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  Diablo II: Resurrected
Posted by: Bolty - 02-20-2021, 12:29 AM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (25)

Blizzard announced today at BlizzConline that Diablo II: Resurrected will be released in 2021, a full HD remaster of the original game and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack with updated cinematics.

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  Diablo IV
Posted by: Bolty - 11-01-2019, 08:54 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (6)

Blizzard announced Diablo IV at Blizzcon today.



I especially loved the tiny nod to the original Diablo 1 trailer at the start of the video, with the swinging shutter on the old, decrepit house.

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  Diablo's 20th Anniversary
Posted by: Bolty - 01-06-2017, 04:57 AM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (8)


Twenty years, everyone. It's been twenty years. Hello again to all of you who were here in the beginning!

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  Blizzard's 25th Anniversary
Posted by: Bolty - 02-09-2016, 02:14 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - No Replies

Blizzard Entertainment is celebrating their 25th anniversary and put out a video commemorating the event:

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  An Oral History of Diablo II
Posted by: Bolty - 09-10-2015, 01:56 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (3)

US Gamer has an amazing read posted yesterday entitled In Their Own Words: An Oral History of Diablo II. Interviews conducted with the original Blizzard North/Condor team that developed the original Diablo including David Brevik, Max Schaefer, and Erich Schaefer describe the team mentality, the lessons learned, and the development process of the first two games.

David Brevik Wrote:There was no definitive design document [for Diablo II]. There was a loose structure. "Hey, I know we wanted to go here for Diablo 1, this is kind of the first act. This is kind of the story we're telling there." And then we get to the second act, and "Hey, where do we want to go," and then, "Oh, I got this idea for this level, it's going to be in space, it's going to be awesome." And we'd mock it up. "Yeah, that's great. Doesn't make any sense in the story, but what the hell, it's kind of cool."

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  WoW: Warlords of Draenor Nov. 13th
Posted by: Bolty - 08-15-2014, 12:41 AM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (14)

Blizzard has announced the next expansion release date for World of Warcraft and showcased their cinematic trailer:


No matter if you're a fan of WoW or not, once again Blizzard's cinematics team proves to be one of the best in the industry.

Any Loungers planning on returning to WoW for the expansion?

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  Rob Pardo Leaves Blizzard
Posted by: Bolty - 07-03-2014, 08:27 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (2)

Rob Pardo, Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard Entertainment for 17 years, announced he is leaving the company today. Rob was a designer on Diablo II and Diablo III amongst other Blizzard games.

Quote:Every ending is a beginning and today marks a new beginning for me.

After 17 years at Blizzard, with long and careful contemplation, I have made a difficult and bittersweet but ultimately exciting decision to pursue the next chapter in my life and career.

Before I even joined Blizzard, I was already a huge fan of the company and its games. In particular, I was extremely passionate about the emerging genre of real-time strategy games. It was a dream come true when I was given the opportunity to work on StarCraft, which at the time was being created by a very small team by today’s standards. It was tremendously fulfilling to get to know everyone on the team personally and to contribute our energies toward a shared goal in such a creative and engaging environment.

Blizzard Entertainment has been simply the best place in the world to be a game designer. The best aspect of designing games at Blizzard is that the entire company is passionate about the gameplay within each and every product. From the executive team to customer service to our global offices, every single person is a player and contributes to making the best possible games. It’s for very good reason that the first credit on every Blizzard game is “Game Design by Blizzard Entertainment.”

I’m really proud of the contributions I was able to make to Blizzard’s accomplishments. From building lasting games, to supporting the growth of eSports, to extending the Warcraft world into a feature film, and of course to being able to celebrate our shared passions with the Blizzard community online and at BlizzCon.

The Blizzard community is ultimately the reason why we come to work every day and pour our souls into every world and experience we create. Blizzard’s players are the most passionate in the world and your commitment and dedication are truly awesome to behold. Creating entertainment for you has been an incredible opportunity, and I know that you will continue to grow and become even stronger as a community over the years to come. It has been so meaningful on a personal level to help create joy for all of you.

I’m looking forward to new challenges in my career, but I will always cherish the time I spent with you all and the amazing and collaborative teams at Blizzard. It was both satisfying and humbling, and it made me a better developer and a better person. I look forward to playing Blizzard games as a player for many years to come. Most important, now I have plenty of time to learn how to build a competitive Hearthstone deck.

