GameShampoo.com Staff attended the Diablo 3 Q&A panel at Blizzcon 2011 in the Anaheim Convention Center in California, and we are very excited to report to you from there!

Blizzard's Diablo III panel included:

Jay Wilson - Diablo III Game Director

Kevin Martens - Lead Content Designer

Christian Lightner - Art Director

Jason Regier - Lead Programmer

Robert Bridenbecker - VP of Online Tech



Panel was just pure goodness, an hour of letting us, the players, ask Blizzard anything we wanted about Diablo!

Player: so yesterday during the panel you were guys were talking about difficulty level how normal mode would be very very easy but what about veteran players are we really gonna have to beat the game once before we get any kind of challenge are you guys going to add a way to make the game harder before progressing?

Jay: No we are not planning on having any kind of shortcuts through normal difficulty, just like Diablo II normal difficulty will be fairly quickpath we are not too worried about people getting bored, it does get more challenging kinda later even in the first act and profressively, so I wouldnt say the entire of normal difficulty is easy, the first hour only is a tutorial and then it gets more challenging. what we've noticed about lot of people playing especially more serious players, they get thorugh the first act relaly quick and dont have problems with getting bored and such"

Kevin: The normal difficutly level if you are a veteran this is your chance to enjoy the story and get familiar with the skills so you can really kick ass in veteran mode

Player: There are 3 kinds of gamers in Blizzard games: Hardcore, Casual, and farmers. And with farmers being such a big industry, how are you planning on combatting this because farmers are already looking at diablo and thinking how do we make lots of money

Jay: Farming wont be as big an issue in Diablo 3. The most important thing to remember about diablo is that its not a persistent world. in wow they are in your world taking your monsters, loot, interfering with your experience. But in Diablo they can go off into their own server, own world, own instance, and it doesnt affect you at all. The downside of farmers is really their impact on the world and it wont be a big problem in Diablo

Player: What's the Chad man do

Kevin: he fulfills all your dreams

Player: You guys made the followers more viable for endgame content (because the feedback wanted it) Is there any benefit or is it even possible to get to the end of the game in inferno without a follower?

Jay: We made them viable not required. They do give some nice bonuses. If you really dont like followers then you should be able to play without them. We still want to find a way where you can get the benefits of the follower without having a follower. That is something we will explore in the future.

Player: Is Diablo a girl?

Kevin: Diablo is not constrained by our human gender stereotype. diablo can take many forms and we have never seen its true form

Player: can you elaborate on hardcore mode, when its unlocked, are there going to be real money transactions, are there any differences between diablo 2 hardcore mode and diablo 3

Jason: for those that dont know, if you make a hardcore character and that char dies it is gone forever. its completely separated - gold only auction house (not real money) cant trade with normal characters,when you die your body doesnt drop, your items are gone you cant collect the items from your body. Pvp is something we are still debating. If we have you die permanently in Arena then hardcore players will never play arena. we are thinking on how to get around that.

Player: Inferno mode: Do you expect fresh 60s to succeed in inferno and do you plan on nerfing inferno to make it more accessible to casual players

Jay: No. and we wont nerf it for all the noobs are there. we said it was going to be hard. we had a video and everything. we cant promise that we will never nerf it. but we wont nerft it to make it casual.

Player: This might be a stupid question, but in dialbo 1 and 2 there is fog of war, why isnt it there in diablo 3

Jay: There is fog of war in diablo 3

Kevin: we took it out of the home town but there is still fog of war in the rest of the area

Jay: Do you mean the light radius? some dungeons emphasize it more. It is there. When you only have one light its easier in a 2d engine when everything is hand drawn but in a 3d engine one light makes it more bland you really need more lights around the character to make it stand out more.

Player: Randomization in dungeons, there are some areas in diablo 2 that are frustratingly convoluted, why did you make it like that, are you toning it down in diablo 3

kevin: most dungeons are very random. very often in a complete dungeon there is a unique entry point, idol of ragnar, treasure hunter,escort mission and conlcludes in the end so there is a random dungeon in between but there is a start and end point that dont change. but there are quests that have very little randomless. Like the templar level you acquire the templar in that level he has his own story but even there there is a little randomless.

