Diablo III items could be upgradeable and would become non-tradeable in the process, in one possible future item change discussed by Diablo III Game Designer Travis Day. He talked about this idea in an exclusive interview with Diablo Somepage, along with Game Director Josh Mosqueira and Lead Designer Kevin Martens. They also talked about the constant work to balance Diablo III skills, why they want players killing elites more than bosses, and other topics.

Read on for part 3, the final installment of our interview with the Diablo III developers. See Part 1 and Part 2 for the previous news from the interview.

The massive itemization revamp for Diablo III is moving along, but it won't be done by BlizzCon 2013, according to Diablo III Game Designer Travis Day. Day discussed the work being done on items in an exclusive interview with Diablo Somepage, along with Game Director Josh Mosqueira and Lead Designer Kevin Martens.

Read on for more, in this part 2 of our extensive interview with the Diablo III developers. (See Part 1 and Part 3 for their discussions of working on the console Diablo III, and other topics.)


Josh Mosqueira is busy at E3 this week promoting Diablo III in all its forms, especially the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game. Once that is wrapped up, he said he will be working with the PC team to continue designing the evolution of the game. "I think the team have kept working on keeping the game evolving and moving forward. Once I come back from E3, that's when I myself will be going to start diving into the deep end of the Diablo 3 PC world," he said. As he discussed in his introduction as Game Director for Diablo III, Mosqueira sees the foundation of Diablo III, going forward, as focusing on the fantasy of the franchise. "I think that Diablo is such a unique Action RPG in terms of the sense that we let these players play these bad-ass heroes, they have these great skills, and they have all these awesome items. The combination of epic heroes and epic loot is, for me, at the heart of the Diablo experience."

Mosqueira noted that the items are one of the major areas in that fantasy. "We really want to reclaim the Diablo roots, and hold them up high, and focus on: what are the core pillars for our fantasy, how do we make the player feel like they're embodying these epic heroes? How do we create epic villains that will challenge these heroes? How do we make loot meaningful and rewarding, and something that makes you keep coming back for more and more and more. I think those are the sort of the big tent poles that as a team, we're really rallying around, and we really want to drive forward."


Josh Mosqueira is a big fan of the work that has been going on for months, to overhaul the entire loot and reward system in Diablo III. He sees it as a big part of the 'fantasy' of Diablo III that he wants to emphasize. "When it says that we wanted to focus on that core essential fantasy for Diablo, one of the thing we're working on, is something that I've been calling 'Loot 2.0'. That is, how can we really deliver on that fantasy? Diablo is all about items; how do we make those items rewarding, making sure that you're getting good upgrades at a reasonable clip. So the guys have come up with a lot of really cool ideas that we just can't wait for you guys to get your hands on."

Unfortunately, it will be some months down the road before that wait is at an end. Blizzard is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to projecting dates about patches, and Travis Day gave the standard line that "it's done when it's done" when talking about the completion of the itemization revamp. When asked if it would be done before BlizzCon 2013 he stated, "it'll be a while, it's certainly not before BlizzCon," which is happening on November 8 and 9 this year. So the hopes of fans to enjoy the itemization overhaul this summer (or indeed, likely this year) will not be realized. The itemization revamp patch will not be arriving before 2014.

All these item changes will arrive as one major overhaul, not split up into multiple patches. "Players should not expect to see it coming piecemeal; when it's ready it'll be all as one big change to the system. It's not going to be something that little bits are doled out," Day said. Mosqueira agreed that the items changes are a major overhaul, that will need to be added all at once. "That's true. We're really taking it as a more open-faceted approach to addressing the question of loot. As Travis said, there are a lot of moving pieces; not just within individual items, but sort of overall. I think for everybody to get a real good sense of all of these changes, we're gonna have to give you guys a whole package," Mosqueira said.


That itemization revamp, which Travis Day is spearheading, involves looking at the entire structure of items and rewards in Diablo III. "There's still a lot of work to be done. There are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to Diablo's items and rewards schemes. We want you to remember awesome items because they did something memorable, not just because they had big numbers on them. It's a lot of work to do, and there's a lot of ground to cover," Day said.