As to what I will be doing next, I don’t have an answer for you yet . . . but I will “when it’s ready.” My priorities are to enjoy the summer with my family, play plenty of games, and think about what’s next. The game industry is such an exciting place right now with PC gaming thriving, the new consoles, mobile games, and virtual reality becoming an actual reality. It’s like having an empty quest log and going into a new zone for the first time.

In the past, I haven’t been the most avid Twitter user, but I’ll strive to do better and keep you updated there—@Rob_Pardo. Please stay in touch!

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  Path of Exile: Sacrifice of the Vaal
Posted by: shoju - 02-24-2014, 07:14 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - No Replies

I've been waiting to do this post until we had more information to go on, but now seems to be a good time.

On March 5th, GGG will be releasing the first major content update for Path of Exile entitled Sacrifice of the Vaal.

Corruption of everything seems to be the name of the game with this. SO far, they have spoiled database grabs of Corrupted Skill Gems, Corrupted equipment, Corrupted Maps, and a new Orb. The Vaal Orb.

Corruption has been shown to do a few things so far.

  • It can allow items to have white sockets, like the Tabula Rasa
  • It can change the base property of an item. They teased an Onyx Neckalce that had base Lightning Damage Leech instead of +stats.
  • It can increase the level of a gem past 20.
  • It can increase the quality of an item past 20.
  • It can allow maps (and presumably other equipment) to roll more than 6 modifiers.


They have released 4 teaser images so far.
Mindfang
Unset Ring
Corrupted Blackheart
Ambush

Pay close attention to ALL the details in those images. There is an awful lot to digest in each image. Including a new type of item. The unset Ring. Yes. That's a gem slot in a ring.

They even released a 10 second video.

The release of this will coincide with the 2 new, 4 month leagues.
Ambush, and Invasion.

No word on those leagues yet, but it looks like Screengrab 4 has a "safe" on it, and is from the Ambush league testing. Could be interesting.

I'll keep you all up to date as more information becomes available.

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  Path of Exile - Patch 1.0.6 The patch of the Summoner.
Posted by: shoju - 01-30-2014, 07:04 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - No Replies

The new patch is upon us, and it is heavily summoner themed. As I did with the last patch, here are the notes, with a little commentary.

Version 1.0.6



Major Features/Content:
Added a new Intelligence skill - Summon Raging Spirit:
Summons a short-lived flaming skull that rushes at nearby enemies and attacks them rapidly. Enemies cannot directly engage these spirits and can pass through them.

---This is a welcome addition to a summoner's toolbox. After playing a summoner up to level 73, it got to a point where I felt like a curse bot. This will add a little more "gameplay" to the toolbox.

Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence skill - Desecrate:
Desecrates the ground, summoning corpses and dealing chaos damage to all enemies in the area.

----I'm pretty interested in this one as well. The wording leaves me curious about a few things, but it could be a lot of fun for a "new" type of summoner.

Added a new Intelligence skill - Flesh Offering:
Consumes a corpse, temporarily empowering your minions with swiftness (attack, cast and movement speed). The skill consumes other nearby corpses, increasing the duration for each corpse consumed.

----This is nice. Finally, a way to actively buff your existing minions. and fits really nice with:

Added a new Intelligence skill - Bone Offering:
Consumes a corpse, temporarily granting all of your minions the power to block both attacks and spells. The skill consumes other nearby corpses, increasing the duration for each corpse consumed.

----YES. YES. YES. One of the hardest parts about playing a summoner, is that your minions can get squishy. This is great for those scenarios where you are facing large packs, and need a way to beef the defenses of your minions.


Summon Raging Spirit is first available to the Templar and Witch from the "Breaking some Eggs" quest on Normal Difficulty.

Desecrate is available to the Templar, Shadow and Witch from the "Delving Into Sin" quest and to the Ranger from the "Lost in Love" quest on Normal Difficulty.

Flesh Offering and Bone Offering are first available to the Witch and Templar from the "Lost in Love" quest on Normal Difficulty and to the Shadow and Scion from the "A Caged Brute" quest on Cruel difficulty.


