Blizz "3rd Team" title upcoming..

I was looking through old posts recently, and I made a post in like 2002 saying that we probably wouldn't see D3 until late 2005. lol

Damn, back then im sure you thought it was hella away, and now we still don't have a damn announcement

Damn, back then im sure you thought it was hella away, and now we still don't have a damn announcement

Yep, I didn't expect it to be this long.

How many years did we wait from WC2 to WC3? Then for SC1 to SC2?

Blizzard is decidedly slow on releasing games, although they've all been very good releases.

I'm supposing either they're really slow at developing games/or they might be trying to bring in some next generation gamers, the little kid gamers and a whole new group/community to buy their products, because after all, they have most of us origional players still on board, why waste precious material when you can spread it out, and sell even more.


You've gotta figure, they're up to 8 Million subscribers now.. which is horribly large.

8,000,000 * $15 a month = $120,000,000 a month.. Yeah, their electic bill is geting paid...

I read something a while ago about Richard A Knaak saying that blizzard is using the Sin War trilogy as a storyline for something. He wouldn't say what but at the time the site was speculating about a possible movie. I think it is very possible that the story line for D3 will be in the past rather than a sequel to D2 LOD. I can't remember but are there actually more than 3 prime evils or is it just diablo, baal, and mephisto. I'm probably confusing something else I read about 7 prime evils but I can't remember honestly.

I suppose we will just have to wait for blizz con like we had to wait for the Korea Announcement for SC2. In the mean time I will dwell on Warhammer... lol.

There are 3 Prime Evils, and 3 Lesser Evils.
Primes were:
Diablo
Baal
Mephisto

Lessers were:
Andariel
Duriel
Belial
some other dude

I wouldn't be opposed to D3 being in the past, but it doesn't really feel like a progressive series that way.

The past of the Diablo story was in.... Diablo 1, and before that there wasn't any problems until the 'Evils' started to emerge, that's where the rest of the stories came from... So I really don't see how the story could go into prequel mode, i'd much rather have it progress, like you mentioned vollvs.

There are stories from before Diablo 1.

If anyone has Diablo 1 for playstation(I do), you can listen to a bunch of stories on there. There's a whole section on the CD that has stories about the prime evils and hell and etc. Even though the game sucks, there's a LOT of information there.

Ive only read the first sin war book but demons like lilith are around at that point so I guess we could be fighting the sons/daughters of the prime evils. I can't remember the demon that got wtf pwnt at the end of the first book though... I think it might of been meph's son. I believe lilith is his daughter.

Diablo:Hellfire is the tits!

There are stories from before Diablo 1. If anyone has Diablo 1 for playstation(I do), you can listen to a bunch of stories on there. There's a whole section on the CD that has stories about the prime evils and hell and etc. Even though the game sucks, there's a LOT of information there.

I doubt they'd use that material though to make another game, but who knows, blizzard loves suprising their customers. I mean hell, Blizzcon is only a week away, so i'm sure we will find out soon enough

If they have a cool cinematic trailer and 15 mins of gameplay like they did for SC2 I will probably be cleaning up a mess on saturday.

If they have a cool cinematic trailer and 15 mins of gameplay like they did for SC2 I will probably be cleaning up a mess on saturday.

There's a new quote on the Blizzcon site about the BETA signups and playing from "underneath" or something, hold on i'll go look it up.


Edit: It's on this page
http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon07/goodiebag.shtml

Beta Key In addition to giving you the opportunity to become a terror from the deep, the goody bag you receive will also contain an access code for an upcoming Blizzard beta test. Enter the code on our website and sign up to be contacted when the upcoming beta test is ready for you to join. While beta tests give us a chance to fine-tune our work, they also allow participants to try out and give feedback on a Blizzard title before it becomes available to the general public.

Could be interesting, just gotta wait til the 3rd, oh wait. That's in 2 days

I would think that that would be the beta for SC2, there is no way they could be anywhere close to beta stage for a Diablo 3. I highly doubt it will even be beta testing before next years Blizzcon. This year is probably beta keys for SC2 and perhaps next year will be d3 (hopefully not some WoW ex pak ).

