Diablo III Previews

[GameBanshee News]

A couple of new articles have surfaced that sum up the information released during Blizzard's Diablo III unveiling at the Worldwide Invitational event. The first is at 1UP:

After a few minutes of the Barbarian smashing up zombies and ghouls, Wilson then premiered a wholly new class for Diablo III: the Witch Doctor. If you like to use the language of previous games, he seems to resemble the Necromancer, but with some additional skills. There even was a bit of the Sorceress' flavor. Like the Necromancer, the Witch Doctor is quite up on his pets and disease-based spells. One early spell that Wilson demonstrated was the locust swarm, which basically conjures up little plague pockets that tear apart whatever enemies they encounter. Then he summoned the mongrel, a beast that performs the pretty typical "go claw at things and also be my meat shield on occasion" task. The Witch Doctor can also combine these two disciplines by casting locust swarm on his mongrels for a nasty effect -- instead of being torn apart, his mongrels gain additional disease-based damage for their attacks.

Besides his use of disease and pets, the Witch Doctor also has some nice crowd-control spells. Horrify conjures up an ooky-spooky ghost above his head that will scare the bejesus out of most enemies, while Mass Confusion creates a spirit that drives the baddies crazy enough to attack each other. Firebomb brings a heavy damage option to the Witch Doctor's arsenal with a straightforward fire-based ranged attack spell that seems to be influenced by Diablo II's Sorceress. Finally, easily the most impressive of the Witch Doctor's ability is one that creates a wall of zombies; nothing like propping up a social book-club's worth of flailing zombies as a defensive obstacle.

And the other is at Gamasutra:

Another important evolution of the franchise is the fact that environments will be destroyable - the example shown is a stone wall collapsing on a group of enemies, eliciting crowd glee.

So, sure, there's some obvious boasts from the game's creators, with Wilson commenting: "Diablo 3 will be filled with more story and quests than any Diablo before."

But overall, there are key changes - the game will, first and foremost, be a co-operative title, according to Wilson. While the designer cautioned the audience that all things can change before the title ships (at a so far unconfirmed future date), he does introduce the audience to a new class, the witch doctor.