* The big news is that the Beta Opt In rules have suddenly been changed. Previously, it was anyone who owned an Active Battle.net account which required any Blizzard game. Now, it's only anyone with an active World of Warcraft or Starcraft 2 account.

So, for those veteran accounts who have been playing Diablo 2 for 10 years.. they have no chance of getting into the Diablo 3 beta. Starcraft 2 players do, though.

The claim was later refuted, reconfirmed, refuted, reconfirmed, and then refuted again. These were all done by CMs or GMs.. so who really knows what internal rules are really being followed.

I've been told that there are other unofficial rules too.. like unsupported video cards won't make the beta, certain system specs, and "flagged accounts".

What's really interesting about this sudden change in the beta rules, is that it comes 1 week after I wrote about this exact same strategy. I've always known that the blog was monitored by Blizzard, and thankfully Daeity had hooked me up with some tools to track that sort of thing. There's a Blizzard system, for example, that has been "pinging" the blog twice a day at pre programmed intervals for quite a while now. It "watches" front page and new posts only. Just a very strange coincidence that after that blogspot about B.Net accounts, they changed the rules exactly for that situation. :)

* If you're interested in a Diablo 3 Beta "Offline Crack", there's a server emulator in the works. You can get all the information you want here. It's very early stages and something marginally playable is still several weeks away.

* More news from Rockstar, as expected. The release date for Max Payne 3 has been announced.. once that's out of the way, should free up some room for a RDR PC port announcement.

* Blizzard announced 6 games within the next 3 years at the recent Citigroup conference. These games are: Diablo 3, D3 X1, SC2 X2, SC2, X3, WOW X4, and WOW X5. This is all very very old news though and practically everyone already knew all about this. Not sure why this was suddenly "news" on so many gaming sites.

* I was going to add a bunch of stuff about illegal online gambling in this post, but it got so huge that I had to create a brand new post for it. I'll put it up later when it's done.

* I was thinking about writing an article on the "New" Diablo 3 Blackmarket that will emerge. You know, potential changes to the blackmarket now that Blizzard is running their own ingame Cash Auction House.

For example; because RMAH will not be available to Hardcore players, that's one market where items will be available. Because of the rarity and risk involved for farmers, the value of items will be substantially more expensive than Blizzard's RMAH. The size of the Hardcore community is a factor at play here too.

Third party websites will also sell the cheaper items (but in larger volume) with no listing fees. The big seller here won't necessarily be high end gear, but probably items or mats instead.

But, what other kind of stuff? Maybe Hardcore character sales? Maybe even the same stuff sold on the RMAH, but without the listing fee. It all depends on the listing fee, but I'll be pretty disappointed if it's more than $0.20 per item.

I really like the new RMAH, mostly because it's new and different for such a popular franchise, and it creates new forms of competition and tactics in the industry. I'm looking forwards to seeing how the market will evolve, and how Blizzard will combat competitors.

Apparently, I'm going to be very busy over the next little while. :) If I spot anything unusual or interesting, I'll make another update.. but for now there are a lot of D3 videos and streams available for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiCwATxb0a0 (Demonhunter Gameplay)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI4ya75Gig8 (Barbarian Gameplay)
http://www.twitch.tv/day9tv
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nomsayin
http://www.diablounderground.com/diablo-underground-live-stream
http://www.twitch.tv/wigens/b/294468076
http://www.justin.tv/orbitzun4/#/w/1730301568
http://www.twitch.tv/wigens#/w/1730431056
http://www.twitch.tv/crypto137
http://www.justin.tv/fluddastud#/w/1730241232
http://www.livestream.com/pushbuttan

You'd assume that many of them were D2 fans, but judging by their gameplay it's like they've never played an Action RPG before (some, not all). I also haven't seen any "Beta Feedback" menu systems, confirming previous beliefs about it's true purpose. :)

I've also updated a few items on the previous post (Unofficial Diablo 3 Features).

** Okay, so it looks like I won't be as busy as I thought.

I've seen a full play through of the D3 Beta on 3 classes now and it's become very repetitive.

Funny how everything about the beta is now old news to me. People will still be talking about it for the rest of the day and the week.. but if it's over 30 minutes old, then it's old news. :)

Take the D3 DOTA discovery I had made for example. It took at least 4-6 hours before it was even discussed on forums by anyone else (and was still not posted on any gaming news sites), and when I saw it, I thought to myself; wow, that's really old news. A lot of the other stuff in that same "Unofficial Features" post still hasn't made it to the web surprisingly.

This is what the internet has done to me.. if it's 1 hour old, it's really old news, and might as well be from a couple weeks ago.

