Blizzard doesn’t do consolesBlizzard doesn’t do consoles

 
The studio has a reputation for producing phenomenal PC adventures, but can’t say the same for console creations. “StarCraft: Ghost” was intended to be ported as a console title as well, but the project failed. The game was scrapped early during its development stages. “People don’t want to believe us when we say we’re going to make a console game,” game director Jay Wilson told GameInformer in November. “I understand why they don’t believe us, because we’ve tried this before.

We’ve also never invested in it to the degree that we’re doing now, and we’ve never had a product that we felt was appropriate for it.”
 In addition to controls, graphics and aesthetics are just as vulnerable when it comes to porting titles. “The PC has been happily running games at 1080p and above for yonks,” writes TechRadar’s Ed Ricketts when comparing PC and console gaming. Let’s also not forget one of the most important aspects in RPG gaming: customization. And the PC is full of it, with mods and add-ons galore that aren’t available on gaming systems.

  

digital pre-purchase avaialble right nowdigital pre-purchase avaialble right now

 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it looks like the wait is over! Blizzard has officially announced the release date of the highly-anticipated action RPG game for the 15th of May 2012. If you’re the extremely competitive player, you’ll be pleased to hear that Blizzard is accepting pre-purchases of the digital version of the game today, meaning when the game goes live, you will be one of the first to log on and start your adventures.

For those who plan to purchase physical copies of the game, expect it to retail for $59.99 and will be available on both PC and Mac, while the Collector’s Edition will go for $99.99 which includes the full game on DVD-ROM, a behind-the-scenes Blu-ray/DVD two-disc set, the Diablo 3 soundtrack CD, a 208-page Art of Diablo 3 book, a 4GB USB Soul Stone which includes full versions of both Diablo 2 and the expansion, Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, a Diablo skull base along with exclusive in-game content for Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. So who else is excited?!

Diablo 3’s release date is just over a month away, and to celebrate Blizzard has revealed new videos of some of the game’s more destructive skills.

“Doing battle with the Burning Hells means fighting fire with fire, and this week’s videos are all about destruction. We’ve got skills to tear through demonic invaders with summoned zombies and locusts, pepper them with knives and arrows, warp their minds, blow their bodies apart, and more,” reads the Diablo 3 blog. Click the link to see the skills below in action. 

Diablo 3 will not be shipped with PvP Diablo 3 will not be shipped with PvP

 

As most you Diablo 3 fans out there have probably realized by now, the game has been delayed, and it looks like Blizzard does not want to delay it any further than necessary which is why they have announced that the PvP aspect of Diablo 3 will not be shipped with the game upon its release. Instead, Blizzard will be introducing the PvP system in a patch following the game’s launch.
According to the Diablo 3 blog, Jay Wilson has acknowledged that the PvP system is not up to their standards, but instead of delaying the entire game for one aspect of it, which would not be fair to everyone else who may just want to play multiplayer or solo, Blizzard has decided to ship Diablo 3 sans PvP. We have to admit that PvP content isn’t for everyone, especially those who are more inclined to questing with friends and exploring the game rather than going head-to-head against other players.

While this move seems to go against Blizzard’s tradition of releasing games only when they have perfected it, but we guess they did not want to disappoint the legion of Diablo 3 fans out there. In any case, PvP fans out there might find solace in knowing that when Blizzard finally releases the PvP patch it will have been “perfected” with a ton of content for you guys.

  

the manifestation and maneuverability of diablo3 charactermanifestation and maneuverability of diablo3 character

 

There’s a reason the name evokes hallowed memories in any PC gamer over the age of twenty, and a reason a sequel to a game that came out twelve years ago has us desperate to delve into its depths: the Diablo games, like the soulstones and enchanted gems its players pick from its dungeons, are polished to an insane level.

The previous game saw a band of adventurers stomp the archlords Mephisto, Baal and Diablo, as well a host of their grotesque followers. But it’s been twelve real-life years and twenty pretend ones since those events of the PC-only Diablo II, and the people in the town of Tristram are forgetting their land’s troubled past. But just as society collectively decides all those stories from two decades ago were total myth, a new evil rises in the undercity beneath Tristram. Enter you, your weapon, and your insatiable desire to murder things by pressing buttons very quickly.

