This is more of a reminder (or a placeholder) for something that should be revisited after Diablo 3 goes retail to confirm the legitimacy of an old Titan related leak.

You might remember that back in mid April there was an alleged Diablo 3 leak on 4chan. But, it's looking more and more legitimate now that the beta and the Azmodan video at Blizzcon were released. Remember, this 4chan leak was long before the F&F beta started, and before anyone knew any details like these about Diablo 3. At the time, it was met with a LOT of criticism and disbelief.

[On a little piece of historical trivia, the D3 F&F beta didn't start until the first week of Sept 2011. That was when Sixen said that there was no F&F beta. :) The next day, I posted a comment from our well known source that the closed beta would be starting on Sept 20.. which it did. :) Forcegaming was predicting Sept 12 at the time. It's one of those small tid bits that a majority of users sometime miss. My comment was actually the result of another email I had received from TOD after his/her mid August leak.]

Here's a link to the entire archived chat log. And, here is a collection of his claims (which were considered "bullshit" back in April). :)

(* UPDATE: The archival site has been down for a few days, and the cache will most likely disappear, so I created a mirror here. Pastehtml will probably give a warning before going to the page, mostly because of all the 4chan links in it.)

Confirmed:

1. Plans for a D3 console port. (Blizzard intended to port it to consoles when the expansion development began.)
2. Levels were generated in mediocre way.
3. Didn't feel as open as D2. Levels in D2 were much bigger. In D3, "open world areas are small with little side areas, and its randomly generated dungeon levels are mediocre, with rectangular areas glued together."

This part about the open areas with little side areas and dungeons glued together with rectangular pieces is what really stood out to me. I mean, he really nailed it right there. That's exactly what the beta is like, and one of the concerns players have over the post-Act 1 areas. Blizzard has promised that this isn't the case though. I still have my doubts though.

4. No runewords.
5. Low system requirements.
6. Same model as Starcraft 2, no LAN. Online only requirement.
7. Final stage is not the High Heavens. (An old rumor.)
8. Boss battles are scripted and easy. (One common complaint from beta players, and the same is expected from all of the other bosses.)
9. Elites "not as crazy as in D2; they have less enchantments".
10. Level design.

Level design? In what order? I.E: Does the desert come in the second act, or later?

First act: Tristram and surroundings (monastery, Leoric castle,etc)
Second act: Desert
Third act: The bastion keep. Really [bad] act.
Fourth act: Begins where the meteor hits, then you descend into hell

This was another pretty good confirmation. Except he says "where the meteor hits", which I always assumed was the Tristram Monastery. But Act 4 does start in the "Holy Sanctum", "Blessed Chancel", and "Radiant Chapel" before moving to the Spire and then into Hell. It could be that another segment of the meteor (or another meteor) hit the Monastery? Still.. very specific and very accurate.

Unconfirmed:

11. Codex and spell rune combinations.

Is there any kind of in-game codex for [stuff] like monsters and spell rune combinations?

No. There are recipes, and some special items like lost scrolls with some lore in them, used in recipes.

This one is iffy. He either confirms no rune combinations and/or in-game codex stuff. He says there are recipes and lost scrolls for recipes with lore in them. And, it's possible that the in-game codex lore for monsters were after his testing.

12. "You fight Tyrael in act 4." (Probably not the end boss, but rather in the middle or just before Diablo, if this is true.)

13. Plot Line

When Tyrael broke the Worldstone in D2, it basically destroyed what separated the mortal world from heaven and hell. So Asmodan devised a way to resurrect Diablo because his essence wasn’t completely destroyed with the soul shard. They invoked a meteor to hit Sanctuary for its impact would generate enough energy to provide a portal from hell for a massive army. Tyrael was corrupted by Asmodan. Asmodan is boss of act 3.

Azmodan has been confirmed as the boss of Act 3, which was pretty specific. And everything else above seems pretty close to the truth based on the small amount of information we know about the game.

14. In the end, the hero will sacrifice themselves to act like the Worldstone before it was destroyed, thereby separating Hell and the mortal world again. Diablo gets chained in Hell, never killed.

Conclusion

He did a pretty good job nailing many of the fine points in the game. If items #12, #13, and #14 end up being true, then it lends him some very good credibility to his claims of being an internal tester.

And, it also gives some credibility to his other Titan related comment:

-Do you know anything about Blizzard’s other projects? Brief thoughts on all the classes? Favorite thing from D3? Is it ever going to be released?

