After some wait, Blizzcast 8 has finally been revealed to the public!

It is available for download here:

http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode8.xml

Discuss what you think about this new Blizzcast which is supposed to be almost exclusively about Diablo 3.

Here are the four new Diablo 3 images that were included with BlizzCast 8 which primarily showcase the inventory system:

I (mockery) particularly like the little details, such as the difference in the stitching around the borders depending on whether you have a bag or a burlap sack selected. The inventory system as a whole looks really sharp if you ask me. What do you think about it?

source : http://www.diablofans.com

Bashiok explained some of the Diablo III User-Interface (UI) features, how it is distributed on-screen and more interestingly the intelligent UI engine that auto-assigns an ability or spell to the hotbar when you gain a new one. It is gonna be exciting to see how much the hotbar and UI has changed from what we saw at Blizzcon 2008. Hopefully, it will be playable in the upcoming Blizzcon (August) to keep you updated.

Bashiok: In Diablo III you’ll have seven places which skills can be placed. Four on the hot bar, one for the left mouse button, and two for the right mouse button. The two for the right mouse button can be swapped back and forth using Tab or the scroll wheel.

Currently any of your skills can be placed into any of these seven skill spots. The game tries to help you out with their placement though. When you train a new skill it will attempt to intelligently place it for you. So if it’s - for instance - a buff or non-targeted aoe ability (witch doctor Horrify, barbarian Ground Stomp, etc.) it’s going to put it into your hot bar as it’s not something you use through a mouse-targeted enemy attack. For abilities that are used by clicking on an enemy (wizard Magic Missile, etc.), the game will attempt to intelligently place them on your mouse buttons for you. So after learning a new skill it’s already on your bar ready to be used, and it’s placed somewhere that makes sense to how it’s used.

But just because it attempts to help you out by placing skills where they make the most sense, you can put them anywhere you like. If you want to have Magic Missile cast by pressing the first hot bar key (the 1 key on your keyboard), you can, and it will cast toward wherever your cursor is. You can do this with any of the abilities.

The system automatically places skills where they make the most sense, but allows you to customize however you please. It’s a nice wide open, play how you want to play approach, while still offering a helpful guide in the beginning. Also I think it will help, or possibly just not impede, class build diversification.

source : http://www.diii.net/

There seems to have been a slight misunderstanding by some fans on Battle.net regarding the term “Content Patch” for Diablo II 1.13. WoW fans know this, as Blizzard is making “Content Patches” all the time for WoW, but the meaning is just that it’s a “major patch, which adds content, not just minor fixes”. It does NOT mean that bug fixes are excluded, naturally.

Bashiok explains this a little bit further, as well as explaining exactly why we won’t hear of any ETA on the patch. As for me personally, I’m just surprised and glad they will make a content patch. ETA would be added luxury that I’d never expect.

Hrm, well I wouldn’t expect an ETA to be given. Development time on this patch is going to be tight, but regardless of how much time is spent on development alone, the testing could toss it back and forth for an indeterminate amount of time. Such is the fact of development and release.Not that anyone’s going to read this, and not like it makes a difference now to the 72 page thread in the suggestion forum, but it seems the text describing the patch was misunderstood by some. Underlining ‘content’ seemed to give some the impression that we are purely looking for suggestions to add a new act, or a new dungeon, or that there wouldn’t be any changes that one wouldn’t consider ‘content’ such as fixing bugs. That wasn’t the intent. A content patch is simply a description for a patch that is a major release, and not a patch that only makes minor corrections, fixes and tweaks. That doesn’t mean that those corrections, fixes, and tweaks aren’t also what we were looking for though.

The ambiguity therein of what that means specifically to the bugs and content you all have in your noggins makes the head swim, but that’s about as well as I can put it without promising one thing or another.

source : http://www.diii.net/

Bashiok replied to a post about how gold sinks and soul bound items might work in D3 (a guy made an inventively annoying suggestion that everything soul bind and players would have to buy expensive scrolls to take items off) with some general info about how the D3 team hopes to handle both issues.

Gambling in Diablo II. Money sink.If you want to get into, buying anything from any vendor is drawing wealth out of the economy and therefore could be considered a gold sink.


I know what you mean though, you’re talking about the huge $$ investments that don’t provide immediate benefits to your character. Which, by the way, ground/flying mounts in World of Warcraft wouldn’t figure in to as your increase in income from simply traveling faster more than makes up for it. But that’s not really important here…


We’re attempting to build a more stable economy in Diablo III, and just like Diablo II did, we will have ways to draw money out of players. If that means there will be big ticket items or not, I don’t know, could be. If we want to throw out gold as much as Diablo II did we’ll definitely need some better places to spend it if we want gold to be worth anything.


To address the original post, we don’t like the idea of binding items just because Diablo is a trading game. To take away that ease of trade but add an asterisk behind it stating “Unless you pay a lot of money”, it’ll just make it feel… I don’t know… kind of crappy. There are better ways to go about keeping a stable economy, and whenever possible they should be on things the player finds helpful, useful, or at the very least “fun”.

What do you guys think about these 2 issues?  The D3 Team has consistently said they don’t want much/any soul binding items since they like to encourage trading. As for gold sinks… what can work there? Most RPGs do it with extremely expensive repairs, sometimes gold costs for respecing, or by selling vanity items that make your character look cool, but don’t really affect game play. Those techniques often feel artificial though, like they’re clearly just there as gold sinks. Can gambling return in D3, but improved enough that even high level, well-equipped characters still prioritize it? And can that be done without making gambling so useful that it’s overpowered?

source : http://www.diii.net/

• Five powerful character classes to choose from, including the barbarian and witch doctor
• Brand-new 3D graphics engine enhanced with spectacular visual effects and Havok physics
• Numerous indoor and outdoor areas detailing new regions in the world of Sanctuary
• Interactive environments with dangerous traps and obstacles, and destructible elements
• Randomly generated worlds bolstered by scripted events for endless and dynamic gameplay
• Vast assortment of fiendish monsters, with unique attack patterns and behaviors
• New quest system and character-customization options for the ultimate action RPG experience
• Multiplayer functionality over Battle.net with support for cooperative and competitive play