Presenter: Welcome to the Diablo III Lore and Story Q&A panel. The panelists are: Leonard Boyarski (senior designer), Michael Chu (game designer/writer), Brian Kindreagan (lead writer), Valerie Watrous (game designer/writer) and Justin Parker (historian)

Kindreagan: Hey, BlizzCon! I’m Brian Kindreagan and I’m the lead writer on Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. And I’m gonna ask everyone on our panel to introduce themselves before we get to the questions. So let’s start with Leonard.

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Boyarski: I’m Leonard Boyarski, and I’m senior world designer.

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Chu: Hey, I’m Michael Chu and I’m game designer and writer. And you can probably blame me for some characters like the Monk, Witch Doctor Covetous Shen and Zoltun Kulle.

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Watrous: Hi, I’m Valerie Watrous and I’m a writer on Diablo. I work mostly on dialogue and characterization.

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Parker: Hello, I’m Justin Parker. I’m the historian or one of the historians. We mostly work with the world that’s gone before and trying to keep continuity as best we can.

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Kindreagan: So, Justin is the surprise last minute addition to our panel. So that he can help with the some of the really deep Diablo history if we get into that. So, OK, let’s open it right up for some questions. If you have any questions, call me up.

Fan # 1: One of the things that I kinda wanted to see if you guys were thinking about, specifically with this release is a failure cinematic, you failed to defeat Malthael, he kills you, instead of just respawning, do you see him destroying humanity?

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Kindreagan: Well, I don’t think we’d be able to do a failure cinematic as such, because cinematics are enormously expensive and time consuming. So even tough that would be a lot of fun, I don’t think … if we had to do at the expense of, let’s say, the opening cinematic, that would not be so good. Like, the only cinematic that you’d see is the failure. So, we wouldn’t be able to do anything like that, but we are exploring a couple of interesting things we can do when you die. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of them were at the point I could talk about them quite yet.
 

Fan #2: Hello. I was actually told to address this question to Leonard Boyarski.

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Kindreagan: You’re welcome, Leonard!
 

Thunderclaww: So, in Sanctuary the main barbarian is called Bul-Kathos. He’s the original barbarian. However, the Immortal Kings set which is like the main barbarian set, it mentions Worusk who is king of the barbarians apparently. But, is the immortal king reference to Worusk or is it Bul-Kathos and who is Worusk?

Boyarski: I’m so glad you asked that question. Worusk is, he was a king, he became king by uniting the tribes. Bul-Kathos who’s pretty much a semi-deity and he was the first one to unite the tribes, but that was way back in the ancient times, and there’s legend of the barbarians, pretty much one of their myths. This Worusk guy came along a lot later when they’re all human beings and the tribes were all warring and he put them all together. And then after that, they had the council like it’s in Harrogath. So, he was given the honorary title of Immortal King in reference to the fact that he did the same thing that Bul-Kathos had done.
 

Fan #2: Thank you.

Fan# 3: Hello, What happened to the dragon? Where’s Trang’Oul? Is he gonna come up in the expansion?

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Boyarski: Justin, do you want to take a little bit of this?

Parker: Well there, there just doesn’t seem there have been an appropriate place to reintroduce them. I mean, obviously the necromancers are still referencing him and drawing on his power, but he hasn’t made an appearance since quite some time ago.

Kindreagan: So he’s out there somewhere.

 

Fan #4: Hi. I was wondering how the templar and crusader different ideology and will they have any specific dialogue in the expansion?

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Kindreagan: They differ in ideology quite a bit. So the templar is a member of an order that sort of rose from the ashes of the Paladin order. They are a newer group. As you learn in Diablo 3 they have some very questionable practices as far as how they indoctrinate people into their order. The crusaders are actually a group that was created at the same time as the Paladin order long ago. They went off in the opposite direction. When the Paladins went West, they went East on sort of a secret mission. And so they disappeared into the Marsh Lands of the East and were not heard from again for a long time. And now they’ve come rolling out from the East to discover a very different world than the one they knew when they left. So, they actually are sort of… They trace their origins back to the early days of Zakarum faith. They represent an older and perhaps more purer version of the Zakarum faith than it is currently known on Sanctuary.
 

Fan # 5: Hello. In Zoltun Kulle’s archives there’s a bunch of coffins that are floating in the background. What are in them? What are they containing or hiding?

Kindreagan: Michael.

Chu: Well, Zoltun Kulle was really interested in a lot of different things. Pretty much anything that had to do with magic, he was curious, he liked to experiment a lot and so what you sort of find around the archives are sort of what’s left over from his experiments. You know, just magical excitement.

 

Fan #5: Alright, thank you.

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