Jay Wilson has been an instrumental figure in the creation of Diablo III, and now he’s set to depart — but he’ll be staying within the company to work on another, unannounced project.

“I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III, and while it’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding periods of my life, I’ve reached a point creatively where I’m looking forward to working on something new,” said Jay on the Battle.net forums.

“The powers that be at Blizzard have been gracious enough to give me that opportunity. Over the course of the next several weeks, I will be moving off of the Diablo III project and transitioning elsewhere within Blizzard. This decision was not an easy one for me, and not one I made quickly, but ultimately it’s what I feel is right.”

In his farewell post, Wilson expresses his pride at his work on Diablo III and the community around it, and admits to making mistakes in managing his relationship with the community. “My intent was always to provide a great gaming experience, and be as open and receptive as possible, while still sticking true to the vision the Diablo team has for the game,” he said.

“I know some of you feel we fell short of our promise to release the game ‘when it’s ready.’ While we’re not perfect, we try to make the best decisions we can with the information and knowledge we have at the time. That doesn’t mean we always make the right decisions, but if we made a mistake then I feel we’ve made an exceptional effort to correct it.”

“This is what you can always count on from Blizzard: that we will stand by our games and make every effort to continually improve them over time. We heard the feedback and suggestions from the community.”

Best of luck to Jay in his new job from all of us here at games.on.net.

Although team deathmatch mode for Diablo III has been canned, duelling is set to come in in the next patch (1.0.7). Blizzard have now detailed how it will work, and it begins with speaking to a new NPC named Nek the Brawler in New Tristram.

Speaking with Nek will teleport you and your party to the Scorched Chapel, a new custom-built PVP zone with four distinct areas: a church, a graveyard, a river and a lake. Yourself and up to three friends can then battle in a free-for-all format.

“The game doesn’t keep score and there are no objectives,” wrote Wyatt Cheng on the official blog. “We wanted dueling to be as simple and straightforward as possible, so we created a minimalist system — we know that even without rewards and objectives, some players just want to beat each other up.”

“Some matchups may be one-sided, and we don’t expect that battles will be necessarily balanced. But that’s okay, because dueling in Diablo III is more about kicking ass and taking names in a no-holds-barred sort of way, and this design certainly allows you to accomplish that.”

Wyatt’s post also details some other changes that you’ll see in 1.0.7, including class balances for the Wizard and Monk, new crafting recipes, new gems, monster power changes, and other nitty-gritties. Check out the full post for more.

Source: Battle.net

If you’re the sort who likes to play a Hardcore character in Diablo III then you probably already live on a knife-edge and are careful to avoid anything which might kill you. Lately however, the thing that’s been killing Hardcore players are each other, through harsh use of vote-kicking.

Passing a vote-kick on a player locks them down for 10 seconds, during which they can’t move but can still be killed — locked down in the middle of a nasty melee with monsters, there’s almost no chance of survival. Well-timed vote-kicks are now apparently the tool of choice with which to dispose of your rivals (and they said PVP wouldn’t be in the game yet!).

Thankfully, Blizzard are on the case, with Lylirra posting that they are “looking to remove the 10-second movement lockout whenever a Vote Kick is passed from both Hardcore and Normal modes.”

“While we realize this solution may allow players to exploit the Vote Kick function to avoid death, it’s not a very reliable survival technique and we feel that it’s a better alternative than players losing a character they’ve invested a lot of time into due to griefing. We’ll definitely be keeping on an eye on this, though, and will consider other solutions if necessary.”

Source: Incgamers

A new blog post overnight from Jay Wilson, head honcho of Diablo III, has revealed that team deathmatch modes for Diablo III are being shelved due to a lack of depth.

“Simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly,” Wilson explains in the post. “We’ve brought a lot of people in to try out Team Deathmatch and, while some found it entertaining, most of our testers didn’t feel like it was something they’d want to do beyond a few hours. Without more varied objectives, or very lucrative rewards, few saw our current iteration as something they’d want spend a lot of time in.”

Wilson also explains that Team Deathmatch mode throws a “laser focus” onto class balance, and that some issues remain in that area that they don’t feel they can adequately solve.

Duelling, however, is still on track to make it in with patch 1.0.7, which is due “sometime in the new year”. Wilson explains that the team are hard at work drafting up a replacement for team deathmatch, exploring “new modes that play up to the strengths of the character classes, focus on objectives beyond just defeating other players, and possibly even integrate PvE elements and rewards”.

Source: Battle.net

Polygon brings word that the scientitians inside Blizzard HQ now have Diablo III “up and running” on an unspecified console device and is “kind of exploring it”.

“We’ve got builds up and running on it,” said Rob Pardo, chief creative officer.

“We’re hoping to get it far enough along where we can make it an official project, but we’re not quite ready to release stuff about it, but it’s looking pretty cool.”

Meanwhile, D3‘s lead designer Jay Wilson told the site that the whole team is “working on the next big Diablo thing. A lot of that stuff will show up next year at some point.”

Source: Polygon

The upcoming Diablo III 1.0.5 patch, of which we have written about extensively, is now live on the game’s servers and you’ll need to update before you can get in.

