Diablo III at Gameplanet NZ

Diablo III player claims to have made US$10,000 in auction house

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:49:00 +1200

A Diablo III player is claiming to have made US$10,000 (NZ$12,198) by selling items in the game’s real money auction house.

The player has offered screengrabs of their bank account and auction house transaction list as proof.

Posting as WishboneTheDog in this Reddit AMA, the player discussed their philosophies regarding the auction house, and the state of the Diablo III economy in general, which they claimed was “slowing down”.

Blizzard president talks next Diablo patch, launch wobbles, always-on

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:01:00 +1200

Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime has addressed many Diablo III player concerns in a lengthy post on the game’s official forums.

“I speak for everyone at Blizzard when I say that we appreciate the passion and affection many of you have for the Diablo series,” he began, before discussing the difficulties of such a massive launch.

“We were thrilled that Diablo III had the biggest PC-game launch ever, surpassing the lifetime sales of Cataclysm (the previous record holder for biggest PC-game launch) in a matter of weeks.

“However, the launch had many challenges as well. It has always been difficult to forecast how many players we will have… we’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new game,” said Morhaime.

Blizzard recognises Diablo III's lack of end-game content

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 08:41:00 +1200

Blizzard’s community manager has taken to the Diablo III boards to concede that there isn’t enough content in the game to keep people entertained in the long-term.

The developers were aware of this problem, said Bashiok, but the game wasn’t World of Warcraft in that Blizzard wouldn’t be able to pump out tons of new content every couple of months.

“We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they’re going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven’t already),” his post read.

Always-on didn't hurt Diablo sales or Blizzard's rep - Introversion

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:27:00 +1200

Diablo III’s online-only model was not a good idea, but it didn't hurt Blizzard's sales, according to Introversion Software.

Introversion founder Chris Delay, whose studio is most famous for real-time strategy game Darwinia, told Eurogamer that an always-on requirement offered little benefit to gamers, but it's likely that even those who decried the practice played the game.

"From the gamers' point of view, there is no pro to always-on," he said. "It's something that's for game developers to protect their game… I'm under no illusion it's done for piracy reasons, not for functionality reasons.”

Heavy restrictions for new Diablo III players [UPDATED]

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:30:00 +1200

UPDATE:

Blizzard has released the following statement following the news we posted this morning regarding the restrictions placed on new Diablo III players. The developer states that the level and act cap are an unintended consequence of a security update, and that it is working to fix those bugs as soon as possible.

The statement also goes into a little more detail as to why the restrictions have been implemented, saying that they are designed to deter credit card fraud, "which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone."

Diablo III real-money auction house has launched

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:00:00 +1200

Update:

Sure enough, Diablo III's real-money auction house is now live.

A guide to using the auction house has been posted on the Diablo forums.

Diablo III real money auction house delayed further

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:34:00 +1200

Blizzard has delayed the launch of Diablo III’s real money auction house for a second time, presumably to focus on battling other problems that have sprung up since the game was released.

“In light of the post-launch obstacles we've encountered, we have made the decision to move the launch of the real-money auction house beyond the previously estimated May time frame,” Blizzard said on Battle.net.

“As we mentioned in our original announcement, our goal has always been to ensure everyone has the smoothest experience possible when the real-money auction house launches, and we need a bit more time to iron out the existing general stability and gameplay issues before that feature goes live.”

Diablo III: some religion-based names banned; Monk class powers reduced

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:14:00 +1200

Should you wish to name your Diablo III character Atheist, Christian, Mormon, Hindu or Islam, you are out of luck.

The names have been banned by Blizzard, which would be quite an annoyance if your name actually was Christian.

Catholic is also banned, yet Protestant isn’t.

Diablo III sets sales record

Thu, 24 May 2012 09:31:00 +1200

Diablo III was purchased an incredible 3.5 million times in the first 24 hours that it was available, becoming the fastest selling PC game ever in the process.

After a week, 6.3 million were playing, said Blizzard.

Those figures excluded World of Warcraft Annual Pass owners who got a copy for free. If they are counted, the day one total would be 4.7 million gamers playing on May 15.

Diablo III accounts compromised - report [UPDATED]

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:15:00 +1200

Update:

Blizzard has released a statement on its Battle.net forums regarding the Diablo III hacking.

The Diablo III developer calls on its experience releasing World of Warcraft expansions when it says that any new release will result in an increase in incidences of accounts being compromised. Blizzard has also outlined three measures players can take to secure their accounts, the Battle.Net authenticator and Battle.Net mobile authenticator, and a recently-added service, Battle.net SMS Protect which sends a unique login code to an account-holder's SMS-enabled phone, can be used to remotely reset passwords, recover an account name or disable a lost Authenticator.

Blizzard apologises for Diablo III server problems [UPDATED]

Sat, 19 May 2012 03:51:00 +1200

Blizzard has publicly apologised for Diablo III’s server problems, admitting that it didn’t prepare thoroughly enough for the game’s launch.

"Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough," said Blizzard via Diablo III's Battle.net forum.

As well as hampering players’ ability to get into the game, server problems have now delayed the launch of the game’s auction house.

Diablo III auction house implemented to limit dishonesty - Blizzard

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:48:00 +1200

Diablo III’s real-world currency auction house was put in the game primarily to quash dishonesty and streamline trading, says the game’s director Jay Wilson.

"The whole trade economy of Diablo II was a really interesting element of the game, but the game didn't support it hardly at all. And so we looked at that and said that's a real failing, and something we need to fix," he said.

He also acknowledged that provided the service was useful, he had no problem with Blizzard taking a slice of each sale total.

Diablo 3 has launch hiccups, gets beaten

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:18:00 +1200

Diablo 3 has been finished already.

Its first-ever public conqueror goes by the name of Yoshichan, and he clocked the game on normal difficulty in 12 hours and 29 minutes.

Yoshichan guided his Barbarian to the endgame before posting his final game statistics on NeoGAF.

More discussion of Diablo III for consoles

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:39:00 +1300

UPDATE: Blizzard has contacted Gameplanet to clarify the comments made by Micah "Bashiok" Whipple:

Bashiok’s response on Twitter was intended as a confirmation that we’re actively exploring the possibility of developing a console version of Diablo III, as we’ve mentioned in the past. This is not a confirmation that Diablo III is coming to any console platform. Our focus right now is on finishing the PC/Mac version of Diablo III and making sure it’s a worthwhile successor to the Diablo series.

ORIGINAL: Blizzard has confirmed that it intends to release action-RPG Diablo III on consoles.