Diablo III Preview
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 911
One of the earliest questions faced by Diablo III's development team focused on the ways the series could be updated for a new generation of PC hardware. Obviously, the possibility of giving the game a new 3D look was considered. for the space of a meeting. The team chose to stick with the series' standard isometric perspective (rather, isometric-style) from day one; changing that, they feared, would ultimately change the nature of the core gameplay too much.
There was also the question of character classes. For Diablo III's development team, they had to ask themselves which classes fit the gameplay. As Wilson explained, the intent all along has been to build Diablo III's character classes old and new to support the game rather than building the game around specific classes. The Witch Doctor, for example, bears a number of similarities to Diablo II's Necromancer, but is meant to be played as more of a direct damage-dealer than the older game's class. While this is all well and good in a non-revealing sort of way, the newsy bit is Wilson's explicit confirmation that the old Necro will not be one of the three as-yet-unannounced Diablo III classes.
The most exciting changes we discussed related to the new and improved Battle.net. Most of what's going to happen is still in the planning stages, but fans can in general expect to see more integration between game and community. No one will be forced to sign on to Battle.net to play Diablo III, but characters created offline will not be playable online in the interests of limiting any potential for cheating the system.
