So I’ll admit it, I gave up on Blizzards latest Diablo game just over 4 months after it came out, I had hit the level cap, and wasn’t able to grind for the gear I needed in order to advance to higher difficulties. At the time the difficulties and drop rates were tuned in an attempt to force players to use the Auction House to get the proper gear for their level, or grind for endless hours. Level 60+ content was poorly organized there was no adventure mode, and I simply could not get past act with my monk. Since literally rage quitting during Act 2 (the freaking bees that shoot little bees) I haven’t opened the game at all. I’d say it’s probably been a year or more. Since then both the real money, and gold auction houses have bene removed (march 2014) and there has been a full expansion with a new character type (Reaper of Souls, and Crusader). The game has been patched quite a few times and holy crap this feels like a whole new game!
Diablo 3 is one game that consistently has gotten better over the two years its been out. The first version of the game 1.0 was nearly unplayable. Over powered enemies, and endless loot grind, a real money auction house that allowed player to just buy victory, and a lack of diversity for hero builds all plagued the early game. Most if not all of that has been fixed now, the game has been patched a 20.00$ expansion released, loot fixed, the RMAH is gone, and there is no more loot grinding (ok its still a grindy game). So now the only thing left is a few balance tweaks. Blizzard has not been neglegant on that! Through out the 4 seasons that they have had so far, they have pathched, fixed exploits, and generally just tried to not be evil towards their paying customers.
Now Details on season 5 are emerging. First the actual notes right from Bungie
Season Journey Updates
Seasonal Legendaries Removed – All legendaries from patch 2.4.0 on will be “immediately available” regardless of Season participation.
Haedrig’s Gift – New item-based reward will give players set pieces as they progress in the Season Journey, with all pieces given out by the completion of Chapter 4.
Barbarian: Might of the Earth
Crusader: Thorns of the Invoker
Demon Hunter: The Shadow’s Mantle
Monk: Monkey King’s Garb
Witch Doctor: Raiment of the Jade Harvester
Wizard: Firebird’s Finery
New/Updated Conquests
Cosmetic Rewards – Season 5 rewards include the Conquerer’s Boots transmogficiation, exclusive Portrait Frames, and the Wickerman Pet.
Season Rebirth – Non-Seasonal characters can be “rebirthed,” resetting them at level 1 and removing all items and accomplishments except: player name and time played.
Blizzard isn’t shaking the boat in terms of Season structure with Season 5, the shift from Seasonal Legendaries to a full set will change the difficulty curve. The jump from hitting level 70 and dressing down in Legendaries to earning that first full set is likely the most challenging content jump for new players. This could potentially reduce the number of plays who stick around for the full season.
The stage is set, the lights are up, and its time for Blizzcon, blizzards nexus for news and e-sports tournaments. It all starts with the opening ceremonies.
We open this year with a video about Starcraft, lots of talk from developers about how much they love the series, and how it spawned a e-sport around it. This is really a love story to Legacy of the Void, showing us that the community and the devs made the game it is today. The video wraps up in a neat presentation all about how much everyone loves the Blizzcon and how it all comes here, to this convention. It’s the nexus of all of Blizzards E-sports and all of their news and game dev and its all coming to this stage.
Mike Morhaime (president and a co-founder of BlizzardEntertainment) comes up on stage, and he’s here to talk about how much Blizzard also loves Blizzcon. People attend from everywhere, around the world, and millions buy the stream pass to watch this live. Blizzard is 25 this year, even scarier 20 years since WarCraft II tides of darkness (my first blizzard title I feel old). We get a cute bit about how people have met their spouses here, how people love blizzard, how much it is great company and how much they love the fans.
The first big annoucnment is Brightpaw, a manna kitty, this years charity pet! Its a cute pink cat, who if you purchase your money will go to charity.
Next we got a new trailer for the end of our Star Craft journey. Jim Reynors voice tells us “we just gotta finish what we begun” This trailer gave me literal goosebumps, I couldn’t believe it. it’s a cinematic love story to the SC world, we see the Protoss fighting Aemon, and hear a bit about how the Protoss will be fighting in this the last Star Craft expansion. This is a much expanded trailer from what we have seen so far, but its not really giving us much story. Unfortunately this seems to have been an internal video and I cant find it anywhere that’s shareable.
Our next announcements are Archon Mode, and Co-op missions. They will be non 1v1 modes that are co-operative, and will cater to more casual players, who may not want to ladder.
The development team behind Diablo 3 has released behind-the-scenes details of designing the game’s Legendary items in a blog post today, looking to tap the collective mind of the community that so adores the series.Read More
Blizzard has been eager to add reasons for players to keep enjoying Diablo 3 long after they’ve completed the main story line. The new paragon leveling system announced today seems to be a great addition. Originally reaching level 60 just left players in an item hunt with no where else to go with their characters. The paragon system adds 100 new levels that begin at level 60.
A big issue for level 60 players has been finding magic gear to continue improving their character. Some players had Magic Find stat boosting sets of equipment they’d switch into before defeating enemies to raise their chances of good drops. This upset other players who were against the gear swapping concept. So every paragon level rewards you with 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find boosts. As well as core stat boosts like you’d get from a normal level up.
It will be interesting to see where this new concept goes. For more details straight from blizzard on this new system continue to read more.
Blizzard’s last patch to Diablo III introduced some restrictions for players who decided to buy the game digitally. As it stands right now, players who purchased the game through Battle.net are only able to access the games first Act and are capped at level 13, they are also not able to play launch public games, gain access to the auction house and cannot make use of the public chat channel available to other players.
The auction house limitations, chat restrictions and other communication barriers were intentional but blizzard says that new digital purchases to be able to access more of the games content. Restricting players to level 13 and Act I ( namely the Skeleton King) was an unintended bug and will be fixed with the next patch.
Click the jump for a full list of restrictions that will be remain in place for up to 72 hours for those who purchased D3 digitally.