But wait! This patch will cause your game preferences to get overwritten — so before you do, remember to back up your D3Prefs.txt file. Here’s Dankorii with the official word:

“This file can be found in the following locations:

Windows 7/Vista:
Start Menu > Documents > Diablo III folder

Windows XP:
Start Menu > My Documents > Diablo III folder

This bug has been resolved in patch versions after 1.0.5, so backing up this file should only be necessary this time around.”

Source: Battle.net

There’s nothing more exciting than a good datamine, and Diablo Fans have done just that on the upcoming 1.0.5 patch. Information gleaned includes confirmation of the 10-minute PVP arena time, as well as two teams of four-a-side. Of most interest though, is the addition of ‘PVP Tokens’, rewards gained from successful completion of PVP matches (alongside gold and experience).

PVP Tokens can be redeemed at a new NPC by the name of Gryffith, whose descriptive text in the data files reads “Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots! Spend tokens to get fat loots!”. So that’s pretty telling.

Players will also be able to earn titles, such as ‘Scout’, ‘Grunt’, ‘Sergeant’, ‘Senior Sergeant’, ‘First Sergeant’, and ‘Stone Guard’, as well as PVP-exclusive banners. Check out Diablo Fans for all the details, including some murky pictures of what upcoming maps might just look like — assuming little changes (which it inevitably will).

Source: Diablo Fans (via PCGamesN)

Although it’s not quite the offline mode that many were hoping for, the ability to appear offline so that you don’t get harassed while trying to shank as many innocent demons of Hell as possible is something that has long been missing from Diablo III.

Patch 1.0.5 will be remedying that, allowing you to appear offline to all of your friends regardless of whether they know you through RealID, BattleTag, or even just in-game as character friends. “The ‘Appear Offline’ status option will be added to World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III separately in future updates for each game,” writes the official announcement.

“For Diablo III, we expect to add the feature in a patch after 1.0.5. For World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, we expect to add the option sometime after the release of each game’s upcoming expansion.”

Source: Battle.net

Patch 1.0.5 has now hit the Diablo III PTR, and the patch notes have hit the internet. The promised changes to defensive skills and the addition of an “Infernal Machine” that can be used to summon uber-bosses for sweet loot are in, as is the addition of a ‘Monster Power’ command that enables you to fine-tune the game difficulty on a much more granular level.

Resplendent Chests have been changed to operate similarly to Elite packs in Inferno difficulty with rewards based on stacks of Nephalem Valour, and major in-game events now grant one stack of Nephalem Valor when completed by a level 60 character on Inferno difficulty. Shrines, pets and snare effects have also been changed.

Also included in the patch notes is the promised huge nerf to the Demon Hunter’s Trail of Cinders rune, down from 1500% bonus damage to 300%. You were warned. Check out the full patch notes on Battle.net.

Source: Battle.net

Blizzard have begun to tease the general shape of changes they’re planning to make in the upcoming 1.0.5 patch for Diablo III. Primary among the changes is the “nerf that is not a nerf” teased yesterday, explained by Blizzard as “changes to defensive skills across the board while simultaneously reducing incoming damage.”

“The net result is a survivability buff for players, and an increase in build options as defensive abilities become less mandatory”.

As well as this, 1.0.5 will include a device called ‘The Infernal Machine’, which will allow level 60 players to summon uber versions of “some of Sanctuary’s most nefarious bosses” — and then try and murder them. The device will need to be assembled first, however.

Finally, 1.0.5 will add a new ‘Monster Power’ command similar to the ‘Players 8′ command that gives finer control over how challenging enemies will be. More details are expected to arrive on the Battle.net blog next week. Patch 1.0.5 is also widely expected to nerf the Trail of Cinders bug.

Source: Battle.net

The aptly-named Diablo fansite DiabloFans is claiming that they’ve received advance warning from Blizzard via their Community Manager Bashiok that patch 1.0.5 may contain things that look like huge nerfs — but will actually turn out, in greater context of some other changes — to be mad buffs, instead.

“Blizzard contacted a few fansites to inform us of a change coming with Patch 1.0.5. When we post the unofficial datamined changes for patch 1.0.5 they will appear as if a lot of classes have been nerfed. However Bashiok informs us that these nerfs will be out of context (and are not nerfs but buffs),” writes the site.

“Those changes will be compensated in other ways so that the changes actually end up as a net-buff for players.”

DiabloFans goes on to point out that the Public Test Realm download button has now been activated on the game’s launcher, which — assuming it’s not a mistake and Blizzard didn’t just flick it on too early — could hint at the possibility of upcoming PVP testing.

Source: DiabloFans

Despite the fact that Blizzard only announced the 100 bonus Paragon Levels a fortnight ago, an amibitious Barbarian by the name of Alkaizer has already maxed it out and, thus, hit level cap again.

The key to his success is apparently getting an experience gem in your helm to provide +27% bonus experience, a movement-speed bonus of around 24%, and constantly running through the following: Core of Arreat, Tower of the Damned (level l1), Arreat Crater (level l2), Fields of Slaughter (Bridge of Corsaic – WP), The Keep Depths level 2 (From level 1 WP). Here’s a YouTube video explaining it all.

Alkaizer’s recommended build is located here, and his character itself can be checked out here. Damn.

Source: PCGamesN