Anyways, I really have no interest in watching any more videos or streams. I've seen it all now. The beta was a lot shorter than I had imagined and the bosses a little too easy, but overall it looks pretty awesome (I especially enjoyed the voice acting, lore, and audio) and I'm looking forwards to the live retail.

I'm going to create a running list of all of the interesting leaked tidbits extracted from the latest Diablo 3 MPQ. More details here and here if you're not already aware of the latest leak.

A lot of the extracted data is development related too, so you can see a brief view of potential future projects. Most of it will show you monster and boss names, zone names, and all of the player skills and abilities. I'm more interested in neat little things (like what you'll see below).

PVP Game Types

* Cooperative
* "Diablo 3" / Normal
* DotA
* Arena
* Team Deathmatch

It's interesting that they're bringing a DotA style game into Diablo 3. You should see this hitting gaming news sites later today.

Random Features

* Looks like there's a targeting mechanism (toggle key) for selecting the more injured monsters first.
* You can drop your banner for people to see (like an emote) and show off.
* Speaking of /emotes, here's what is available so far: Help, Follow, Give, Thanks, Sorry, Bye, Die, Run, Wait, Go.
* There's a gambling Gheed-like vendor available. This was one thing a lot of people were asking about that Blizzard never confirmed (probably because of the "gambling" and real money implication). Any bets on whether this will be available in the final version?
* You carry a Bestiary and a Lore Book built from all of the random book drops that you can collect throughout the game.
* You can receive notifications when someone is inspecting you. Very useful for World of Warcraft, so don't be surprised if you see that feature added.
* Easy quest selection, just click on the NPC and you can walk away. If you chose to listen, you can stick around though. No more walls of text, and you can jump right into the action. You can also listen (yes, listen not read) to quests or lore items while you're on the go.. a nice little feature borrowed from other FPS/RPGs.
* It appears that leveling up causes a nice little "explosion" effect around you, and for added effect it also causes AOE damage to mobs around you.
* NPCs talk WAY too much when they accompany you (hirelings, quest NPCs, escorts, etc). There is probably an option to turn it off.. or at least, I hope there is.
* When you exit your Campaign Game, you can save your progress and return to it later. In D2, if you started a new game, everything was reset. Would be very cool if you could invite people to your saved game (say you came across a very rare random event.)

Items

* Item Reforging: "Transmutes all properties of a single magic, rare, set or legendary item into an entirely new set of properties. This process permanently reduces the maximum durability of the item by 10% and cannot be used on items with required level 50 or above."
* Your gear can be dyed. Very nice.
* Gear can also be "Undyed" and "Vanished" which apparently makes gear invisible.
* Players can purchase Stash Expansions for extra storage. You can purchase "Slots" and "Tabs".
* Crafting Plans are random drops for making weapons or armor, but there are also a ton that are basically Enchanting Recipes. Many of them look like they're named right out of World of Warcraft, for example "Enhance Gloves: Superior Brawn".
* There are a lot of Crafting Plans for Gemcrafting ("Design: Radiant Round Emerald") as well.
* When loot drops, you can set timers on how long you want the item text to appear. That way, you're not always alt clicking to see loot.
* Quivers can also come with special abilities for your bow (e.g. fire damage arrows, snaring effects, etc.) Will be the same for secondary weapons, like shields too.

Special Events

* There's a spiral event (which most likely takes place in the Hell Spire in Act 4) where you can keeping moving from one level to another, in either a timed event or a difficulty progression. The more you progress, the better reward you receive. Reminds me of some jRPGs.
* Each zone can have random dungeons or timed events that popup. There are randomly appearing caves, ruins, temples, towers, scavenger dens, mines, cellars within structures, puzzles, and NPC vendors. There's also the Pony Carnival event and the "Secret Bovine Wundercave".
* There's a timed "Gateway to Hell" event. Also, one where Diablo is trying to corrupt the Crystal Arch (Act 4). Speaking of which, I see a lot of references to Black Soulstones (aka Worldstone Shards) that have been cut or added to the game frequently.. maybe they have more expansion pack plans for them.

Character Naming

* 1-32 max. characters in size.
* Spaces and no special characters permitted.
* The banned character names list is a good read.

Future Stuff

* Act I, II, III, and IV are mentioned. As well as Act V and Act VI. (Which we already knew they had planned to release within 3 years.)
* Player titles go up to level 100, in 10 level increments. I suppose they could be PVP titles.. but why the specific character levels? There are also "Corruption" titles for those with evil karma.
* The beta client has a Verisign expiration date of 12/05/11, identifying a retail release prior to Christmas 2011. Of course, all of this was already released by Daeity a long time ago. :)

Hirelings and Pets

* Hirelings can learn skills as they level.
* You can summon a friendly creature and roams around and collects gold for you as you travel.

