Diablo III Message Board older than one year ago

In almost a month on the dot, Diablo III will finally, honestly, truly launch. This is not a test. Opinions on the beta have been mixed, but still, it is the third entry in a positively massive franchise about everyone’s favorite spicy Latin brand of Satan. We’ve been waiting for more than a decade. All eyes are rightfully on Blizzard’s loot lusting opus. Which is a bit odd, if you think about it. What other genre is so completely indebted to one game? Moreover, is that the slowly festering mark of a stagnant game type? After the curious news that Runic seemingly intends to release Torchlight II a month outside the shadow of Blizzard’s behemoth, I got in touch with Runic CEO Max Schaefer to clarify that comment and chat a bit about the future of the genre he helped pioneer.

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Diablo III’s Barbarian is quite the nuanced character. His culture is… well, and then there was this exploding mountain that… OK, he kills stuff with axes big enough to be chopped down by normal axes. Also, he leaps onto his squishy loot pinata enemies like Mario if he’d been the victim of an oh-so-trendy gritty reboot. Honestly, though, Diablo isn’t really the place to live out my fantasy of Reginald Spleenfury, the exceedingly well-read and business-like barbarian who struggles to push back against a society that refuses to understand his ways – and is also largely illiterate and has yet to invent business. So I’ll probably just roll his underachieving, overkilling slacker cousin Powthwack Kabiffzott and check my brain at the door.

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In much the same, incredibly depressing way we’re all destined to become our parents, I tend to believe gaming’s spiritual successors slowly but surely inherit oddly specific qualities of their forefathers. For instance, Serious Sam riffed on Duke Nukem, only for Serious Sam: BFE to spend years in uncharacteristic silence with nary a peep as to its development progress. As time passed, I began to worry that Torchlight II would suffer the same fate, ultimately following in Diablo’s languid footsteps. But then I felt an odd fluttering sensation in my Anger Regions. Is this… optimism?

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“Survival depends on striking a balance between hatred and discipline” is, by a strange coincidence, RPS’ mantra. Only without the discipline. So we’re a little galled to discover that Diablo III’s Demon Hunter has the same outlook on life. Here’s a look at what an armed and fully operational Demon Hunter can up to. She seems to be quite the whirlwind of destruction in the right hands, with a brutal mix of dark magicks and explodey techology.(more…)

Following Blizzard's recent announcement that the publisher would be temporarily excising PvP functionality from its upcoming role-playing game Diablo III in the hopes of getting it out to stores sooner, we expected we'd hear a finalized release date for the game soon after. And now we know.

Blizzard today revealed that Diablo III will finally be released on May 15, both at retail and via Battle.net. Those who pre-purchase the game via Battle.net will get to play "as soon as the servers go live"--just not in PvP of course.

Granted, the vast bulk of the comments from that previous announcement seemed totally fine with leaving the PvP for another day, so long as they could get their hands on the single-player and co-op content all the sooner.

Of course, the real issue with this forthcoming release date (as mentioned on twitter by Giant Bomb family friend Giancarlo Varanini) is that it's hitting stores right around the time most American students have finals, all but ensuring more Fs than society has ever seen at a single time. Grades will have to be repeated, whole years of college will go down the drain, and ten years from now, an entire generation of role-playing fans will suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of a gas station counter studying up for their air conditioning repair exams while wistfully staring out the smog-stained window, wondering where it all went wrong.

Thanks, Blizzard.

Blizzard said this: “Starting that day, gamers with a thirst for fast-paced action and adventure will be able to purchase Diablo III at retailers throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. In addition, gamers in the regions above as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil will be able to buy Diablo III digitally via Blizzard’s Battle.net® website.” The Russian version of the game is delayed until June 7th.

So that is who can buy Diablo III on 15th of May.

Morning all, and welcome to a quick and dirty round-up of all the news semi-fit to print that just happened to occur over the course of the weekend. You know, that time period where we drink ourselves into a 48 hour stupor that pretty much always ends up with you face down on the couch, screaming into a pillow in the hopes that the sheer force of volume and rage spewing from your body will somehow will the pain, grogginess, and two-day-old Chinese food out of your body? No? Never had this happen before? Man, you guys are missing out.

Anyhow, here's all the news that took place over the course of my usual weekend screaming fits, including news about Diablo III's upcoming release, the fate of UK retailer GAME, and some tidbits about another years-late movie-to-game adaptation that probably nobody actually wanted. Enjoy!

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The general mantra of Blizzard regarding Diablo III and its oft-delayed release is that it'll come "when it's done." Now it's coming "when it's almost done," if this late Friday announcement from the company is to be believed (it is).

