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  (Source: Blizzard)

  (Source: Blizzard)

  (Source: Blizzard)
Blizzard ends the suspense and announces Diablo III

Blizzard Entertainment today confirmed it is working on Diablo III, a video game long rumored to be in production with little chatter from Blizzard.  Announced for the first time during Blizzard's 2008 WorldWide Invitational (WWI), the company also provided a handful of game details to help draw interest to the game.

Even though Diablo, Mephisto and Baal were slain in Diablo II, Tristam is again under siege by evil creatures that players will have to eliminate.  The game is being designed to focus more on cooperative play instead of soloing through the world.

As expected, cooperative and P2P gameplay will be available online using Battle.net, Blizzard's free online service that launched with the original Diablo in 1997.  The only game that hasn't used Battle.net has been World of Warcraft, so unconfirmed rumors reporting Diablo III would be subscription-based have been debunked.

DIII gamers will play in a new 3D graphics environment based on Havok physics, where they will be able to interact and even destroy the environment.  Diablo III will also have a random-level generator to make each new level unique.  

Similar to Dungeon Siege and other newer role-playing games, the latest Diablo will offer full zoom capability and a customizable hotbar to help access inventory and skills.  There are no more health or mana potions, as players will now have to walk across floating orbs to get their health benefit.  Armor will also be class specific unlike in Diablo or Diablo II.

There will be five different classes in Diablo III, with the barbarian class making a comeback, using Cleave, Ground Stomp, Seismic Slam and Whirlwind.  A new class will be made, Witch Doctor, who will be able to use ancient tribal magic to help slay enemies.  He'll be able to use Mass Confusion, Soul Harvest, Firebomb, LocustSwarm and Horrify while also having abilities similar to the Necromancer from Diablo II, such as summoning pets.

Deckard Cain, a central figure in the first two games, will make a triumphant comeback into Diablo III, though his specific role is unknown.

Gamers became excited about a possible third Diablo video game after Blizzard acquired the Diablo3.com domain name in May.  The team responsible for creating the previous Diablo video games, programmers from Blizzard North, has seen a mass exodus to a company they created in 2003, so it will be a new team creating Diablo III.

Diablo II and Diablo II:  Lord of Destruction have both sold more than 20 million copies since their release in 2000 and 2001.

Blizzard has launched the Diablo III web site and an official new trailer for the video game can be found by clicking here.

The game will be released for both the PC and Mac, but a potential release date for Diablo III has not been announced.  It is likely Diablo III will release after Starcraft II, which also has not been given a solid release date.

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Hard to know when it'll come out
By wordsworm on 6/28/08, Rating: 0
RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By bodar on 6/28/2008 9:39:51 PM , Rating: 2
Watch the gameplay trailer. Its mechanics are just like D2 and not like WoW, unless you count the fact that they added a hotbar. I don't know about the sysreqs. There seemed to be a lot of crazy effects going on there. Looks like I'll be building that new rig after all.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By StevoLincolnite on 6/29/2008 12:09:17 AM , Rating: 5
Blizzard usually make there games run on the lowest common denominator. (Thus Intel Integrated stuff).

When Diablo 1 was released, it was capable of running on almost any PC, Same went with StarCraft, which could even run on a 486, despite it's requirements wanting a Pentium 133.

Diablo 2 ran rather well on even the Cyrix Chips with a 2mb video card. (It wanted something like a 233mhz Pentium, although people with slower systems managed to run it fine).

WarCraft 3 can run on Mid-level Pentium 3's paired up with a Geforce 256, although if there are allot of units it will get bogged down.

World of WarCraft basically runs on any Intel Integrated card, even the ones without TnL and Pixel Shading Support, so I would Imagine that StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 should be able to run comfortably on even the Intel X3100 which seems to perform better in the Direct X 9 Shader path than the Direct X 7 and 8.

You don't need lots of cool effects, just smart artists that can make the most of what they have available, take the Wii for example, allot of the games are not *that* Graphically intensive, but they certainly look awesome thanks to the artists and smart coders.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By wordsworm on 6/29/2008 12:43:27 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
they certainly look awesome thanks to the artists and smart coders.


Yeah, but usually that's not how things are done. But I'm sure you're right in reference to Blizzard. I got Diablo 2 on PIV with 768MB RAM/64MB ATI Radeon. It ran very nicely.

In any case, I must say I wouldn't be surprised to find that folks out there are manipulated by games like Crysis to buy the latest and greatest hardware so that they can run the game. I hope it's the same for Diablo 3.

But, I can't help but wonder how long we'll have to wait. I figured StarCraft 2 would have come out by last Christmas considering how much publicity they got last summer - but still I'm waiting.

Anyways, don't count on this game not breaking into 'new' territory. From what I have understood, they're throwing physics into the mix, which should make everything a lot more interesting. That's fairly new stuff.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By Calin on 6/29/2008 6:47:54 AM , Rating: 2
I've run Diablo 2 on a 600 MHz Duron, with 256 or 512 MB of RAM and a GeForce MX 400 (no T&L).
I've also ran two instances of Diablo 2 on a Pentium 3 733 MHz with 512 MB of RAM, without ill effects (it had a lower video card, NVidia TNT2 on AGP)


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By StevoLincolnite on 6/29/2008 9:44:27 PM , Rating: 2
I used to run it on a Celeron 300, 64mb of ram and a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee 16mb card, with the game maxxed out.

