Posts with tag DIablo-III

It's flown by, but believe it or not, Diablo III is a year old today! Blizzard Community Manager Lylirra has put together a special message on the Diablo forums about the special buff you can get in return for simply logging in to defend Sanctuary.

Lylirra

One year ago today, the gates of the Burning Hells opened and Diablo III was unleashed onto the world. Since then, millions of heroes have been created, billions of hours have been spent in games, and trillions of demons have been slaughtered without mercy. We've grown and improved a lot since release, both as a game team and as a community, and thanks to your feedback, passion, and unquenchable bloodlust, we expect the next year to be even more epic.

To celebrate this milestone and the community that made it possible, we're giving away free buffs! (Who doesn't like free buffs?) Players who log in to defend Sanctuary between May 15 and May 21 will receive a 25% boost to their Magic Find and +EXP stats. The buff is only available while logged in to the game, but it will apply to all characters as well as stack with other similar bonuses -- the +EXP bonus will stack multiplicatively and the Magic Find bonus will stack above the 300% cap!

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This is somewhat similar to the buffs players can receive when it's WoW's birthday, so Diablo III fans can probably expect it to return every year. Happy birthday, Diablo!

Sure, we all like gold. But even the most gold hungry among us can see the problem with a bug that allowed players to accumulate trillions of in-game currency, which is exactly what happened with Diablo III's patch 1.0.8. As a result, the game's Auction House was taken down, and Blizzard is still debating what actions to take to correct the issue, but Lylirra posts on the official forums that roll backs won't be necessary.

Lylirra - Auction Houses Temporarily Offline -- Update

12:00 a.m. PDT: At this time (and after careful consideration), we've decided to not move forward with rolling back the servers. We feel that this is the best course of action given the nature of the dupe, how relatively few players used it, and the fact that its effects were fairly limited within the region. We've been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections. While this is a time-consuming and very detailed process, we believe it's the most appropriate choice given the circumstances. We know that some of you may disagree, but we feel that performing a full roll back would impact the community in an even greater way, as it would require significant downtime as well as revert the progress legitimate players have made since patch 1.0.8 was released this morning.

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I know it would be a pretty big blow to lose character levels or gear acquired legitimately, so if they can go after the actual accounts that used the exploit and remove just their duplicated gold, that seems like the best option to me.

We all know about the World of Warcraft site's Armory feature. Now, this official preview over on the Diablo III EU site shows off the character profile system coming for DIII. If you're familiar with the armory, it's not going to shock or surprise you. Character profiles will present your character's gear and accomplishments for other players to look over. Yes, this means my poor abandoned barbarian (fun to play, but I got bored grinding gear) will forever be presented to the world in all his not particularly impressive glory.

Unlike the WoW armory, the profile page will be linked to you, with a career tab that presents all of your characters and a heroes tab that gives detailed listings of equipment and skills for your individual characters and their followers. If you have ideas for features you'd like to see, be sure to leave some feedback.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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Diablo III players have had a few weeks to get to level 60, and Blizzard's recent patch to smooth over some of the difficulty hikes has made sure that more adventurers than ever can hack and slash their way through Inferno, the game's ultimate difficulty level and best source of loot. Players have discovered that it's efficient to keep a second set of gear in their bags loaded up with Magic Find, the stat that boosts your chance to find rare items, and swap to it when Elite/Champion packs or bosses are at low health. Unlike WoW, loot is calculated when a creature dies, not when it spawns, thus allowing players to benefit both from the good stats on their main gear and the MF on the gear they switch to.

Blizzard considered this an unintended but allowable way to play; now that the method is well known out in the wild, though, players are feeling forced into playing this way, and the devs know it. To that end, they've announced that they're working on a solution to the gear swapping problem and explained a few of the choices they're mulling over, replete with pros and cons for each.

And they want your feedback! Comment on the blog post with your thoughts and which change you'd personally like to see. Keep in mind, though, that regardless of which change is made, the devs are planning to boost MF for everyone so that no one feels penalized by whichever change makes it to launch.

Full blog post and link, after the break.

Diablo III's patch 1.0.3 is the game's first patch of any significance, and the game is down for maintenance this morning as the patch is deployed. Game service is expected to return in the Americas by 1:00 p.m. PDT. Many of the game's major post-launch balance and design changes have been rolled into today's patch, so it's an exciting day for hardcore Diablo players. The full maintenance announcement can be found below.

Additionally, if you're looking for more Diablo content, don't miss the guides, news, and other coverage on all three of Joystiq's offerings: Joystiq prime, Massively, and right here on WoW Insider.