The idea of "scaling legendaries" is part of the picture. Day was quick to point out that these are not items that scale in power, like are available with the World of Warcraft Heirloom items. Instead, the power and required level of legendaries will be based on the level of the monster that drops the item. "People are really excited about the possibilities of, 'Oh man, I can find a non-max level The Gidbinn, that's amazing, and have a little fetish running around with me', if that's the effect when we're all said and done," he said.

Deciding on the details for all of those items is itself a massive task. Day noted, "A lot of the moving parts are just coming up with the ideas specifically, like what are the things going to be? How do we generate 200+ ideas, for effects that are completely unique to this item? A lot of the examples that I've given still hold true, and we've gotten a lot of work done in that area, there's still a lot to come up with." One example he has given often, that he mentioned in a previous interview was from a suggestion on the battle.net forums: A set bonus to let Call of the Ancients last forever, and turns the ancient Barbarians summoned by that skill into essentially permanent companions.

Not all of the ideas for legendaries involve such increases in power. Day said, "We've also had more... flavorful ideas, I guess would be the best way to put them. One of the ideas we had come up in our brainstorm sessions which we all got really excited about, and then have to figure out how to make work is: you have a Treasure Goblin who follows you around, and picks up white and grey items, and occasionally throws magical items out of his sack for you." Whether flavorful or powerful, Day wants the legendaries to be more interesting than the ones currently available. "We want you to remember the items because they did that awesome thing. Like when people talk about Windforce in Diablo 2, they remember it because Windforce had this completely unique effect. So we're trying to recapture that as much as we can", he said.


This has been part 2 of an interview with the Diablo III developers. See Part 1 for their thoughts about the Xbox 360 and PS3 console Diablo III versions, and developing for the PC and consoles at the same time. and Part 3 has discussions about item sinks, gold sinks, skills and bosses.

Blizzard is out in force at E3 this week, talking about the Xbox 360 and PS3 console versions of Diablo III. As seen in the picture above, they have a large booth with the PS3 Diablo III available for attendees to play. The developers have been giving many interviews at E3, about the new console versions of D3; the second part of our own interview with the Diablo III developers will be coming on Friday.

Blizzard also released a multiplayer trailer for the console Diablo III, showing multiple players on the PS3 version. It details how the console versions of the game can support local co-op, playing online with other people, or a combination of the two.



Read on for more E3 information about Diablo III, and comments from the Blizzard Blue posters.

The PC version of Diablo III might receive features that were originally designed for the console versions of the game, after the release of Diablo III for the Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 3. In an interview with Diablo Somepage, the recently promoted Diablo III Game Director Josh Mosqueira (seen above) was joined by Game Designer Travis Day and Lead Designer Kevin Martens. The three of them discussed how those features might be copied from the console to the PC, the differences between the PC and console versions of Diablo III, and a number of other topics about the game.

Read on for the details, in this first part of our extensive interview with the Diablo III developers. See Part 2 and Part 3 for more news from the interview.

Josh Mosqueira said that certain features, such as the orbs that provide 10-second character buffs in the console versions, may eventually be ported to the PC version. "Once people get their hands on the console game and start learning more about it, when it comes out in September - I think if there are certain aspects of it that our PC community says, 'Hey, we would like to try some of this stuff out', I think we would be open to considering some of those changes."


This could also include changes to the boss fights in Diablo III. Kevin Martens said, "Every time we make something as heavily scripted as some of the boss fights are, we always think of better versions after we ship. We always love to go back and fix some of that content." While noting that it wasn't necessarily a high priority to immediately update the PC version of the bosses, he said that changes to the boss fights seen on the console versions of Diablo III could make their way to the PC. "When you get your hands on the console game, you'll find that improvements have been made to some of the boss fights; some of those could possibly be rolled back into the PC version in the future."

The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Diablo III were developed in tandem, and the two versions have the same feature set. It was important to provide essentially the same experience for the two console versions, Mosqueira said. "Even though we have this really great relationship with Sony, we wanted to make sure that we treated all our console players equally." (That naturally doesn't extend to the promotional console fare, such as the announced PS3-exclusive items.)

