New Diablo III Screenshots

For those of you who are chomping at the bit for any new information about Blizzard’s next big title, Diablo III, they have just updated their artwork and screenshots with a few new pieces of high-rez goodness.On Blizzard’s website, you will find two new screenshots, three new pieces of artwork and a new wallpaper.

‘Diablo III’ Designer Describes How Game Will Appeal To ‘Diablo’ Fans And Broad Audience

“Diablo” fans aren’t just those taking the time to make petitions and their own screenshots.

According to lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson, the team has to appease an “extremely broad audience” as well as hardcore fans.

“Up until fairly recently, ‘Diablo II’ was Blizzard’s best-selling game,” Wilson recently told me when I asked him just who “Diablo” fans are. “‘World of Warcraft‘ has finally surpassed it, but it took it several years to do that. And part of the reason is how approachable the game is.”

Keeping the game approachable is key for Wilson. “It’s one of the reasons why we made some of the choices we made, like when we pulled out the potion system,” he said. “When we wanted to add a hot bar we knew we had to pull the potion stuff out. Every time we add something, we have to pull something out to keep the game very simple and straightforward to play.”

“One of the things that happened in ‘Diablo II’,” Wilson continued, “was the player was faster than most of the monsters and had pretty much infinite health because they would just pop as many potions as they wanted. So when you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them… by just spiking the difficulty.”

“When you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them.”

But in “Diablo III,” players will have to pick up health orbs after they’ve killed enemies, which will restore their health upon contact. Wilson saw on the forums that people were worried that this might make the game “ridiculously hard.” He said that fans shouldn’t worry.

“That’s only if we tuned it like ‘Diablo II,’” he said. “When the player has similar downsides, it means we can make a lot more interesting monsters. We don’t have to kill you to challenge you. We can make a monster that affects your mobility, we can make a monster that has different kinds of attacks that are dangerous to you and that you actually have to avoid. And so it makes the combat a lot more interesting.”

While Wilson said they’ll keep the game accessible, he knows “Diablo III” has to ultimately appease their hardcore fans. He assured me that the team has kept this in mind, and is making the game progressively harder.

“I think that hardcore players, long-term, will find a game that has lot more depth for them.”

“A lot of the choices we make are styled towards knowing the long term,” he said. “I think that hardcore players, long-term, will find a game that has lot more depth for them but we distinctly made the choice that in the first stage of difficulty, the game’s really easy. So it’s easy to get through, it’s fun to play and you can kind of spam with one skill. But as you get further and further into the game, you start having to go, ‘Okay now I’ve really got to use this ground stomp thing to stun some monsters and get some distance from them to recover.’ That’s something that we focus on more later in the game.”

Source: MTV Multiplayer

Whats Wrong With Diablo 3’s Graphics?

Lately, I have heard many gamers complaining about Diablo 3’s graphics. No matter how hard I try, I just dont see why the hell everyone hates them so much.

I hear people saying “They aren’t as dark as before” and “They’re just trying to copy World of Warcraft.” I just dont see it that way. Sure, some of the areas are very light, maybe thats because it’s during the day? Usually it’s pretty light out in the afternoon. Diablo 3 still has plenty of dark dungeons and other places. I also doubt that they are trying to copy WoW. Blizzard is just trying out some new scenery and seeing how it all works out.

The thing that surprised me is the petition sent out earlier this year. It basically stated that Blizzard should change the graphics of Diablo 3, make them darker like the first 2 games. The petition ended up getting over 50,000 signatures.

Of course, Blizzard still refused to change the graphics of the game. When you think about it 50,000 people really isn’t that much compared to the whole gaming community. I would like to know if the people who signed the petition actually expected it to change Blizzards mind. You honestly expect them to go back and change the graphics that they have already created? Its just stupid and arrogant, if you ask me. Lets see you guys go out and make a game, its not easy. The last thing you would want to do is go back and change all the graphics you made. Its like the idiots that want an 8th Harry Potter book. J.K Rowling isn’t going to go out and make an entire book because a few people want her too, and the same goes for Blizzard with re-making Diablo III’s graphics.