However, you don't even need a 3D accelerator to run Diablo 2, as the Software Renderer is actually fairly decent for what it is.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By Frank M on 6/30/2008 12:07:06 AM , Rating: 5
I used to run it on a cardboard box tied to an etch-a-sketch.


By 1078feba on 6/30/2008 11:17:02 AM , Rating: 2
Saran Wrap for a screen, right?

Yours is the funnniest one liner I have read in quite some time.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By afkrotch on 6/30/08, Rating: -1
By Yawgm0th on 6/30/2008 5:11:27 AM , Rating: 4
quote:
Sure couldn't get WarCraft 3 to run on my Pentium 3 600mhz, 512 megs PC100, 5400 rpm hdd, and Rage Mobility 8 meg. That was a 1 year old laptop at the time.

Shenanigans. You might have purchased the laptop only a year prior, but it is very misleading to call that a year-old laptop.

Pentium 4 came out in 2000 and by 2001 almost all new Intel-based laptops were using Pentium 4s or P4-based Celerons. Even in 2000 most laptops contained better hardware. War3 came out in the summer of 2002.

When War3 came out, I was running a year-old low-end (maybe 1400 or 1600) Athlon XP with onboard VIA graphics -- which were notoriously buggy and slow at the time -- and the game ran just fine. I had to update the drivers for wisps to show up because of a bug, but the game was quite playable.

I played Diablo, Warcraft II, and Starcraft on a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB of RAM and Windows 95. I cherish memories of online Starcraft over 28k, 36k, and 56k modems. The same applies to Diablo II on a 233MHz Pentium 2, 128MB of RAM, Windows 98 and more dial-up Internet.

Blizzard has consistently developed games that run on what people own. If you pick up a Blizzard game and your computer can't run it, it's a solid sign that your computer is nearing obsolescence or is already obsolete.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By Screwballl on 6/30/2008 12:58:40 PM , Rating: 2
that is one area that the original programmers failed to look at... the future.. sure it ran well on older systems but the window was limited to what 800x600? That is fine full screen or windowed at 1024x768 but with as many 17" and bigger resolutions that came up quick.. it would have been nice to see some higher resolutions available or a patch to allow it to work with the higher resolutions and widescreen support.
Hopefully DIII will work well with older (DX8, integrated) and newer (DX 10.1) systems.


By PWNettle on 7/1/2008 3:12:57 PM , Rating: 2
You could say this for all or most games of that time. Blizard rules but can't see the future or know their games will persist for years and years beyond expectation.

All good modern games are designed to be much more flexible with resolutions.

I seriously doubt D3 will work with Dx8. Blizzard makes solid engines that produce great visuals without requiring monster PCs but I doubt they'll go that archaic. Watch the gameplay demo on the D3 site (it's very spiffy) - I think you'll need Dx9. I would even say you'll want a fairly decent system for full visuals, since the game looks fairly visually intensive for a Blizzard game.

D3 can't release soon enough!


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By thartist on 6/28/08, Rating: -1
RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By wordsworm on 6/28/2008 11:35:25 PM , Rating: 4
So what are you saying, that the speculation was made by psychics? Or do you suppose some information was leaked and that's why Diablo fans have been expecting an announcement like this for the last year?

June 28th, an image was leaked/distributed: http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/06/28/blizzard-unve...

quote:
July 13, 2007 Frank Pearce, senior vice president of product development at Blizzard, comments on the unannounced project. "Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome." His full comment makes clear that there are just 3 games well into their development processes at Blizzard: World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, and something unannounced. If Diablo III isn't what Team 3 is working on, it's going to be a long, long wait.

http://www.diabloii.net/wiki/Diablo_3_Rumors#July_...

Yeah, it wasn't official, but there were Blizzard employees, high level and otherwise, feeding the mill since 2005, including a nearly completed version of Diablo 3 which was, as they say, tossed after the developers left the company.

So, even if you've kept your head in the sand, it doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot of unofficial, yet credibly sourced, information going on around about the game.


RE: Hard to know when it'll come out
By icrf on 6/29/2008 9:40:35 AM , Rating: 2
It doesn't take a psychic to speculate that a company is going to extend a successful franchise. I predict EA will release a new NFL game next year. I also predict Firefox 3 won't be the last of that application.

The "news" here is that it's now official, not a rumor. Ease up.


By wordsworm on 6/29/2008 9:38:28 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The "news" here is that it's now official, not a rumor. Ease up.


So, like I said before, no big mystery that it's coming out. What remains the big mystery (as I said in the original post) is when the game will actually come out.


Beautiful News
By Saffleur on 6/28/2008 7:32:20 PM , Rating: 2
This just made my day. I used to play Diablo 2 all the time, it was my addiction similar to how those are addicted to WoW. This just makes me happy. The Gameplay tidbit was awesome. I wonder if Witch Doctor is the new Necromancer and whether they've decided to forgo the Assassin or Druid....They have to have an Archer, I can't see them not having one.




RE: Beautiful News