Bashiok offered a much welcomed thorough mind-picture of what all of us should expect in Diablo III when it comes to dungeons.  We won’t be seeing the same interiors over and over, with the same type of colors or illumination across each one.  Each dungeons will feel unique and epic.  The art team is designing a lot of detail and contrast into each dungeon separately depending on its location and lore behind it, as well as other factors.  This game will set big differences between itself and Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.

With this in mind, the Art Direction Controversy looks at this point laughable.  We only got to see one small area of a dungeon. Not the whole thing.  Many fans who went to the 2008 BlizzCon, including Flux, myself and the IncGamers staff had the opportunity to play and see others play different areas of Tristram and its Cathedral.  Each level looks different and detailed.  Not all the place is green hued, or bright.  Hope all the fans able to go to this year’s BlizzCon have the opportunity to play the new build of the Diablo III demo.  It is gorgeous.

	Blizzard Quote:
	I think there’s a nice juxtaposition between the larger more epic dungeons and the others that may be less epic but have very specific tones and themes associated with them. When you step inside one of the more epic dungeons, like the Tristram cathedral (and considering its past, shouldn’t it be epic?) you immediately know you’re somewhere important. Somewhere that looks and feels magical in its presentation and lighting, as opposed to, say… a cave. Still cool! Caves are still awesome, but you probably don’t want magical purple and green lighting in a cave, it’s probably going to have a much different and subdued feel. If it’s a natural cave it may have light streaming in from cracks above, or if it’s a mine it might have lighting from lanterns. Much earthier and natural. Then you walk into some ancient tomb of a powerful wizard, oh crap, this place clearly has something else going on. The lighting is a bit unnatural, maybe some sickly greenish hues to set a theme and mood. That type of theming adds a lot to keeping the scenery changing and interesting. If you’re just fighting demons against a grey or brown backdrop for hours and hours, days and days, maybe years and years… it gets boring. Interesting, themed, and contrasting scenery all help ensure visual longevity. I think before too long we’ll have shown a nice cross section of the dungeon types and looks. It’s been too long staring at the one dungeon. Each one has a very unique look and feel, so it’s really cool going in to each one and having a total change of scenery. It’s all very exciting and we’re all looking forward to sharing it with you and seeing the fan reactions just as soon as it’s ready.

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Joystiq.com was amongst a group of gaming sites that recently enjoyed a visit and tour of Blizzard’s offices in Irvine. This isn’t that rare a treat; we got to visit last year before Blizzcon and Leord spent most of last week there as part of a Starcraft 2 event, but the Joystiq article has an extensive photo gallery, with 99 pictures showing the offices, library, museum, wolfrider statue, maps, decorations, decorated cubicles, etc. I grabbed out the few Diablo-related images, (Do want the huge framed D3 world map!) but the whole thing is worth a look, especially if you’re a WoW fan, since artwork and props related to that game dominate the proceedings.

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Our resident lore-and-all-things-obscure-guru Medievaldragon posted about a new registration by Blizzard on BlizzPlanet.com and WorldofWar.net. It seems kinda WoW-related, so might be nothing, but it’s actually worth reposting here. Read MD’s thoughts on it after the break. Is it the new MMO, the new game, or “just” a WoW expansion? Cataclysm is a name you should remember, regardless!

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Part Three of our exhaustive Diablo 3: Year One review covers December 2008 and January-February 2009. (See also parts one and two.) There was plenty of news during these months, with rumors and intrigue galore. No re-eruptions of the damned Color Controversy, but we saw Tyrael graphical improvements, fan disapproval of seasonal bonus features, the rainbow blasting unicorn and Thousand Pound Ghostbuster, Blizzard kicking sand on E3, the unauthorized Ba’al movie poster, an official (but unintentional) guarantee that Diablo 3 would be released in 2010, black market Secret Unicorn Level t-shirts, and contraband video of the Female WD meeting a new NPC friend.

Click through to read the whole run down; there’s even a special bonus Year One wallpaper, courtesy of VioletJoker. Click to view it large; you need it that big to appreciate all of the individual images included in this great collage.

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It has been a good week in the forums so far. Unfortunately we didn't see much Diablo-related news when the StarCraft fanatics talked about multiplayer and Battle.net with Blizzard over in Irvine, but at least the StarCraft II LAN discussion has thankfully not really reached the D3 community.

This is a special week, with about a year ago since the Diablo III announcement, and Flux has been busy trying to summarize the events of the past year in his first and second review (more to come). Inspired by Flux we have mixed up an interesting list of threads from the forum with varying relevance to the one-year anniversary.