Added five new Unique items, two of which were designed by supporters.
Dying Breath A new unique Staff, that increases cast speed, mana, radius of curses and auras, and the effectiveness of curses on nearby enemies, at the cost of increasing damage taken by 18%.

Solaris Lorica Or the Poor man's Shavronne's Wrappings as it will be called.

A lot of people are already panning this as a bad unique, since it's an armor only item that gives you the "Chaos Damage doesn't bypass ES" But, it has a few bonuses for it.

1.) It's an armor based item, so rolling melee colors should be a little easier.
2.) It's low level, so you can start using it sooner.

being the big two. While I don't think it will ever be seen as an equal to Shav's, it is a nice unique not to be overlooked. Even on my badly geared witch, I can achieve 5K ES, and I'm not even in "good" gear. Definitely, a worthwhile addition to the game IMO.

Skullhead
Life
mana
+10% block for minions
+armour for minions
Life Regen for minions.

This is an AR / EV helm, so it will be a little tricky to use for some, but it offers a nice alternative to going with the +2 Minion to helm headpiece.

Snakebite
Frenzy Charge gloves, that increase attack speed, and accuracy per frenzy charge, reduce the duration per frenzy charge, and when you are at max frenzy charges, your attacks will poison enemies.

These are ES/EV gloves, and make for an interesting combo with some of the chaos damage changes that have come about recently.

Alberon's Warpath
Chaos Damage
Chaos Resistance
MOvement Speed
+Skeletons
16% increased strength.

These are really interesting boots. The + to number of skeletons leaves me a little confused, but they should be an interesting piece to try out.


Added two new cosmetic microtransactions: Lightning Skull Helmet Skin and Arctic Skull Helmet Skin.

Added two new Achievements: Band Together and Full Clear: Ship Graveyard Cave.

Added two new vendor recipes.



Minor Features/Content:

You can now add notes to people on your friends list. Right click the contact and select "Edit Note". By default, new friends now have a note saying what their character name was when you added them.

This is an absolutely fantastic change. No more trying to keep a notepad of people I'm trying to trade with.

You can now only run a maximum of two copies of Path of Exile simultaneously on one computer.

Interesting change. I understand why they would do this to an extent, but I'm not sure that it will curb the behavior that they are intending to curb.

I do hope, that if they are able to achieve what they are after, it might open up the idea of "unfixing" the portal bug that they previously fixed, to save those of us who dc.

Hillock now uses the same triggered effect that the Blacksmith does, in Cruel and Merciless difficulties. The damage of the poison cloud produced by his zombies has been reduced in all instances (including Maps).


Good. I like this idea. I'm also, all in favor of reducing the damage from the poison cloud.

The Blood Weta Pet has been renamed to the Gore Weta Pet.
The client now fetches the next Daily Deal when the current one ends.


Minion Balance:
(I said this was the summoner patch right?)


The life progression of all player summoned minions and totems has been changed. Minions and totems now have more life at lower levels (+50% at level one) and around the same life by approximately gem level 21.

The damage of Raised Zombies has been increased by around 50%.

The additional damage bonuses at higher levels of the gem have been removed.

The mana cost of the Summon Skeletons skill has been reduced at all levels. Summoned skeletons now do around 40% more damage at all levels.

The Animate Weapon skill now adds a flat physical damage to the weapon. The animated weapon has had its innate elemental resistance values increased.

Added five new minion passive skills, added additional stats to existing notables, and updated many minion passives to include Minion Attack and Cast Speed, Minion Life Regeneration, Minion Life Leech, Minion Elemental Resistances, Minion Chaos Resistances and Minion Block Chance.


All of this is a great step in the right direction. Some of the changes towards the end of Closed beta really hurt summoners until they were in truly end game quality gear. I'm hoping that this will make some of the changes more palatable.

Duration Balance:

The Increased Duration support gem duration bonus has been reduced from 50-83% (depending on level) to 45-64%. Its quality bonus has been halved.


Understandable, based on some of the things that were achieved with the gem, that were unintended.

Immortal Call, Blood Rage, Conversion Trap, Animate Weapon and Frost Wall have had their base duration increased by 25%.


Seems reasonable given the changes.

Firestorm, Poison Arrow, Ice Shot, Arctic Armour, Arctic Breath, Curses and Smoke Mine have had their base duration increased by 10%.

again, in light of the changes to the support, seems reasonable.

