BlizzCon: Diablo 3 Gameplay and the New Wizard Class

At BlizzCon 2008, they went into great detail about the Diablo 3 gameplay, and announced a new class—The Wizard!  I personally love playing the glass cannon class, but she is no wimp!  She can take out mobs like it’s nobody’s business!

First, I want to go into greater detail about the new gameplay.  Diablo 3 is everything you loved about Diablo 2, and more.  Blizzard took player favorites, and improved upon them.  Besides the massive graphics upgrade, your character can destroy the environment and interact with it: building walls can collapse, rusty chandeliers can fall, and you can push your enemies off the side to fall to their death.

Physics engines have also been implemented, so if you kill a bunch of zombies at the top of a hill, they will gradually slide down, leaving a bloody trail of gore in their wake.   Explosions have objects that will ricochet and scatter, instead of a set animation.

Mob deaths also get new animations, depending on the way they died.  A Witch Doctor’s locust will strip the baddie to the bone (as depicted in the gameplay video).  Critical deaths have different animations, giving the user more satisfaction with every kill.  Blizzard has maintained our love for blowing things up and destroying armies of mobs in the most epic visual eye candy the world has ever seen!

For those who have played Diablo 2, you are likely familiar with the socket item aspect of the game.  Blizzard has provided us with an even more customizable way the pimp out our character.  I speak of the rune system.  With each spell you possess, you can attribute a rune to it to.  For example, the Witch Doctor firebomb with a multi-strike rune will continue to bounce and explode until it hits a wall.

Due to the blessed media pass Blizzard bestowed upon me, I had unlimited playtime to test Diablo 3.  I got a chance to thoroughly test the limits of the Wizard class.

Details about the Wizard class:
Huzzah! To the first playable Asian character.  This was the most enjoyable, simply because they implemented the rune system for this class in the demos.

The Wizard has three skill trees: Storm, Arcane and Conjure.  I will list some of the skills, but not all.  These are mostly the ones I had first-hand experience with.  I followed the Arcane and Storm trees.

Storm:
•    Charged Bolt: a spell that sends a charge into the ground with directional area effect damage. (If you add multi-strike, your spell will continue to attack past its enemies.  You can mow down whole rooms with a few waves.)
•    Frost Nova: an AoE that explodes around the Wizard, freezing targets in their tracks. (With multi-strike, each frost nova-ee will cast their own frost nova.  This creates a chain of frost novas from the one you originally cast.)
•    Storm Armor: Temporary armor that will cause damage to any who attack you.

Arcane:
•    Magic Missile: Ranged magic bolt that will leave glowing purple corpses all over the place (with multi-strike, shoots two missiles instead of one).
•    Disintegrate: Face-melting beam.  The longer you maintain the beam, the more damage it does. (Multi-strike allows your beam to continue past the baddie, hitting the ones behind it.)
•    Wave of Force:  Wizard jumps into the air, sending a force wave AoE, pushing all the mobs back.  I found that on rail-less bridges, I could send the mobs off the edge to their demise.

Conjure:
•    Spectral Blade: Your main attack, several strikes go flying through the air simultaneously, causing some splash damage.
•    Mirror Image: Creates a duplicate that functions like cannon fodder for ease of crowd control. (This was demonstrated, but not playable in the demo.)
•    Hydra Conjure: Like in the old Diablo, a magic turret that throws magic projectiles (this was in the skill tree, but was neither demonstrated or playable at BlizzCon.)

Some changes in gameplay allow you to have more spells at hand than just the two on your mouse.  You will be able to hotkey 4 spells and 2 for potions, giving you a total of 6 spells in your armory.  This limits your character, but emphasizes individual play style variety.

One fan asked if there would be a secret cow level in Diablo 3.  Blizzard’s answer…it’s a secret.

Diablo 3 still has a long way to go.  They still have their other classes, as well as new levels and bosses to build.  However, I can tell all you fans that it will be AMAZING!  Blizzard has not disappointed us yet, and will not with the upcoming Diablo 3.

Diablo, Diablo, Diablo, how I love thee…
Thou were my first addiction.
Thy cinematics were mine eye candy.
Thoust replay factor kept me sedentary.
Diablo, Diablo, Diablo, I love thee very much.