WoW Expansion is coming, Blizzard has made it clear that they're attempting yearly expansions. If they all change the game as much as TBC did, I imagine their playerbase will shrink appreciably.

TBC took out a lot of casual gamers. I played original a lot but the time consumption for TBC was just too much for me with school. TBC = Endless farming and it lost its sparkle pretty quick after the raids became the same old shit. The next Ex pak will just be more time consumption with more of the same old raids. I would think the lore to be getting pretty thin at this point unless they whip out northrend/deathwing/kiljaeden or something. I suppose they can always make stuff up. I would say WoW has one more expansion left in it but after that I think that the player population will dramatically decrease due to the time consumption raise and other MMOs being released. It would wiser to focus purely on a new diablo game if they are interested in fat cash. If any game could break WoW's MMO record for numbers.... D3 would be the one.

yeah, TBC is what broke the game for me, I was FINALLY fucking catching up on gear etc etc, trying to make as many raids as I could etc etc, then I waited like 2 weeks got the BC, and everyone was already like 65+ so basically, I said fuck it afterwards, and haven't played since.

I can only hopy for D3

I really think they focus too much on 25 man raids imo.

I really think they focus too much on ~1% of their playerbase.

Edit: Seriously, let me copy over something posted on our guildsite.

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t13331-c...p5/#post421777

Well, there have been interminable threads about "casual" and/or "average" progression on this board. It strikes me that in Wowjutsu we actually have a correct answer to this question, for some value of "correct". As of the latest update (16th July 2007), the stats are as follows: # Total Guilds: 15349 (median of all raiding guilds is #7675) # Ranked Guilds: 12191 (median of all progressing 10-man groups is #6096) Percentage of guilds with at least one kill in Gruul's lair = 58.88%. This is the percentage of ranked guilds, thus we deduce: # Guilds with at least 1 25-man kill: 7178 (median of all 25-man groups is #3589-3590) Percentage of guilds moving into the T5 instances is harder to estimate. Void Reaver skews the numbers considerably, so let's leave him out, and define a semi-serious guild as one with at least one kill in SSC. That's 13.42%, thus we deduce: # Guilds entering T5 instances: 1636 (median of all T5-capable groups is #818-819) The beauty of Wowjutsu is that we can now go and look up these exact guilds. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... THE GLORIOUS AVERAGE GUILDS OF TBC RAIDING 1) The average raiding guild (#7675) Wicked Legion - Llane. Has cleared up to Prince, but not Nightbane. 2) The average ranked guild (#6096) Bloodline - Arthas. Has cleared Karazhan (excluding Nightbane), but also has loot from 3 Maulgar kills. 3) The average 25-man group (#3589-3590) Illuminati - Stormscale. Greymane - Corruption. Both have cleared Karazhan including Nightbane, and have killed Maulgar and Gruul. 4) The average Tier 5 capable group (#818-819) The Fallen - Burning Blade. Ðark Moon Templars - Crushridge. Both have cleared Karazhan, Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon, and both have killed Hydross, Lurker, Morogrim and Void Reaver. Conclusions: "The average raider", whether you look at all guilds or only the ranked guilds, has just about completed Karazhan, but has not been able to make the transition to 25-man raiding, apart from occasional Maulgar kills. They are stonewalled at the logistical hurdle of growing in size enough to do 25-man raids. "The average 25-man group" has killed Maulgar, Gruul and nothing else. It has not killed Magtheridon, and has not entered any of the major 25-man instances. They are stonewalled either at the logistical hurdle of attunements (now lifted, so may change in subsequent weeks), or the encounter complexity. The lack of Magtheridon kills would suggest the latter rather than the former, since Magtheridon never needed attunement. And it most certainly is a stonewall rather than simple progression effects. Note that moving up almost two and a half thousand places in the ranking (from 6096 to 3589) nets you one more boss: Gruul. "The average Tier 5 capable group" has killed the easiest 3 bosses in SSC, and the easy boss from TK. That is, they have not killed anything much beyond the so-called "loot pinata" bosses. Hyjal and BT are a niche market and don't have any bearing on this post.

