Filed under: Diablo 3

Diablo 3 coming to the Xbox 360 (and PS3) September 3rd

by Adam Holisky Jun 6th 2013 at 11:00AM

The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 version of Diablo 3 will launch September 3, 2013, according to a Blizzard post today. This is the first time that we've heard of D3 appearing on the Xbox 360. We heard back in February that D3 was headed to the PS3 and PS4.

We do know that the PlayStation version of the game will play on a different realm and not be accessible by PC consoles. It's probably safe to assume the same will be true for the Xbox 360. We don't know if these console realms will be able to interact with each other. The console versions o the game are also having their UI updated to a more console-friendly format.

The play testing on the PS3 version of Diablo 3 has generally been positive. Blizzard's move to bring the game to the Xbox 360 bodes well for it appearing on the next generation Xbox console as well, although no announcement has been made there. Diablo 3 is expected to have its first expansion announced at BlizzCon in November this year.

The full blue post after the break.

Filed under: News items, Diablo 3

Proceeds from Diablo III auction house exploit to be donated to charity

by Sarah Pine May 13th 2013 at 4:00PM

At this point we all should be pretty familiar with what happened in Diablo III with the release of patch 1.0.8. The patch contained a bug in the way the auction house functioned that allowed for people to make lots and lots of gold - far more than they were intended to. The bug was fixed very quickly, but for the last few weeks Blizzard's been busy auditing both their code and the accounts of the players who exploited the bug. Late Friday evening, John Hight, the production manager for Diablo III, put up a post on the Diablo forums explaining in detail both what happened and what Blizzard has been doing about it.

The actions taken seem fairly straightforward and sensible - Blizzard has evaluated the necessary code to check for any other potential weaknesses, and they have either banned or rolled back the accounts of players who abused the bug's existence. That seems pretty typical. But, what's nicest to read is the fact that Blizzard is taking any real money generated by these auction house transactions - including their own transaction fees - and donating them to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. We have no idea as of yet what that amount might be, but it's certainly a nice gesture.

The full blue post is after the break.

Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Diablo 3

Diablo 3 bug sees trillions in gold duping, auction houses shutdown

by Matthew Rossi May 8th 2013 at 11:00AM

Sure, we all like gold. But even the most gold hungry among us can see the problem with a bug that allowed players to accumulate trillions of in-game currency, which is exactly what happened with Diablo III's patch 1.0.8. As a result, the game's Auction House was taken down, and Blizzard is still debating what actions to take to correct the issue, but Lylirra posts on the official forums that roll backs won't be necessary.

Lylirra - Auction Houses Temporarily Offline -- Update

12:00 a.m. PDT: At this time (and after careful consideration), we've decided to not move forward with rolling back the servers. We feel that this is the best course of action given the nature of the dupe, how relatively few players used it, and the fact that its effects were fairly limited within the region. We've been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections. While this is a time-consuming and very detailed process, we believe it's the most appropriate choice given the circumstances. We know that some of you may disagree, but we feel that performing a full roll back would impact the community in an even greater way, as it would require significant downtime as well as revert the progress legitimate players have made since patch 1.0.8 was released this morning.

source

I know it would be a pretty big blow to lose character levels or gear acquired legitimately, so if they can go after the actual accounts that used the exploit and remove just their duplicated gold, that seems like the best option to me.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Economy, Account Security, Diablo 3

Will WoW ever come to consoles?

by Elizabeth Harper Apr 16th 2013 at 8:00PM

With Blizzard taking Diablo 3 to the PlayStation, we kind of have to wonder... is World of Warcraft ever going to make a console debut? And before you say it's impossible, that World of Warcraft is too complicated to play on a console, once we would have all said that about Diablo, too. And if Diablo makes the jump successfully -- there's no release date yet, so it's hard to say when we'll be able to judge its success -- maybe WoW will follow. At any rate, seeing WoW come to a console is probably a lot more likely than ever getting that pony Ghostcrawler promised us.

So, fellow gamers, if WoW did come to consoles... would you be playing it? Would it encourage you to buy one of those next gen consoles we've heard so many rumors about? Or would you stick to your PC gaming rig?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Diablo 3

Diablo III on the PlayStation 3 and 4 to have offline play?

by Adam Holisky Feb 22nd 2013 at 1:00PM

We spotted an interesting tidbit from the above interview GameTrailers did with Chris Metzen and John Hight (a new Production Director at Blizzard) after the PlayStation Diablo 3 announcement. Hight says around the 8:35 mark:

We think the thing that was really cool, that Chris talked about, is that we're going to allow for local co-op as well as online co-op. So you can have four people on the same screen, no split-screen, and we just zoom the camera out, or if you're offline...