Fortunately for these forgetful folk, you’re handy in a fight. New technology and that twelve year wait hasn’t significantly altered the formula. Monsters – from lowly zombies to hell’s favoured lieutenants, via rotting, bloated aberrations and bleached skeleton warriors – swarm the screen, necessitating swift, tactical fighting to keep them away from your soft skin. Batting them back to the hole they crawled from is a case of whacking them with your favoured weapon or ability, and Diablo III amps both the number of enemies and the scale of enemies: the result is daunting, even if you’re not a weakling.

  

Blizzard Moves Toward Console Launch, 5 Reasons It Won’t WorkBlizzard Moves Toward Console Launch, 5 Reasons It Won’t Work

 

Fans are anticipating the newest addition to the “Diablo” series, which is set to be released on May 15 for PCs. However, there was one detail missing from the launch announcement earlier in March. Gamers were expecting the adventure RPG to come to consoles, but there was no mention of an Xbox or PlayStation debut.

But that could change very soon, according to a report from ComputerAndVideoGames.com. COO Paul Sams told the website that Blizzard is pursuing a console edition of the 16-year-old game.

“We’re continuing to explore [Diablo 3 on consoles],” he said to the website. “We think that the way we built it for the PC may need some tweaking, but it will ultimately be the type of game that can really make sense and be really fun, well-polished and a true Blizzard-level experience on a console.”

One of the primary reasons “Diablo” stuck with its PC origins is to emphasize the main priority at hand.

 

  

valor buffvalor buff

we’re working hard on balancing and testing Diablo III, and one of the major components is making sure that the end game experience is fun and exciting. We’d like to share a few of our goals for end game:
We have an enormous number of skill build combinations, and we want a lot of those skill builds to be viable and interesting
While there are millions of skill builds available to players, we don’t want players swapping skills regularly to beat specific encounters as they come up
We don’t want repeatedly running specific three-minute chunks of the game to be the most efficient way to acquire gear for your character
While a three-minute run shouldn’t be the most efficient, we also don’t want you to feel like it’s a two-hour commitment every time you sit down to play
Bosses should still feel worth killing
Nephalem Valor is one of the major new systems in Diablo III and it kicks in at level 60. Keep in mind that this is still in testing and we’re still working out the details. Here’s how it currently works internally: Rare and Champion packs already have great loot on them. By killing a Rare or Champion pack, not only do you get their loot, but you’ll also receive a buff granting you increased magic find and gold find. However, if you change a skill, skill rune, passive, or leave the game, the buff disappears. As an extra reward, if you kill a boss while this buff is active, you’ll receive extra loot drops from that boss.

The exact amount of magic find and gold find provided by the buff is still being reviewed, as is the amount of extra loot you get from a boss while the buff is active. We’re also playing around with whether or not the buff stacks, what the duration should be, and whether or not it should persist through death. We want to make sure the buff is strong enough to make staying in your current game more rewarding than creating a new game. At the same time, if the buff is too strong, it risks making shorter play sessions feel not worthwhile.

We expect this system will encourage players to stick with a skill build of their choice, select an area of the game they enjoy, and sweep it for rare and champion packs on their way to a boss, finishing off a run with a boss that’ll be worth killing. If you wanted a shorter play session you could be done at that point, but if you have more time, the path of least resistance would ideally be to stay in the same game and make your way towards the next boss. 

most important aspects for the franchisemost important aspects for the franchise

 

Since the beginning of the trilogy, BioWare has delivered a fantastic story that is driven by player choices. Mass Effect 3 promises a story that can be enjoyed by both longtime and newcomers alike.

The plot focuses on the galaxy’s resistance to the Repears’ arrival. It begins with Shepard leaving Earth while it is being attacked to gain allies and to build the Crucible, which is supposed to be an effective weapon against the threat. Along the way, the story provides resolutions to long-standing conflicts within the universe, such as the genophage. The beauty of the story is that the details of these resolutions are dependent on player choices. The resolutions can vary wildly.

The writers have incorporated elements from other sci-fi epics such as “War of the Worlds,” “Stargate” and “Battlestar Galactica” to create engaging story.

It also helps when you have a talented composer, Clint Mansell, to elevate the already emotional scenes to downright beautiful. Unfortunately the ending of the game is lackluster at best and idiotic at the worst.