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t13331-c...p5/#post421777

Repeating the exercise a week and a half later... Bracket Number 0 - 25 0 25 - 50 8 50 - 75 5 75 - 100 15 100 - 125 21 125 - 150 12 150 - 175 19 175 - 200 27 200 - 225 27 225 - 250 24 250 - 275 24 275 - 300 15 300 - 325 9 325 - 350 2 350 - 375 3 375 - 400 3 400 - 425 4 425 - 450 2 450 - 475 0 475 - 500 0 500 - 525 0 525 - 550 2 Comparing this to the previous curve, what do we see? Well, the front runners have moved on by around 50 points. In BT, the top end bosses are worth about 35 points each for a first kill. This would seem to indiate that on the front-ranking realms, each of the top 10 guilds has killed about 1.5 new bosses. The main peak is now at 200, up from ~185. At that level, first kills look to be worth about 20 - take that with a pinch of salt as that's only a guesstimate. Even so, it looks as though the rate of progression here may well be less than 1 boss per week. We still have the big subsidiary peak at 100-125, corresponding to realms where guilds are struggling to get beyond Gruul/Magtheridon. If anything, this peak is getting more pronounced as the absolute tail-enders catch up to the "wall" around 125. What conclusions can we draw? At this point, nothing much beyond the obvious. 1) On some servers, it's hell on a stick just getting into raiding at all. 2) The majority of servers are progressing through SSC/TK at less than one boss per week. 3) Progress in BT appears to be considerably faster. Now, there's two possible explanations for (3). It may be that BT is flat out easier than SSC and TK. Or it may be due to guild stratification. The better guilds (and by extension the better servers) progress faster because duh, they're better. My feeling is that there's evidence for both. If you look at the top tail, you can see there's evidence of bimodality. There's *more* servers at a 412 average than at a 340 average. That's what you'd expect from a very rapid dash through BT after getting past Kael. However it still is only the very tail end of the server distribution that's pushing through, which is what you expect from the "server stratification" scenario. It would be a lot more informative to run this kind of analysis on the raw guild distribution, rather than just the average of the top 10 guilds on each server - however as I said, I'm not cutting and pasting 127 pages of lists unless I get very bored at work some day. With regard to that point though, I'd say that the image of the "average" progression as SSC/TK is falsely rosy, since this is the average of the top few guilds on each server. We're only looking at 2220 guilds out of 12762 ranked guilds. Eyeballing the main lists, it looks to me like the absolutely dominant story is the block in the early hundreds, in moving past Maulgar/Gruul. It's large enough to show up as a subsidiary peak in the above analysis precisely because on some servers even the top 10 guilds are blocked right at the start of 25-man content. Edit: Further eyeballing again shows a "No shit, Sherlock" scenario. The three big blocks are: 1) Getting into SSC and TK 2) Killing Kael 3) Essence / Mother Shahraz The list of upcoming nerfs looks like it's addressing 2 and 3 - Blizzard presumably intend for a large proportion of the people that got into SSC to progress into BT. From my perspective, I'm much more worried about (1), since it's by far the biggest block. Blizzard presumably believe that the majority of this is people that don't actually want to raid 25-man. Hence ZA coming out as 10-man and being an alternative progression. And to be fair, ~40% of rated guilds (i.e. well progressed in Kara) haven't killed Maulgar, and might conceivably prefer to stay as 10-man groups. However, I think the fact that the clear majority of ranked guilds (almost 60%) have killed Maulgar, and at least 50% have killed Gruul, is ample evidence that there's a large population who want to progress into 25-man content and (for whatever reason) are unable to get properly stuck into SSC and TK. Early days since the attunement lift, of course, so that may be part of it. But I think that unless we start to see *many* more people in SSC and TK soon, there will be another round of nerfs incoming to these instances. Perhaps even to MC levels, where you can actually enter before you hit the level cap and still kill things.

It's good that someone proved something that I already knew.