I think that a lot of gamers are forgetting what really matters in a game: The gameplay. Whether or not the graphics are good or absolutely horrible, it all comes down to how well the game plays out. Diablo 3 offers more than enough of that; Giving us new classes, new weapons and armor, and a bigger world, for starters.

All I’m saying is that graphics are only a fraction of a game. Blizzard is trying out something new, isn’t that what gamers want? The graphics of the game are still beautiful, just because its lighter doesn’t mean that they suck. All I’m trying to say is forget about the graphics guys, after all, it’s the gameplay that counts.

Source

Diablo 3 lead: Necromancer, other classes could return

When Diablo 3’s Witch Doctor class was revealed, many of you — at least one-fourth, by our estimates — decried the perceived loss of the D2 Necromancer. Keep hope alive, True Believers, because D3 lead designer Jay Wilson tells MTV Multiplayer that it’s still possible he’ll rise from the dead.

Wilson admits that the dev team was divided on the topic of bringing back classes. “But after we’ve established Diablo 3 as its own game with its own type of gameplay and experiences,” he said, “I wouldn’t be opposed to looking at old classes … We’re looking out ahead of time at what our expansions are going to be, so we’ve got to keep room open for some of those other classes down the road.” Wilson also said they designed the Witch Doctor so there would be room for the Necromancer. Now that we’ve got that settled, you can go back to complaining over the art style.

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Blizzard Looking for New Diablo III Art Director

About a week after Blizzard sat down to talk about Diablo III’s art direction and tear apart some fan’s concept art showing how it could be improved, Blizzard is listing a job opening for Diablo III Art Director.

Art Director
Blizzard Entertainment is currently looking for a talented, motivated, and experienced art director to lead the Diablo III art team. For this position, you must be highly organized with outstanding communication skills and proven experience in management. We’re looking for a proven track record of shipping AAA products in an art director role. Experience modeling and texturing assets for a diverse visual range of environments and a solid grasp of form, color, and light for both 2D and 3D art assets are also essential. You must be experienced at mentoring a team, able to work well in an environment of artists who are passionate about making great games, skilled in another art task (illustration, modeling, texturing, animation, or concept drawing), and well-versed in related tools (Maya, Photoshop, etc.).

The fact that the position, which hit the site on Tuesday, is specifically Art Director and that it spells out that the person will be leading and mentoring the Diablo III art team leads me to believe that perhaps something’s up with Brian Morrisroe, who last we heard was the game’s art director. Of course it could be that he just lay the ground work for the game and they want to bring someone else in to wrap things up. It could also mean that they’re taking a new direction, but given how adamant Blizzard’s been about not changing the game’s look, that seems like a pretty slim bet.

We’ve contacted Blizzard to see if Morrisroe is still the art director for Diablo III and whether he is still at Blizzard. We’re also trying to nail down whether this new job listing means the game’s art direction is undergoing a change. I’ll be sure to update once we hear back.

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Blizzard Confirms Departure of ‘Diablo III’ Art Director, Look Of Game Won’t Change

Blizzard has confirmed to MTV Multiplayer that “Diablo III” art director Brian Morrisroe has decided to leave the company.

A company rep says his departure won’t change the look of the game.

Here’s what a Blizzard representative told Multiplayer via e-mail:

Regarding Brian, he recently resigned to form a startup technology company (outside the game industry), which is why we’ve posted about the open position. This change won’t impact the game…we’re really pleased with the look and feel that Brian helped create for Diablo III, and the new person we bring onboard will work with the other artists on the team to maintain the art style moving forward.

Morrisroe’s departure, which incidentally comes after much controversy surrounding the game’s colorful new art style, prompted Blizzard to put up the job listing, first reported by Kotaku earlier today.

When I sat down with lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson last week to talk about the team’s design choices and his thoughts on fan-altered screenshots, he told me that Morrisroe was the one who spearheaded the franchise’s design changes. Specifically, I asked who we should blame for the rainbows. Wilson said:

“If you want to blame anyone for the rainbows, you’d blame our art director Brian [Morrisroe]. Because Brian is more the person who drove the art style into where it is. But it didn’t really come directly from him. What he brought to the art team was concepts and ideas — the idea of contrast, the idea of using color more, the idea of going for a more stylized look. Because what we were looking at before was more photo-realistic. Really trying to get something that looks like a painting — that was his goal. But the actual result of that came from the art team. And a lot of the environment guys, and some of the texture artists, they’ve all kind of chipped in to try and get the feel of something that was very unique.”

