Stay a while, and listen...
Blizzard has announced that the long-awaited Diablo III will be released on May 15, 2012, and is available for digital pre-order right now. Whether you like the announced changes from Diablo II or not, it's hard not to be a little excited for this one.
Diablo II was released in 2000. 12 years ago. I used to play that game nonstop, and still probably end up reinstalling it once a year. I always defaulted to blizz/orb sorc.
I haven't played the beta, but from what I've read and seen, Diablo III does have some major changes from D2. The character classes are a little different. Gone are the paladins and sorceresses. The new game will have 5 classes: barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk, and demon hunter; but this time you can choose their gender. From the gameplay footage I've seen, it seems like they've tried to keep the dark atmosphere from the earlier games, but at the same time used a lot of the WoW character design, which has always been a little cartoony.
There's no lan capability anymore, any multiplayer must be done online. And they've cut the max players per game from 8 down to 4, which sucks if you have more than 3 friends. No more 8-man Baal runs :( But as you can see from the gameplay videos, more than 4 would be madness on the screen. Oh, and PvP is confined to an arena now.
I think the most interesting change has little to do with actual gameplay. There will be an in-game auction house to buy and sell your items. And even more game-changing is a real money auction house. No more need to make an "occy for pul" game, or resort to D2JSP. I'm still not sure how I feel about this, as it wasn't part of the beta. I'm a little curious to see it in action. I just hope the real money auction house doesn't get run by Chinese gold farmers like WoW. And part of me is worried about the item schemes. I hope they're more like D2 and less like WoW. I'm all for set items and their bonuses. And runewords. Like, I played Torchlight and couldn't stand their item system. I want to be able to reach top-tier gear, not have the gear available be ever-changing to match my level.
In any case, I can't wait. I'll be playing D2 in the meantime.
And there better be a secret cow level somewhere in there...
I know what you and your kind are planning...
