‘Self-found’ is the Diablo community’s esoteric term for a philosophy of play we were all very familiar with before the Auction House: making it through the campaign without recourse to online selling or buying of gear. It’s become something of an old school phenomenon of late, and it was only a matter of time before somebody like popular streamer Archon put the question to Blizzard: What are the chances of us seeing an officially-sanctioned self-found mode in-game in the future?
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Blizzard have brought the North American Diablo 3 auction house back online following a full audit of transactions carried out since the 1.0.8 patch was released earlier this week. The patch introduced a gold duplicating bug which saw some players generating billions of free gold.
Blizzard opted to perform an audit instead of a server rollback as they “didn't like the idea of punishing [the majority of players] for the bad behavior of a few people”.
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Yesterday, we learned that World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers are falling. Again. At its peak, World of Warcraft reached over 12 million subscribers; today, that number is at 8.3 million, and Activision and Blizzard expect subscriber numbers to decrease further.
What’s going on? Why are people quitting WoW, and can Blizzard halt the decline?
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Diablo’s 1.0.8 patch went live yesterday, implementing some of the changes Blizzard have mused aloud about in recent weeks - magic and gold find bonuses when playing co-op, for instance, and notifications in multiplayer for Elite monster encounters. But it also introduced something entirely unexpected - a gold duping bug that saw some players acquire billions in a matter of hours. Blizzard promptly shut down the Diablo auction house in response, and have already plugged the leak - but refused player calls for a global rollback.
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Blizzard have been plugging away at ways to make Diablo 3 a more invigorating experience without resorting to primary colours. They’ve done their best for co-op, and have now turned their attention to legendary items, with the aim of making every drop something to write home about.
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Twitch have closed the accounts of a popular streamer and his girlfriend after the nominally wheelchair-bound broadcaster was seen standing up and walking away from his PC.
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Blizzard last week made the frank admission that multiplayer Diablo 3 can “often feel not worth the effort”. “Even if you enjoy playing with your friends, it can often feel easier and more efficient to play solo,” said Wyatt Cheng.
Patch 1.0.8 is released on the Public Test Realm today. It sees the dev team take a few small steps in the direction of better playing in company and, in lieu of the more significant redesigns planned, one big leap towards improving the rewards for doing so.
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Blizzard have bought up IGN Pro League tech and assets from its former owners, and hired former IPL staff to form the core of a new San Francisco team focused on producing "high-quality web and mobile content" in support of existing Blizzard games.
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Since last we spoke about this year’s BlizzCon, it’s become a rather different prospect. For one thing, we now know that it’ll play host to the very first instance of the StarCraft 2 World Championship Series Global Finals. And it’s difficult to imagine that the annual Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo gettogether won’t also feature Hearthstone, Blizzard’s newly announced CCG. With that in mind, it might be time to start scraping together spare change to fund a trip to Southern California.
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While discussing the upcoming changes patch 1.08 will bring to Diablo 3, senior technical game designer Wyatt Cheng explained the current problems with the game’s multiplayer, as Blizzard sees them:
“[f]rom day one, it’s been our goal to make Diablo III a great co-op experience, but right now it's not living up to its full potential. Even if you enjoy playing with your friends, it can often feel easier and more efficient to play solo [...] given the downsides it can often feel not worth the effort.”
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Since Jay Wilson stepped down as director of Diablo 3 we’ve seen a sea change in Blizzard’s outward opinion of the game’s auction houses. The stores drew a great deal of criticism from fans at the game’s launch but Blizzard designers recently added their own voices to the noise, acknowledging that “the fact that most players get their gear from the AH is an issue".
Now, speaking at GDC, Wilson, too, has openly criticised the stores, saying "I think we would turn it off if we could" but that it’s "not as easy as that".
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“Giving players more control and customization of their item stats is something we talk about a lot in our office,” associate game designer Don Vu said in a recent forum Q&A. “There have been a lot of ideas thrown around here and some great suggestions from the community, but we have not finalized any systems yet.” Nonetheless, Vu went on to offer some thoughts on what those systems might be.
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While player trading will be part of Marvel Heroes' in-game economy, David Brevik, Gazillion's Chief Operating Officer and one of the designers behind Diablo 1 and 2, says there's no room for a real-money auction house.
“That’s not the road we want to take,” he said, while I interviewed him as part of our preview of the game. “For a real-money auction house to work? I didn’t like some of the mechanics associated with that and I thought it had an impact on the game that I didn’t really want.”
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Diablo 3 1.0.7a went live in the Americas about 16 hours ago, and has since been trundling out across the game’s European and Asian clients. It means good things for players who prefer their play uninterrupted by crashes or showstopping bugs, but potentially bad things for those of a Wizarding persuasion who’ve been enjoying an overgenerous proportion of arcane power.
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Improving the efficiency of co-op play in Diablo 3 is to be “a big focus” of the upcoming 1.08 patch. According to senior technical game designer Wyatt Cheng they’re looking at improving the raw efficiency of working as a team as well as including features which will save time and make the experience of playing in a group less of a chore.
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As Blizzard continue their plans to move Diablo 3’s focus away from the auction house and back to loot drops within the game, they’ve decided to return to the stat system that drives loot drops. Soon the days where you see a legendary item drop and think “Oh, what variation of dull will this be?” will be over and the days of “I’m glad I’ve got champagne in the house because this deserves a toast!” will be back in.
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The lack of offline play in Diablo 3 was a point of consternation at the game's release (and before, and since). So the news that the recently announced Playstation release of the game will feature an offline mode for local co-op is a tad surprising. Previously Blizzard stood by their choice arguing that always-online play was "critical for the long-term integrity of the game experience".
Blizzard have not yet confirmed the offline mode for Playstation but in the Gametrailer interview below Blizzard's vice president of creative development Chris Metzen and production director John Hight mention it in a discussion of local co-op.Read and Comment
Blizzard’s annual will-they-won’t-they potential announce-a-thon is happening on the weekend beginning November 8th in Anaheim, California, about half an hour’s drive from the PC megamonolith’s Irvine headquarters.Read and Comment
As a way of avoiding some of Battlenet’s matchmaking shortcomings: namely the inability to name your own rooms and chat channels, Diablo 3 players have organically created their own fight club: Inferno Act 1 Q9 games are now being used as a de facto arena system.
If you’re struggling to find people to brawl with, or find that PvP chat is too quiet, you’re just not looking in the right places. Other players who have had the same trouble took things into their own hands (and fists) and these Act 1 Q9 games are becoming the place to fight. “Queues are instant,” says one poster on reddit “and everybody is there to brawl.”Read and Comment
Diablo 3’s gold and real-money auction houses have long been a bone of contention for the playerbase. But in a long discussion thread over in the Diablo 3 forums, a number of Blizzard developers have expressed some misgivings on the effects of auction houses on Diablo 3’s meta-game.
The core of their discussion was simple, "the fact that most players get their gear from the AH is an issue."
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