General Balance:

Poison Arrow's damage has been increased at higher levels. It now does roughly 35% more damage at gem level 15.


This should make the gem more viable, given the added support of chaos damage.

Desecrated Ground, created by the unique Lightbane Raiment and the new skill Desecrate, now deals flat chaos damage per minute rather than a percentage of life as chaos damage.

The damage of the bombs of the Undying Incinerators and Undying Alchemists has been increased.


Not sure that I approve of this change.


Bug Fixes:


Fixed some issues with the DPS display on attacks linked to offensive trigger gems.

Fixed some optional dialogues required for the All Ears achievement.

Fixed a bug where Necromantic Aegis did not correctly give base block chance to minions.

Fixed a bug where the drop audio for Wheel of the Stormsail was for metal rather than wood.

Fixed crashes with some skills when they were echoed by the Echoing Shrine.

Fixed a bug where Righteous Fire was not correctly supported by the Item Quantity or Item Rarity support gems.

Fixed a bug where monsters that use Puncture would not use it if the target was cursed.

Fixed a bug where no icon would be displayed if Conversion Trap was used on you.


All in all, another high quality patch. I really am pleased with the direction that the game is going, and I think that the 1.1 release in March is going to be a very interesting time, as they have previewed a new monster type, and also the new short form leagues.

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  Path of Exile - Patch 1.0.5(b) and news of 1.0.6
Posted by: shoju - 01-21-2014, 07:59 PM - Forum: News and Announcements - Replies (1)

Version 1.0.5b


Added support for the Fracturing mod in races.
And a thousand voices were suddenly silenced. This mod can be brutal. I'm unsure of what to think.

The Cast On Death Support Gem no longer supports minion skills.
This change, while I understand it's intent in fixing what has been dubbed an exploit, really leaves Cast on Death as the single most worthless gem in the game. And with Animate Guardian still floating out there, that is truly saying something.

Trigger Support Gems no longer support Trapped or Remote Mined skills.

I don't quite understand what the intention was here. But then, I don't play traps and mines. Anyone able to elaborate why?

Storm Call and Ethereal Knives have been added to the provisions chest in the Endless Ledge.
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Storm Call just became my go to in Endless Ledge.

Flameblast has been added as a chest reward for Witches in Descent: Champions.

Very Cool change as well. This skill takes some finesse and time to learn, but is a lot of fun.

Fixed an issue where portals were not closed when logging out of a character via the character selection screen.

Worst Bug Fix Ever. I had hoped that this behavior was a precursor to fixing the "OH HEY I JUST CRASHED And now I lost my portal."

Fixed an issue where degeneration damage of other players would not display correctly.

Good.

Fixed an issue where Auras and Tempest Shield could be applied without the reservation succeeding.
That's a problem I'm glad they fixed.

Fixed a bug where the Raise the Bar achievement could be completed incorrectly by using resistance flasks multiple times.
HUh. Never thought to try that. I just tossed on a Kaltenhalt, a cold flask, walked into the slums, and hit the flask.


Now, for the upcoming 1.0.6

Summon Raging Spirit: Summons a short-lived flaming skull that rushes at nearby enemies and attacks them rapidly. Enemies cannot directly engage these spirits and can pass through them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Very interesting Skill, from the video they had posted, this could be a lot of fun.

Desecrate: Desecrates the ground, summoning corpses and dealing chaos damage to all enemies in the area.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Very interested to see if it only gets the corpses in the area, or if you will be summoning skelly type corpses.

Flesh Offering: Consumes a corpse, temporarily empowering your minions with swiftness (attack, cast and movement speed). The skill consumes other nearby corpses, increasing the duration for each corpse consumed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This, could be a lot of fun. I could see this being a staple in many summoner builds.

Bone Offering: Consumes a corpse, temporarily granting all of your minions the power to block both attacks and spells. The skill consumes other nearby corpses, increasing the duration for each corpse consumed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

I see this going hand in hand with the flesh offering, one for offense, one for defense. I do have a couple of reservations about the whole "consumes other corpses" thing. That can get hairy at times in some places.



So what say you lounge? Good patch and preview? Or is this content not as enticing to you as previous GGG patches?

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