Player: With there being a monetary aspect tied to the game via the auction home - my question is about the botting, what are you guys doing to increase the warden protection for body

Rob: From a warden standpoint its an investment we will continue to invest there. we have some inheret protection in that it does make the bots a little less effective. We will be monitoring that and policing it very well so that we can take care of that.

Jay: People who jump into the game, and broadcast, and jump out of the game, that irrtated me and we are going to look and try and stop that.

player: All is strikes, single clicks, single attack, or there is frenzy

Jay: a lot of the abilities you can hold down and some you cant. we've tried to design the combat is that the most optimal way to play is never with just one ability that you hold. We find its more fun when you using a couple of abilities together. but yes you can do the same sequences like in diablo 2

player: have you through about adding wsad movement controls so that players dont have to spin the mouse so much when kiting

jay: we played around with games that use that and we came to a conclusion: first, we dont want to support two control schemes. Its really hard to make one control scheme great, and making two of them great is too hard. the analog nature of WSAD movement does not bode well with diablo 3

player: are you planning to put the rune stones again?

kevin: we have a lot of new systems that are going to do everything the runes do. Gems are coming back and we have more things that they do as well. we moved a lot of the attributes and the stack points into the itemization. Crafting you make your own items, you can break those things down, there will be tons of new systems we dont need tunestones any more we have everything covered.

Player: You guys keep teasing us about console version of the game is it coming out on console or not?

Jay: We havent officially anounced it. we hired people, we have a team working internally, we want to make it on console. but we dont want to announce something until we are sure. We really would like it to be on console, we think it can work there. it should feel natural on the console not like it was forced on it.

Player: about runes: 5 runes seven rates. crimson runes for example you change your mind and put it in meteor instead. but if you change your mind it locked. but now you have 5000 runes. that creates a huge inventory problem. what are you doing about that?

Jay: We are still playing with this system. The system we put in has some good things about it and have some bad things - the inventory. we dont know yet how we will fix this.

Player: Back in D2 I perfected the teeth necromancer build. Are there similar skills in D3

Jay: We probably have a skill thats similar to teeth

Player: what kind of challenges do you have for the console version of Diablo 3? any design/implementation challenges?

Jay: We havent built it yet. The biggest challenge is really attacking. Movement feel better. magic too. but how you target. a skill like blizzard. trying to think exactly where its going to go. Monster distribution and AI feels different then PC. how the controller feels, how it feels to get surrounded. its mostly the controls. everyone wants a game where you have direct control of your character and we want to gtet it right on the console.

Player: Can we get some beta keys?

Jay: I have some in my back pocket right now. We will release more beta keys very shortly. we will send out waves of beta keys. we are waiting for the big patch to release. also thanks to all current beta participants.

player: in the sound panel they said, if you could make a level with a sound effect of pig playing guitar and also will there be secret areas

Jay: what kind of guitar does a pig play

kevin: we wont spoil the secret areas

player: will builds that the follower is the main source of damage be viable?

Jay: we dont know if thats the case yet.

Player: Level cap for player is 60, but monsters are 61+, is there plans for super dungeon for when you beat it?

Jay: if you get bored I am sure we will do something about it

Player: yesterday you revealed that the cast speed for wizards is going to be related to weapon speed and arcane power regenerates at static rate, what are you doing to incentivize having faster weapons for spells like meteorite.

Jay: The faster weapons affect academic skills. you have to have something to do at all time. you cant just stand, but we dont want to do mana potions. for the wizard you have academic spells that are free and you can cast them whenever you want but some skills like meteor it affected by 100% weapon damage but some spells are constant. If you have more abilities that have constant attack rate you want faster weapons, for others you want bigger weapons

Player: Authentication system- will authenticators be linked to D3 like starcraft 2 and wow

Jay: yes