Mysteries of the Mighty Barbarians.

[djzombie]

There's also that totem thing or whatever at character screen, that's just basically an achievement tracker. Not sure how it interacts with the game environment, i.e., can other players see it, and grovel at your e-peen? But that could end up being a reason to continue slugging through outside of items.

From what I've read that Totem serves two purposes,First it tracks your progress and achievements, what difficulties you've completed, and I think its customizable(though not sure to what extent. In a multiplayer game each persons totem is displayed in town and clicking on a persons totem will teleport you to them.

[avelle]

I was deeply confused by you talking about totems until I realized you meant the banner thing.

[djzombie]

Yeah sorry for the confusion.

Seems cool though, being able to teleport from town to any person you want to join.

I think I like what they're proposing with inferno, it does make the entire game viable at max difficulty, that was really what was missing from D2.

Unique armor art for each difficulty is also very cool.

[avelle]

Ohhh snapple:
https://twitter.com/#!/richbcnet/sta...26368108974080

@richbcnet richbcnet
Diablo 3 beta invite just showed up. Any cardio routines out there that target your index finger? #cnet

Cnet if you are trolling I swear to god I will choke the life out of every one of your staff members.

[Pikarya]

Suddenly Cnet traffic goes through the roof, for the first time in eons.

[Uzor]

If this is a lie... people will DIE!

[avelle]

If this is a lie... people will DIE!

I'm already digging my pitchfork out of the shed just in case.

[avelle]

Invites appear to be going out to a few lucky Blizzcon attendees with more potentially coming tomorrow. It's not 100% for sure, but both this person on the D3 forums and an administrator for the TeamLiquid site have stated they received emails with their invites.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3082213224
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...tpage=267#5339

Could still be a hoax, but it is looking more and more legit by the minute.

edit: False alarm on the TL post, he has since corrected himself and said that it was a press invite.

[Kyo]

A buddy of mine who writes for gaming media, received his today as well, he showed me the email personally, I didn't believe it either, thought he was fucking with me.

[avelle]

A buddy of mine who writes for gaming media, received his today as well, he showed me the email personally, I didn't believe it either, thought he was fucking with me.

Was it a press invite or a Blizzcon invite?

[Kyo]

Was it a press invite or a Blizzcon invite?

Press.

[aurik]

Excited to see beta coverage starting very soon!

That said, having though about the issue, I think diablo 3 is making some mistakes that are going to really undercut its long-tail nature.

As I mentioned earlier, allowing players to hard-cap on exp seems like a bad plan. D2 had a wonderful system of severely diminishing returns past 80, which meant that playing your character was always productive in a strictly measurable way, even if that progression was all of +20 max hp after hours or days of investment. Also, they've announced that there will be no ladder ("leaderboards"). The ladder was a huge success in D2--so much so, that every time a new season rolled around a large portion of the community rerolled into the new ladder even if they weren't planning on playing for ladder spots. I think the lack of a leaderboard system / progression meter will just douse any drive for people to continue to play their characters after they have finished the game. And that's what has given D2 such a long tail--when there is a ladder reset I'm always tempted to go back and level a new character (and have done so 3 times) and compete again for ladder spots.

If it was me setting direction on the game, I would definitely revert this. I'd make a system where at 60 you earn some sort of "merit points" (perhaps in Inferno only) very slowly that you can spend for small, permanent, all-but-meaningless upgrades (much like D2 post-85 or so). I'd bring back global leaderboards that tracks the leaders in merit points, as well as an automatically-reset quarterly tally, then do something like pick a few players that ranked high on the leaderboard each quarter and interview them for the Diablo3 news area.

I'd also want to set up a system where people can form ad-hoc communities and people could load up the leaderboard for any communities to which they belong. So we'd have a BG-only leaderboard, but that wouldn't preclude me from participating in other communities as well.

And of course the leaderboards would nicely integrate into the D3Armory.

[Militant]

This is great news indeed. Sounds like we're within the 6 monthish release window for sure, but I don't want to spark that debate again.

[Uzor]

I'm excited. And then I will be severely disappointed when I don't get a single beta key ever.