As usual, if you find any threads that you feel are of extraordinary interest e-mail to inform us!


Somewhat Official Diablo 3 Release Date Pool

• Mad Mantis' (our Necromancer & Witch Doctor Moderator) ultra-classic betting thread. Many of the bets seems to have failed already, but new ones keep popping in!

I feel D3 is too much like WoW because...

• Always a hot potatoe, this massive thread/poll by Demetrium has been reincarnated. Have a go yourself!

How do you feel about monster immunities?

• A great way to balance a game, forcing players to use skills tactically, or just stupid? Intereting topic by Neltharion.

My take on a Bard class

• Technomancer, the author of the Arcane Warrior/Elemental Warrior is back with another fan class. He tries his skill on the classic D&D Bard, which immediately became a popular topic. I assume we'll see the class in DiabloWiki soon enough!

Auction Houses - No thank you.

• Kickstarting his Diii.net career, commonhumans start one of two interesting threads, and the first one is about trading. There are a lot of pros and cons between the bartering of Diablo II and the Auction house of WoW, but even if there is resistance to AHs among fans would it be enough to stop Blizzard from adding it?

Getting more serious

• The second thread by commonhumans is a more in-depth speculation post about classes. Well worth a read.

The First Year - Fan Art

• Resident fan artist VioletJoker has made a special picture and a special thread to commemorate the one year anniversary. It's a nice fan art collage that will suit any PC.

Will my computer be able to run Diablo 3?

• This extraordinarily important question is asked by WhiteNinjaHero, despite the fact there are no known minimum requirements for Diablo III yet. Fear not however, since I have called for the fabulous Kalos, who shortly will answer any and all known and unknown PC stat questions!

That's all for now, remember to report interesting threads to !

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Bashiok went on a forum tear late Tuesday night, touching on a number of issues.

A fan complained about the no-LAN support issue that’s currently gripping the SC2 community and Bashiok replied with an eye towards D3:

	Blizzard Quote:
	All removing LAN support does is hurt legitimate buyers, pirates will have LAN and their free game.It might take them a while to reverse engineer it, but they WILL have it. Bashiok: More so than overbearing/invasive anti-piracy measures that would affect everyone who buys the game regardless of how they’re going to play it instead of just those that may want a LAN feature? I would doubt it. I don’t know a lot about it, Diablo III isn’t really facing the brunt of the Battle.net 2.0 features just yet, but I think that removing LAN in an attempt to avoid more severe anti-piracy measures is pretty cool. We’re saying “Hey, we’re pretty sure you’re going to love our game. The multiplayer is really the best part though. In order to get in on that that we’d just like to make sure you bought the game. Cool?”

In a related post, someone asked if D3 would be free through Battle.net. Bashiok hints that it will be just as free as SC2 will be. A very qualified statement.

	Blizzard Quote:
	are they going to charge to play diablo 3 online? Bashiok: Mike mentioned it in an Activision Blizzard investor meeting [paraphrased] “A player that buys Starcraft 2 at retail will have the ability to play on Battle.net with no additional fee.”  I’ll point out that this is a very carefully worded statement.   So you mean you have to subscribe to the online fee in order to find the high level weapons and use all of battle.nets features right? Bashiok: No.

Elsewhere, some dude tries to get overly-clever with the game lore vs. the D3 Hammer of the Ancients skill, but falls just short of completion.

	Blizzard Quote:
	None of the Ancients use a giant two handed golden hammer. Talic wields a fiery sword and shield and uses whirlwind. Korlic wields a polearm and uses leap attack. Madawc wields dual throwing axes and uses shout. I even checked their lore backgrounds on Diablo2.diablowiki.net and none of their backgrounds suggest the use of a two handed golden hammer. Bashiok: “Those three are not ancients” Right. They were chosen as protectors of Mt. Arreat by the Ancients.

First of all, it’s a virtual hammer created magically for a short duration, not a specific item of which only one (for the purposes of lore) exists. If there were a D2 skill called “Blessed Hammer of the Protectors” it wouldn’t mean those blessed hammers were literally the same ones used by some mythological paladin lords.  More specifically in this case, the confusion comes from the fact that the D2 quest and NPC dialogues use the term a bit loosely. Madawc, Korlic, and Talic are called “The Ancients,” and they’re reached via “The Ancient’s Way,” but the actual quest is called Rite of Passage. See the lore sections on each of their monster pages for the story of how they were selected by the ancient Ancients to become the newer Ancients and stand guard over Mt. Arreat.

