By Patrick Garratt
We’re now in the European press conference for Diablo III at the Blizzard Invitational in Paris. It’s about to start. After the break.
- It’s over. Thanks for reading!
- “I don’t think we’ve broken a hundred on screen at a time, but we’ve flirted with it,” says Jay of monsters.
- The core ideals for the game have stayed consistent over the dev period. Jay says the style and look of the game is the thing that’s changed the most.
- They’re talking about voice comms. Want to improve on it.
- Blah de blah. Sounds like it’s running out of steam a bit. Five minutes, says Mr PR.
- “We’re in hardcore production,” says Jay. They’re working mainly on content at the moment.
- “Diabllo is not that is very mod-friendly game because of the random nature,” says Jay. Mods haven’t been a big focus. It’s difficult with this title, he says.
- They’re talking a lot about co-op. “We really see the single-player and co-operative play as the same thing,” says Jay.
- “The biggest thing we have to help us protect against piracy” is the community, says Frank. People want to be a part of Battle.Net.
- Seasonal stuff – a la WoW – is a “cool idea”.
- They’re going to “discuss” a beta, but nothing confirmed yet.
- “It’s always our goal to run on a broad range of systems,” says Jay. They won’t confirm system specs.
- They use Zelda and WoW as inspiration for boss design. Jay says the bosses are going to be much more complex than Diablo II.
- You can pick character gender, but you can’t customise. They want you to kill monsters as soon as possible.
- They don’t have the boss frequency yet. Jay says the boss in the stage demo wasn’t a boss at all, just a creature.
- The characters in the game will have their own plotlines and stories.
- “Our goal is to sim-ship in as many languages as possible”: Frank. He says it’ll be very hard to do, though.
- “We haven’t made a decision about our financial model,” says Jay. All regions are different.
- The game has real physics, but it’s not a “pure, physics reactionary system.”
- The blue teaser image was supposed to be the face of Diablo. Jay “doesn’t know” what the purple penguin was.
- A lot of different locations. Dur.
- It’s going to mix random and static maps. They’ve been experimenting with random exits, entrances, monster placement, items, and so on.
- We definitely want to add web functionality, says Frank.
- Around 50 people working on the game.
- Story for the game starts 20 years after the events of Lord of Destruction.
- Targeting a length “similar” to Diablo II.
- They’re going to improve trading, apparently, but are still working on how it’s going to happen.
- They won’t talk about the skill tree format. Sounds like it’s not nailed down.
- We’ve got so many monsters to reveal, says Frank.
- “We’re very interested in the consoles but we don’t have any plans at this time to become a console developer”: Frank.
- They’ve just confirmed Diablo III for Mac. “Absolutely,” said Jay when asked if it was happening.
- “The Diablo III team is definitely thinking about e-sports and whether or not it makes sense for the game”: Frank.
- Frank just said they’re planning PvP features but they’re not saying anything about it right now.
- “We have a new version of Battle.Net that will appear in the coming months,” says Jay. Frank says the new features for Battle.Net will be seen in conjunction with StarCraft II’s release.
- When it’s done. “It’s far too early in development for us to put a release date for it,” says Frank. It’s been in development for four years.
- “Brand new 3D engine that we developed in-house.” Jay says they don’t have a name for the engine.
- Frank Pearce and Jay Wilson answering questions for the next hour.
- Starting now.
- Hall’s filling up. This should be good. Press only.
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