Now at the end of his sentence he gets cut off by the host, but the fact is easy enough to pick up. It would appear that Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 3 and 4 will have offline play; which would be the total opposite of the PC version.

Having to always have an internet connection for Diablo 3 has been a source of, what's the right word... annoyance for a lot of players. The fact that this might be changing bodes well, even if it is only for the PlayStation for the time being.

There is no indication offline play is coming to the PC. We've reached out to Blizzard for a response to this, and will update when we know more.

Many thanks to the readers who sent this in!

Filed under: Diablo 3

Diablo 3 coming to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4

by Adam Holisky Feb 20th 2013 at 7:55PM

"One couch to rule them all!" -Chris Metzen at the PlayStation 4 announcement

Chris Metzen, Senior VP of Story and Franchise Development at Blizzard, went on the stage at the Sony presser and announced Diablo III is coming to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It will have not only the single player campaign, but also 4-player coop mode.

Blizzard originally started out very strong in the console market, but in modern times hasn't been active. They have, however, constantly been hiring console developers, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that they finally have something to reveal. But the fact that Diablo 3 is coming to the PlayStation 4 in the grand fashion that it was revealed today says a lot about their commitment to the game.

Metzen makes it known what their intention is: "Blizzard and Sony have entered into a strategic partnership, through which we will take over the world." Metzen went on to say that more information will be forthcoming, and to look specifically at PAX East.

The PlayStation 4 will be coming out during 2013's holiday season. For more information on the PlayStation 4 reveal, checkout Joystiq's liveblog.

Filed under: Diablo 3

"Appear Offline" coming soon to Battle.net

by Adam Holisky Sep 20th 2012 at 9:54AM

A much asked for feature is on its way into the game -- you will soon™ be able to set your Battle.net status to "appear offline," letting you have some much needed peace and quiet from the clamor of all those friends playing Blizzard's various games.

Currently, if you're logged in and have Real ID, Battle Tag, or character-level friends, then they can see you online no matter what. While this doesn't present a huge problem, sometimes people just want to go in a game and play by themselves, without the presence of a group. And even though WoW will never be a single player game, this upcoming change will certainly allow you to disappear into the masses when you want.

Blizzard's full release as follows:

Blizzard

In the coming months, we're planning an update to Battle.net that will give you more control over your online presence when playing Blizzard games. Soon, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III players will be able to select "Appear Offline" as one of their Battle.net social-status options (along with Available, Busy, and Away) for those times when they want to wander Azeroth by their lonesome, dominate the galaxy in radio silence, or slay demons in solitude. When you choose this option as your status, all of your Real ID friends, BattleTag friends, and character-level friends will see you as "Offline" in their friends list whenever you're logged into a game.

The "Appear Offline" status option will be added to World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III separately in future updates for each game. For Diablo III, we expect to add the feature in a patch after 1.0.5. For World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, we expect to add the option sometime after the release of each game's upcoming expansion.

Thanks for your continued feedback, and we'll share more information on the availability of this new feature in the months ahead.

source

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria, Diablo 3, StarCraft 2

Blizzard releases details for Diablo 3's big 1.0.4 patch

by Michael Sacco Aug 10th 2012 at 7:00PM

Blizzard releases details for Diablo III's big 104 patch

Blizzard has been promising for a while that Diablo III's patch 1.0.4 would be a Capital B D Big Deal for the game, and a blog post from developer Wyatt Cheng seems to reinforce that notion. What's missing from this particular post is specifics about the sweeping class changes the devs have been talking about, but apparently that's going to be a whole 'nother blog, so fear not.

Some major features of the patch are below, with the whole blog after the cut.

Magic find and gold find will no longer be averaged in multiplayer games.
Monster health will now be a flat increase of 75% health (per player), regardless of the game's difficulty level.
No more Out Of Time enrage timers on elites or healing to full after you die a few times.
Normal monster HP is increasing by a slight amount, but the chance of finding rare items on normal monsters is being increased by a factor of four.
To close the gap between normals and elites, elite HP will be reduced slightly.
Weapons of ilvl 61 and 62 can now roll weapon damage that extends to numbers currently reserved for ilvl 63+.
Use of two-handed weapons will be encouraged by new sets of affixes.
Repair costs of high-end items will be reduced by about 25%.
Problem affixes like Fire Chains and Shielding are being adjusted, and Invulnerable Minions is gone, baby, gone.
A tentative release date of the fourth week in August.

