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| Hits: 2742Well here we are. The PvP Blog that we have been waiting for weeks is finally here via Jay Wilson. I have made a short summary, followed by the blog post itself.
PvP Blog Summary:
- Team Deathmatch, while it is in a "working" state, is not ready for prime time yet.
- Team Deathmatch in its current state may never make to the game, as they have chosen to pursue a different route for different modes.
- Team Deathmatch may make it back into the game at a later point in the future, but not scheduled anytime "soon".
- As a result, Jay and the rest of the development team know what we have been asking for (at minimum) since before launch and want to respect that.
- Patch 1.0.7 will contain dueling, allowing for 1v1 action. (Dred note: May also help jump start the tournament scene).
- Patch 1.0.7 information will follow shortly after the New Year so stay tuned.
Diablo III PvP Update
Hey everyone,
The development team has been working really hard on the features, content, and systems for PvP in Diablo III and I wanted to take some time to give an update on where we're at.
Of course, our goal has been to release our Team Deathmatch mode as soon as possible, but we don't want to put anything out there before it's ready. Right now, Team Deathmatch isn't yet where we want it to be, so I want to provide some insight into where we are at in the development process.
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The State of PvP
Our original intent with PvP for Diablo III was to provide more formal support for the dueling community that existed in Diablo II. We wanted to give players some kind of structure that would not only make it easier for you to duel with one another, but also allow you to have duels that were team-based. This is how our Team Deathmatch mode emerged, and it's been instrumental in making a lot of improvements to Diablo III. But in continuing to develop this mode, playtest it, and put it in front of other developers within the company, we've found that it falls short of our expectations for a high-quality Blizzard experience.
Putting people into an arena and letting them hurl fireballs and swing crazy-ass swords at one another always has an element of fun to it. I imagine it's no surprise to anyone reading this blog that people like battling each other in video games, so if you had the chance to play our Team Deathmatch at one of the BlizzCons where we featured it you might not understand why we'd say that we don’t feel the current mode is good enough.
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Well, Here's Why…
For us it comes to a few issues, one of which is depth. Simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly. 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.
Another is class balance. Like Diablo II, Diablo III was designed to be a PvE-first kind of game, where we never compromised on player abilities in the name of future PvP balance. We want to be able to carry over as many of the crazy runes, items, and skills as possible, with their crazy effects, and alter them as little as possible. In a casual PvP mode, something equivalent to a WoW Battleground, this would be fine, but Team Deathmatch felt very hardcore, and it put a laser focus on class balance in a way that we didn’t think would be good for the game as a whole.
Certainly, we've gotten a lot of benefits from the development of Team Deathmatch, especially in the areas of controls and combat model tuning, but at this point we don't believe it's the experience we feel it needs to be in order to ship, so we will be shelving it for now and exploring other options.
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What's Next
So, our core problem is that our Team Deathmatch mode doesn't feel like a great addition to Diablo III. It's not up to the quality that Blizzard gamers expect or that we feel you deserve, and it doesn't really fit with our goals for the rest of the game. The question now is what are we going to do about it?
First and foremost, if our original goal was to support dueling, then we're not achieving that goal very well if we don’t actually give players a way to duel in-game. You’ve been asking us for dueling for a while, so we're going to add it to the game soon. Dueling is currently scheduled to release with patch 1.0.7, which is set to hit sometime after the new year. (We'll be providing details about that feature very soon, so stay tuned.)
But as I mentioned before, we are going back to the drawing board on a new replacement for Team Deathmatch, something that feels more appropriate for Diablo III. And as we stated previously, regardless of when we release it, it'll be a free addition to the game. Team Deathmatch provided us with the foundation that we needed and served us well. Hell, it may even still be added in some form in the future. For now, though, we're going to first be looking at 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.
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Keepin' It Real
We wanted to be upfront and honest with the community about where this particular project is at. It's certainly not ideal, and I know some of you got to play Team Deathmatch at BlizzCon and are probably thinking, "It seemed good enough! Just give us that." I also know how I feel whenever a game or game feature I'm looking forward to is delayed, but, as with all things Blizzard, we want to be sure that the features we add to Diablo III are actually worth it and will make the game better, and PvP is no exception.
While we don't have any further information to share right now about our plans for additional PvP modes, we really look forward to posting more about dueling in the next few days.
--Jay
| | Hits: 2871"SC:NerdRAGE!" Winners!
I have given out the last remaining keys to the following people, Fralon, Michlichwitch and Bobbychan123! Congrats on your Beta Keys guys, hope you enjoy your (late) Christmas Gift!
With these Beta Keys given out all taken. This contest is over!
Bring it Back; the Poll - (With it, Your Voice Too!)
