”...the high end runes are intended to be very rare.”

Mmmm…  I wonder which lower level Blizzard techie is going to be making a silent 1 million in ebay dollars on the side.

dupers and distributors can buy a few more lamborghini’s in 2010.

“Early design thoughts”
“Honestly, it hasn’t been decided.”

As always. I wonder when we will start hearing something that has been decided or finalized. Probably 2 years later.

I personally think the giving the Runes another purpose (i.e make them used for improving weapons .. ala a crafting system component) and users will really have to make meanignful choices when using their Runes.

hate a simple comment: high runes meant to be rare

i hope its nothing like in d2, otherwise, dupers will be like, really rich. and like every game, they will find a way, or try to, and guess what gonna happen next? welcome back d2 economy xD

As always. I wonder when we will start hearing something that has been decided or finalized. Probably 2 years later.

Yeah. This sort of comment from Bashiok is always a bit discouraging. And with StarCraft II not even in beta yet…honestly, late 2010 is probably an optimistic estimate for D3.

All Blizzard comments are a bit discouraging.  These skill rune comments are nothing new and once again we’ve been told “not decided” / “not finalized”.  Then there is the Starcraft beta announcement, “beta this Summer”.  What Blizzard left out of the announcement is that “Summer” means the day before “Fall”.

I think I need to go back to the “Guess the D3 Release Date” thread and pick a day in 2011.  My end of June 2010 guess—we’ll be lucky if the beta starts by then.

I still want to know what exactly a D3 rune is supposed to be. 

I mean, in D2 runes were enchanted stones that imbue weapons or armor with magic powers.  Weapons have sockets that you put them in.  In D3, what is a rune, and how does it give you extra powers?  This is supposed to be a role-playing game… maybe it’s just me but I have a hard time visualizing myself as an axe-wielding, armor-clad Barbarian, picking up a small stone with a mystical rune carved into it, then opening up my skills control panel and selecting a skill to plug that rune into.

Please Blizzard, come up with a better story for your rune system.  Right now, it’s not much different from the mushrooms and fire-flowers we used to pick up playing Super Mario Bros.

This is supposed to be a role-playing game…

It’s not an actual roleplaying game as you can’t really roleplay in it. It just has a couple of game elements in common with true RPGs (e.g. story-driven gameplay, character classes, character improvement) which is why people still call it an RPG. In reality it’s more of an action game.

That aside, I’m wondering just how rare high level runes will be. My understanding is that each class will be able to rune a number of skills, which means that the demand for high level runes will be very high.

I hope they won’t mess up the rarity like the D2 team did. I managed to find all kinds of elite uniques (windforce, grandfather, death’s web to name a few), yet the rarest rune I ever saw was Lem.

Right now, it’s not much different from the mushrooms and fire-flowers we used to pick up playing Super Mario Bros.

this made me lol

I would like for high end runes to be so rare that it could only be found once on each server per year. That would keep me playing much longer.
If you find everything pretty easily, it will get boring after 2 months. Pursuit is what makes it interesting, not easy possession.