Diablo 3 - Tidbits @ MTV

Dhruin

SasqWatch
Joined
August 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
Continuing the annoying habit of splitting interviews into a dozen minor newsbits, MTV has two pieces on Diablo III from lead Jay Wilson. The first is on having class gender choices:
Despite the cost, the company is moving forward with gender choices for the character classes. For Wilson, it wasn’t even an option anyway. “For me it was always a no-brainer to have gender choice,” he said, having both male and female characters in “World of Warcraft.” “There’s so much interest as to guys who plays girls or girls who play guys. Sometimes it’s assumed that people play their own gender, but a lot of the times people don’t. It’s obviously a really important choice that we want people to be able to make on their own.”
...and the second on the storyline rounding out a trilogy (but not the end of the franchise):
Not much has been revealed about “Diablo III“’s storyline, but lead designer Jay Wilson did tell me that the game will round out the story arc set up by the previous two games.
The plot behind “Diablo III” was developed with Blizzard’s VP of creative development Chris Metzen, who crafted the tales for the first two games. In the first “Diablo,” the player quests to kill the Lord of Terror.
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
And while “Diablo III” ends the trilogy, fans needn’t worry — it’s not the final curtain for “Diablo.” “We’re not saying this is the end of the ‘Diablo’ universe, but we are trying to bring this storyline to a close,” Wilson said. “It’s not just ‘Diablo III’ — we’ve got plans beyond.

As many others noted, this might be a strong hint that a Diablo 3 mmorpg is coming. At least after the addon to D3. Which would follow pretty strongly in Warcraft 3's steps. WoW also came out after WC3 and The Frozen Throne.
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,252
It will be interesting to see what Blizzard can do with a Diablo MMO after the experience they've accumulated with World of Warcraft. Maybe they'll finally come up with the "next generation" of MMO's. Probably not; Blizzard were never huge innovators, instead polishing and perfecting established mechanics while introducing some clever extensions.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,915
Location
The Netherlands
It will be interesting to see what Blizzard can do with a Diablo MMO after the experience they've accumulated with World of Warcraft. Maybe they'll finally come up with the "next generation" of MMO's. Probably not; Blizzard were never huge innovators, instead polishing and perfecting established mechanics while introducing some clever extensions.

They did report and confirm that they have a next-gen mmo in development. But that is still in preproduction(meaning they're still doing concept work and bringing a team together. So that could very well what they were referring to.
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,252
Frankly, a Diablo MMO doesn't make sense at this point or in the near future. With Diablo 2, and especially Diablo 3 - they've moved towards a more cartoony style compared with the original - and the basic formula is too close to WoW as well. At heart, WoW is Diablo stretched thin with a ton of fluff.

I'm almost certain that their next MMO will be either World of Starcraft or WoW 2. Maybe something entirely different, though that's hardly their style.

A Diablo MMO would be redundant.
 
And maybe it's just an overhaul of the WoW graphics engine they're planning... it's gotta happen sometime, don't you think?

Yes and no? Maybe?:

Eurogamer: Do you think WOW is ever going to need a complete overhaul of the engine?

J. Allen Brack: That's actually something we talk about every expansion. It's interesting, two games have really tried that before, Ultima Online tried it and EverQuest tried it as well, and in each case it was only somewhat successful. In each case a lot of people continued to play with the original client, because it was faster, or they preferred it, or were just used to it or whatever. And so for me as a game developer, the idea that we would spend so much time and energy on something and have people go, "meh, that's not really for me," that's not very exciting.

So I don't think there's really a clear model as to how to do that successfully. The model we have with Wrath of the Lich King allows people with high-end machines some additional graphical effects, and then we'll have some kind of fallback for the people who don't. Will we need a graphical update from the ground up at some point? Yep, probably. And I'm positive we'll talk about it next expansion.
 
Joined
May 25, 2007
Messages
95
Thanks, that's really informative. I don't really keep up with WoW anymore, but I'm sure that I'll play again by the time Wrath of the Lich King gets released. I wouldn't want to miss that, I'm sure.

By the way, I don't have what can be considered a high-end machine these days, so while I'd be interested in how improved WoW graphics would look, I could probably not run then comfortably myself. Also, I'm interested to know what these new high-end options in WotLK are...
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,915
Location
The Netherlands
Back
Top Bottom