That Titan MMO will be integrated with Facebook, and will be more or less like Second Life. The classes are well designed, with each having different gameplay. I liked the skill system plus runes. Expect a beta announcement at BlizzCon.

What I always found odd about this, though, is that he was a tester for Diablo 3.. so why would he also have access to the Titan game? Perhaps he heard it from a coworker.. or perhaps he heard it from somewhere else. :)

I've actually heard this very specific comparison before (e.g. "integrated with Facebook and like Second Life".)

It was something that the Original Daeity once said. Right before it was removed. :) (And at the time, there were no other websites or sources that compared Titan to Second Life and Facebook.)

kOOpat wrote:

Many people will call bull on this, they said the same about the slate leak ;)

But what he said about Titan certainly drew my interest. It's the exact same thing that Daeity said before Blizzard perma shut down his blog. He said that the closest comparison to Titan was Second Life there was a large variety of environs, customizable player appearances (e.g. suits, ties, dresses, army outfits, fantasy & scifi wear, etc), heavy interaction with social networks like Facebook and other ARG-like influences, maybe even "customizable worlds" that can be shared with friends. There was a load of other leaked info, but it was killed fast and I didn't take screenshots.. cuz who could have really anticipated that would happen. What I saw of the art work though it looked awesome!

Regy wrote:

@kOOpat: With that logic, the guy who posted this could easily have been a reader of Daeity's blog prior to it being shut down, so his information was taken from there.

The fact remains that this was posted on 4chan of all fucking places, and that he's lying about the NDA loophole (no company miswrites NDAs to that extent)

To easily discredited to take seriously, and the fact that he sounds like a raving lunatic.

The Greatest Days wrote:

Did it occur to you that maybe he's one of the many people that read Daeity's blog? He's more than likely recycling info from that. Blizzard shutting it down made tons of people believe in the info's legitimacy, so this chumpstain thinks he struck gold.

I, for one, believe nothing. I mean sure, does some of his plot info sound plausible? Yeah absolutely, if only this wasn't coming from this particular chumpstain. Lifeless losers have gone to much less trouble to achieve their 15 mins of anonymous e-fame.

As you recall, TOD had a post (that was involuntarily deleted) that covered a ton of info about D3, Titan, and subs. He also had another post about subscriber figures that was also deleted. And others were removed completely. But, he summarized a lot of those details into the important parts that would be announced at Blizzcon (e.g. level cap, required online connection) in the "Huge News" post.

There are still bits and pieces out there that mention details in his last posts, and "koopat" just confirmed a link between Daeity's old posts and this D3 leak.

Also coincidentally, the Daeity D3 leak was on March 23 2011, and this 4Chan D3 leak was on April 13 2011. :)

The whole situation just seems oddly connected; D3 tester not associated with Titan gets Titan information, compares to Daeity remarks, leaks D3 information, Daeity also leaked D3 information, and all of this happening so closely together.

This might just be an incredible coincidence of course. There's no way to tell what really happened: he might have been a legitimate internal tester and they just both knew the same internal details about Titan (which helps in a confirmation regarding Titan), he pulled the information from the blog (the probability of the timing and details is pretty amazing), or maybe he just really did his homework and pulled pieces from all over the internet or through his own lore research. But to have so many parts correct and so specifically written, I don't think it could have been gathered from rumors.

Anyways..

If you exclude all of these interesting coincidences, if everything he said is indeed proven to be true, then it certainly lends a ton of credibility to the Titan game design.

Also, a lot of Blizzard's decisions about Titan were made during a time when Zynga was extremely successful, they had partnered with Facebook, and they intended on implementing Real ID (with FB) into their new games. It's quite possible that a FB integration has been planned for a very long time, and they're getting their feet wet with SC2. (Just like the RMAH in D3.)

It will be interesting to see (and another confirmation) if Blizzard introduces new FB integration features within Diablo 3. For example, seeing online players that are linked to FB profiles, messaging in-game users from FB, forming FB-based guilds (instead of in-game guilds), maybe even a FB/RMAH or inventory management system if it proves to be successful.

At Blizzcon 2011, they mentioned that they were looking for a way to implement guilds. A Facebook based guild system would certainly explain why they left out in-game guilds for retail. Now, they won't call it a "guild" system though, it will be a Facebook Friends linkage page or something (I wonder how it could be integrated in-game though?). But, it will be a good way of getting non-users to start using Facebook for Blizzard games. :)