Posting up official word on the Battle.net blog, the company let it be known that the sticky wicket that's kept Diablo III from moving on to life at retail is the PvP feature, which the blog described as not "living up to our standards." So, for the time being, PvP is actually being excised from the game in order to help get the single-player and co-op functionality out to retail sooner, given that both those aspects of the game are very nearly done.

Once the PvP is complete, Blizzard plans to release a patch that will turn the functionality back on. Of course, all of this messaging stopped short of actually announcing a release date for Diablo III, because lord knows that would just be way too easy at this point. Still, with PvP apparently out for at least a short period, one can surmise that the release date can't be too far off.

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We've reported previously about the fiduciary woes currently plaguing UK retailer GAME, who I was not-so-gently informed by the Kingdom-dwelling population of Giant Bomb is not only one of the biggest video game retailers in the UK, but rather the biggest by a fairly wide margin. In my defense, I've been to your country twice, and one of those times I was in Nottingham for 48 hours. So it's not like I've really had much time to soak up your retail culture to the fullest extent possible.

Anyway, while the previous word signaled some serious doom and gloom for the retailer, apparently that doom and gloom took hold yesterday. Following a report from MCV (which sourced The Sunday Times), GAME has reportedly contracted financial firm Rothschild to help sell the company outright. The report says that GameStop may have some interest in the Spanish arm of GAME, but that the UK section of the company may end up going into administration.

GAME had been wrestling with credit issues for quite some time, issues which came to a head just a few weeks ago when it became known that the retailer would not be stocking a number of high profile products, including titles like Mass Effect 3 and Street Fighter x Tekken.

Based on the comments from the last time I reported on this, I'm guessing most UK players won't be too terribly sad to see GAME go. My question is, who picks up the slack if GAME goes away entirely? Aren't there hardly any specialty game shops in the UK nowadays?

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I've been hearing occasional snark-filled whispers about the possibility of a video game based on the cult crime movie The Boondock Saints for a while now, and apparently those whispers have proved true.

Those who were in attendance at a small announcement event at South by Southwest this weekend got their first look at the game, which is in development at Critical Mass Interactive, who are the makers of this game and also some other stuff you've maybe actually heard of, albeit in a purely mercenary capacity.

The teaser shown at the event effectively showed nothing, save for a couple of character models based on the avenging brothers of the film's story, played by Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus respectively. Joystiq says the actors will be voicing their characters in the game, as is David Della Rocco. No word on Willem Dafoe possibly returning to voice the psychotic gay FBI agent of the first film, but I wouldn't put any money on it happening.

Considering what a catastrophe the sequel, Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day, was, the fact that this is a developer better known for loaning out members of its team for contract work than any of its own, original projects, and the fact that franchise director Troy Duffy's decision making over the last two decades has largely been defined by his raging cocaine habit, I'm maybe going to remain skeptical about this one for the time being.

It’s done when it’s done has long been the Blizzard maxim, but apparently no longer. Diablo III will be released before it’s entirely done, Blizzard having recently revealed that it will be launched without its Player vs Player mode. Uh-oh. Admitted lead designer Jay Wilson, “the PvP game and systems aren’t yet living up to our standards… After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete.”

“All of which is just about complete.” ALL OF WHICH IS JUST ABOUT COMPLETE.

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Normally we use the made-up term ‘Diablolike’ to mean a game in the vein of hacky-slashy dungeon-crawling, but in this instance I use it to mean ‘a game that really, really wants to look like Diablo III.’ From colour palette to fonts, the look of Dungeon King is to my mind as shameless as a guy wearing one of those ‘dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians’ t-shirt, but I post it because it’s quite the technically-accomplished piece for a browser/Flash game. It looks great, the essential running around and chopping up monsters stuff is fast and fluid, and it’s got its compulsion loops running at maximum efficiency: you won’t want to stop until… well, you won’t want to stop. That’s the point.(more…)

Blizzard Entertainment had pegged Diablo III for a March release, but as fans had started to suspect, the studio might not actually hit that timeframe. Turns out that’s true, based on news during the company's fiscal call today.

Diablo III is now being targeted for a release sometime during the company’s second quarter. For reference, Activision Blizzard’s second quarter ends on June 30, so the game could arrive at any point before then.

Could. Hopefully.

“We’ve implemented changes to the game that we believe will greatly increase the game experience,” said Blizzard president and co-founder Michael Morhaime.

Morhaime said there would be “more details” about the game’s release date “in the coming weeks.”