Finally, someone just noticed the Rainbow Level t-shirts from last year’s Blizzcon, and had some questions about them.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Two quick questions about the shirts that some Blizzard employees were wearing at Blizzcon 1. Do you plan to sell these? 2. Would you care if I made my own? Bashiok: 1. Maybe. 2. Probably not, just don’t try to profit from our artwork.

That guy should have been here back in February when we posted this news item. Before the lawyers shut them down…

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Earlier today we posted some news about the D2 v1.13 patch delay, and that patch’s (hopefully) imminent arrival on the testing realm. In related news, talked to Bashiok this afternoon about the big list of D2 questions I assembled from the dozens of suggestions you guys submitted. Bashiok said that their were delayed along with the v1.13 stuff, but that we could hope to hear about them once the patch arrived.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Bashiok: After talking to the legacy producers we decided it might serve the community and the developers better to use [the questions] as a post-1.13 sort of “well what now?” approach… Please let people know that we’re waiting until after 1.13 is released to look at the future of Diablo II development and so we’re going to wait until then to answer any questions regarding it.

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A fan asked Bashiok about loading screens for Diablo 3, and he gave a very encouraging reply, then elaborated on the technical schematics in a second reply.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Bashiok: There aren’t any loading screens. Personally I think it’s amazing and I don’t understand the magic the programmers have worked, but the game is instant or near instant. The same is true for initial game load. Start up the game, create a character, click a button and the game world shows up. No waiting and no real discernible pause. Mileage may vary slightly of course, but it would (from what I’ve seen) be in the realm of a second or two second pause at most. The keyword is to load stuff dynamically in a VERY optimized way :-D Bashiok: ITS MAGIC

As best I recall from last year’s Blizzcon demo, there were essentially no loading screens on the demo, unless you joined an MP game and had to wait for the other players to make their character choices and get synch’ed up.

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Bashiok has finally revealed the reasons Diablo II patch 1.13 was delayed.  Basically, the Diablo II team resources were moved to work on an emergency contingency when the Warcraft III custom map exploit affected players with injected malware.  This is what Karune said on January 5, 2009:

	Blizzard Quote:
	Warcraft III Custom Map Security Warning We have identified an exploit that could allow malicious software to be spread through Warcraft III maps. We have applied a temporary fix to address this issue when playing on Battle.net, and we are working on a patch to permanently address the issue when playing on a LAN or playing single-player custom maps. In the meantime, we recommend that players avoid downloading maps from unofficial sources or websites they do not trust—be aware that corrupted maps may share the same name as other popular maps. If you encounter custom maps that no longer function or other issues related to this fix, please post details below. As a reminder, this is a serious issue we are working on, and we want to make Battle.net the best online service for gaming as possible. Please only post in this thread if you have constructive feedback to add in regards to this Warcraft III exploit.

This was obviously a very critical exploit that needed action.  The Diablo II team really wanted to dispatch patch 1.13 to players back then, but reality-check ... things happen.  The good news is that the patch to fix Warcraft III custom map vulnerabilities is now on PTR. Once that PTR is over, the Diablo II team will be free to resume work on the final steps of Diablo II patch 1.13.  They were almost ready to launch within a two-week window.  That means patch 1.13 will be hitting PTR any time in the next few weeks folks.

We want all our fans and visitors to be alert on the news and to join Diablo II patch 1.13 PTR to submit feedback and bug reports to the developers.

You can read Bashiok’s long story after the break.

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Here lies part two of our Diablo 3: Year One wrap up. This article series is covering/reliving/recapping/reanimating the milestones in Diablo 3’s development and other key and controversial events in the Diablo 3 online community. There’s far more to report on than you might think; certainly more than I expected, when I started researching what I thought would be a quick little trip down memory lane. 

Yesterday’s installment covered the first three months of Diablo 3, including the countdown to the debut at last year’s WWI event in Paris.  The next three months, September, October, and November 2008, were no less-action packed, with continuing installments in the Art Controversy, Diablo 3’s appearance at the European GDC show in Leipzig, several new bestiary updates, the debut of the official and ret-con-tastic Diablo Timeline, and the massive excitement that was Blizzcon 2008. Blizzcon featured the first public play time on Diablo III, the Wizard’s semi-expected debut, the dawn of the auto-allocated attribute controversy, and more in depth D3 write-ups than you can shake a caduceus at.

Click through to read the full piece, and check back tomorrow for part 3.

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