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Diablo III patch 2.1.0 released today

Today sees the launch of the latest Diablo III patch, 2.1.0. It’s a major patch, with a raft of changes, despite only weighing in at around 300 MB. European and Asian players will get the patch after the US launch.

The Diablo III patch 2.1.0 has two major goals, according to its developers. First, they want to ‘reduce the number of extreme outliers in class balance in order to set us up for ongoing improvements,’ and second, to ‘provide ourselves a new metric (Greater Rifts) by which we can more easily identify future outliers’. Both of these goals are essentially about improving balance between the different classes (types of character) in the game.

This patch includes four major new features: Seasons, Greater Rifts, Leaderboards and The Cesspools. Read more about them here.

‘Outliers’ refer to classes, or certain combinations of classes with certain skills, items and so on, that appear to have an unfair power advantage over other combinations.

While it’s relatively small at 300 MB, according to an official post on the games’ forums, applying the patch may take up to 30 minutes, as it alters a lots of files within Diablo III. Once the patch has been rolled out to players, the game’s servers will be taken down for maintenance between 3am and 1pm PDT (pacific daylight time). This or course follows the downtime players suffered during the weekend when Battle.net suffered a malicious DDoS attack.

Diablo III is available for Windows and OS X.

Source: Diablo II forums

Blizzard announces closure of Diablo III Auction House

One of the most controversial features of Diablo III is the Auction House, and developer Blizzard has announced it is being closed in March 2014. You can use in-game gold or real money in the Auction House, which mean players can trade or pay for items instead of finding them in the game.

One of the explanations for the Auction House was it gave players a safe place to trade items, and meant there was no black market for items. But instead of being a small addition to the game as intended, they have become huge, with half of all players using them ‘regularly’.

Being able to buy a cool item immediately makes it less attractive to fight through dungeons in the hope of finding the loot you want. The reward of getting cool loot in game is important in the Diablo experience, and the auction houses undermined that.

There is undoubtedly a business angle here, but we know that by early this year the game designers had become unhappy with the auction houses, and they were not included in the recently released console versions of Diablo III.

Next year sees the huge Reaper of Souls expansion release, and Blizzard are promising a ‘Loot 2.0‘ update so in-game loot drops will be ‘less, better, and more epic.’ The quick-fix auction houses don’t fit well with the hardcore promise of Diablo, and it seems gameplay has won over business decisions this time.

There are still no plans to allow offline play in Diablo III for PC.

[Sources: Eurogamer, Blizzard]

Video: What is Diablo III?

Are you wondering what all the fuss is about Diablo III? It’s a huge release, but coming 12 years after Diablo II, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were lots of people with little idea of what it actually is.

It looks like Blizzard are aware of this and they’ve released a video, which you can see below, called ‘What is Diablo III?’. The game is released on May 15th on Windows and Mac, and boxed editions come with Guest Passes inside, which you can give to your friends so they can also try the game.

Continue reading “Video: What is Diablo III?”

Play Diablo III open beta this weekend

Blizzard Entertainment’s fantasy/horror game Diablo III comes out on May 15th, and the beta version is open for anyone to play this weekend. You’ll need to sign up for a free account and download the client, then you can get down to slaughtering demons!

The beta isn’t massively long, but it gives you a taste of how the game has been improved. The general feeling I got was one of smoothness – Diablo III is really slick, and everything just seems to work as it should. The sound is excellent, and visually it manages to be dark enough while keeping everything clear.

Read on for a video of Diablo III gameplay.

Continue reading “Play Diablo III open beta this weekend”

Diablo III beta gameplay

It’s been over a decade since Diablo II was released, and it is testament to that game’s popularity that there is so much excitement about the Diablo III closed beta and upcoming release in 2012.

Diablo III beta impressions

I played the beta recently, and I think Blizzard has made something that will please fans and newcomers alike. Diablo fans will be right at home with the controls right from the start because there are no big changes. The graphic style is what you would expect from Blizzard, with well defined cartoon-like graphics that are full of detail. It’s very atmospheric, and the environment looks great, with some nice touches like crows flying up out trees as you pass.

Once you’ve created your Hero, from the usual character classes, you are dropped right into New Tristram, a town that has just suffered a meteor strike that has resulted in the dead rising and attacking. This sets you up on a mission to find Deckhard Cain, who is trapped in the Cathedral.

How to get a Diablo III beta key

If you want to apply for Diablo III beta testing, while nothing is guaranteed, you can sign up for a free Battle.net account, and then follow the instructions here on the official Diablo III site.

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