Diablo® III

What update?
I just read it and there is no new news. There is no update and there are no dates...

There are shorter ways of saying "mea culpa"...

And there are better ways of trying to sound intelligent........ peanut!!

Posted by Ulvareth
We’re also working on a gameplay system that will provide players who have max-level, high-powered characters new goals to strive for as an alternative to the “item hunt.”

Id like to see higher lvl cap for me diablo games are lvling and hunting items :) but some extra things to do are always welcome!

Thats a promise of end game content.

adding sockets to items would remedy a ton of the issues players have with item rolls. REALLY hoping u add this feature. Anybody who reads this and agree plz show ur support

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwQ5aXOStQ

Everything that he's talking about in this video should be implemented, DAOC did it right!
No pvp rewards and no champion levels = i'm done with this game.

Dear Diablo Players,

Now that Diablo III has been out for two months, I would like to take a step back and discuss the launch, the feedback from the community, and talk about what the future holds for the game.

We’ve had an enormous amount of feedback since the launch. I speak for everyone at Blizzard when I say that we appreciate the passion and affection many of you have for the Diablo series. We truly believe “Every Voice Matters,” so I want to thank you for sharing your experiences in an effort to help us improve the game. Your support makes it possible for us to continue doing what we do, and we never take that for granted.

The launch week of Diablo III was memorable for many reasons — some positive, and some not so positive. 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. We’ve been floored by the response.

However, the launch had many challenges as well. It has always been difficult to forecast how many players we will have. With World of Warcraft, it was a challenge to handle the immediate demand when we launched back in 2004, and that was just in North America. We eventually expanded to other regions and reached nearly 5 million players by the end of the first year, and there were a lot of growing pains with that. However, we’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new game. For Diablo III, we looked at historical sales for Blizzard games and other top-selling PC games and watched preorder numbers. We even upped our estimates to ensure we had additional capacity, or so we thought. In the end, it just wasn’t enough, and that is something we will work hard to conquer for future releases.

In response to the immediate and overwhelming demand for the game, the team worked around the clock to support all regions, increase capacity, ship additional hardware to our datacenters, and troubleshoot and fix bugs as they sprang up. While things have by and large been running smoothly for several weeks now, various game-related issues have come up that we have either already responded to or are continuing to investigate (such as the latency issue some of you are experiencing) and make adjustments for. Rather than address every subject individually, I’ll just say that even as we work to address or resolve current issues, it’s always possible that further issues will crop up. We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we’re committed to delivering an awesome game experience, and we hope you’ll have faith that we will continue to keep that commitment and respond to any new or outstanding issues quickly.

We are not satisfied with breaking launch records; we want people to continue playing and enjoying Blizzard games for a very long time. The Diablo III team has made an epic, entertaining, and beautiful gaming experience. That being said, we know that it isn’t perfect. Our teams are working hard to improve the game balance, build on our design, and listen to what players are saying to make it the best game it can be.

You’ve seen some of that work already in patch 1.0.3, and you’ll see additional improvements with patch 1.0.4. On the game balance front, this update will contain changes designed to further deliver on the team’s goal of promoting “build diversity,” with buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Another topic we’ve seen actively discussed is the fact that better, more distinct Legendary items are needed. We agree. Patch 1.0.4 will also include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways you probably won’t be expecting.

We’re also working on a number of interface updates, including social improvements that will allow players to more easily view their friends’ achievements, more quickly join games, and more efficiently communicate with each other. In addition, we’ll be making updates to the auction house in the future to provide players with better information through tooltips and notices, offer improved search functionality, and more.

Regarding the real-money auction house, our primary goal for including this in the game was to provide convenience and peace of mind for those players who might otherwise turn to third-party services to buy items. Black market trading sites can put accounts at risk and create many customer service challenges. We felt that the players themselves also deserved the opportunity to benefit from the extra loot they found, as opposed to having all of the benefit go to the black market/illegal trading organizations. We know the auction house isn’t perfect, but with your help and feedback, we’ll be able to continue making it a better experience for those who choose to use it. On the flipside, we are also committed to ensuring you have a great experience with Diablo III without feeling like the auction house is mandatory, which was never our intention. Thank you for all the feedback about that.

One other common topic we’ve seen in the forums is the always-connected experience, and the perception that the online requirement is nothing but an ineffective form of copy protection that has already been cracked. While we’ve never said that this requirement guarantees that there will be no cheating or game cracks, it does help us battle those problems (we have not found any fully functional cracks). More important to us is that the online requirement is critical for the long-term integrity of the game experience. I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design. The effectiveness of the online elements — including the friends list and cross-game communication; co-op matchmaking; persistent characters that you can use by yourself, with others, and in PvP; and some of our customer support, service, and security components — is tied directly to the online nature of the game. These and other online-enabled features are essential to our design for Diablo III. That said, there are still improvements we believe we can make to expand the online experience and make co-op play even more rewarding, and this will remain one of our priorities moving forward. Overall, while there are some downsides to the online-only approach, I still believe this was the best long-term decision for the game.

I know many of you are also looking forward to patch 1.1, our PvP update, which will provide new experiences and give you a whole new way to apply the skills you’ve picked up while battling demons. This patch will also build on the social and auction house changes I mentioned above, and the team will continue to fix bugs and further tune game balance as well.

