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Blizzard announced on 28 June 2008 that Diablo III was in development. Beta was announced on 20 September 2011, and it was announced on 15 March 2012 that Diablo III would be released on 15 May 2012.
Our own Diablo III forums officially opened on 7 May 2012.
Blizzard announced on 19 December 2013 that Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, an expansion including Act V and the Crusader class, would be released on 25 March 2014.
- Any content which has not been edited extensively after those dates (view history) is likely to be outdated.
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General
What's New in Diablo III:
- Four difficulty levels, with 4 acts each: Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno. Inferno difficulty is for level-capped chars, the difficulty is uniform in each act in this difficulty and it's meant to give capped characters areas to play that will give good loot drops without having to resort to just boss runs.
- Shared Stash There is a stash shared among all characters on an account, accessible in town and expandable with gold.
- Auction House Items will be able to be traded between accounts on the Auction House. Softcore characters can trade items for gold or real money, whereas Hardcore characters are limited to gold transactions.
- Other players in your party can port to your location via a banner in town that you can click to join them.
- Health Health Globes are the main way of recovering health during battle, and will drop from slain monsters.
- Blizzard Poster Bashiok has indicated that PvP will be consensual in Diablo III:
We're - in general - not big fans of griefing for any game. It's really only "fun" for one person, and that definition of fun isn't generally something we're going to want to encourage. It's far more positive to encourage and support meaningful and skillful options and systems within a game, than a mechanic for people to instantly turn against one another for no meaningful gameplay reasons.
I definitely remember running with my friends, and someone toggles it, and bam everyone is dead and your one friend is laughing. Ok, ok, good joke I guess, and then you run back and *bam*, you've toggled it to get them back. After a while everyone usually agrees to a truce because it's just a waste of time. But I also remember running with random players and losing extremely nice items because of it, not cool. I'm sure that it was a feature that was right up some people's alleys, I won't deny there are some that would enjoy nothing more than to see others frustrated, but is that truly something that should be encouraged through design - if not directly opposed?
We have a large focus on cooperative play for Diablo III, and the mechanics and design decisions related to multiplayer are likely going to be based on supporting and encouraging it as much as possible, and not breaking it down.
That doesn't mean that PvP won't have its own focus, but those are details and features we aren't yet discussing.
Classes
Skills
Items
- Items
- Crafting & Artisans
- Crafting Thus Far
- Artisans can be 'leveled up' through Tome of Training (made from Page of Training, a dropped item) and Plans that are dropped items. They are account-wide. Artisans will be able to specialize in order to get better results with a specific weapon or armor type, but the information so far is that specializations are not exclusive, so that it should be possible to specialize in all of the types you would like.
- Mystics will have the unique ability to change the appearance of your equipment to match the look of any other equipment (for the same location on the body) that you have found thus far in Reaper of Souls.
- Mystics will also have the unique ability to exchange a SINGLE MAGIC AFFIX from a piece of equipment for you to a random result.
Follower
- A Follower is similar to a mercenary in Diablo II, although only available when playing solo. They have storyline elements, but are designed not to 'outshine' the hero. Blizzard initially intended followers to be available in Normal only, but after feedback they will be available in all difficulty levels.
- Followers will leave you when another player enters the game, but can return to you when you are along. They can only be used for "single player" gaming.
Quests
- It appears that there will be storyline quests and instance-based quests.
- Act I
- The Fallen Star
- The Legacy of Cain
- The Broken Crown
- Reign of the Black King
- Act II
- Act III
- Act IV
- Act V
World
Regions seen prior to release:
- Forgotten Tombs
- Leoric Highlands
- The Howling Plateau
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- The Canyon Rim Mines
- The Stinging Winds
- New Tristram
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- Caldeum
- Lut Gholein
- Kurast
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- The Arreat Crater
- Tristram Cathedral
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Monsters
Blizzard has said that monsters will not have elemental immunities in Diablo III, unlike Diablo II where monsters with two (or more) immunities could be issues for certain builds.
Boss and Champion monsters will have Special Effects according to the difficulty level they are encountered in. In normal difficulty, they will have 1 effect. In Nightmare, they will have 2 effects. In Hell, they will have 3 effects. In Inferno, they will have 4 effects. Some combinations of effects can be very powerful, especially if they include Crowd Control effects combined with Ground Effects.
Game Mechanics
Blizzard
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