The guys at Joystiq are going over their first Diablo 3 multiplayer experience during Blizzcon.
The quality of the video is way better that most I’ve seen. You need to wait a bit for the multiplayer gameplay to start (at 3:08). The party is complete with all three Diablo 3 characters: Wizard, Barbarian and Witch Doctor.
The only complaint was that the screen was a bit overwhelmed with all the special effects:
The only negative thing we could see was the messy screens you’d get when playing in a party. If you have a Witch Doctor in your group casting Locust Swarm, and a ton of enemies are massing around your group, you’ll start frantically clicking at any and everything on screen.
Check out the Skeleton King fight at the end! I’m still not sure if the Wizard managed to kill it… I guess not.
Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational 2008 starts in half an hour in Paris. If you can check the intro image – there’s a dark shape that is more and more visible.
UPDATE: Diablo 3 is OFFICIAL! Live news from the event:
12:15 — Announcement…..!! Guy playing Diablo music on an acoustic guitar…
12:18 — Footage of large scale battles, comets streaking across the sky, demons, Diablo 3 officially announced.
12:20 — Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo 3 coming out. He’s going to demo the game.
12:20 — It’s apparently still an action RPG. Same interface — red
health and blue orbs. Skill bar at bottom. 3/4 overhead perspective.
Character with 2 axes hacking at demons in what appears to be a foggy
cathedral. Has a jumping attack where he smashes the two axes into the
ground.
12:21 — The axe guy is the barbarian class. Says improvements have
been made, like the hotbar for skills. Using the mouse wheel and tab
key you can quickly switch between skills. Whoing inventory. Appears to
still have slot limits. Using enchanted axes with frost and lighting
,which stuns and freezes opponents.
12:25 — Each piece of gear is custom designed for each class. Barbarian puts on demonic sort of garb with giant devil horns. Barbarian can hop across gaps on the map. Barbarian dislodged a rock wall and dropped it on zombies, killing them. Demoing moving whirlwind attack.
12:33 — Witch doctor can cast out locus swarm, which spreads between targets and deals damage. Can summon mongrel things that he can cast locust swarm on, which buffs their damage. Outdoor environment now. Quite pretty in that vibrant, slightly cartoonish Blizzard graphical style. Like with StarCraft 2 and it’s similarities to the original, Diablo 3 looks and sounds, at least at a glance, quite similar to previous games. Witch doctor also has a mass fear type of ability.
12:36 — Multiplayer will work over battle.net. Heads into a final fight against some gigantic moving trees. Final boss here, called siegebreaker assault beast, is absolutely gigantic, maybe around six or seven times taller than the player characters.
12:37 — Demo ends. The crowd roars…
Update: Diablo 3 release date has been tentatively set to follow the launch of Starcraft 2 and Battle.net 2.0 some time in early 2009.
Blizzard has opened poured a flood of screenshots and other media from Diablo 3! A few dozen screenshots have been released thus far and here’s the ones that I found most interesting. Be sure to check the official Diablo 3 announcement too.
The Barbarian hacking through skeletons. Note the duel-wield.
The Witch Doctor and his mass-effect spells. I guess he’s the new Sorceress!
This is a close-up of the armor. Note the level of details. It looks proper 3D.
It’s the Witch Doctor again. Note the depth of the level. It looks pre-rendered but it’s certainly beautiful.
Enter the Boss! It looks five times bigger than the character!
This is the demo gameplay that was given during the Diablo 3 announcement in Paris. The video is a bit short but … anything short of the game itself, seem short to me!
You can download the high-quality gameplay footage here. Check out the Diablo 3 screenshots too.