We’re also working on a gameplay system that will provide players who have max-level, high-powered characters new goals to strive for as an alternative to the “item hunt.” We’re not ready to get into specifics just yet, but I can say that we’re actively taking your feedback into account as we plan out the future of the game.

As always, we appreciate your candor and passion. Your constructive feedback and thoughts are valuable — they will continue to help us be a better company. I just want to reiterate that while we can’t claim to have ever shipped a perfect game, we are committed to supporting our games relentlessly and making improvements where we can. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Mike Morhaime

To bad your launcher sucks and is still looping the latest patch. I see no mention of that or any acknowledgement of it anywhere on the forums.

19/07/2012 13:46Posted by Witcher

Maybe read it again, somehow I got a feeling that with peeps like you, it doesn't matter what they post. Its never good anyway. It does contain some updates and nice to know thingies.

One thing is for sure... to have the CEO post on the forums really means something is wrong.

not really, i tihnk this compounds the fact that there are issues, they knwo of them, and they are lsitening. their fault (i honestly think) is not answering things sooner.

who else do you want to answer the problems other than the CEO of the company? You seem too young or far too jaded to accept or understand this, so keep up the negativity :)

Dear Diablo Players,


Mike Morhaime

To bad your launcher sucks and is still looping the latest patch. I see no mention of that or any acknowledgement of it anywhere on the forums.

Tried the tech support forums? that's hardly a widespread or pressing issue...

19/07/2012 13:00Posted by Ulvareth

Regarding the real-money auction house, our primary goal for including this in the game was to provide convenience and peace of mind for those players who might otherwise turn to third-party services to buy items. Black market trading sites can put accounts at risk and create many customer service challenges. We felt that the players themselves also deserved the opportunity to benefit from the extra loot they found, as opposed to having all of the benefit go to the black market/illegal trading organizations. We know the auction house isn’t perfect, but with your help and feedback, we’ll be able to continue making it a better experience for those who choose to use it. On the flipside, we are also committed to ensuring you have a great experience with Diablo III without feeling like the auction house is mandatory, which was never our intention. Thank you for all the feedback about that.

Thumbs up!

I love how blizzard keeps having blues make these posts that say the same thing over and over again. Nothing new was addressed in this post that hasn't already been said by blues in the past, but with less BS. Truly disappointed by Blizzard. I need to stop making excuses on why I haven't quit this game yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwQ5aXOStQ

Everything that he's talking about in this video should be implemented, DAOC did it right!
No pvp rewards and no champion levels = i'm done with this game.

i loved DAoC for this very reason, but then they screwed up with the xpaks etc...

pvp xp + lvls is what its all about i agree!!! keep the games completely random matching, and it should avoid a majority of abusing.

Best news from Blizz regarding D3 in a while. Lvl 60 alternative game mode sounds nice, but the best thing are improved legendaries. This means that you constantly have the feeling of finding something utterly unique and awesome if done right. At least for me, instantly would give more want to play the game.

They posted this on the EU forums first ? Hide the women and children, the end of days approaches!

19/07/2012 13:00Posted by Ulvareth

I fully understand the desire to play Diablo III offline; however, Diablo III was designed from the beginning to be an online game that can be enjoyed with friends, and the always-online requirement is the best way for us to support that design.

Then why was the decision made to penalize us for playing with friends? Even after the damage nerf, it's still easier for my to solo due to the loss of follower buffs and the health increase on mobs.

Epic letter!

Thanks for this!
[Blizzard reputation + 10000]

If someone doesnt want to read this wall of text this is short version:

"Yes we know that we launched this game atleast 1 year to soon. Yes we know that this game is still in beta. Thanks for feedback beta players".

Rest is unimportant.

Have some respect random dude. that man's a legend.

hey Blizz. it's been rough, but I know these things take time. just keep working on what you guys are working on. I'll just keep playing. or not (in which case I'll eventually come back.)

Nice post. I'm looking forward to the changes.

BTW. It would be smart to make some way to identify that new unidentified legendaries are indeed new or I would predict that a lot of players will try and scam people with old unidentified legendaries.

Also for the love of god fix the trade window!!! other than that looking forward to the patch :)

So can you tell us when the next patch will be ready then? I fear by the time the patch is ready there'll be no players left to enjoy it...

when the 1.04 comes i want to BE AWSOME! plus dont nerf more items and skills its lame ._.

This answer was very nice.
I got pleased with it and I hope more people will as well.
Addressing issues is what must be done and I am glad for what I just read.

Thank you.

Call me crazy, but that's not exactly a lot of information for such an amount of text.
Also, you (Blizzard) regularly claim to listen to feedback and to make improvements based on what players say. I'm not saying you don't, but you ALWAYS fail to communicate what exactly it is that you learn from us. There's never any real info about what's going on, just an endless "So this is something we'd like to do but there's no time estimate".

In short, messages from the company are too far between, and too void of real information.
If you could address THAT problem, a lot more people would be very happy.
People want to keep playing Diablo 3, but they're not going to bother if they don't know what is going on with development, or when (if ever) they can expect the game to contain a certain feature.

I like walls of text, but only so long as the text holds useful information.
On that particular note, I am thoroughly displeased with the communiqé.
You do get a heaping amount of goodwill for posting anything at all, but try and answer a few questions next time.