Filed under: Diablo 3

Diablo 3 character profiles preview now available

by Matthew Rossi Jul 11th 2012 at 4:00PM

Diablo III character profiles preview now up

We all know about the World of Warcraft site's Armory feature. Now, this official preview over on the Diablo III EU site shows off the character profile system coming for DIII. If you're familiar with the armory, it's not going to shock or surprise you. Character profiles will present your character's gear and accomplishments for other players to look over. Yes, this means my poor abandoned barbarian (fun to play, but I got bored grinding gear) will forever be presented to the world in all his not particularly impressive glory.

Unlike the WoW armory, the profile page will be linked to you, with a career tab that presents all of your characters and a heroes tab that gives detailed listings of equipment and skills for your individual characters and their followers. If you have ideas for features you'd like to see, be sure to leave some feedback.

Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Diablo 3

Does WoW need variable raid scaling?

by Matthew Rossi Jul 10th 2012 at 4:00PM

If you've ever played a game of Diablo III and had a friend join you, you've heard the message "The minions of hell grow stronger." When you play DIII in a group, the monsters you're stepping on either grow in number or power and sometimes both. When you or your friends leave, the game tunes itself back downwards, so that while there are fewer of you, there are also fewer of the monsters or they have less punishing abilities.

I bring this up because I wonder if just such a system would help address or perhaps even destroy the 10/25-man raid debate in World of Warcraft. What is there was no fixed raid size? What if raids were any group up to 25 players, and the trash and bosses simply scaled themselves for the size of the group?

You see threads on the forums constantly debating the back and forth on 10- vs. 25-man raiding, exclaiming how 25-man raids are dying out, which I find undeniably true purely based on the logistics of each size of raid, and so on. I'm sure we've all been in a situation where we wanted to raid but we were a few short. Now, imagine if you could always raid, as long as you had the two tanks and three or four healers ready to go, because the raid would scale itself based on how many people you brought.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Cataclysm, Diablo 3

Diablo 3 patch 1.0.3b patch notes

by Adam Holisky Jul 10th 2012 at 2:00PM

Another small Diablo III patch was released today, covering a handful of bug fixes for the auction house, the general chat, and the tooltips. There are no changes to item drop rates or other tweaks to the gameplay like we've seen in other patches.

You can check out all those other patches notes, too, for more information on what's changed the last few iterations (patch 1.0.2, patch 1.0.3, patch 1.0.3a, large June hotfixes). Of particular note is that Inferno Mode has had its barrier to entry significantly reduced now and provides for a much less head-desking time when farming items.

Still no PvP patch yet. That one's a bit off in the future.

Diablo III Patch 1.0.3b – v.1.0.3.10485

Auction House

Bug Fixes

The "Bid" and "Buyout" buttons will now be correctly grayed-out in the confirmation window when attempting to purchase an item with insufficient gold

Bug Fixes
General

Fixed a bug where leaving a heavily-populated General chat channel would prevent players from rejoining any General chat channel until they logged out and logged back in
Fixed several tooltip-related bugs that were occurring when viewing items with 2 or more sockets in the auction house and profile pages
Fixed a rare crash with tutorials on item pickup

source

Filed under: Diablo 3

Blizzard wants your Diablo 3 Magic Find feedback

by Michael Sacco Jul 3rd 2012 at 7:00PM

Diablo III players have had a few weeks to get to level 60, and Blizzard's recent patch to smooth over some of the difficulty hikes has made sure that more adventurers than ever can hack and slash their way through Inferno, the game's ultimate difficulty level and best source of loot. Players have discovered that it's efficient to keep a second set of gear in their bags loaded up with Magic Find, the stat that boosts your chance to find rare items, and swap to it when Elite/Champion packs or bosses are at low health. Unlike WoW, loot is calculated when a creature dies, not when it spawns, thus allowing players to benefit both from the good stats on their main gear and the MF on the gear they switch to.

Blizzard considered this an unintended but allowable way to play; now that the method is well known out in the wild, though, players are feeling forced into playing this way, and the devs know it. To that end, they've announced that they're working on a solution to the gear swapping problem and explained a few of the choices they're mulling over, replete with pros and cons for each.

