Diablo 3 Armory - Unofficial Diablo 3 Fansite

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 :).

Omega, I trust you ♥ ^^.

(Okay, that was gross, I just had to)

sounds pretty cool, inspired by WoW - obviously, but I think a different type of boss fight every now and again is going to be interesting

I don't like random quests. I like to be in control. Choose your own path, that's my style.

Sorry Strajder, but arent random quests the point of no control? If Blizzard was to set up all the quests in order like in Diablo 2, then you would have to follow the path they set for you.

If you have a bunch of random quests then you get to choose which ones you accomplish and which ones you can toss aside.

@Dwerg...... okay repressing memory and I am fine (JK). I like the idea of different boss fights.

@Strajder We have no power or control. We are only pawns in the greater war between powers of haven and the powers of hell..... one must bow to one of these masters or parish before them both.

I am actually somewhat interested in what the random quest are like, if done well they may be a good thing for the game.

u know what boys...the one thing i really wanted to see was quest choice that will make u follow either the paths of heaven or hell...sadly, the main storyline/quests r fixed.

@stebo: if i understand the system correctly, it doesnt give u any freedom, but rather the randomly selected quests from the pool r imposed upon u as the set to choose from while others wont even be available (and i am not referring to character specific quests).

Quote by stebo88

Sorry Strajder, but arent random quests the point of no control? If Blizzard was to set up all the quests in order like in Diablo 2, then you would have to follow the path they set for you.

If you have a bunch of random quests then you get to choose which ones you accomplish and which ones you can toss aside.

IMHO random quests are equal to giving the control over the choice of quests to the program. I would like to see a selection of quests from which I could pick one to my liking. That is what I wanted to say.

@ Strajder - oooh, okay, you got me going on that one

I'm sure you're going to run into characters who are going to ask "my rogue scouts...."something something - always skip that monolog

and if you want to help out you say, "what's in it for me, Hun"

Or do you literally mean a list, like a notice board in town or something?

Quote by Dwerg

I'm sure you're going to run into characters who are going to ask "my rogue scouts...."something something - always skip that monolog

and if you want to help out you say, "what's in it for me, Hun"

Or do you literally mean a list, like a notice board in town or something?

The first one. You meet NPCs who could give you quests, but you could only have X quests overall. Maybe this could be controlled by level.

As long as it's not Cain every other time

It sounds good, but at the same time it's exactly the same as in D2 so I'm liking it,
but kinda like getting into a cold pool to swim. So I'm not sure

What I'm wondering is if you are a native hero (Paladin in Kurast or Amazon in Rogue Encampment)
is that the only time you will be getting character specific quests or does every town have need of particular skills and stuff? I want chapter to be different for every toon I have, if that's possible

One thing I am wondering about regarding random quests is how will they progress through various difficulty settings...meaning if I just finished the game on normal and am proceeding to nightmare, will it randomly generate a new set of side quests or will it save the ones I did on the previous level on my character profile???

I understand what Strajder is getting at, and tend to agree. It's more of a Baldur's Gate style of play.

In essence, you have this world with lots of areas to explore. As you explore and talk to people, you open up new quests/areas. You don't have to complete the quests in a certain order. There is still a major storyline going on, but the side quests don't necessarily need to be completed to continue the main story.

The challenge to this kind of set up is that you could unknowingly enter an area or go on a quest that is beyond your current experience level. Baldur's Gate attempted to get around that by modifying monsters to match your current level. I'm sure D3 could do something similar as well.

I could see D3 having side quests that were opened up in certain towns, or by being a specific class, or responding to an NPC in the "right" way.

Quote by ShadowHammer

The challenge to this kind of set up is that you could unknowingly enter an area or go on a quest that is beyond your current experience level.

Easily fixed. Just make NPCs not to offer certain quests until you reach certain level. That's what I meant by "controlled by level".

Quote by Strajder

Easily fixed. Just make NPCs not to offer certain quests until you reach certain level. That's what I meant by "controlled by level".

Yeah, I think we suggested two methods that achieve similar results. My idea was to modify the monsters to match your current level. Your idea is to not offer the quest until your character has reached a certain level. Both ideas sound fine to me, and could be implemented in D3.

i just hope that the reward for the quest are alot better i was sick of some of the lame stuff people gave me