More UI Changes, Paladin/Warrior/Rogue Skill Animations, D3 Poll, ATTN Weekly News

[chaud]

Diablo 3 - Current Players in Inferno, Finding and Trading Gear, Blue Posts, Inferno Act 3 Farming Spot

Mists of Pandaria UI Changes Update
Several more UI changes have been made since our last post.

• Professions have had subgrouping added, both for cooking and others where appropriate.
• You may now blacklist up to two battlegrounds when queuing by selecting the thumbs down next to them. You are unable to blacklist the Call to Arms battleground.
• A button has been added for the Mists of Pandaria cinematic. (No, it doesn't work yet!)
• A new loot roll status window has been added that allows you to see what each player rolled and the outcome of their roll.
• Account wide achievements that you can make progress towards on any character are now flagged with a blue coloring. You can see the status of every achievement on WoWDB in the Quick Info of each achievement's page.
• The spellbook now talks about what has changed and how to use the core abilities of your spec.
• The Dungeon Journal now has unique art backgrounds for each expansion

Paladin Skill Animations Preview
Today we continue with the Paladin's new skill animations!

Warrior Skill Animations Preview
Moving on, we have the new Warrior skill animations!

Rogue Skill Animations Preview
Rogues also got a few new animations!

Diablo III Blue Posts
Today was a holiday in the US, so the blue posters were silent, but there was a Diablo III Game Design Update and other blue posts. If you want to read them all, see the latest two news posts on Diablofans!

Finding and Trading Gear
This isn't a new concept. In Diablo II gear was randomized and so absolutely ridiculously rare that you could almost be guaranteed to never find the exact item you were looking for just by farming for it yourself. To be the best you had to trade items with others, as you might find an extremely rare item, they may be willing to trade for yours. If you wanted to get ahead within any reasonable amount of time you had to trade. Now, Diablo II had one thing going for it which was the mass proliferation of dupes for the rarest items, which completely tanked its economy and quickly allowed anyone to gear themselves in the best possible items for nearly nothing. In Diablo III you don't have that luxury, you need to actually find the rare items, or trade for them.

Now, you have a couple options, you can jump into our Trading Forum, post up your item/s and then meet someone in-game and barter a trade. You can also use the in-game Trade channel, and again barter trades. Or you can use the auction house system. How you trade items is up to you, bartering out of game, bartering in-game, the AH for gold, or real money once it launches. We're not forcing anyone to do anything, and if you don't ever want to trade with other players that's your choice as well, but due to the nature of drops in Diablo games, if you want to be the best you need to trade.

The difference in Diablo 2 was that you could solo act 4 and 5 with gear you farmed yourself. In Diablo 3 you have no chance in act 2 and onward unless you buy gear from the auction house. The best gear drops in the later acts (Jay said there was one tier of drops in each Act), so there will be a looooong while until I even have a chance at starting farming the best gear. Basically I have to gear up so I have a chance at gearing up so I have a chance at getting the good loot. In D2, I could start farming the best loot the game had to offer by myself.
Good point! Yes, Diablo III has an additional difficulty level, Inferno, with a very steep difficulty curve. One bit of misinformation is that loot is static in where it drops, but in fact the loot table bands are quite large. For example the "Inferno Act I loot" has a chance to drop in Hell Act IV as much as it does Inferno Act II. You will need to farm Inferno Act I to get a shot at those higher level items to drop so you can continue progressing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forum)

Diablo III - Game Design Update
As more and more players begin to perfect their character builds and progress into Diablo III’s higher difficultly levels, some of the most prominent feedback lately has been about game balance and design, and that’s what we’re here to talk about today. As with any new game, gameplay issues are inevitable, and we hear a lot of feedback regarding what‘s balanced, what’s not, and everything else in between. We recently made some decisions to adjust (or outright nerf) a few class skills, and today we wanted to explain our overall philosophy on design changes -- as well as give some insight into some more changes that are coming up.

Before we get to that, though, we thought it'd be fun to share a few interesting stats we've collected since Diablo III's release:

• On average players have created 3 characters each
• 80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30
• 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty
• 54% of Hardcore players chose a female character
• The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal
• The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity)
• The most used runes for each class at level 60 are Barbarian: Best Served Cold, Demon Hunter: Lingering Fog, Wizard: Mirror Skin, Monk: Peaceful Repose, Witch Doctor: Numbing Dart

(Continue reading on: Blue Tracker / Official Forum)

Poll: What difficulty are you playing in Diablo 3?



ATTN Weekly News
Pico is back again this week with news about World of Warplanes Beta, Mists of Pandaria, the indie game highlight OKABU, Minecraft, Diablo 3, and Curse's LoLPro team.

[moveth]

the Ui, in general, is becoming much more user friendly. I like it.

[Deleted]

I love Pico!

[Ultima]

Indeed. It's especially great when they incorporate AddOns into the game.

I am in love with Blizzard's Official Raid Frames. I swear by them, along with Clique, when healing. They are very customizable.

I would be in favour of a built-in Recount, however I fear that they are not doing so as they don't (and shouldn't) consider numbers the end-all and be-all of the PvE aspect of the game.

[Clanner]

we need a blacklist for dungeons too!!!!

[Deleted]

The poll is bugged, votes for Inferno don't count.

[Riggnarock]

I thought most if not all achievments were going to be account wide :P

[Marraphy]

That Decoy glyph is going to make rogues even MORE of a pain in the ass to deal with xD But it's really cool though

[chaud]

The poll is bugged, votes for Inferno don't count.

Most likely it knows that everyone is lying on an anonymous poll and has decided to go on strike.

[WoRsT]

awesome!

waiting for diablo 3 patch..

and wow .. i cant wait!

[Vorenos]

Glyph of Disguise looks AMAZING

[Fatal Jinx]

im part of 0.2% inferno =']

[Radeghost]

mop cinematic... interesting

[Vynistra]

The poll is bugged, votes for Inferno don't count.

Mine did because I'm in Inferno. :P
That and I checked the count before I voted.

[Deleted]

No way, they brought back swirly ball!

[risingforce]

Living the Dungeon Journal update --I hope they are all as detailed as the current entries and include classic (et al) Raids.

Good job Blizz, psyched for MoP and currently smashing my way through Diablo 3 Nightmare.

[Salech]

As this poll shows, many people are already on Inferno.

[billybob10110]

And never again will I have to do Isle of Conquest!

[fishoa]

They finally updated the Dungeon Journal!

Amazing. I'm so excited for this expansion. Keep up the good work Blizzard.

[Firebert]

@chaud: For the Account-wide Achievements, is the number at the top of the Achievements pane the amount of Achievement points your character has, or your account has?