Source: MTV Multiplayer

Blizzard On Diablo III Achievements

Blizzard’s community manager Bashiok has fielded multiple questions regarding Diablo III’s achievements and how Blizzard plans to implement them into the game.

Steam achievements are generally based around small, situational, skill, or long-term goals in short “round” or level based FPS’. So obviously achievements in an MMO are going to be vastly different, and can cover a much wider range of goals from small and fun, to long and involved, and yes even to the impossible.

For us completionists we’re going to be frustrated by not being able to have everything. But part of the system is specifically to show off where you’ve been, how long you’ve been playing, and what you’ve accomplished. I’m going to have to deal with the fact that I wasn’t everywhere or did everything at some point in time. I’m going to have to focus on the goals I can achieve instead of those I can’t. There’s no point crying over milk that was spilled two years ago that I just found all dried and crusty under my refrigerator.

That’s World of Warcraft though. It’s a persistent world and moves and evolves and changes with patch to patch, and expansion to expansion. There’s a lot more area for there to be achievements that were attainable at one time, but due to that evolution of the game - are no longer possible.

Diablo III isn’t an MMO, it doesn’t evolve in the same way, and so there’s far less chance for there to be an achievement rendered impossible due to game updates.

With regards to completionists and whether the Achievements system will frustrate anyone:

It won’t. Completionists like you and I account for such a small percentage as weirdo OCD-crazed gamers that it really won’t. It may seem like a large group because we entrench ourselves in groups and pockets of like-minded individuals. But really a “normal” person might say “Hey there’s an achievement for going to BlizzCon 2005, I wonder if I can find anyone that has that one…” while you and I may sit in a corner with glazed eyes rocking back and forth and muttering something about murloc codes.

It’s only cruel if you’re putting that much importance and stock in a tiny colored square in your armory profile.

Several users complained about whether the achievements would create an ‘elitist clique’, to which Bashiok responded:

Such as the /love a squirrel clique? Come on though, you’re going a bit far. So we can’t even recognize raiding achievements now because it’s an elitist clique? It’s a game, keep it in context.

Is an achievement found in an out-of-way website really that much more in-your-face elitism than someone wearing full Season 4 and a spectral tiger mount right in front of you in-game?

No, no, it’s just an achievement system, not a weapon. You determine your own level of involvement.

You got served.

Source: Blizzardguru

UGO: Diablo III Development Update Preview

UGO writes: “Late last week we got to spend two hours in a locked New York City hotel room talking PC games with three Blizzard designers, one of whom was Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson. Well… the door wasn’t exactly locked; really, we could have left at any time. But when you’ve got face-time with one of the folks who is currently in the process of pouring his heart and soul into the greatest PC action-RPGs, you don’t walk away until you’re forcibly removed by a broadsword-wielding barbarian.

One of the earliest questions faced by Diablo III’s development team focused on the ways the series could be updated for a new generation of PC hardware. Obviously, the possibility of giving the game a new 3D look was considered… for the space of a meeting. The team chose to stick with the series’ standard isometric perspective (rather, isometric-style) from day one; changing that, they feared, would ultimately change the nature of the core gameplay too much.”

‘Diablo III’ Designer Explains Why Necromancer Was Cut, Hints At Return

Although many “Diablo” fans have expressed fondness for the Necromancer from “Diablo II,” lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson confirmed to MTV Multiplayer that the character class will not appear in the initial release of the game.

When the team was choosing which classes to include in the long-awaited sequel for Blizzard’s best-selling action-RPG series, they decided to create a brand-new one — the Witch Doctor. And with only five classes in the game, “Diablo III” just didn’t have room for two curse-dealing, pet-wielding classes.

Here’s Blizzard’s explanation for why the Witch Doctor replaced the Necromancer:

“Our approach for classes in ‘Diablo III’ is that we don’t have a strong desire to bring back classes from the previous game,” Wilson told me. “The goal is to try and give people new gameplay and not just re-hash old gameplay. We’re not just making a ‘Diablo II’ with updated 3D graphics.”

