As the title says, there will be a pvp update with dueling in the upcoming patch! Finally something! Yes I know it has been 7 months since release but we will finally be able to kill other people! Just not the way you expected.

As of patch 1.0.7 you will be able to duel other players and it will work like this:

• Speaking with Nek will take you and your party to the Scorched Chapel, a new zone designed specifically for player combat
• Dueling currently supports up to four players in a Free-For-All format, which means you can battle your friends either one-on-one, three-player FFA, or a full four-player FFA
• This zone has custom geometry and features four different areas: the church, the graveyard, the river, and the lake
• To duel another player, you’ll need to speak with Nek the Brawler at the inn in New Tristam

You can check out other minor details regarding non-pvp stuff from the full post here.

Diablo 3 1.0.5 patch was on  9/21/2012 to the PTR by Blizzard.

This patch focuses on the new Monster Power, which allows you do adjust how hard the monsters are on each difficulty in game. Also the Infernal Machine was introduced, it is a event that will allow players to fight against the so called “uber” versions of specific bosses, it will really challenge you!

There is also a changes coming to the auction house, search parameters will finally be able to be saved between characters omg!!!

Many other small changes are being applied but those are defiantly the ones you will notice most!

Check out the full notes here.

Diablo 3 Global Play was introduced a new functionality that allows you to play in game servers in regions outside of your own, no more making accounts on multiple realms to play with other people!

• The Americas - For players in the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.
• Europe - For players in the European Union, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and Middle Eastern countries such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
• Asia - For players in South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

This was something that always deterred the competitive side of PvP back in the D2 days if anyone remembers. Not to mention the fact that ladder resets (They are doing away with ladder resets don’t worry! That is another post in itself) and duped items.

Anyways players will create characters and play in their “home” region. This is determined by where they live. This allows Global Play to give players the ability to switch to any of the other game regions either before or after they log in.

You can find more details in this blue post: link

Diablo 3 Commercial finally, it’s here!

On Sunday, April 29, a new Diablo III television commercial will debut on FOX during Family Guy (9 p.m./8 p.m. Central). The spot includes a few juicy bits of never-before-seen Diablo III cinematic footage and sets a nightmarish tone as we count down the days to the end of days…

Hopefully it is better than the garbage WoW commercials we have gotten before lol.
Anyways here is a link to the blizzard post: Diablo III Commercial on Fox Sunday

Diablo 3 will it expand? According to blizzard community manager Zarhym in his recent post about the Diablo 3 team’s stance on Diablo and eSports  he said:

We want PvP to be incredibly challenging and fun, but we want to avoid turning it into a truly competitive leagues/ladders eSport. We just don’t think Diablo gameplay is very conducive for that type of controlled environment where balance is paramount.

That said, we want to develop PvP as an engaging and rewarding system. What we don’t want to do is take a traditional eSports approach to PvP, where balance will become so important to a competitive ranking system that solo and cooperative gameplay feel a bit neutered as a result.

We want your characters to feel totally imba. Then we want you to enter some Arenas, send the scorched remains of other players’ corpses flying, and let the satisfaction wash over you — until your opponents take similar care of your hero, that is.

You can read the post for yourself here

I truly hope that they change their mind on this, just look at games like Starcraft  2 yeah it maybe an RTS but largely the reason it grew so fast and so quickly is because of the community. Sites like teamliquid and twitch.tv or even /r/starcraft are community driven. Which quickly got picked up by tournament ran companies like MLG, IGN’s IPL and Dreamhack.

Yeah Diablo 3 will huge for the next couple years, but will it fall off the map like WoW’s competitive arena? I hope not.

I played probably 10-15 hours this weekend of Diablo 3 beta. They had a ridiculous amount of problems early on with how the severs were handling the load. Overall it was fun to play it again with friends who could finally get in. (Stress test weekend) Also I am honestly surprise after reading other forums where people are constantly complaining about how the game isn’t “polished”… Really?

Bottom line is, trust in Blizzard. They are, whether you like them or not one of the best developers in the world, and easily in the top two or three developers from the west. They have an impeccable track record as far as high quality, original, and incredibly fun games. They listen to the community, and they are meticulous, and perfectionist. If the servers aren’t running well, they will fix them.

If something isn’t balanced correctly, they’ll fix it (WoW pvp aside lmao). It’s still the Diablo we know and love, and even with the DRM and new changes to it, it’ll be the quintessential hack and slash / dungeon crawling three quarter view game for easily the next 5+ years. It’s useless complaining about a game before it’s being released. Whether that complaining pertains to the graphics, the gameplay, the pvp potential, the sound, the skill system(s), the crafting, or even the stability of the servers.

Alright enough of the rant. I think I should just point this out, the single most amazing thing after added into Diablo 3! (Not even Arena!)

That is right you can finally stack gems!

Anyways guys I am going to bed its been a crazy weekend. I hoped to get in some more game time so I could make a more specific guide on each classes skill sets and how stacking specific stats help or hinder your play.

It is still enough to post so when I get sometime on Monday or Tuesday I will upload it for everyone, until then cya!

Diablo 3 Progress is yeah… If Blizzard can balance this PvP, I could see it easily becoming an eSport. The matches are extremely intense and require tight coordination to succeed. It quickly led to taunting and cheering as we all figured out the game. The arena was square-shaped and full of pillars and barriers for cover. In the middle of the round, four health orbs will spawn in the center providing the only healing
available to players.

There is some crowd control, but each class has an ability–with a long cooldown–that will break any roots, snares, and other effects. Additionally, each class has an ability that helps them move quickly around the map be it teleporting or sprinting. The spells at my team’s dispel worked well together and we could easily kill opponents if we caught them unaware in a stun.