We’re pretty certain here in the offices that Diablo 3 is going to be huge when it launches on May 16, locally. Most of you have most likely bribed a doctor for a dated sick leave slip already, while the rest of you have either put in for leave, or told your employer that he can stick his soulstone where the sun don’t shine.
And while you will probably spend days playing at a time, the one aspect of Diablo that always has players furrowing their brows and thinking deeply, is what class to choose for their debut adventure in Sanctuary.
Blizzard is aware of that, and they have a new trailer for those of you who are considering using the Demon Hunter for your voyage into the depths of hell and back.
Meanwhile, for those of you who are planning on engaging in a little bit of digital masochism, Blizzard has some more information regarding that unlockable ultra-high difficulty setting. “Inferno monster levels aren’t linear any longer. They get progressively more difficult. This was really a reaction to Inferno play-testing”, Diablo III community manager Bashiok said on the Battle.net Forums.
There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into.
We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60. But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people. For the crazy people they need a huge ramp in difficulty, for a more ‘casual but still hardcore audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty.
As a result, Act III and IV are now “really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only.
With this scaling difficulty, Bashiok dipped into his inner Dark Soul and confirmed that players will indeed encounter ridiculously difficult challenges in their quests, regardless of which section they were playing in.
“You’re going to die, a lot, and you’re going to have a horrible character for quite a while. You’re not going to hit 60 and finish the game on Inferno. You’re going to be smashing your face against Act 1 Inferno for weeks,” Bashiok said.
I’m not the biggest fan of playing a game with a difficulty level that constantly punishes me, as I much rather prefer a decent challenge that can be overcome, usually resulting in me screaming “Oh Yeah!”, while fist-pumping the air around me with immense joy.
What about you guys, do difficulty levels such as this actually appeal to you?
Last Updated: April 3, 2012