“The problem was, we looked at the class and didn’t think that we could really make him a lot better,” he explained. “We could add some new stuff to him but for the most part — curses, corpse explosion, skeleton pets — done. That’s the class. We wanted to create new gameplay, so we chose to do the Witch Doctor as a different kind of class.”

Though the Witch Doctor will have similar abilities to the Necromancer, Wilson didn’t want to “have to live by any Necromancer rules.” One of the big differences between the two classes is how damage is actually dealt.

“If [the Necromancer] dealt damage, it was through corpses laying around or through his pets,” he said. “The Witch Doctor, his pets are a little more transient. If you watch the gameplay video, you really notice his pets come and go like crazy. There’s a wall of zombies that go away fairly quickly or pets that just kind of blow up willy-nilly. That was intentional — to try and make him different than the Necromancer.”

However, for those who are really passionate about the Necromancer, there’s still hope to see the class in a “Diablo III” expansion. In fact, Wilson thought that expansions might be a great place to bring back any of the old classes not included, particularly since the team itself had passionate debates on the topic — almost as much as the game’s art direction.

“There’s a lot of people on our team who aren’t happy with our class choices,” he admitted. “But after we’ve established ‘Diablo III’ as its own game with its own type of gameplay and experiences, I wouldn’t be opposed to looking at old classes. We are trying to design [the Witch Doctor] class so that if we did bring back the Necromancer, there’s room for him. We’re looking out ahead of time at what our expansions are going to be, so we’ve got to keep room open for some of those other classes down the road.”

Wilson added, “It’s one of those things where, unless we put like 30 classes in the game, people are going to be unhappy. But if we put 30 classes in the game, we’d hurt the game. I think that of the classes that we’ve chosen, there will be something for everyone. I’m not worried that people won’t be able to find a class that they like to play.”

“Diablo” fans, does Blizzard’s explanation appease you? How do you feel about the Witch Doctor replacing the Necromancer?

Source: MTV Multiplayer

‘Diablo III’ Designer Turns Tables, Judges Fans’ Screenshots

[UPDATE 8/7: For those who heard that the "Diablo III" art director has resigned and are wondering how that affects the game's look, check out our full report.]

For some die-hard “Diablo” fans, signing a petition protesting “Diablo III“’s decidedly new and colorful art direction wasn’t enough; they went ahead and made their own mock-ups for how they think the game should look.

When I sat down with lead “Diablo III” designer Jay Wilson last week we talked about why the team chose to go with the new, brighter color palette versus the older games’ dark, desaturated look.

Then I showed him some fan-altered screenshots that had all been posted on the petition to see what he thought.

So to the “Diablo” fans who aren’t sold on the colorful art style of the new game, read on to see what Blizzard thinks, pros and cons, of your suggested screenshots…

#1 - Light Radius on Witch Doctor in Dungeon (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)

Jay Wilson, Designer of “Diablo III”: The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons.

Now in terms of the actual texturing, this texturing, where they grayed out everything and it’s very flat and the monsters are all kind of a similar tone — that does not play well. It’s very boring to run through more than a couple of times, and it’s very difficult to tell creatures apart and pop them out of the environment. So those things don’t really work for us. A lot of the lighting stuff I think is very cool, but it’s also not very doable for us.

#2 — Witch Doctor in Dungeon (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)

Wilson: It becomes really hard to see all the profiles. Look at the tables and see how hard it is to see the profiles of those.

And one of the things that I actually would argue about something like this is that it’s completely against “Diablo II.” If you look at the spell effects in “Diablo II,” they’re very over-the-top. To gray out the actual spell effects, to me it’s pulling out all the vibrancy and interest out of them and really going against a lot of “Diablo II” philosophy.

#3 — Barbarian in Outside Environment Fighting Skeletons (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)

Wilson: I will say I wouldn’t be surprised if we had areas in the game that had this kind of texturing in the background. They’ll probably be later in the game because they’ll be darker, but again, the biggest problem here is that the silhouettes don’t stand out enough.

And it’s easier [to see] in this shot because you’ve only got skeletons, but if there are three other types of creatures in there — which is not uncommon — and give them all that same desaturated tone, you won’t be able to play the game very well.

