BlizzCon 2014 – Diablo III: What’s Next Panel Transcript

This is a transcript of the Diablo III: What’s Next panel held at BlizzCon 2014 in the Anaheim Convention Center on November 7. Among the panelists were Diablo III developers:

Josh Mosqueira (game director), Jonny Ebbert (senior designer), Wyatt Cheng (senior technical designer) and Kevin Martens (lead game designer).

Transcript

Mosqueira: Hello, Blizzcon!

(Audience cheers)

Mosqueira: Awesome! How are you guys doing? How was the opening ceremony? It was epic, epic.

Attendee: Fix up the stream!

Mosqueira: You’re right, and we are going to fix that right now. So who is interested in hearing a little bit about a game we call Diablo III?

(Audience cheers)

Mosqueira: Awesome. So I’m Josh Mosqueira, the game director, and with me on stage we have Johnny Ebbert (our senior designer) and Wyatt Cheng (senior technical designer), and our lead game designer Kevin Martens; and we want to welcome you to the “What’s Next” panel for Diablo III.

So let’s get right into it. What an amazing year it has been and let me be the first one but not the last one to say a huge thank you for your love, for your support and for killing all the demons and getting all the loot. You guys have been awesome. The year started off about a year ago when we announced you were going to shut down the Auction House. What do we think about that? It was awesome.

(Audience cheers)

Mosqueira: And then we followed that up with Patch 2.1.0, that really brought up Loot 2.0; and then we followed that up with Reaper of Souls, and the Ultimate Edition; and since then you guys have fought Malthael and killed them both on PC and console; and you guys have been awesome, and we really enjoy– but guess what?

Now we get to talk about “What’s Next” and for us death was just the beginning. So you know, in the last couple of months we released Patch 2.1.0, we brought you Greater Rifts. We brought you Ladders also known as Seasons.

In a whole new area, you guys are to explore in a cesspools, but that’s not it and today we are going to talk about all the amazing new things you guys can look forward to in the next couple of months. Leading up to what is going to be Patch 2.1.2 which is really coming soon.

So what are we going to cover today? A lot of cool stuff. What’s new with Greater Rifts? A whole new area to explore. Some more details behind Patch 2.1.2. But we are going to start with one of my favourite little rascals in the world of Sanctuary: the treasure goblins.

(Audience cheers)

Mosqueira: This is one of the epic moments of playing Diablo. There you are busy, minding your own business and this little bugger shows up and you throw caution to the wind and you start chasing him often throughout the pass of monsters. Usually with the hardcore character and you forget you are playing hardcore and you die, but you chase him because he’s going to drop loot, right? And this guy really changes the way you play the game.

So we love this guy so much that we decided that we needed to create a whole realm for the treasure goblins. A whole family got the trooper and that queen is still one of my favourite monsters in D3.

But we felt that the star, the treasure goblin didn’t get enough love, right? So you probably know that we have the main treasure goblin and we have a couple of dopplegangers.

You know we have 3 other treasure goblins that all they have is to wear different color pants.

And we felt that was wrong. So say goodbye to them because they have now been retired and please give a warm round of applause and welcome your new treasure goblins.

(Audience applauds)

Mosqueira: So let me introduce them starting with the Gem Hoarder. Now any guess what he drops?

Yes, you are going to see him and he’ll spawn in front of his portal and every time you hit him gems are going to drop, and more gems, right? Yea, look at all those gems and of course what’s going to happen when you kill him? A gem explosion!

(Audience cheers)

Mosqueira: Yea, because gems are awesome. Alright, he’s not alone. We have this green guy we called the Odious Collector.

Now what does he drop? Well he has a thing for crafting materials and plans. So that’s exactly what he’s going to drop. So as you are chasing him down (and you really looking for these crafting materials) this is the guy to chase because he’s going to drop some pretty cool plans. Some yellows and greens and oranges. This is very awesome.

The last guy we are introducing today: the Blood Thief. Now him and Kadala don’t get along and you can probably figure out why cause all the bloods you give Kadala, he steals. So the only right thing for us to do is try to get them back. Right?

So there you go and he is going to drop a few blood shards, some small blood shards, and of course he’s going to drop a whole ton of blood shards. Yea, very awesome, isn’t it?

So in addition to few new types, we have a few tweaks to really make the gameplay really come to life. So we focus on the visibility if you notice on the clips the goblins now spawn in front of the portal. They have more unique sounds so you will be able to hear them and see them but also figure we need to make it more interesting to fight.

Now there’s a different stagger count and now they are going to do this really sneaky thing of actually trying to find other enemies to lure your towards. So keep that in mind. We also created unique mini-map icons for each of the new treasure goblins so you can figure out when to see them and how to fight and find them.

So is there a new treasure goblin family that you guys can expect to fight and slaughter in our upcoming Patch? Now speaking of which, now going to pass that back to Jonny and he will tell you all the changes coming up to Adventure mode. Jonny?

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