But for now, excited. It's right on track with my predicted schedule of beta starting September 9-16 and ending in October, with release in early-mid November

[djzombie]

I'm excited. And then I will be severely disappointed when I don't get a single beta key ever.

^ this.

[arus2001]

Ladder was dumb (woohoo jobless schlubs marathoning with their cube of mountain dew and a bucket at their side for nothing more than fleeting e-fame) and diminished EXP returns has never really been a good thing in any game I played ever. When it came to EXP, dying at the higher levels was pretty brutal, and let's be honest, D2 was not a game without bugs and connectivity issues that could result in many unwanted deaths. The MSLE bug was most certainly notorious for killing people off, and Extra Fast monsters were pretty bad about breaking sync and not being where you thought they were. Nevermind the fact all classes were hardly created equal when it came to gaining EXP, or even difficulty progression if you didn't rush. D2's current Hell mode is a clusterfuck of balance issues, and it really shouldn't be that way just because they wanted it to be the hardest difficulty.

[aurik]

It's an undeniable fact that ladder gave people an incentive. Just look at how many people reroll when the ladder reset for the new ladder environ, even 10 years after release. Also, I never had a problem making it onto the ladder even while working full-time. And as I said, if you allow player-created communities with personalized ladders, then you get rid of the problem of "a whole bunch of people I don't care about are cluttering up the ladder".

The same with an XP bar that was almost impossible to completely fill out. The ability to always log on and get a few million xp in a session and make "progress" was a huge incentive to continue playing characters. Otherwise you pretty much get to 70 and then beat everything and that's that. Beyond about 80 the difference a level made was so marginal and it took so long that it wasn't really a big deal, but the bar was still there to fill up.

Dying was never a problem. If you had problems with dying to...well, whatever you died to...you just needed to L2P. The game was utterly survivable, even without using massively overpowered bugged or duped items. I must have invested in excess of 1000 hours in the game and died a grand total of 6 times (93, 87, 87, 77, 37, 23). But in any case, this is moot as they've removed the xp penalty for dying.

The other issues you cited (different classes had different xp earning potential, unbalanced xp if you rushed to a5h and leeched, huge balance issues in hell, etc) aren't really problems with d2 ladder, but defects in game balance/design, and as such irrelevant to the discussion of ladder / hard-capping.

[Arkanna]

I agree with you Aurik on everything except the dying part. I played exclusively HC in D2, and I lost quite a few characters to dumb shit like warping extra-fast mobs, "edge of the map" lag, and just generally-poor connection quality where it was not my ISP's fault. Disconnect death != L2P.

Pretty sure Battle.Net 2.0 will address that for the most part though.

[aurik]

Also played exclusively HC, had dozens of guardians, only ever lost 1 dude to dropped connection (87 bonewall/prison necro in cows...pretty dumb place to play as that build). Never had a problem with extrafast/map desync. But I virtually never played solo, that helps offset lag issues a lot.

edit: kinda sad I can remember every single death in visceral detail despite having played thousands of hours and dozens of characters over the past 10 years...

Spoiler: show

93 java hybrid, PK from a GA zon using trigger hack in a pub cow game...only PK I ever suffered, not looted. sixth death.
87 bone prison/wall necro, lag-drop in private cow game by the king's boss pack about 1 screen northeast of the red portal, not looted, full trang set. fifth death.
87 warcry barb, fana strong fast frenzytaurs in the frozen river (anya's map), around a northwest-to-southwest corner. looted. second death.
77 warcry barb, MS LE Conv obknight pack in CSanc just after the entranceway. looted. first death.
37 ribcracker zero-vit wolf druid, popped by a FE boss death explosion in ancient's way, in the northeast of the map, looted, third death
23 barb, popped by a FE councillor death explosion in kurast, not looted, fourth death.

[Arkanna]

Also played exclusively HC, had dozens of guardians, only ever lost 1 dude to dropped connection (87 bonewall/prison necro in cows...pretty dumb place to play as that build). Never had a problem with extrafast/map desync. But I virtually never played solo, that helps offset lag issues a lot.

That's true, I generally played solo, or at most with one other person (an RL friend).