Diablo III Forum Activity

Diablo community manager “Bashiok” discusses the Diablo twitter feed, Diablo II’s upcoming v1.13 patch, and more in his latest responses on the official Diablo III forums.

On the increased stash size in the Diablo II v1.13 patch:

Not every change is going to appeal to everyone.

We asked for community feedback and a larger stash size was in the top three most requested changes.

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Higher resolution, which we unfortunately just can’t do because it would fundamentally change the game and require a huge development investment to have the game/servers spawn enemies farther out, have them aggro from farther out, and even then it increases travel time to the player… it’s just a mess. Apparently increasing the resolution in LoD was this gigantic issue so I think the idea of increasing it again makes some of the old time programmers want to curl up in a fetal position.

And new end game content, which we do want to continue adding, but just wasn’t possible for this patch.

On v1.13 not living up to expectations:

I think anything that’s been hyped so much and has been so long in the making will never meet all expectations. Especially when there’s such a huge range of what the word ‘content’ means to different people.

The best thing we can do though is just get it out there as soon as possible. The groans of ‘not enough’ are inevitable at this point methinks.

On gold being valuable in D3:

Gold will continue to be valuable as long as we have the option to drastically increase the amount needed to buy a desired item/feature.

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A gold based economy is infinitely more approachable and easy for new players to get into and understand than an item drive economy. So I think you’re putting your own spin on what they actually said or meant.

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First and foremost I think it’s a mistake to forget that gold was an intended currency in Diablo II. The Diablo game style isn’t based on the idea that gold needs or has to be worthless and item for item trades are the only thing that work and any attempts to do otherwise will fail because it’s Diablo and people don’t like gold and…

No.

Onward.

Item for item trades are certainly a part of what people know from Diablo II but remembering the result doesn’t mean it matches the intent.

Let’s make a hypothetical. Diablo III is out and gold is worth something. There are systems or features or something within the game that you want to buy or invest in and it costs gold or gold is a large component of the cost to get it. Regardless of the specifics, you want MORE gold so you can buy some of this stuff you want. Ok.

So then you’re playing and you kill something and a sweet item drops, but you don’t want it. Or better yet, you could keep it for an alt but you know it’s worth something, so…

You can go find someone and trade it for another item You can go sell it on a theoretical auction system getting gold for it, which (being worth something) can then be spent on the system/feature whatever it is you want gold for /or you can turn right around and buy an item you want from the theoretical auction system using the gold you just got.

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You could play the entire game (WoW) until you have all the best gear and have beaten the highest level and hardest bosses and never even know that the auction house exists. So I disagree completely.

There’s no reason Diablo III would be any different were it to include an auction house system and gold based economy.

On the Diablo twitter feed:

Thought I’d remind everyone that we have an official Diablo twitter feed, we’ve already run some cool contests, we have daily questions and interactions, and we’re also making mini-updates that talk about current work as it progresses on the game. The best way to get involved in everything we’re doing is to sign up and ‘follow’ the Diablo feed.

Some updates this week from http://www.twitter.com/diablo you may have missed:

“Female monk concepts are complete, work continues on her different armor set looks.” “New ‘˜bloated corpse’ clickable object almost complete. Decomposing with treasury-goodness.” “Dual-wield attack animations for the male monk are in progress. Check out some fist weapon concepts. http://bit.ly/bGV8r” “Wizard resource system first pass concepted by Mike Nicholson, and it’s looking… volatile.”

Sign up for a twitter account and then just visit the Diablo feed and choose to follow it and you’ll get updates the second they go out. Most cell phones have programs/apps you can get for twitter so you can follow the latest Diablo updates even while you wait for your turn to yell at your local town hall meeting.

We of course also have Warcraft and Starcraft feeds, but aside from Blizzard there are also a lot of different people and companies to follow. Personally I also like following my favorite comedians, some of them are really active and I get to to read a ton of funny throughout the day.

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I wasn’t too hot on it either. I mean all I heard about it in my daily life was from over-enunciating news casters that half giggle every time they pause before saying twitter, tweet, etc. because… IT’S SO WHIMSICAL! Or just general over saturation.

And if you hear enough about celebrities or athletes you despise using twitter to update their fans on what conditioner they use or the size of their bowel movements, yeah, it sort of makes you hate even the concept of it.

But … the community team here came up with a big overarching twitter project because just about every major game developer was already on board, and once I got into it I have to say there’s a lot of pretty cool stuff to see. You only have to see what is being said by people or companies that you want to see. Sometimes the companies you can follow hold daily contests or giveaways or give limited time coupon codes – and free stuff/savings is cool. In our case you may also get some exclusive info on the development of our games.

There’s that hurdle of not worrying what other people are doing and just using a product/service because it’s something you want. And it’s an opt-in experience! Just jump on and ONLY follow Diablo if that’s all you want to do.

I will admit though, I wear kind of tight fitting jeans.