Shrines

* Pretty much any kind of shrine you can imagine is there; the typical elemental resistance, health, and regeneration.
* Also a Luck Shrine, a socketing shrine, even unsocketing, item augmentation, Identify shrines, Remove Curses, +25% Magic and Gold Find, +25% experience, etc.

Blizzcon

* A lot of references to Blizzcon since this was (and will be) the build that players used during Blizzcon.
* There's a hidden "BlizzconPrize" that players can randomly loot with the message: "Congratulations! You just found something so awesome it grants you fame outside the game! Show this item to any Diablo 3 attendant to claim your prize."

Remember when Blizzard said that they were surprised players were so upset about the online only requirement for Diablo 3? The reason they were surprised is because they compared D3 to World of Warcraft and it's "roots are in Battle.net and now with Diablo 3". Diablo 3 was built just like WOW; it was stylized artistically after WOW, borrowed most of it's features and content from WOW, Stories and Quests borrowed from WOW, monster and NPC designs from WOW, boss fights from WOW, etc.

Blizzard thought that players would expect Diablo 3 to be like WOW. (Even though Diablo 1 and 2 could be played offline.)

But then, they were surprised again at the fan rage about Mods not being permitted in Diablo 3. Their reason? "Well, Diablo 2 didn't have mods."

Do you see the broken logic here?

They implement major features from WOW, stylize the game after WOW, COMPARE IT TO WOW and then, when they leave out other WOW features, they "get confused" when users are angry.

World of Warcraft has spoiled many players when it comes to end game content as well. There are just so many options available.. dozens of instances, dozens of raid content and end game bosses, metagames, professions, exploration, achievements, competition, and PVP. It's a massively awesome game with many possibilities.

When it comes to Diablo 3, though, players are in for a bit of surprise. Blizzard has changed the definition of "end game content" for Diablo 3.

When asked about End Game content, Blizzard says that Inferno difficulty is the End Game content.

Jay Wilson: "One of the things we wanted to do was really create an environment for the player at the end of the game. So, what we've decided to do is create a 4th difficulty we call Inferno." [Source]

@Diablo: “Depends on your definition of end game. Max level happens at end of Normal, so probably Hell, if that's what you mean.” [Source]

Basically, you play Normal difficulty, then Nightmare difficulty, and then Hell difficulty to be level capped. Then the "end game content" is just the next difficulty level.

So, from a World of Warcraft perspective, here's a rough example of what your gameplay experience will be like:

* Here are the different regions you can visit, at the end of each region or "instance" there's a major boss fight. (Based on current Beta Client details, I'll update Act list if there are changes in retail.)

Act 1
New Tristram
The Cathedral
Cemetery of the Forsaken
Fields of Misery
Festering Woods
The Highlands
Halls of Agony (Boss)

Act 2
Caldeum Sewers & Palace
Stinging Winds (Alcarunus, Black Canyon Mines, Khasim)
Dahlgur Oasis
Boneyards
Desolute Sands
Archives of Zoltun Kulle (Boss)

Act 3
Bastion Dungeon (Depths of the Keep)
Bastion's Keep
Fields of Slaughter
Arreat Crater (Boss)

Act 4
Gardens of Hope
Hell Portal
Silver Spire
The Crystal Arch (Diablo Boss Fight)

* From Level 1-20, you run 4 instances.
* From 20-40, you run the same 4 instances again.
* From 40-60, you run the same 4 instances all over again.
* When you level cap at 60, you can go back and run those same 4 instances again but the bosses are colored differently (originally red, then purple, then black, and now radioactive green!) and they are harder to kill..
* All of the best loot only comes from the last instance though. So, your end game is running the same boss over and over and over and over.
* You can personally run all end game yourself, a team is not needed to defeat Inferno difficulty and it's completely soloable.
* But wait, there's also another option available at the end game! It's an item selling meta game.

End game content should not be compared to WOW; they're not similar at all. Since Diablo 3 is targeting spoiled (in it's most positive sense, since WOW is such an amazing game) WOW players, I'm wondering if they'll be upset when they realize the lack of options in D3 re playability.. maybe they'll find it extremely boring since there are no options available? And everything can be done solo?

Maybe D3 should have taken the WOW approach, and unlocked multiple new "instances" and "zones" when the user hits the level cap.

For Diablo players, this won't be a problem. They're already used to the Pokemon "Gotta Collect 'Em All" item game. But for WOW vets, it will be an odd gaming experience to jump back into.

Difficulty levels also should never be used to artificially increase the length of a game. It should only be reserved for more difficult and challenging adventures, with better rewards because of the risk involved, but that's it.

If Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes 30 hours for a full play through, it shouldn't be advertised as a "90 hour RPG" because there are 3 difficulty levels available.