Loot-hoarders rev up your engines and reinstall Diablo 3, because it's time for another annual dive into Diablo's past courtesy of the retro-themed Darkening of Tristram event coming back for another month of low-fi demon-slaughter.
For those who missed out on on this event last year, it's a good time to dust off your demon-slaying gear. Not only is Diablo 3 still a well supported (if curiously balanced) game, but the Darkening will let you poke around a semi-authentic recreation of Diablo 1's iconic town and haunted cathedral until the end of the month.
]]>How have we already reached the end of Diablo 3 [official site] Season 11? Time goes quickly when you’re battering your way through Rifts and trying to unlock achievements on fresh, seasonal characters. If you’ve still got things to do, you’d better finish them soon because it finishes on October 20.
]]>I’ll be honest, I couldn’t really see a space in Diablo III for a Necromancer. Another class that’s based on raising gross minions and smashing up mobs from afar? The Witch Doctor seemed to have that amply covered, commanding zombie dogs, harvesting souls and erupting towers of zombies from the ground.
Oh but it’s great to be completely wrong. I’ve been having a wonderful time, raising the dead and casting dark curses. Here’s wot I think.
]]>The skeleton-raising, corpse-exploding Necromancer class will arrive in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls [official site] with the launch of its 'Rise of the Necromancer' paid next week. The paid add-on brings back the Necromancer class introduced in Diablo II, complete with his (and now her) tooth-grinding chums. Blizzard today announced that it'll launch alongside the next update on June 27th (or later, in certain corners of the world), priced at £13. Here, see what the class gets up to:
]]>An unconventional form of weekly challenge run is coming to Diablo 3 [official site] with the introduction of Challenge Rifts in the next big patch, Blizzard have announced. Every week, Challenge Rift players will play through the exact same Greater Rift with the same character and item build - a character copied from an actual player's account. Challengers will take on the same Rift with the same build originally used to beat it. It's an interesting idea which might force players into some unconventional play styles. I dig that! And the reward for beating the original player's time? Loot, obvs, and bragging rights. Have a look:
]]>If you're one of those "I'll wait for the Game of the Year Edition" folks, good news: Diablo 3 [official site] now has one. Blizzard have launched the Diablo 3 Battle Chest, a bundle combining the base game and its expansion, Reaper of Souls, with a small discount. And if you have waited four years for this, nice: after years of patching, Diablo 3 nowadays is good stuff. While I no longer own physical copies of any games, the 'Battle Chest' name still warms my heart a little with memories of excitement at buying those big old boxes filled with Blizzardy treats.
]]>Update: Yikes! Blizzard has confirmed The Darkening of Tristram will be an event taking place in Diablo III in January, and will return annually (side note: holiday events seem to be all the rage right now) as an anniversary-themed homage. The event will be home to some exclusive loot, including the soulstone from the original Diablo along with the Butcher's clever and Wirt's leg. Keen beans will be able to access the event from the test realm starting next week.
Original story:
Fresh information has dropped out from the sleeve of Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime’s wonderful bowling shirts: the Necromancer class will be coming to Diablo 3 [official site] next year. But what’s that hiding in the other arm? Blizzard is also remaking the very first Diablo in the Diablo III engine, and that’s coming out in the next couple of months.
]]>After a few months steeping on the PTR, it's time for another massive Diablo III [official site] patch. Like, surprisingly massive. The type of content a different developer might package up, slap a name on, and sell for a fiver.
Want the rundown?
]]>The four-year wait between the announcement of Diablo III [official site] in 2008 and its release felt like an eternity but dang, Blizzard have spent almost that long continuing to work on the game after launch. Last night brought a hefty update, Patch 2.3.0, with new monsters, areas, items, a persistent progression track with goals and rewards, and a magical new cube a bit like Diablo II's Horadric Cube. With the ability to reforge Legendary items, transmute materials, and extract powers, it sounds quite a treasure.
Come have a peep at all the patch adds in this here viddy vid:
]]>At Gamescom last week Blizzard announced that Heroes of the Storm [official site] would get a host of updates including new heroes, a map and skins. Some of this content is now out on the Public Test Realm, Blizzard's publicly available testing environment where players can help shake out bugs and preview what's coming next. There's one very interesting change: you must now buy any paid-for items before you can test them. It's a strange combo of Early Access and pre-ordering, where these items - in this case new hero Kharazim, aka the Monk from Diablo 3 - will transfer to your main account only when they're fully released.
]]>The official launch of Diablo 3 [official site], uhhhh, it could have been better, yeah? Game Director Josh Mosqueira, who joined the team as the console lead in 2012, did a talk at GDC yesterday about how things were internally at this time and going forward into developing the expansion, Reaper of Souls. Check it out below, along with the latest details on the upcoming patch.
]]>Diablo was the awkward child of this BlizzCon. With WoW's expansion coming soon and StarCraft's Legacy of the Void now being shown off, Diablo is the only currently-released game without a paid update on the horizon. I figured another expansion would be announced this weekend, but between a new game, movie news and the like, nothing was forthcoming. When asked, the reply was "nothing to announce." Instead, the panel on Friday was focused on upcoming patches, the next of which is 2.1.2, and what changes they'll bring. Check out the details below.