#4 – Barbarian on the Bridge… And Rainbows (Blizzard shot followed by fan-altered shot)

Wilson: More rain? It’s funny because if you watch later on in the [debut gameplay] video, we have more rain. It is much stronger than that. I’m sure they got rid of the rainbow. Yeah, rainbow — gone. I think our artist just put [the rainbow] in there because they knew that’d be controversial. And I’m sure they were like, “Well we’ll see how far we can push it.”

MTV Multiplayer: Just to be clear, are we going to see a lot more rainbows during the game?

Wilson: [laughs] After the announcement, one of our environment artists went to the darkest area in Act One and put a giant rainbow across the whole area. No, you’re probably not going to see a ton of rainbows. But we don’t think the one that’s in there is that big a deal. You know it’s like, it’s a waterfall. My favorite [criticism] is the one that analyzed the light refraction angle, and told us why from that angle seeing a rainbow would actually be impossible. Oh yeah, and it was upside down because the colors were reversed. And we’re like, “This is a whole different world than ours! Who’s to say that light refracts the same in the Diablo world?” [laughs]

We don’t think it’s that big a deal; we just think it adds a lot of interest to that scene. We don’t have specific plans to fill “Diablo” with rainbows. It’s not like we restarted the project and were like “Diablo III — now with rainbows!” Although I will say the pitch that I originally did, once we decided what we were going to do, said “Diablo III — now with pants.” Because we added a pants slot.

#5 – “How It Should Look Like” (Blizzard shots followed by fan-altered shots)

Wilson: A lot of this change is adding noise to the screen. If [the characters] weren’t centered on the screen — like find the witch doctor. Especially think about him as a friend [in co-op play]. Standing over there, you can’t even tell the difference between him and the zombie. And that’s another player, and when you can’t tell the player apart from the creature, that’s horrible.

You’ve got to think that there’s potentially up to seven other people in addition to yourself, and several dozen monsters. All that noise just translates into unplayable, especially when this starts moving. This texturing was actually very similar to one of our previous art styles. But when you started moving and the whole screen just kind of shimmers, you can’t really tell anything that’s going on.

MTV Multiplayer: So you ultimately decided to change the art direction only after play-testing the game?

Wilson: Yes. Because this is how we remember what “Diablo II” was like as well. This is what we were thinking what “Diablo II” looks like. And then we played through, and we were like this isn’t very fun. And then we started going, “Why was ‘Diablo II’ so much more fun?” And some of the Blizzard North guys [the team that made 'Diablo I' and 'II'] knew why right away. They were like, “Well, because we didn’t make all the areas like this.” And if you think about even the areas they did, the creatures were really bright. Like in the gray and dark dungeons, those are the places that you run into the ghosts who were almost like glowing brightness, and that was so that they would stand out from the backgrounds.

#6 – “Necromancer’s Choice and WoW Gayness” (Fan-altered shot followed by Blizzard shot)

Wilson: I think one of the things that these lack is if you stuck every one of these re-done shots right next to each other you would not be able to tell that they’re in different areas. One of the things that’s key to “Diablo II” — and I’ve gone through and done timing on it — it changes environments every 15 minutes, and every 45 minutes they give you an environment that looks completely different than one you’ve ever seen before. And when they change environments, the contrast is huge. It’s like I’m in green lush fields, and now I’m in the darkest dungeon you’ve ever seen. I’m in a bright sandy desert, and now I’m in a completely dim mummy tomb. There are these vast shifts in look, and it’s one of the things that keeps people interested in playing the game.

It’s a very simple game, and [you need to ] constantly vary what you throw at the player — big look changes in the environment, creature changes with different behavior. And not just behavior; we spent a lot of time trying to make creatures show up and die more interestingly. Because those are all the things that keep you going. Each one of those things is a reward. When you pull all the color out of the environment and you make it too homogeneous across the game, essentially what you’re doing is you’re pulling away the player’s reward of feeling like they’ve progressed because the area they’re in now looks like the area they were in 30 to 45 minutes ago.

So that’s one of the reasons why we really felt we had to do this. We had to move to an art style that had a lot more variety in it and was capable of a lot more.
Source: MTV Multiplayer