Volition's probing Saints Row IV keeps its crazy cool atop the UK chart for another week, while Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix enters the running 2nd. Diablo III stays 3rd for consoles. Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Disney Infinity, Minecraft for Xbox 360 and Payday 2 all keep steady from 4th to 7th respectively. EA Sports' NHL 14 slips on the rink 11th.
Blizzard has announced that it's rectifying what many fans of the series considered a mistake: the Diablo III auction houses, both real money and in-game gold, are being removed on the 18th March, 2014.
The auction houses in the PC version of Diablo III may be going away, but Blizzard insists that the game will still require an online connection, and that policy isn't changing.
There's a fair bit of introspection going on at Blizzard with Diablo III's auction house getting the chop, and now Senior Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng expressing discontent with combat's pacing. Right now health pools going from "full to nearly empty" in the blink of an eye is hurting the game, he says, as death becomes "very binary." Rapid healing ruins just as much.
Drama! EA Sports has swanned in with FIFA 14 and grand theft charted the top spot from Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V in the UK all format chart. The crime spree sandbox has to make do with 2nd place. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was 3rd, followed by PES 2014 now 4th. Splinter Cell: Blacklist slinkies down 7th, along with Saints Row IV and Diablo III 8th and 9th. Rayman Legends climbs 10th.
The Diablo III 1.0.2 update that was released for the PlayStation 3 version on the 1st October is now available for Xbox 360 version as well. The patch's chief function is to fix crashes during cutscenes.
Blizzard has revealed one of the new artisans from the Diablo III expansion Reaper of Souls, Myriam Jahzia, a Mystic who grants two special services to the player: Enchanting and Transmogrifying.
Blizzard has released a new gameplay trailer for Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls showcasing the new features coming our way, including the new Bounties system, Nephalem Rifts and much more. These revelations follow on from last month's unveiling of the Mystic Artisan, and her many enchantments awaiting our custom. The gameplay trailer is over a minute and half long.
The console versions of Diablo III have been getting rave reviews, in part for the flawless adaptation of the gamepad controllers to the game - so much so that some players have been clamoring for gamepad support for the PC version.
The traditional Friends and Family method of Blizzard beta testing their projects is being slightly altered for Diablo III expansion Reaper of Souls as they will give 3,000 players a crack at Death. It appears there will be no NDA imposed either so YouTube and Twitch had best brace itself. Opting in for the beta is 'no guarantee' to be selected but does "at least give you a chance".
Blizzard has announced that the closed beta for their upcoming major expansion for Diablo III, Reaper of Souls, is now live.
The release date for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls has been quietly unveiled via the Battle.net Shop page for the action-RPG's first expansion, which offers standard and Digital Deluxe editions. The beefier offering includes three additional character slots to clear space for all-new heroes, as well as digital goods for Diablo III, World of Warcraft and StarCraft II.
Blizzard has altered their default setting for Battle.net parental controls so that the young'uns don't bankrupt their families through in-game real money purchases, which includes World of Warcraft. That also impacts Hearthstone and Diablo III's auction house, which shuts down March 18th. The setting can easily be reversed to see bank balances plummet for new pets.
Diablo III expansion Reaper of Souls is scheduled to start pre-loading to game clients "this month if all goes well," reveals a Blizzard community manager. It's more-or-less an automated process and needs little input. In fact the pre-expansion patch (2.0.1) will actually contain "all of the expansion data" from the game disc, however expansion-only content won't be playable until March 25th.
Blizzard's next Legendary item for Diablo III has been sculpted by community consensus from over 19,000 voters. It was part of a 'Design a Legendary' series the studio was running on Battle.net. The third vote has seen the Legendary item's unique power chosen: Elemental attacks have a chance to fire abilities based off the Lord of Hatred himself.
Blizzard has unveiled the official Collector's Edition for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and it's packed with treats both physical and digital. Soundtrack, behind-the-scenes videos, artwork... There's also a 'Ghost Wolf' minion, three additional character slots, a World or Warcraft Treasure Goblin pet, Malthael-themed mouse pad and in-game gear.
The general slip and slide of World of Warcraft subscriptions manage to reverse the trend last quarter as figures rose to 7.8 million. However Activision concedes a lot of work is needed to maintain that. It was the "seasonality from the holidays" and the "excitement from BlizzCon" that topped subscription numbers back up. Diablo III now at 15m sales.
A reminder has been posted by Blizzard that the gold and real money Auction House for Diablo III will be closed indefinitely next month, March 18th. They also give us a first look at two new social features. Clans and Communities are set to appear with patch 2.0.1. Essentially these are "easy and practical tools" to be made available for like-minded nephalem to go loot hunting.
Leonard Boyarsky, an influence on Fallout and now lead world designer for Diablo III, has revealed that Blizzard originally planned for branching choices, and even a morality scale. However they soon stepped away from that as Boyarsky feels an action-RPG isn't 'right' for branches, but the "bigger issue has to do with multiplayer." Weep for single-player.
Finally having clawed its way out of closed beta and now the Public Test Realm, Blizzard announce Patch 2.0.1 will be going live for Diablo III today. It's an exciting chapter for the action-RPG of many loots. Speaking of, the new loot system comes into effect which sees less drops but each more valuable overall. Paragon caps are also removed and difficulty levels become dynamic.