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"the Diablo II 1.13 Public Test Realm is LIVE! "

4294967293 Posts by Omega - Fri, Dec 11th 2009, 01:19pm

Yes that is right but do not take my word for it see for your self

"We traveled for an eternity..." - Marius

Travel no longer my friends - the Diablo II 1.13 Public Test Realm is LIVE!

Q: How do I begin testing on the PTR?
A: When you start Diablo II change your Battle.net gateway to "ClassicBeta". When you log in the 1.13 patch will be applied to your game and you can begin testing the changes made in the patch. Since it's a new realm you'll need to create a new account.

Q: I don't see the ClassicBeta realm in my gateway list!
A: Log into one of the other gateways first, then back out and the classicbeta realm will appear.

Q: What if I want to play the normal game again?
A: Simply choose any of the other (non-PTR) gateways. Your game will be reverted to version 1.12 and you'll be able to play on the live realms as normal.

Q: Where are my characters?
A: The PTR realm is separate from the live realms so your current characters aren't carried over. You'll need to create a new character to begin testing. But, cheats are enabled and you may use the following cheats by typing them into chat while in a game:
Gold # - Will provide the amount of gold specified
Level # - Will increase your level to the number specified
Waypoints 1 - Will activate all waypoints. You must still reach an act before that act's waypoints will be unlocked with this cheat.

Q: What happens to my characters once the PTR testing period ends?
A: They remain on the PTR realm to be removed once the test ends. Characters on the PTR realm won't transfer to the normal realms.

Q: How long with the PTR run for?
A: As long as we deem necessary to ensure the patch and changes are solid.

Q: Where can I give feedback and what kind of feedback do you want?
A: All 1.13 PTR feedback and bug reports should ONLY be posted in the Diablo II Test Realm Forum here: http://forums.battle.net/board.html?forumId=20601702&sid=3000

  • All post should have a subject line that clearly describes the bug or feedback being given
  • Use the search feature to ensure a thread doesn't already exist before posting
  • When reporting a bug include as much information as you can, including steps to reproduce it if possible
  • Any non-constructive posts may be deleted and the poster's privilege to post revoked
  • This is a chance for you to ensure the 1.13 patch includes changes and balance tweaks that you think would lead to a better overall experience. Getting the information to us in a clear and logical way helps us understand your view and makes it easier for us to collect feedback for any potential updates to the 1.13 patch before release.

    • Q: What is the new "Mystery" mentioned in the patch notes?
    A: It's related to the respec system implemented in the patch and can grant additional respecs beyond the three given for completing the Den of Evil quest in each difficulty. You'll have to play to find out how though.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    - Patch 1.13
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    A new Mystery has been revealed!

    - Players of Hell Difficulty Realm games are hereby warned once again,
    that a series of new and challenging tests await you! The answer lies
    within Diablo's Bosses, which span across the world from the Den of Evil
    to the Throne of Destruction...


    Major Bugs

    - Fixed an item dupe bug.
    - Video improvements for Intel Mac machines with OS 10.5 or greater.


    Minor Bugs

    - Uber Mephisto now checks for both Uber Baal and Uber Diablo to be killed before spawning summoned minions (Before he would only check for Uber Baal).
    - The game will no longer stop and then restart the game music after the window loses and then regains focus.
    - Fixed an issue where the game window would minimize when running in windowed mode when it lost focus.
    - Fixed an issue where the game window wouldn't center properly when it was created.

    Specific changes/improvements

    - Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in Hell difficulty.
    - Increased the drop rate of high runes.
    - Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).
    - Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items required for Uber Tristam.
    - Modified the gold bank limit to be a flat cap not bound by level.
    - Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.
    - Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.
    - Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.
    - Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal's summoned minions no longer give experience.
    - Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.
    - Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.
    - Users can now toggle the display of text over the Health and Mana globes by clicking on the bottom area of each orb.
    - Updated two Act 5 mercenary names to Klar and Tryneus.
    - When creating a single player game, pressing the 'Enter' key now automatically creates a Hell difficulty game if possible.
    - When creating a game, each difficulty button is now bound to a unique key: Normal 'R', Nightmare 'N', and Hell 'H'.
    - The 'Enter Chat' Button in the battle.net waiting room is now bound to the 'Enter' key.
    - Added the windows system buttons to the game window (MIN, MAX, CLOSE).
    - Added new command line parameter '-nofixaspect' which allows users to not fix the aspect ratio to 4:3 when maximizing windowed mode. This lets the game 'stretch' to fill your monitor.
    - Added support for '-sndbkg' command line switch. This enables sound in background.
    - Added support for '-nosound', '-window', and '-windowed' command line options.


    Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes


    Amazon

    -Immolation Arrow - Increased radius of Explosion effect by 33% and Immolation effect by 50%.
    -Immolation Arrow - Explosion effect damage increased by 20%.
    -Immolation Arrow - Increased base duration by 33%.


    Assassin

    -Shadow Master - Increased resistance range per point from 5-80 to 5-90.


    Barbarian

    -Whirlwind - Reduced initial mana cost by 50%.
    -Masteries - Changed critical strike chance from 0-25 to 0-35.


    Paladin

    -Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.


    Druid

    -Werebear - Damage bonus increased by 15% across all ranks.
    -Werebear - Increased health by 25% and armor by 1% per point.
    -Shockwave - Synergy from Maul adds 5% damage per point.