]]>Because video games, one of the things added in the latest Diablo III patch is "The Cesspools." They're the sewers of Westmarch, a city overrun by an angel of death and his hoards of minions, making them only slightly better than a toy store in the run up to Christmas. They're included in patch 2.1.0 as a new area to explore within the endgame Nephalem Rifts, quick one-shot dungeons with totally random layout and encounters. These have also received an upgrade, now with timed "Greater Rift" versions that provide unique rewards and global leaderboards for speed and difficulty. The most significant introduction is Seasons, similar to the character ladders in ealier Diablo games, which allow a competitive version of levelling and loot hoarding.
]]>The most interesting thing about Reaper of Souls, the first expansion for Diablo 3, is that it's an admission of guilt. Blizzard are one of the best developers in the world not only because it makes great games, but because it prods and tweaks and adds to them after release until they positively hum with glory. But Reaper of Souls isn't a nip here and a tuck there. This expansion is Blizzard dealing with the reality that, in many people's eyes, Diablo 3 just wasn't very good. But can it be fixed?
]]>Kumquat-complexioned entrepreneur David Dickinson shoulders you aside as he storms the corridors of the Diablo III Auction House. "How can they shut it all down?" He barks, beads of butter springing from his forehead where only sweat would be visible on a lesser man. "Where will I be able to offload this Wicker Chair of +7 Discomfort and Old Tin Soldier of +2 Melancholy Reflections About The Interwar Years?" The items in question are firmly secured in his gargantuan trouser pocket.
"Well, Sir Dickinson." You begin, struggling to keep pace with his powerful stride. Dickinson hasn't been formally knighted by the monarch but the 'Sir' is fitting - the silver gavel of a higher power still has often caressed the lint from his shoulders behind the carved doors of certain secret chambers. "Nothing will be lost, at least not yet."
He turns to you, actual bolts of lightning sparking across the damp crevices of his brow. "Explain. And then show me a very noisy trailer for Reaper of Souls."
]]>Diablo III's first expansion, Reaper of Souls, won't explode forth from the Internet's gleaming loot cavities for another month, but the free patch that includes a healthy chunk of its content is already here right now. Well, if you live in America. It's not out in other regions yet, but it will be soon. It's quite a behemoth, with loot of the 2.0 variety flowing from both its wazoos. Rebalanced classes and a new customizable difficulty system are also in, as are revamped bosses and a fully overhauled Paragon leveling system. Basically, this patch is Reaper of Souls' blanched white backbone. More details below.
]]>Diablo III: Reaper of Souls' closed beta is now in full swing, and that colloquialism makes it sound like everyone's singing and dancing along to big band music instead of hacking and slashing. If only that were the case. If only. But the clickity clacking Second Coming Of Loot is inching ever closer to completion, so Blizzard's seen fit to issue a release date. That's how game development works, doncha know. So then, got plans for March? Well, CANCEL THEM. Or don't, because letting videogames dictate the pace and structure of your life probably isn't very healthy.
]]>Every time I write about Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, I cannot resist the urge to blast "Don't Fear The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult. Then I begin having flashbacks to the original Prey, a game that, incidentally, made me far happier than vanilla Diablo III. But hey, seasons don't fear the Reaper seems to be kinda on the right track, so that's encouraging. Now, though, it's time to keep it from catching aflame (or going up in smoke; I forget how it works in Hell) and careening madly off a cliff by lending a hand during the game's beta phase. It just opened up to Blizzard's friends and family (and also "valued media contacts and key members of the Blizzard community"), but others won't have to wait too terribly long to take a crack at it. An invite-based closed beta will kick off before the year is out.
Welp, that's it. I've done all I can do. In an interview with Diablo III: Reaper of Souls' lead designers, I attempted to comprehend once and for all why they refuse to simply add an *option* to go offline on PC. The auction house will soon be gone, the console version has no such requirement, and I cannot conceive a universe in which the game's community suddenly shatters like a beautiful ice crystal just because its members don't always have to be connected to the internet. And yet, here we are. On the upside, lead designer Kevin Martens and art director Christian Lichtner actually had some rather encouraging things to say about the rest of the game's direction, though our chat was ultimately, sadly cut short.
]]>Diablo 3 launched, sold millions of copies, but then seemed to almost disappear amid complaints that it lacked an endgame, that its auction house had ruined the thrill of finding new items, and that it was too easy until you'd completed it multiple times.
Blizzard seem to have listened to the complaints, and next year's expansion, Reaper of Souls, aims to re-define your relationship with the game's pointy blades and protective armour. First, by removing the auction house, and now with a few new details of the game's artisanal Mystic on Blizzard's Diablo blog
]]>Well, I suppose it can't all be good news. On one glittering, jewel-encrusted hand, Blizzard announced that Diablo III's near-unanimously disliked auction house is headed for the great demon-ridden crypt of failed ideas, but this isn't entirely a win. It's good to know that Blizzard is filling in that abyssal fissure in Diablo's foundation, yes, but many players were also aching to get a long-awaited feature out of the deal: an offline option. It seems like a no-brainer now that the auction house is on the way out and Diablo III's console version doesn't require an Internet connection in the first place, but Blizzard has told RPS that it's simply not meant to be.
]]>Oh gaming industry, you and your spin-straining, whiplash-inducing about-faces. Not even two weeks ago, Blizzard resolutely declared that Diablo III's much-loathed auction house was in for the long haul, gunking up a crystal clear loot stream with the suffocating tar of commerce. But now? Well, the frigid giant's completed its glacial admission that maybe a systematized undermining of Diablo's very core wasn't the best idea. So, come early next year, it'll be gone for good. Yes, for real. Oh joyous day.
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