Gaming Blog

Who Was There: The Diablo III panel was lorded over by four of the lead developers on the game: lead world designer Leonard Boyarsky, technical game designer Wyatt Cheng, lead technical artist Julian Love, and lead designer Jay Wilson.

What They Talked About: While the headline announcement to come out of Blizzard Entertainment’s opening ceremony for BlizzCon 2009 this morning was the announcement of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the publisher didn’t forget about its Diablo III fans. Having previously revealed the barbarian, witch doctor, and wizard, Blizzard today announced that the fourth playable class will be the monk.

As part of a “Heroes and Monsters” panel session for the game, Diablo III leads Wilson, Love, Cheng, and Boyarsky went into greater depth on why the team settled upon the monk and what will differentiate him from the other classes in the game.

According to Wilson, the monk was inspired by the traditional pen-and-paper role-playing archetype, with the goal of creating a fast, melee-oriented fighter that, in contrast to the barbarian, was also less physically durable. Interestingly, Wilson also noted that the monk was inspired by arcade fighters, primarily by way of the combo system that the class will employ.

Going into deeper detail on the combo system, Cheng first outlined three of the monk’s skills. The first, Way of the Hundred Fists, has three components–a dash, a multiple strike, and an area-of-effect attack. Crippling Wave is a debuff ability, and it first slows an enemy’s movements, then reduces the monster’s damage, and finally refreshes both effects while extending the detrimental attacks to all nearby enemies. Exploding Palm, which Cheng described as the monk’s signature skill, allows for two damage strikes and then a damage-over-time attack.

Because it’s Diablo, these components are cycled through with three successive mouse clicks. Notably, players will be able to combine these abilities, such that the first click would be for Way of the Hundred Fists, the second click would activate the second component of Crippling Wave, and the third click would land the final component of Exploding Palm.

Love then addressed the look of the monk, who the panel said will draw inspiration from both Asian cultures and Eastern Orthodox religious orders. Since the monk is essentially a warrior of the church, the team felt it was important to give him what they called a “holy color palette,” which incorporates a lot of coruscated silvers and golds. The monk’s graphical effects also display his runic knowledge, with various holy symbols appearing as he attacks.

Quote: “We’re going to have to keep that one a secret until next year.”–Jay Wilson, in response to a question regarding Diablo II’s amazon class.

Takeaway: The monk class should serve as an interesting counter to the barbarian, which emphasizes more brute strength over precision. Indeed, Blizzard noted that the monk class will be more challenging initially due to his relative weakness. However, in later levels, the class should pack a significant punch.

Over the past few weeks, Activision Blizzard’s stock has been creeping downward on analysts’ growing suspicion that one of the company’s most anticipated releases of 2009, Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft II, would be delayed. Today, that suspicion became a reality, as the publisher announced as part of its April-June earnings report that Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty for the PC has been delayed to the first half of 2010.

Blizzard attributed the delay to a desire to release Starcraft II alongside the relaunch of its online networking service Battle.net. That said, the developer also confirmed that it planned to use the extra time to continue honing the game.

“Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game,” the Irvine, CA-based developer said in a statement. “The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.”

Blizzard has previously indicated that the newly redesigned Battle.net will factor heavily into the game maker’s antipiracy initiative, often seen as the Achilles’ heel of the PC gaming market. As such, Blizzard said in June that it would be doing away with local area network play, forcing all Starcraft II players to connect through the online portal, instead.

Though Starcraft II was initially announced as a single product, Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2008 that the sci-fi real-time strategy title would be split into a trilogy. The first installment, Wings of Liberty, will focus on the human faction known as the Terrans. More specifically, it will seek to resolve the conflict between Jim Raynor and Kerrigan, which was the crux of the original Starcraft.

Notably, Starcraft II has yet to enter an open beta-testing phase, though the publisher has been accepting applications from volunteers through its Web site since May. Blizzard also noted today that it plans to provide more details on the beta test “in the future.”

Frozenbyte’s action platformer Trine probably wasn’t on most people’s radars before the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo. However, with just about a month left before release, the game received a healthy infusion of interest, thanks to an impressive E3 showing where it walked away with GameSpot’s Best Downloadable Game award. The PC edition of Trine subsequently went on to garner positive reviews upon its release on July 9.

The PlayStation 3 version of the game, however, remains MIA. In mid-July, a Frozenbyte employee indicated on the game’s official forums that Trine would finally arrive for the PlayStation Network this Thursday, July 30. However, that will not be the case, with the same company representative citing a software bug as the reason for the most recent delay.

“Unfortunately, Trine isn’t coming to PSN this week, and this time it’s our fault as there was discovered yet another small bug, which needed to be fixed,” the representative wrote. “I can’t tell for sure when the release is coming, as no one really seems to know. Also, I have no idea [if] EU and NA releases [are] timed differently. For us, not knowing is also a bit tough, but I hope it’s eventually worth all the waiting.”

For more information, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage of Trine.