    Necromancer

    -Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer loses life when golem takes damage).
    -Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100% to 70% - 120% of corpses health.
    -Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.


    Sorceress

    -Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and Blaze and 4% per point of Warmth.
    -Blaze - Synergy receives 2% damage per point of Firewall and 4% per point of Warmth.
    -Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per rank.
    -Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra projectile.
    -Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.
    -Lightning Mastery - Reduced overall effect by 15%.

    Source

    DiabloFans Exclusive Jay Wilson Interview

    13 Posts by Sixen - Mon, Nov 23rd 2009, 05:08pm

    DiabloFans recently completed an exclusive interview with Jay Wilson. We had the chance to ask him about monk skill trees, class specific quests, and a lot about the item system going into the game. This is the first interview conducted by DiabloFans in some time and reveals a lot about what's going in regards to the Diablo III development. Thought i'd give you guys the heads up, =).

    DiabloFans: Back in Diablo I a player could find Elixirs. If you drank one it gave you 1 stat point (ie: drink elixir of strength, you gain 1 strength point). Seeing how Diablo III's stat points are non-customizable, by a leveling standpoint, could elixirs be an option to give stat points some player customization?
    Jay Wilson: Well, if we did something like that, we would fall right back where we were in Diablo II. As far as stat point expenditure, we don't consider it to be a very strong customization system. Now, there are ways within the game to customize stat points mainly through items. However, there are still a lot of things and systems that we haven't even shown yet that are going to be new ways to approach your items that will allow for new "customizations."

    DiabloFans: What are the differences in the difficulty levels in Diablo III other than just monsters doing more damage? ie: What reason will people have to play through these modes after having already beaten the main story of the game on an easier difficulty setting?
    Jay Wilson: We haven't really gotten into the difficulty settings a lot; we're still just working on the core content for the game at this point. The primary reason as to why a player would want to progress through the game, through the several difficulties would be for more of a challenge. There will be also better item customization, for example a Level 100 character in a higher difficulty would see and wear items that a Level 30 character would not have a chance at seeing in the lower difficulty. Said items will also look and feel completely different whereas in Diablo II a lot of times you just had a remodel of the same old items with different names.

    Source: DiabloFans.com

    Hellforge interview

    14 Posts by Omega - Thu, Oct 22nd 2009, 07:39pm

    Leonard Boyarsky, Blizzard's Lead World Designer for Diablo III did an interview and talked about the story of D3 here are a few parts.

    Like in the first game, all the quests were randomized. Is it the same way in Diablo III where you won't run into every single character or quest?

    Leonard Boyarsky: We're doing - there's a main storyline that is, parts of it might be randomized depending on the area, depending on what the quests are, depending on what the actual objective is. But apart from the main quest, most of our other content is randomized, so from game to game it will be completely different. I can't give you any kind of percentage because we're still playing with those numbers, but that's really the way we built this game is so that we can have a lot of randomized content, including story elements and including quests.


    Speaking of background lore and all that, to what extent will the books from Richard Knaak's Sin War Trilogy be a part Diablo III's storyline/setting. I mean, are you guys taking anything from it at all?

    Leonard Boyarsky: Well, nothing specific. It happened 3,000 years before the events of the Diablo games, but it is... it was our attempt to really kind of get out there - you know, with some of the history of the world and kind of codify the lore to a certain degree. It's been awhile since I read them. I've actually read all of them, and I helped during the process of them.

    Chris Metzen worked really close with him really closely to make sure that his vision for what the Sin War was all about was really put forward there so the history is - maybe some of the particulars might not be exactly the way they end up being presented, but as far as the overall details and the overall thrust of the story, that's lore... our core lore, I guess. And we're - I don't know if we'll refer to them specifically, but that's definitely like background into what we're doing if that makes any sense.


    With regards to the new dungeons, are we gonna see the same kind of dungeons over and over again. In D2 or D1 or any other action RPG, you go into a dungeon, and kill a boss monster. Are there gonna be any new types of dungeons, like puzzles... like how World of Warcraft has many different types of dungeons.

    Leonard Boyarsky: Our approach to bosses is that we're trying to change up the gameplay. We're trying to look at different ways of fighting, or designing bosses as opposed to just jacking up their health and damage they do. We really wanna kinda make it interesting - there's gonna probably be other stuff that we work into the dungeons, and other events in the game that maybe kinda turn or change up the gameplay a little bit just to keep it interesting.


    So I suppose that the focus of the game would be on humanity, rather than the angels and the demons and the other stuff that people throw around when they're discussing the game?

    Leonard Boyarsky: Well, it's always - if you look at the Diablo games it's always about the humans. How did the humans react to this? How is this affecting the humans? The humans are caught in the middle, what is that all about? What's gonna happen to Sanctuary? What's gonna happen to the human beings?

    There's some stuff that they talked in the Sin War, about how humanity came about. And you know, at the end of the Sin War... I don't wanna throw in any spoilers there for people who haven't read it yet but they talked about how the uneasy... I guess "truce" allowed the existence of Sanctuary to continue.

    Mankind is in a very tenuous position in this universe, and the games have always taken that position or that viewpoint, and we're gonna be continuing that in this game.


    Remember this is just small part softhe interview so make sure you read the whole interview here and post what you think. After all do you trust me to give you the best parts :).