely love that, but those take a LOT of time, and effort, and money, so I'm not surprised they left it to in game assets. The REAL (for lack of a better word) cinematics will be in the game like they always are, to push the story forward.

Well, that's my thoughts anyway, and I'm no WoW fan, or blizzard apologist. I just don't see how people can complain about Diablo 3. The second one was over ten years ago, of course thing's are gonna be a bit different now

Someone help me out here. I fail to see how this looks like WoW...

Looks like my glorious Diablo 2 has an amazing successor. Haters gonna hate.

just got back from blizzcon. this game looks amazing.

it'd be a blast to work on their environment team. textures look great. I've gotten over any disappointments i had with the art direction.

Damn you Sectaurs, would've been nice to meet up.
I'm looking forward to more KP monsters... Also giant frog Witchdoctor skill is pretty awesome;)

My favorite game of all time, and it's not even out.

Originally Posted by ThE_BirD

Damn you Sectaurs, would've been nice to meet up.
I'm looking forward to more KP monsters... Also giant frog Witchdoctor skill is pretty awesome;)

I saw you at one of the panels... if you heard someone yell out 'BIRD' when they introduced you, that was me. so, that's kind of like meeting.


and yeah, I was floored by your fx system.

@Jeremy S.: Demon hunter is the Assasin class really and will have traps, etc.

Diablo3 Gameplay Panel at Blizzcon. Tons of cool stuff and great insight into the art direction, etc. First 2 parts mainly about the Demon Hunter but it goes into everything else as well.

Worth sitting through anyway.

You Tube

You Tube

You Tube

You know I said 700 skills was alot...well...er....97,000,000,000 builds per class! Whoa.....

You Tube

P.S. AAAARRRGH!..I want this game bad!

Gimme Itam!

12 SOJ for Cham and Ber Rune!
Imp Shanks and Loathe Grasps for 7%ML Windforce
Trading 39/15IAS jewel for 100pdsc+20Life
SOJ for Raven Spiral!

LF: Ethereal 6 socket Superior Colossal Blade.
Trading for .08 Shakos! Name your price




God damn I miss this game!!!!!

mmm sweet characters in that game ^_^

I guess that's the kind of information I miss out on when I don't pay for the stream that gives it out... I SO WANT THIS GAME RIGHT NOW!!!! God damn, that demon hunter class looks perfect. Thanks for those videos, I guess I have no lingering disappointments in the game left. It's pure win now

>>>WARNING DIABLO3 AWESOME OVERLOAD<<<

Crafting Sanctuary Panel Video's. More panel videos from Blizzcon. With great environment art insight.

And a whole bunch of other awesome shizzle.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/699952

Any of you play Torchlight?

Originally Posted by Cojax

Someone help me out here. I fail to see how this looks like WoW...

Looks like my glorious Diablo 2 has an amazing successor. Haters gonna hate.

heh! thats simple, role an arcane mage, and go to some instense...Now scroll back the camera view, rotate it -40 degrees horizontally and +30 degrees vertically. You will get your answer.

I would strongly recommend you should do this attempt in instence near iron forge.

but ya I am seriously down for Diablo 3, its been in works for far too long and I cant wait to get meh hanz on eet.

The Crafting Sanctuary panel was AMAZING!! Great info in there, really pumps me up to play this game NOW.

And BigJohn, Yeah, I've played Torchlight. Enjoyed the shit out of that one too. Waiting for the second one to help ease the tension of waiting for Diablo 3 ;)

Originally Posted by Jeremy-S

The Crafting Sanctuary panel was AMAZING!! Great info in there, really pumps me up to play this game NOW.

Yeah. very cool. And its settled my one niggling doubt about D3. I was worried they might be focusing on the balancing of the game in the PvP game and nerfing the skills which would effect the PvE game. But they mention it in the Q&A in part 4. And they are not going to do that. Cool.

@Bigjohn. Yep. I play torchlight also. Pretty cool. Never quite got into it fully for some reason. Although I still pick it up and play it now and again.

Arcane Mage in central Ironforge:



Arcane Mage in Blackrock Depths:




Protection Paladin in Ugarde Keep in Northrend because the chains and stuff are a closer match:



My graphics settings are not set to max in these. If I had thought of it I would have at least turned the shadows on max.

They don't look 'that close'. Give me a break. Ya they both use hand painted textures but Blizzard has been using hand painted textures for years now. Diablo 3 isn't using a WoW style its using Blizzards style of art. Diablo 1 and 2 art styles where way different from all the other blizzard games at the time (mostly because it was technically a different studio, Blizzard North). Bottom line Diablo 3 is not WoW and it looks fine...in fact it looks great. IMO.