I will be starting 1 to 2 week polls once again. They'll be focused on community feedback and potential community feedback going right to Blizzard (I can do that you know \^_-/ ). I'll make a quick news post when I start them again.
Plans For the New Year:
First things first, for the New Year I will be setting up a grand contests for the four (4) Full Development Team Signed Diablo III:CE & four (4) Mini-Tyrael Statues that were given out at last years BlizzCon 11'. I am asking for ideas via the Facebook & Twitter. I have a few, but want these to be somewhat challenging but FUN too! I am also in consideration and searching the web for partners to give these away also! I want to really hit the community and give everyone a good shot at getting some of the most rarest swag you can get.
Next thing, I will be doing is making a nice resource page. They will be for the usual websites and build sites, but in addition I will be going after those great Excel sheets, good YouTube videos, and maybe re-start the DE Podcast with some help. This site was always to help the community, but also bring it together...that's what I am going to start anew in the New Year.
Finally it will be house cleaning and continuing to expand my reach into peripheral companies to review gear (and give some away) and do what is done best here:
"Make Your Hack and Slash Known!"
| | Hits: 1754Before I forget...
Merry Christmas everyone. Hope your swords be soaked in blood, inventories full of rares and more, and may boars be the least that you feast upon!
Oh, and enjoy the new fiery "Old School" made new site background and logo. "Look at me Enkeria, I can do this?!"
| | Hits: 1654Late night updates for the win, and the weary....ZZZzzz...
SC:HotS Beta Key Contests Concludes:
I like to congratulate fisherman on being the only one to answer correctly. So with that, I will be sending the last two Keys to you! Send one to a friend to have fun with.
I will be picking winners for the SC:NerdRAGE contest tomorrow night.
My Diablo PvP Blog is Up!
It took a lot longer, but all the info we know with some speculation is up for you to read. A lot of images too. Hope you enjoy, working on what the next one should be.
| | Hits: 1641Hmmm, so "What had happened..."
SC:HotS Beta Key Updates:
Day 5:
The answer was the Möebius Foundation, which is led by Dr. Emil Narud, but owned by Valerian Mengsk. No one was able to get the answer, but I will do something I feel charitable. Read Day 6 bellow, trust me you want to : D
Day 6:
Well tis the season as said before. The first of 5, YES five Christmas parties was tonight for me and well, it fell through. The last day of trivia will still happen tomorrow as intended from 3:00PM EST to 6:00PM EST tomorrow (Friday).
So what to do about day 5 and 6...? Well this is what I'll do, I will simply take all the names who attempted day 5 and pick four winners and random. I figure that be the best option.
Starcraft:NerdRAGE Contest:
This contest is still going and will end Midnight Saturday. not too many entries. You guys still have a chance, 5 keys alone being given out for it! Give it a go!
Blue Love for Diablo 3 Fansites (Hey That's me?!):
Deck the Hells (With Lots of Free Stuff!)
Fa la la la la, mwah HA HA HA...
Every year around this time, just as the holiday season reaches its zenith, the community team begins its annual tradition of preparing for the road ahead (pending apocalypses be damned). But as we began to schedule our meetings for brainstorming what kind of cool projects and promotions we wanted to do for 2013, we realized...we had absolutely no where to hold department gatherings anymore. We'd run out of meeting rooms!
Our mission became clear. The primary objective? Empty out the office we'd been using as storage space and turn it into the finest meetin' room this side of Sanctuary. The bonus objective? Discover what treasure lurked in its depths and present the bounty to as many worthy companions as possible.
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(Note: Cat not included.)
So, under the pallid glare of fluorescents (and to the tune of The A Team theme song), we destroyed that office's defenses, looting everything its box-ridden corpse had to offer. To our delight, after carefully cataloguing our spoils -- and checking the lists twice -- we identified the following rare items:
- Signed Diablo III Collector's Editions (over 30!)
- Mini Tyrael statues (over 40!)
- Books of Cain
- Diablo III pins
- Diablo II action figures
- Some Battle.net Authenticators featuring everyone's favorite Prime Evil
- And a bunch of World of Warcraft swag
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I've titled the right one: "Zarhym Shrugged."
We decided the best recipients of all this sweet stuff would be you, our mighty community, and picked a few awesome allies to help us distribute the goods:
We're letting these sites set the terms for how and when everything's given away, so be sure to tune in to their front pages (or video streams) for possible holiday swag sightings. We can't wait to see what kind of epic contests, challenges, or raffles they might have in store!
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No Bashioks were harmed in the capturing of these photos.
