Diablo 3 Beta ETA, PassLoot and NPCScan, Blizzard Comic-Con Panel

Diablo 3 Beta coming "soon"
Every now and then I have people asking me about a potential ETA for the beta of Diablo 3. This is a pretty hard question to answer but we can guess that it will be available very soon.

1. Activision Earning Call - During the latest conference call, Activision announced that the beta would start during Q3 2011, that's between July 1st and September 30th.

2. Press Tour - A Diablo 3 press tour is scheduled for Diablo fansites on August 1st, this is pretty much what happened with Cataclysm with the Press Tour happening 2 weeks before the start of beta.

3. Box Art - Last but not least, the Diablo 3 beta box art has been uploaded on the european battle.net last week, Blizzard seems to be getting ready for a launch "soon" - https://eu.battle.net/account/local-...-gb/d3-big.png (Thanks to Fisker for finding that one)


I'm not saying that it will happen omg omg omg super soon, because beta get postponed easily but things are definitely moving forward and I wouldn't be surprised to see something happen a few days after the press event.

For more information on Diablo 3 and a coverage of the press tour, your best bet is to keep an eye on Diablofans.com


Addon Review - PassLoot (by chaud)
PassLoot is another great addon for lazy efficient players who don't want to continue to do the mindless loot rolls necessary in groups. It allows very complex or very simple filter settings that will take over looting for you. You can filter by item level, name, quality, type, slot, class, spec, group status, uniqueness, and much more. It even allows for removal of the confirmation popups for BoP and DE actions.

• Download PassLoot @ Curse.com

After installing PassLoot, open the menu in game with "/passloot menu". This is where the filter magic happens. First Add a filter, then click on the Temp Description to change the name in the box below. Press enter after you change the name to something useful. Some of the easier filters to setup are for green quality items.

To DE or Greed green quality items in 5 man dungeons, first add the Confirm DE option from the list on the left if you want to skip confirmation. Then add Group / Raid and set it to either Group or Any depending on if you want the filter to be active in raids as well. Next is Item Level filters, generally it is safe to DE anything from 100 to 319 as there are some holiday and other items that have a level less than 100. Finally add a filter for Quality and set it to Uncommon. This means that the addon will only roll on Green items. Other handy filters are Usable, Zone Type, and Equip Slot. Below are two example filters I have used in the past to get you going.


You can set up similar filters for blues or epics depending on your guild's loot rules for raids, as well as filtering by item name, type, slot, or zone. Take care to set your filters correctly to avoid DEing something you really wanted to keep as GMs will not undo your mistakes. This should help to remove most of the mindless looting from your PvE and let you focus on not standing in the fire!

Under the Output menu you can control the notifications of actions taken by the addon. It can output to many different sources, including many SCT addons or raid warnings, so that you don't miss the action it takes.


NPCScan Update
It's also a good occasion to point out that NPCScan has been updated for Patch 4.2 last week and as usual, it will make your rare elite hunting considerably easier.



Comic-Con - Blizzard Panel - WoW, Diablo, StarCraft Swag
Blizzard had a 1 hour long panel at Comic-con focused on WoW/Diablo/Starcraft merchandising, you won't really hear anything new about the game but you will probably learn a few things on what's coming for WoW TCG, comics, and other products.