South Park takes on hard hitting up to date issues and makes them funny, but it looks like Call of Duty 5 has popped up on their radar screen and the kids of South Park are killing the Japanese and bringing the funny. I like how one of the kids complains about the Flak Jacket perk and the girl tells him that it isn’t a cheat if you rank up.
This brings back so many memories of playing Diablo, Counter Strike and Starcraft during my computer labs in college, you could look down the back aisles and see absolutely no one working on C++ but instead gaming away. Good memories.
Sorry Diablo fans I know there was some rumors flying around the internet about the possibility of Diablo III being rushed out and coming out before Starcraft II, but these have been unconfirmed as of right now. Starcraft II will launch first and Diablo III will follow, which means that Diablo fans will have to wait a while. All of the development team at Blizzard working on Starcraft II remain in place and have not been shifted over to speed up the timelines on Diablo III, just wishful thinking by some hardcore fans.
Diii.net denies the chance of any such rumours to be true, stating known information about StarCraft II being a long way ahead in the development cycle over Diablo III. They also state the fact that Battle.net 2.0 will launch with the RTS game, making a DIII preemptive release unlikely as the Battle.net upgrade is said to be out before the action RPG game.
With the noise revolving around Diablo III and Starcraft II another huge question jumps into my mind, will we ever see a Diablo or Starcraft MMO?
Right now Blizzard enjoys its time at the top of the food chain with World of Warcraft Online and its huge gamer fan base. We hear almost on a daily basis of all the follow on MMOs that are trying to be the next WoW killer, but they all fall short. The closest thing to a true WoW killer was Age of Conan and that game has all but fallen apart with its lack of quests for certain level characters and lack of end game content, players have already began canceling their accounts. Read More »
One thing that was interesting in past Blizzard inspired Diablo games was the fact that only certain genders could play certain classes.
For those who aren’t familiar with past “Diablo” titles, the character classes were either one gender or the other — the Necromancer was male, the Amazon was female, the Barbarian was male, etc. Like the destaturated art style and the inclusion of old character classes, some “Diablo III” team members wanted to stick with the familiar one-gender archetypes.
Looks like Blizzard is willing to pick up the tab in order to offer it’s fanbase all the options they could possibly want. Now you can be a dual wielding female or a mystical sorcerer male. Nice to see Blizzard going the extra mile for it’s fans and even though it cost them some extra coin making the next Diablo game even more open ended.
Despite the cost, the company is moving forward with gender choices for the character classes.
Looks like Blizzard is jumping on the achievement bandwagon heavy, we had already heard that the newest expansion Wrath of the Lich King would bring achievements to the World of Warcraft, but looks like things will not stop there. Achievements will be incorporated into Starcraft II and Diablo III according to Jeff Kaplan of Blizzard.
When the new Blizzard Accounts are active, a player’s ‘WoW’ points can be added to an overall score dubbed an account holder’s “Blizzard Level. It’s basically a gamerscore. For now the points are just a ‘WoW’ character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level.
I liked the idea of achievements on the Xbox 360, but now it seems that everyone is jumping onto the bandwagon. Sony is introducing a trophy system, Blizzard a Blizzard level, what next Nintendo points? I could go without achievements in my Blizzard games, but i guess it does give some replay value to these games and will give you the ability to track achievements across accounts so you can see how your friends did in different Blizzard games.
That is right Blizzard drew a line in the sand and stated that even though there have been petitions and angry fanboys ranting about the dislike of the new brighter color scheme for Diablo III they are sticking with it.
We’re very happy with how the art style is. The art team’s happy. The company’s happy. We really like this art style, and we’re not changing it.
There is no plan to change the art direction and there is a reason as well, a functional one that makes sense, so listen up.
When you have 30 creatures on screen — and four or five different types — target prioritization is a factor. You need to be able to tell those things apart fast, and you can’t do that when your world is gray and your creatures are gray.
I don’t mind the new brighter colors in Dibalo III and think it will help to make the game easier to play. Quite honestly I am a bit tired of all gritty games looking too dark and grainy. Not all games need to be grainy and dark and I am sure the folks over at Blizzard will not disappoint with Diablo.
With the word of Diablo III in the wind, I also began to reminisce about the days of the original Diablo back in 1997 and it goes a little something like this…
Diablo was set in the kingdom of Khanduras where the player took control of a male or female character in an ultimate battle with Diablo himself. It was the classic dungeon crawler with a top down view that allowed you to run around different randomly spawning dungeons with randomly spawning loot. Diablo was a mature game with plenty of gore and a very dark plot and feel that revolved around pure evil. You were an inhabitant of the town of Tristram and you were trying to save it from the Dark Lord by delving into its deepest and darkest dungeons to rid it of all the evils that dwelled there.
Diablo was one of the first games to bring action into an RPG game, where you clicked on mobs to actually fight with them in a real time scenario. The commands in Diablo were pretty basic and clicking on a mob meant you were going to attack them. Loot would drop from enemies that you could visibly see and pick up, with harder enemies giving rarer loot. Diablo introduced the basic premise of different text colors for items: white was a basic item, blue was a magical item and gold was a unique item. The different color schemes for items has spilled over into almost all of Blizzards other titles and is a very easy way to recognize rare items from common ones.
The Blizzard Store was just updated to coincide with the new announcement of Diablo 3 so Blizzard made Diablo 2 and Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction client available for digital download. So if you already own a copy of these games and want some digital love, go over to the Blizzard Store, create an account, register your CD-keys and viola!
Both digital titles are on sale for $19.99 each or go ahead and order the battle chest for $39.99.
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