And they want your feedback! Comment on the blog post with your thoughts and which change you'd personally like to see. Keep in mind, though, that regardless of which change is made, the devs are planning to boost MF for everyone so that no one feels penalized by whichever change makes it to launch.

Full blog post and link, after the break.

Filed under: Diablo 3

Diablo 3 patch 1.0.3b delayed, hotfixes for June 28, 2012

by Adam Holisky Jun 28th 2012 at 2:00PM

Bashiok originally stated that patch 1.0.3b would be out soon, as in this week, but it's been delayed due to development concerns. It's not uncommon for Blizzard to push back a patch release a week to address a problem and make sure it's ready, although it is rather uncommon for them to give any release date, even a week out.

It should be noted too that despite the community QQ over the patch's getting pushed back a week, this doesn't mean D3 is broken or that Blizzard isn't doing its job. In fact, the exact opposite is true -- Blizzard is just being damn sure things are OK before pushing it live.

But even though the patch got pushed back, hotfixes were applied that increased the drop rate quite a bit for inferno mode. Good news for all those farming!

Bashiok's statement as follows, along with the full list of hotfixes after the break.

Bashiok

In general we tend to not provide release dates or specific timeframes for patches due to the complexity of the updates, and the possibility that we'll discover an issue that keeps us from releasing it on time. We discovered a few such issues late into the testing of 1.0.3b, which means it won't hit this week as previously mentioned.

However, we know that a number of changes in 1.0.3b have been highly anticipated, and so we spent the better part of today pulling specific changes that did not run into testing issues out of 1.0.3b, and turning them into hotfixes. These include the Inferno drop increases among a couple others, and will be applied with off-peak rolling restarts tomorrow morning. We'll also be updating the June hotfix blog with specific changes (including new drop rates) tomorrow morning after we manage to wrangle up a cup of coffee.

source

Filed under: News items, Diablo 3

Diablo 3 patch 1.0.3a patch notes

by Adam Holisky Jun 26th 2012 at 12:00PM

Hot off the presses are the patch notes for Diablo III 1.0.3a. Mainly these are bug fixes, but they also fix a nasty issue with unique mobs' not dropping the right amount of loot. Blizzard has steadily been fixing D3 issues as they come up, and it's good to see another bug fix patch.

The full patch notes are as follows:

Diablo III Patch 1.0.3a – v.1.0.3. 10235

Classes

Witch Doctor
Bug Fixes

Zombie Charger -- Skill Rune – Zombie Bears -- Fixed a bug where Zombie Bears were unable to attack targets on slopes
Zombie Bears should no longer become stuck on objects with which they shouldn't have collision

Items
General

Equipped items will now take "wear-and-tear" durability damage at half the previous rate
Please note that durability loss as the result of normal combat is different from the 10% durability loss characters will incur when they die. Equipped items have always suffered durability loss while fighting, and we are simply slowing the rate at which the loss occurs.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug that was causing Unique monsters to not drop the appropriate amount of loot when slain
Fixed a bug with linking items with 3 gem sockets
It is no longer possible to create fake achievement links

Bug Fixes
General

Fixed a bug that was causing the "Switch Hero" button to occasionally disappear after leaving a game while in town
Fixed several gold and leveling exploits
Fixed several game and service crashes (for Mac and PC)

source

Filed under: Diablo 3

Around the Blizzard Multiverse: Happy land

by Elizabeth Wachowski Jun 25th 2012 at 10:00AM

"While cleaning out my guild bank in preparation for Pandaria, I thought it would be a shame to throw away useable Fish Feasts," wrote submitter Riyahnasheed of Epic on Azuremyst (US-A). "Instead of a food buff, I was whisked away to a land of chubby homicidal purple unicorns, manic clouds and bloodthirsty teddy bears. Hallucination, delusion, omen of monks to come? All I can say for sure: never eat two-year-old sushi. 'Best if used by' dates are not a general guideline, they're a hard and fast means to keeping your health and sanity."

I had to do a bit of searching to figure out what the heck is going on in here. Riyahnasheed appears to have transported her WoW character into the Diablo III secret level of Whimsyshire, possibly with the aid of a graphics program, and is unable to find her way home. This is what happens when you try to play both games at the same time and alt-tab between them!

Gallery: Around Azeroth 3

Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

Filed under: Around Azeroth, Diablo 3

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