A Quick Diablo III Recap before Blizzcon

Unveiled over a year ago, Blizzard’s long awaited game, Diablo III, continues to undergo development, with minimum information released semi-sporadically to the ever adoring fans. With the onset of Gamescon, and the upcoming Blizzcon, allow me to recap all that we know to this point.

Diablo III is an action, role-playing, dungeon roaming, hack and slash type of game. It’s a mouthful, but it’s exactly what it sounds like, and is the third game of Blizzard’s Diablo franchise. As such, it takes place in Diablo’s dark fantasy world, Sanctuary, twenty years after the events of Diablo II. It is confirmed to be released to both Mac OS X and Windows.

In Diablo III, each player will get individual drops at boss kills, as well as normal enemies, chests, and so on. If you see it, it’s yours. Gold is also an item drop, but players need only touch it to loot it, as opposed to the old ways of mashing your cursor button and hoping you don’t lag before it disappears. But try to keep in mind that if you’re tromping through a dungeon with a group, range will play a part—don’t expect to be able to run off and do your own thing, and then return with your group to pick up items off mobs they killed without you.

The drop system will not be restricted to spoon feeding you with your class-specific equipment. Now, I hear some of you groaning out there, but trust me—it’s a good thing. Random drops support trading and economy, and, you know, make items you can’t use worth a little more than vendor fodder.  And in order to carry all these glorious items, you’ll need to invest in bags of various sizes. That’s right, they’ve decided on moving away from the system in Diablo II, where different items took up different amounts of space, to the ever popular World of Warcraft system, in which bags have a specific number of slots to store items.

And all items, no matter what kind, take up a single slot, unless they’re stackable. Because, obviously, round, oblong shaped vials made of glass can be shoved together in an overstuffed pack without fear of them breaking. These moments truly let the miracles of magic shine through.

Where was I? Ah, yes.

Blizzard also plans to implement similar, breakable, item containers of previous games. But this time Area of Effect spells (also known as AoE) can and will open these breakables. It is also suggested that if there’s an enemy hiding inside, and if the AoE damage spikes high enough, the spell can kill an enemy—or, if there’s an enemy nearby, explosive breakables can damage the aforementioned pixel monsters out for your blood.

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