"For some time we have been mostly in the dark about map randomization in Diablo III besides two facts: the open world will be static and closed dungeons will be randomized for replayability and varying gameplay, among other reasons."
Sounds good for me :)
Quote:
"Originally Posted by Bashiok
A forum is now available for discussing the PTR and patch and will continue to be available for posting feedback and bug reports once the patch actually goes live. This is to ideally keep the other Diablo II forums dedicated to current game discussion. Any threads discussing the 1.13 patch/PTR/etc. will be moved to the Test Realm forum, or deleted."
Q: we'll be seeing a test realm very soon?
A: No.
A: Well the presence of this forum only means that I made it because I want you guys to know it's here well beforehand, to get into the groove of posting about 1.13 stuff here, and to stop cluttering up the other forums with questions about the patch or reset.
"Playing in groups benefits partly from the per-player item drops, but also an increase in items-per-minute ratio due to groups killing faster than a single player. The amount of items dropping with each additional player is slightly higher than if those players were to just play in their own games. Now, that's slightly deceiving because we're talking about the entire pool of drops, but actually each player sees and receives an equal* portion, so in this case we're looking at the drops as if they were shared completely freely within the group. This may not be the case for all items or groups.
Still, if you have three friends and you're all buddy-buddy with each other and sharing everything, the benefit of playing together for item drops is noticeable. If you're all being very stingy and not sharing anything, or just throwing out the crap, you'll still see a slight increase just from killing speed.
But anyway, with all that in mind, there is already of course a distance limit in which you'll be considered an active participant in a monster kill to be able to receive a drop from it. If you're out of range and someone in your party kills something, you don't get a drop from it. It's a very obvious solution to deal with a very obvious issue. And the range is fairly forgiving."
"Many of you are wondering what's up with the patch and the ladder reset. While I've sprinkled some information around, it's about time it was all mashed up in one easy-to-read location.
Once upon a time our internal legacy development teams wanted to put some much needed love into Diablo II. Diablo II doesn't have tournaments with millions of dollars swirling about them, so it generally took a back seat to the patch development time of our other legacy titles. But one day the planets aligned, and it was finally time to give the old girl a new coat of paint and break a bottle of champagne over her bow with the release of a patch. This went well. Meetings were held, the community was involved and polled, and an extremely long list of ideas and changes was created. That list was then cut down to changes felt to be either necessary changes, or easily implemented to ensure development time was efficient. This also went well.
Not long after, the alarm bells sounded. The patch was progressing quickly, and the release was potentially imminent. Early on it was decided, and somewhat of a no-brainer, that a ladder reset with coincide with the patch release. With the patch progressing well, a potential release of two weeks was estimated, and as always this is the exact amount of forewarning given to players and the community before a ladder reset. An announcement was made quickly and immediately to ensure a full two week notice was given. There are many reasons for this standard two-week notice, not the least of which is that most players don't understand the meaning of ladder and non-ladder, and how a reset affects their characters. Following any reset our support departments are flooded with issues related to the change of their characters, so we attempt to inform beforehand and avoid any unnecessary confusion.
This was all well and good, the community was excited, and the developers were having fun and enjoying being able to work on Diablo II again. Then, as it tends to do, reality struck. Work had to be swiftly and immediately realigned and has and continues to be focused on addressing issues for a different title to resolve a very serious issue."
"We’re preparing for a Diablo II ladder reset to coincide with the release of the 1.13 patch that’s currently in development. We don’t have a final release date for the patch yet, but we’re providing early warning as a reset could occur as early as the end of April. We’ll be providing updates with more certain dates once the patch is closer to release.
Please be aware that with a ladder reset all ladder characters are moved to non-ladder. This means that your characters will still be accessible but will no longer have access to ladder-only features and games. In order to play in the new ladder season after the reset you will need to make new ladder characters."
