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More discussion of the smashing new Diablo 3 news on the imminent D3 beta, big changes to skills, traits, runestones, retcon twists, and more. The twenty-eighth episode of The Diablo Podcast is now online for your listening pleasure. Now that the NDA has ended, Flux, The Eliminator, and Wolfpaq are able to give their thoughts on a bunch of hot topics from the Blizzard media event last week. Issues covered in this part two of a two-part discussion include: Auction House RMT Changes to skills, skill runes, and traits, plus more. Grab the show via direct download, iTunes, or watch on our YouTube channel.   More information about the history and production of The Diablo Podcast, as well as an episode guide and cast of characters, can be seen on The Diablo Wiki.   The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

Over the weekend we cut a two-part podcast discussing all the new info from last week's Blizzard Event. This episode features Flux, The Eliminator, and Diablo's Minion giving their thoughts on on a bunch of hot topics from the Blizzard media event last week. Issues covered in this part one of a two part discussion include the size and purpose of the Diablo 3 beta, the Auction House and the RMT aspect of it, the Diablo III introductory cinematic and its very new visual style, new Battle.net Banners, and more. These were fun to record, since I knew all the info from the media event, but the guests did not. So I got to describe the news, and their first reactions were right then, on live tape. We didn't get any "first time watching two girls one cup" sort of horrified reactions, but there are a number of shocked silences, as well as some mutual confusion. Mostly when we try to figure out why and how on earth Blizzard decided to retcon the Dark Wanderer into Prince Albrecht. This is just part one of the Bliz Event talk; Part two was recorded late Sunday evening, and covers skill, trait, skill rune, and other big changes. It will go live early tomorrow morning. The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

The twenty-fifth episode of The Diablo Podcast is now online for your listening pleasure. In this show Flux, Neinball, and Exile discuss the imminent start of the , and answer numerous listener questions about the beta test. What will be in the beta, when will it start, how do you get into it, how long will it run, what does Blizzard look for from beta testers, how did Blizzard handle other recent beta tests, and much more. Short Beta Coming Soon? I was surprised by how short both Exile and Neinball thought the Diablo 3 beta might be. Listen to the show for their opinions and reasoning, but after thinking it over, they've got a point. I shall explain: The Diablo 3 Beta test will consist of just Act One and probably the Arena. We know that Blizzard has Act One nicely-polished, plus as they've repeatedly told us, Normal difficulty is balanced to be absurdly easy rather gradual in the difficulty ramp up. So testers won't be running into brick walls of excessive difficulty, or many bugs, and there won't be high end/late game character/skill/item/runestone/etc balancing going on. What does that leave that needs testing? Technical support stuff, of course, given all the different computer systems that players will log on with. But in terms of game stuff? Just Diablo 3 over Battle.net, basically. And it's not like Battle.net is a new system at this point. It's been pretty well broken in by a year of SC2. So once they can get good function from the game creation controls, chat channels, LFG controls, trading system, Arena matchmaking, etc... that's pretty much all they need to test before the release. Compare it to SC2; that game's beta started in mid-February, and the game was released in late July; 5.5 months later. SC2 had a shorter development time than D3 has had, and B.net 2.0 debuted with SC2, and the SC2 beta was the entire MP game, with endless balancing and testing and unit-tweaking, etc. D3 is hitting a mature B.net, and will require a tiny fraction as much balancing and play-tweaking as SC2 did. Furthermore, the SC2 team wasn't crunching frantically to make a year-end deadline. All that considered, I don't think the D3 beta test will run anywhere near as long as SC2's did. Will it? The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

Flux and Elly recap the busy week in Diablo 3 news, including new Followers information, new details on item drops in large parties, and a set date for the ATVI conference call. Beta start date announcement coming soon? The twenty-fourth episode of The Diablo Podcast is now online for your listening pleasure. Once again it's Elly and Flux running down the news items of the past week, with our customary wit, irreverence, and inappropriate jokes. Beta start date predictions, release date revisions, reader mailbag questions, and much more. The YouTube version features gameplay video and more visual delights, to accompany the audio, so watch as well as listen. The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

The twenty-third episode of The Diablo Podcast is now online for your listening pleasure. Once again it's Elly and Flux running down the news items of the past week, with our customary wit, irreverence, and inappropriate jokes. Issues discussed include the upcoming, not-new Gamescom demo, the surprising two-minute skill cooldowns and their PvP implications, a pending respecs system reveal, and yet more waiting for the Diablo 3 beta to begin. The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

