Diablo III Interviews

Both Kotaku and Boomtown have published the results of their Leipzig GC Q&A sessions with Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson. A snip from Kotaku’s interview:

There’s one class that definitely won’t be coming back for another appearance in Diablo III. And Wilson says that it was because that class was just shy of perfectly designed.

The Necromancer, he said, was simply a victim of his own success. He was just too well crafted as a character, something that Wilson’s Blizzard design cohorts, current and former, likely don’t mind hearing. Necro fans on the other hand, probably won’t be too thrilled to learn of his disappearance, despite the Witch Doctor class’s similarities.

And a snip from Boomtown’s interview:

Another important reason for the visual look is the tactical approach that Diablo III requires. You will still slaughter tons of monsters – of course – but in the latter parts of the game especially you need to start using that meatball between your ears.

– We knew from the start that we wanted to change to fights in Diablo III. You used to be able to teleport back to the city even during a fight, or survive a huge numbers of monsters just by consuming one healthpot after the other.

– That makes it difficult for a game designer. The only thing you can do is to make the player take enormous amounts of damage, which we used to do in the previous games once the player got into the final parts of the games. That’s the kind of situation we want to avoid. Diablo III won’t just be a matter of having enough health pots.