Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Interviews

Diablo III game director Josh Mosqueira is on hand to address questions about Diablo III: Reaper of Souls at this week’s Gamescom, and that means that we have a couple of new interviews to bring to your attention. First up is German magazine GameStar, who brings us this nearly seven-minute video Q&A:

And then we jump over to GameSpot for an article-style Q&A:

“Trading items is one of the things you do in a game like Diablo,” Mosqueira said, “and because of that we still feel that the original intent of the auction house–providing a safe and secure means of players to trade items–is still working really well. In fact, in the territories that don’t have an auction house the number of account compromises is totally out of whack with the rest of the world.”

“The problem is that we made the auction house too easy to use. There’s not a lot of friction there. And that’s really been a lot of the motivation behind Loot 2.0, to really make sure you’re finding the best items in the most fun way possible: through playing the game.”

Loot 2.0 is Blizzard’s term to describe Reaper of Souls’ new attitude towards item drops, with the expansion changing the game to drop fewer items, but of higher quality. Legendary drops will also feature more of an emphasis on modifying the skills of characters, encouraging players to think further about the way they spec their characters. Blizzard is also introducing Loot Runs, a randomly-generated 15-20 minute dungeon which promises lucrative riches if completed.

Mosqueira says the in-game loot drops in Reaper of Souls will be more tempting than simply buying an item from the auction house. “We’re really trying to tackle what I call the temptation factor of the auction house, which is making sure that players think ‘yeah I could probably find something in the auction house, but you know what, I could probably find something even better and more fun in the game.'”