By Jim Rossignol on August 18th, 2010 at 2:51 pm.
Crafting in Diablo III, eh? Well, kind of. NPCs are going to be artisans who can do some crafting for you, as well as acting as vendors. They’re going to be characters you can – once you’ve discovered them – return to time and again, and they’ll develop and improve their skills as you bring them more interesting materials. Of course Blizzard don’t want to pull us too far away from killing beasts, meaning crafting is going to be sustained by salvaging the loot that will fall, so inevitably, from the pockets of your enemies. Anyway, go listen to Blizzard’s Jay Wilson explain how it works. It’s a huge aspect of the game that we’ve seen nothing of before. The slow hovering over menus in this trailer is quite at odds with the undead obliterations we’ve seen thus far, although it inevitable returns to that at the end of the footage, for a bit of gibby punctuation.
I think it’s far too early to be getting interested in this one. Unless it makes a leap up their list of priorities we’re talking 2012 at the absolute earliest here. Which is a shame as it’s the only thing they’ve got going on that could potentially be of any interest to me.
report
noooooo the world will end before i get to play diablo 3 :(
report
It was too early to get interested in this one years back, but I’m not letting that stop me
report
I don’t know… seems just so like everything else in the hack’n'slash genre. I guess that’s what Blizzard does; refines a known type of game with superior execution. Doesn’t get me as nearly excited about the game as seeing the class previews from years gone by.
report
i really like the background music.
yet I’m still pissed that Matt Uelmen is not on the project :<
report
That’s mature content, alright. Wow.
report
I normally hate grinding, but when it comes to Diablo 3 it seems hard not to like it. Grinding is the whole point of the game.
report
I hope those scenes aren’t very indicative.
I really liked the “Gay WoWness” of the first screens…
report
I was thinking the same thing. The video is so brown, they need to inject some colour into it.
report
Blizzard’s marketing dept. is acting rather sly with this video…
report
YAY Diablo 3!!! Wait, isn’t Bob Ross dead?
report
Love the “looking at rainbows” quote from the video. I’m pleased the crafting systems seems to have been streamlined from the one in D2.
report
“… return to monster-fighting and rainbow-viewing.”
Ahh, Blizzard. I admire their ability to take Angry Internet Man criticism and turn it into a great running gag in their favor.
report
Whoa, that’s a lot of colors!
report
Gibby is my favorite adjective.
report
Seems interesting at least. I like the idea that you’ll be able to improve artisans as you progress, but there’s one hitch though.
Seems like it’ll take longer for you to return to towns this way, what with being able to basically disenchant items instead of having to sell them. Was one of the few reasons I went back at all to begin with.
report
Meh. Craft me something to not have to use Battle.Net and then we’ll talk.
report
Really? Battle.net is awesome. The real problem would be having to install steam for this.
report
What ARE you talking about Deuteronomy?
report
Doesn’t really set the pulses racing though does it? Needed to be interspesed with more gibbiness.
report
What a shame (also,what a rotten way to die.But oh, well…) I heard a bits from D3 music and… well… I think it is a bit crappy…at least in comparison with such masterpieces as Tristram (D1), Wilderness (D2) and Rogue (D2). Comparisons are odious, but still… Matt come back!!!:(
report
And yes, i clicked the reply button under the post of Dominus.
report
Yeah, I don’t know if I’d even go so far as to call the Horadric Cube recipies ‘Crafting’ so much as “Grinding till your eyes bleed so that you can make an item that you are now 20 levels beyond needing.”
report
Back to rainbow viewing…
report
I hate to say this, but by the time this actually comes out, it’s going to be very old news for me. I’m sure it’ll still sell in the many, many millions, but I won’t buy it. I’ll likely be playing the incredibly polished Torchlight MMO instead.
report
I think I will indeed go back to watching Rainbow
Then I’ll go back to playing with my twanger!
report
Nice graphics…for 2004.
report
that means i can actually run it :D
report
Blizzard never do “bleeding edge” graphics that only a handful of their customers can run. They make it so that the vast majority of players can run it on good settings, and even more players can run it on lower settings if need be.
They make up for it by having superior design and stylistic choices. Design > Polycount.
report
It’s a blizzard game they are NEVER cutting edge graphics, they are always designed to run well on an average machine.
Besides which, it is alpha footage, most of the shader/make game prettier stuff probably isn’t done.
report
I really, really hope that all the crafting materials don’t take up inventory spots. The worst thing about Diablo 2, Torchlight, et al is the inventory management and trying to juggle collecting the sets and matching gems and runes and those items you can’t quite use yet and whatnot else within a tiny inventory.
report
As you can (or should be able to) see, they do take up item space, but they stack per type and take up one spot whereas large items take much more space. In the end this will definitely help managing your inventory.
report
It also looks like they’ve gone back on the “one item slot per item” thing they were doing before, unless they’ve already announced this and I just missed it.
report
i have a feeling this is going to feel incomplete after Dins Curse.
report