The twenty-second episode of The Diablo Podcast is now online for your listening pleasure. In this episode Flux, The Eliminator, and Neinball discuss the merits and problems with World of Warcraft's newly-enabled Dungeon Journal. This in-game resource provides players with detailed statistical information about monster locations, hit points, attack types and damage, loot tables, dungeon maps, and much more. (Though not actual strategies or tutorials.) There will be no player-made UI mods in D3 (for better or worse), and Bashiok said no to a Dungeon Journal at the launch, but other as of yet unrevealed systems may cover that aspect of in-game knowledge far better than any of the systems in Diablo II did. Diablo III's lore window (seen in thumbnail) is another issue of discussion. It was a brand new feature as of the Blizzcon 2010 build, and not yet populated with info. If it's been fleshed out as the tabs suggest, it will greatly change the way players process monster, quest, story, and other information in-game. If it's still in the game we'll surely learn all about it fairly soon, in one of the upcoming system reveals The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

The twenty-first episode of The Diablo Podcast is now online for your listening pleasure. In this episode Flux, The Eliminator, and Neinball talk chiefly about the just-revealed long-ass, two-minute skill cooldowns for high level Barbarian skills in Diablo III. Obviously these aren’t the only skills in the game with long cooldowns, but neither guest is much worried about it, so long as the skills are powerful enough to warrant the wait between uses. Other topics include Gamescom 2011 getting the Blizzcon 2010 demo, and why neither guest really believed the D3Here guy’s story. Special guest rumor-confirmation thanks to The Eliminator’s inside info that BlizzCon really was scheduled to head to Vegas back in 2010… at least for a few days. Here’s the show itinerary. View the post on DiabloPodcast.com for more details. Here’s a quick itinerary of the show. 3:00—The guys agree that Gamescom will not get a new 2011 D3 demo, and explain why. 10:00—Discussion of lengthy skill cooldowns in Diablo III. Both guests are okay with them, since longer cooldowns = mega-powerful skills, and since lots of lower level skills in D3 will have no cooldowns at all. 26:00—The D3Here guy’s claims are critically evaluated. Both guests find his credibility lacking, and explain why, as well as talking about what they would have done in his place to be more convincing. 38:00—Closing jokes and conversation about the D3Here guy’s version of the D3 market system, in which a keyboard tapping bird like the one Homer had would come in very hand. As you’ll hear in the closing, this is part one of the show, since our recording session went well over an hour. Part two will go up tomorrow morning, with much conversation about the new World of Warcraft Dungeon Journal, and how such a feature might or might not be imported into Diablo III. Someday. The Diablo Podcast Episode Guide in the wiki provides easy navigation with a short summary of every show. Listen and subscribe through iTunes. View video versions of all The Diablo Podcasts on You Tube, via our all-encompassing Diablo3Inc channel.

Runic Games sent out a press release late last week, trumpeting their recent milestone as Torchlight went platinum, selling over one-million copies for the PC and Xbox combined. Congrats to Max, Erich, Matt, Peter, and everyone else at Runic Games for the achievement. There’s no official release date for Torchlight 2 yet, as it’s following in the footsteps of Diablo II by adding a million features and thus taking longer than anticipated to produce, but they are planning to reveal the fourth and final character sometime before PAX, where they will be exhibiting the upcoming ARPG sequel. Elsewhere, the alpha test for Path of Exile is continuing (I’ve been playing, but can’t really talk about it yet.) and the game is progressing very nicely, with big new patches full of bug fixes plus lots of added content/features rolling out almost weekly. The Templar, the fifth of the six character classes, was just revealed with a snazzy new gameplay movie that’s turned into a storytelling presentation by a gritty voice over narration. You can check out a half dozen new high res PoE screenshots that accompanied the Templar announcement, and view his new movie below. You can even get a high res 720px version of the movie, if you want to swing the download. Beta test signups for this upcoming free ARPG remain available; you’ve just got to create a forum account on the Path of Exile site.   Update: I should have mentioned that I interviewed the Path of Exile guys in person during their first press activities when they announced the game back in 2010. My very long write up of the game can be seen in a post from then, and the full interview transcript is on IncGamers in two parts. Update #2: A gameplay movie with no narration/story/slow motion can be seen here, if you want just gameplay action. These movies are accurate representations of what it looks/plays like, based on my alpha test experiences thus far.