I wish I could say that the ending does not take away from the overall story, but we get an unsatisfying ending that leaves us with more questions than answers.

At the end of the day, Mass Effect 3 might not have a good ending, but is an amazing journey. It is an excellent game that has a well-written story.

Just brace yourselves for the ending that will leave you speechless. 

not challenging in any way not challenging in any way

 

The action option has no dialogue options, but harder combat, and the role-playing option provides the same control over play as previous installments. The problem with the system is that action option gives you no control over the story, while the story option gives you combat that is not challenging in any way.

The role-playing option gives you full dialogue options and allows you to change combat difficulty, rendering the last two options useless.

diablo 3 also has a multiplayer aspect. Unfortunately the multiplayer is a tacked on horde mode, with an annoying card system to unlock new weapons and characters.

Though it is incorporated with single player in a novel way, the actual multiplayer gets old after just a few hours of playtime.

The story has always been one of the most important aspects for the franchise.

Since the beginning of the trilogy, BioWare has delivered a fantastic story that is driven by player choices. Mass Effect 3 promises a story that can be enjoyed by both longtime and newcomers alike.

The plot focuses on the galaxy’s resistance to the Repears’ arrival. It begins with Shepard leaving Earth while it is being attacked to gain allies and to build the Crucible, which is supposed to be an effective weapon against the threat. Along the way, the story provides resolutions to long-standing conflicts within the universe, such as the genophage. The beauty of the story is that the details of these resolutions are dependent on player choices. The resolutions can vary wildly. 

night beverage watchnight beverage watch

 

With the finish line of our long wait at last in sight, the Diablo 3 community forums have been both buzzing and hopping; behaviors annoying in insects and over-caffeinated younger siblings, but quite admirable in game discussion forums.

I was remiss in mentioning it last week, but DiabloIIIChris won our long-running, semi-official, Guess the Diablo III release date forum thread. I’m not going to count up all the entries, but there were hundreds — the exactly-accurate winning prediction was made in post #722. The winner said he chose the exact middle of Q2 once that was the target window, and he was more magnanimous than most of us would have been in his Nostradamian shoes, refusing any offered prizes, including D3 beta access. Congrats to him, and thanks also to Mad Mantis for making regular updates to the predictions list in that thread for the past three and a half years.

Hardrock has created a very useful thread that compiles all of the SuperUnique elite bosses found in the Diablo 3 beta, and even includes screenshots of every one. These are the special, purple-named boss types, with special abilities and flavor texts. (Regular bosses have yellow names and random boss modifiers, as do the blue-named champions.) So how

many special Elites are there? More than you think; in addition to the 8 quest bosses you get every game, there are 3 others that spawn if their semi-random quests turn up, and

19 more than appear randomly (some very rarely), throughout the dungeons. That’s 30 in just the first 1/3 to 1/2 of Act One! Imagine how many we’ll see in the full game? 

fights to shanghaifights to shanghai

 

When speaking with CVG, Blizzard COO Paul Sams shed some more light on the possibility of a console release, indicating that they are very interested in a console project. However, Blizzard will not go ahead with a console port Diablo 3 if the project doesn’t meet their strict standards for quality. At the end of the day, Blizzard’s primary focus is gameplay and a quality gaming experience, not profits.

“We get a lot of questions about why we haven’t made a game for consoles before and I tell them the same thing I tell them about business models: we don’t let business models or platforms drive our decisions. Those are secondary to what’s the most important aspect for us which is the gameplay.”

Sams also mentioned that there are a bunch of hoops to jump through when bringing a game to home consoles. Some of these hurdles require the company to pay significant sums of money, and make them stop and consider if bringing the game to PS3 and Xbox 360 will be worth it. Surely Blizzard can pay these fines with no problems, but if the game isn’t a “Blizzard-quality product,” then paying that money will be a waste.

It’s this dedication to quality that makes Blizzard one of the best game companies in the world, for fans who have the patience to wait for their products. The company is willing to go to great lengths to bring a spectacular game to the masses, by any means necessary. They even went as far as to remove the PvP component of Diablo 3 because it didn’t live up to their standards. Even with the removal of PvP, Diablo 3 is in great shape, and is on track for its May release.
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