After a 7 year wait from the last Diablo, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction,
Diablo 3 was announced today at Blizzards Worldwide Invitational. Hope for
another Diablo 3 release was squashed repeatedly when Blizzard North, responsible
for the Diablo franchise, lost top developers on June 30, 2003, and again on
August 1, 2005 when Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard
North.
Subtle hints have kept the hope of Diablo fans alive; on Oct 23, 2006
Richard A. Knaak, a novel writer for the Diablo series, told BlizzPlanet
“I ain’t writing for a dead game.” The Diablo rumor base was stirred
again when Blizzard Entertainment approached Diablo3.com for their domain, even
though Diablo3.com (now diablofans.com) denied that Blizzard had any intentions
of announcing Diablo 3. Hints for a Diablo 3 announcement peaked last week when
multiple Blizzard homepages were taken over by splash images, these splash
images changed every day with new images and cracks appearing in the ice shown
on it. Many Blizzard fans believed this was going to be a big announcement
because of the 2007 WWI when Starcraft II was announced in the same fashion.
Late Friday on June 27th and continuing into the early morning of June 28th,
the ice began to crack more and more and the picture became clearer, until
finally the antagonist of the series, Diablo came crashing out of the ice and
Diablo III was shown for everyone to see.
A cinematic trailer and a video showing some game play were shown at the
Diablo 3 panel at WWI and now can be seen online. The cinematic trailer shows
that not all is well in the world of Sanctuary. A meteor is seen crashing into
the spot where a door to Hell had once emerged, and an unknown girl lets it be
known that the world is no longer safe.
From the game play trailer you are able to see two classes played the
Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian shows of abilities such as Leap,
Whirlwind and Charged, and appears to be completely redone from the old Diablo
II Barbarian. Also shown, the Witch Doctor appears to be a cross between a
Necromancer and a Sorcerer. The Witch Doctor is able to corrupt foes, summon
ghouls, conjure a demon wall that attacks, and even cast fiery magic. Diablo 3
is being built to be more geared towards playing on multiplayer, with new
features being added to Battle.net to support group play.
There will be a total of five classes playable so far, two being the Barbarian
and the Witch Doctor, with many saying they see a Rogue in the game play trailer.
Characters can be either male or female, but the sex of your character does not
affect game play. There will be many in-game events; one is shown in the game
play trailer, when a bunch of acolytes sacrifice themselves to summon a large
creature. Bosses are a lot bigger, as seen in the final fight of the game play
trailer. I am very excited for this game myself; hopefully more information
will be released in the upcoming days.
Both trailers can be seen at Diablo3.com