Good luck to everyone who participates in the giveaways, and a big thank you to our Diablo III fan sites who've not only helped us reclaim precious meeting space, but also provided a wealth of support, coverage, and cause for conversation in this year of our Lord (of Terror), 2012.
P.S. Here's a sweet digital painting of a barbarian in a Santa suit. Why? Because beards.
| | Hits: 5729Hello ALL!
Been a busy couple of days before the holidays. Got some random news for you on a few things.
SC: HotS Beta Key Contest
I would like to congratulate Auroray, Nev, bitcoinsftl and derpthewerp on winning a beta key. Day 5 is currently going! you have till 10PM EST to answer the solo question.
My PvP Blog:
Tiss the season of plans going to hell and back again! The article is being pushed till Friday. God I feel like Jay here. It will be up and have nice info we know and images to oot. Healthy opinions and thoughts too will arise.
Future Contests?
All I can say is I got my Blizzard holiday gifts, but from what you see, there are four more of EACH! to be had....the contests....the contests I must come up with!
Daily Blue Post Info.
Diablo III Players Banned for Botting
We've recently issued account bans to several thousand Diablo III players who were found to be using botting programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair play, botting, hacking, and other forms of cheating can also cause technical problems with the game as well as contribute to performance issues with the Battle.net service. To learn more about our exploitation policy for Diablo III and how it may affect your gameplay, please visit our official support site.
As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and enjoyable online environment for legitimate players is very important to us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed. In the meantime, if you wish to report the possible use of botting programs to Blizzard, please see this thread for more information. (We will also be adding the ability for players to report this kind of behavior directly through the game client in a future patch.)
For questions regarding account actions, please refer to Account Administration.
I think we are 9 months to late on that.
This isn't our first rodeo. We have been actively monitoring for exploitative behavior since the game launched and taking action as needed. We haven't been very vocal about that process (though we have made a few announcements for larger ban waves in the past), but that's something we'll be working to change and improve upon going forward.
How does one justify if he/she is botting? I mean, I could play for 12 hours for weeks not saying that would be a good thing but its possible so I am just guessing I would eventually get a ban hammer dropped on my head?
While I'm not about to reveal how we identify exploitative behavior in Diablo III (and understandably so), "playing a lot" is not criteria enough to merit an account action for botting.
If you have received an account action and have any questions about it, be sure to check out and follow the instructions provided here:https://us.battle.ne...-administration
The steps included the article are your best course of action.
Battle.net Authenticators Temporarily Unavailable
From December 17 2012, physical products including Battle.net Authenticators will be temporarily unavailable on the Blizzard Online Store in Europe. This is in preparation for a revamp of the store which will take place during 2013. In the meantime, many items can be found on the US Blizzard Store.
Players wishing to acquire a Battle.net Authenticator have several options. The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator is available for many types of smartphone, and you can find out more about it here. For many people, this is the easiest and cheapest option!
If you prefer to have a physical Battle.net Authenticator, you can get hold of one from several sources including the online retailers and high-street stores listed here.
This one was taken from what I saw over at Diablofans, credit goes to Moldran for find this! Source link to Asian Official Diablo III Site Post. The following is a translation.
Possible Dupping Fix in Asia
We understand that accounts being stolen is not fun, which is why we provide account restoration. However, we recently found a number of cases of customer service being lied to about theft, in order to get extra items. Accordingly, we have decided to update the account restoration policy in Asia to help players, and at the same time protect the game economy. This change will reaffirm our view that fraud is theft, and take a stance of "zero tolerance".
Starting at 11:00AM Taiwan time on December 18, 2012, all Diablo III restored equipment (including in inventory and the stash), such as weapons or armor, will be bound to the account. This means that these items will not be able to be traded with other players or placed on auction, but they can still be shared with other characters in the account to use, or sold to the commodity NPCs. Note that unless through the account restoration earned gold or material goods. [sic] After the implementation of these policies, as in the past, we will constantly monitor the economic environment within the game, and make additional adjustments if necessary. (Note: once the player account restoration is completed, future drops in the game, or equipment items received through transactions, are not affected by account binding restrictions.)
The account restoration service is to help the players deal with account theft, and we hope that no one would need to use this service. Protect your account security from theft; the best approach is to ensure your computer's security, and use the Battle.net account security, such as the Battle.net authenticator. Further protective measures cannot be guaranteed perfect because of human negligence; according to our data, we often see many players' accounts stolen a second time, after the first time they were stolen, since they did not take any action to protect themselves.
The game economy is an important part of the quality of the gaming experience, and any attempt to use fraud to obtain additional items may cause harm to the economy and the experience of other players in the game. We hope to give a warning to those of dishonest behavior, and further strengthen the stability of the economy and provide a better gaming experience for all players.