One area where the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Diablo III are both the same is in their lack of a public website to display console Diablo III characters and accounts, that Blizzard provides for the PC Diablo III players on battle.net. Mosqueira said that those type of character displays are "an important part of the Blizzard experience," but that for now, players on the console versions will be limited to viewing characters on their friend's list in the console game network. "Unfortunately for Sony and the PlayStation Network, and for Xbox Live - they're great platforms, but we haven't been able to really get that level of interconnection between our battle.net and those platforms. So for the time being, we won't have a public website where you can see your cool profiles," he said.

That may change when Diablo III is brought to the PS4. "Potentially for the next-gen platforms, we may have a bigger emphasis on these social features; we want to see if we could try to do something like that," Mosqueira said.


Josh Mosqueira has been the Lead Designer for the console Diablo III team, and now he's the Diablo III Game Director; he is in charge of the vision for the entire project, including development for both console and PC. But this isn't the first time he's moved from working on the console Diablo III to the PC version. Originally hired by Blizzard in early 2011 as the Diablo III console lead designer, Mosqueira and the two other initial hires for the console team were roped into helping the PC team during that summer. "They were coming down the pipe, and they really wanted to finally ship D3," he recalls. So the console team ended up working on finishing the PC Diablo III game. "It wasn't until we shipped on PC that the real focus on the console side of things really started in earnest."

With the PC version of Diablo III released in May 2012 and work on the console versions fully underway, Mosqueira headed up the console sub-team inside of Team 3, the Blizzard designation for the entire Diablo III group. The Game Director at the time was Jay Wilson, who oversaw both the PC and the console development, although Mosqueira notes that the console team was "a little bit more autonomous." Throughout the console Diablo III development process, he was given freedom to make changes specifically for the console versions. "Jay said, 'Look, whatever tweaks you need to make to translate Diablo so it feels like an awesome console game, feel free to make those decisions.'"

The changes seen in the console Diablo III, compared to the original PC game, are found throughout the entire game. They include a very different control and movement scheme on the console, as well as overhauled skills, an Evade rolling move to quickly dodge out of harm's way, and a different pace to the monsters throughout the game. An entirely new multiplayer co-op mode offers the ability for four players to play Diablo III together in one location, from a single PS3 or Xbox 360. Combined together, these changes create a game that is instantly familiar to a PC Diablo III player, but fresh in its approach. For Mosqueira, all the changes made when taking the PC Diablo III and wrangling it into the consoles were done for a single reason: "To make the best Diablo console game we can."

Now that Mosqueira is in the Game Director role, overseeing the project for multiple console as well as the core PC version, he wants to encourage that same focused mentality on the PC development side. "I really want us, when we're thinking about Diablo on the PC, to make sure that we're making the best game for PC that we can." He doesn't view Diablo III for the different platforms as direct copies of each other: "What makes a great PC game, we will make decisions that will steer Diablo that way; what makes a good Diablo console game, we will steer console in that direction."

So Diablo III was developed first on the PC, and is arriving in a different form on a number of consoles. Some features from those console versions may make their way back around and end up on the PC side. But despite the cross-over between the console and PC, Diablo III Game Director Josh Mosqueira wants to have each team focused on making the best game for their respective platforms. Can the Diablo III development teams provide equally compelling games going forward, for both console and PC gamers? What will the future of Diablo III bring, aside from the Xbox 360 and PS3 console release on September 3? We'll have more from the Diablo III developers on what they hope to accomplish, in part 2 of our interview.

Our extensive interview with Josh Mosqueira, Travis Day, and Kevin Martens continues in Part 2 and Part 3!

The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Diablo III are available for preorder, and Blizzard has announced bonus and exclusive items for them. All preordered Xbox 360 and PS3 Diablo III sales will include four bonus items: the Infernal Helm mentioned previously, a cosmetic set of white Angelic Wings, and two types of armor dye.

The PS3 version of Diablo III will have five extra exclusive items, only available in that version of the game. They include the cosmetic Crimson Angelic Wings, and four armor items. All of these items are not powerful by level 60 gear standards, but they do provide a useful starting set for PS3 Diablo III characters.

The official console bonus items announcement: