Since the release of Diablo 3 there has been an increase in battle.net accounts being compromised. I’d imagine because a lot of these new Diablo players may not be used to something like World of Warcraft and worrying about account security – and may not know about what measures to take to protect their account.

Blizzard released a statement earlier today going over what players can do to protect their accounts, while also trying to stop the rumors that the servers had been compromised. What it really comes down to is that people aren’t taking measures necessary and aren’t getting authenticators.

The RMAH was also slated to come out May 29 after a 1 week delay. However, Blizzard still feels their stability isn’t quite there yet and are pushing it back to a “Coming Soon” state with no specific date set.

Blizzard has revealed their sales figures for Diablo 3 which makes the ARPG sequel the fastest selling PC game according to their internal sales records.

The game sold a whopping 3.5 million copies on release and an additional 1.2 milion players are playing the game through the World of Warcraft annual pass. Since launch, Blizzard state that 6.3 million games in total have now been sold.

It's no huge surprise there were connection problems on launch day with 4.7 million players all hitting the servers at midnight on release.

“We’re definitely thrilled that so many people around the world were excited to pick up their copy of Diablo III and jump in the moment it went live,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We also regret that our preparations were not enough to ensure everyone had a seamless experience when they did so. I want to reaffirm our commitment to make sure the millions of Diablo III players out there have a great experience with the game moving forward, and I also want to thank them for their ongoing support.”

“Regarding today’s announcement, we recognize that setting a new launch record is a big achievement,” Morhaime continued. “However, we’re especially proud of the gameplay feedback we’ve received from players worldwide. We’re pleased that Diablo III has lived up to players’ high expectations, and we’re looking forward to welcoming more players into Sanctuary in the days ahead.”

Now all Blizzard need to do is sort ot the account hacking problems that are currently plagueing the game and players will be happy.

More at Diablo III Becomes Fastest-Selling PC Game Ever

More Reading

• DiabloProgress incoming!
• Announcing the Launch of the Upgraded D3DB!
• Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.2.9749 Coming Soon

Update: There is a workaround to play Diablo III if you don’t mind:

1. Not playing with your friends
2. The possible lag.
3. Creating a level 1 character

USA players can play Diablo III by going to the login screen, press the Options button. Select Account. Select Europe from the Server dropdown menu. Happy hunting. The only setback is your character list won’t appear in the Europe server. Try the USA servers every time you leave a game. The developers are currently investigating the Error 3006 issue, and implementing a fix at a later time. No ETA.***

Blizzard acknowledged a known issue with Error 3006 time outs. I experienced this a few minutes ago. Powercycling didn’t help me, but you might have better luck.

Diablo 3 Demon Hunter trailer balances hatred and discipline. The cap is temporary while they work on the servers.Diablo 3′s open beta stress test has diablo 3 gold been temporarily capped due to some server stability issues. “Diablo 3 temporarily cap in 2012 We’ve temporarily capped Diablo 3 open beta concurrency until we can address some stability issues,” Blizzard community manager Bashiok said.24/7 service Whenever having trouble in ordering our Diablo3 Gold, you can always have our service around you.24/7 service Whenever having trouble in ordering our Diablo3 Gold, you can always have our service around you.

Users can expect Error 37 and login failure when attempting to log in to the Diablo 3 beta. With that being said, if you are seeing Error 3003, click on Options and change your region to “The Americas”. Open Beta is limited to U.S. servers only.

“This is a stress test, and issues are expected. You may have trouble logging in due to the sheer number of other people attempting the same,” Bashiok warned fans.

Watch and download the latest Diablo III ‘Monk’ Trailer.Blizzard is removing PvP from Diablo III, at least temporarily.He did reassure fans, however, that they will get it sorted out since the test servers are expected to handle a lot more people then they currently have.

More at Diablo 3 Temporarily Cap In 2012

More Reading

• Epic Mists of Pandaria Stockpile Preparation
• Diablo 3: The Unavoidable, Always-On Social Network?
• Cooking for Wow Gold in World of Warcraft

I think I know where players are getting this “vendor everything” mentality. In WoW, most items that drop from bosses are “soulbound”, meaning they cannot be traded or sold to other players. If you are not an enchanter, you have no choice but to vendor or destroy these bound items. So, to put this in WoW terms, everyone in Diablo III is an enchanter. There exists an NPC in the game, known as the “Artisan Blacksmith”, who allows you to “salvage” equipment.This is essentially the option to disenchant any magical or above quality items, breaking them down into crafting materials.

These materials are far more valuable than the pittances you would get from vendoring the equipment. Plus, the crafting materials are used to create more magical items, which you can then either use, place on the auction house, or salvage. Quite often, while leveling, you'll pick up magical items that you either outlevel by an enormous margin, are itemized poorly, or you cannot use. Salvage should ideally be used on any items that not only you cannot use, but no one else would ever want. Items that do +1 extra damage, +2 life per kill are generally considered to be poor choices, even while leveling.

What's not worth salvaging?

There are some items, however, that I advise not salvaging, even if they seem poor at first glance. In order to save you lots of time with your next character, I urge you to save any decent experience gear that you find. Even if it's level five, save your experience gear!

Why? Because experience gear can cut your leveling time by as much as 20%. The only problem is that you need to keep upgrading your gear or else the bonus experience won't be enough for your current level. Having a bunch of sets of experience gear every few levels will help immensely. You don't need to have complete sets, just a few pieces to make a difference on your next character, and the next, and the next…

The other type of gear I recommend not getting rid of is Gold Find. You've probably seen me mention this attribute a few times before, but it's for good reason. This stat increases the amount of gold you come across through monster drops, chests, and other containers by a percentage. If you wear a full set of this type of gear, you could double or triple your gold acquisition rate! However, this will mean your leveling time is slower than if you were using experience gear….More at A Guide on How to Salvage in Diablo 3

I used to know a mage who wore an enchanted Chef's Hat during raids. The first day he wore it to raid, someone asked him to take it off, but he wouldn't; it was his new favorite hat and he intended to wear it. This annoyed several people in the raid, who repeatedly told him to take the hat off, so the mage told them this: “When someone does more damage than me, I will put my other helm back on.”

That day never came, so the hat stayed until he got bored of it.

I mention this story because you'd think with all the plate bikinis and mail hot pants in WoW, the task of assembling a barbarian's costume for a warrior or paladin would be simple. Alas, loincloths don't seem to be that popular with plate wearers, so you'll either have to put on some pants or convince your raid leader that you don't need pants to do your job.

• Shoulders Tundra Pauldrons
• Chest Stormforged Breastplate
• Hands Stormforged Gauntlets
• Waist Earthswell Belt
• Legs Stormforged Legguards
• Feet Vicious Gladiator's Warboots of Alacrity
• Main-hand weapon Razorwind Broadaxe

Witch doctor

I tried creating both a leather and cloth witch doctor and ultimately found the cloth one to be more convincing. All the same, I've included the leather one below if you'd like to create something better from where I started.

Leather

• Head Big Voodoo Mask
• Shoulders Emblazoned Shoulders
• Chest Grizzly Jerkin
• Hands Sentinel Gloves
• Waist Manimal's Cinch
• Legs Warden's Woolies
• Feet Robust Boots
• Main-hand weapon Bite of Serra'kis

Cloth

• Head Bad Mojo Mask
• Shoulders Outlander's Pauldrons
• Chest Polychromatic Visionwrap
• Wrists Pagan Bands
• Hands Dreamweave Gloves
• Waist Watcher's Cinch
• Legs Ancestral Woollies
• Feet Arachnidian Footpads
• Main-hand weapon Bite of Serra'kis
• Off-hand weapon Voodoo Shaker

Deckard Cain and Leah

I don't know about you guys, but I love Deckard Cain. His voice actor is absolutely amazing and reminds me of Catherwood from The Adventures of Nick Danger (and if you know what that is, you'll know why that's awesome). Leah isn't too bad either, if you're into adorable sidekicks.

Deckard Cain

• Shoulders Khaz Modan Mantle
• Chest Gray Woolen Robe
• Hands Scholar's Gloves
• Waist Deadly Gladiator's Cord of Salvation
• Feet Kurkenstoks (Ringo's Blizzard Boots if you're Horde)
• Off-hand weapon Tome of the Dawn

Leah

• Shoulders Resilient Mantle
• Chest Corsair's Overshirt
• Shirt Red Linen Shirt
• Wrists Ritual Bands
• Hands Heavy Linen Gloves
• Waist Willow Belt
• Legs Leggings of the Steppes
• Feet Pagan Shoes

So you want to know what the blogosphere reaction was to Diablo 3?

Let’s not waste any time then – heeeeeere we go!

• Keen and Graev offer 5 points they love and 5 points they don’t so much – “Individual Loot: This has been a real joy. There isn’t a rush to pick up items when they drop. There isn’t this nagging fear that you might miss something. If something drops, it’s yours and you don’t have to worry about being too greedy or thinking about others.”
• Lorehound offers us an entertaining in-character writeup of their first day – spoilerific but fun to read – “Before I arrived at the inn I was stopped by a madman, he kept talking about this being the end of the world. Doomsayers always seem to crawl out of the woodwork when something bad happens, I gave the man no attention and walked towards the inn.”
• Ben at Scribblings On The Asylum Wall thinks that Diablo 3 will fill the gap before Mists nicely – “The story carried me along at a steady pace, and I enjoyed the voice-overs in substitution for just reading quest dialogue, although I imagine when both Suz and I are playing simultaneously that might be less than ideal.”
• Ferrel at Epic Slant is underwhelmed by the game – he doesn’t hate it, he just doesn’t feel it’s enough – “The core of the game, however, feels like Diablo 2. I haven’t seen anything that really improved upon that recipe. Blizzard took a good thing and continued it. There is value in that but with a 14 year development cycle it leaves me wondering what they did.”
• Fulguralis at Killing ‘em Slowly spent the night tied up in server woes, but still thinks the fuss over login issues was unwarranted – “Not only did they want me to play a game simulating a fantastical hell on Earth, but they really wanted me to feel it as well. This, of course, is evidenced by the server failure just as I was getting going.”
• The Ancient at Tome of the Ancient presents us with a first impressions post from the rare point of view of a total Diablo noob – “Clicking to move was strange at first, I think not being able to change the camera angle was the hardest thing to get used to for me.”
• Spinks writes a detailed and interesting post covering the first day as an overview – “I was just getting really wound up by the templar’s gormtastic moralising and cheesy combat comments (eg. “Evil has been REBUKED!”) and thinking, “You know, what my barbarian really needs is a sleazy thief sidekick who’ll spend the whole time trying to hit on me and any female associates “ and sure enough, Blizzard obliged.”
• Pathak / Malygos writes up impressions of the game, including the horror or lack therof – “D1 was a little scary, and I didn’t get far in D2. I didn’t get far in the last Doom game, because of the lighting, and even Bioshock could only be handled in small amounts. So, I was expecting to be jumping out of my skin, but it hasn’t happened.”
• No More Noob writes up general impressions including those of the game’s difficulty – “Sure you’re going to start the first few levels pretty much man handling things…then you run into a pack of elite type monster with a sub boss and your crap habit of not clearing things behind you all of a sudden turns out to not be such a great idea. If you’re not careful you will die.”
• Live Like A Nerd writes up a comprehensive first-impressions post, touching on story, online status, and a lot more – “Of course, I was curious what others think about the game, and so I went and had a look at Metacritic. I wish I hadn’t looked. Metacritic is symptomatic for what’s wrong with gamers today. “

​More at Diablo 3: Specific Points – talents, auctions, battletags and more

More Reading

• If Diablo 3 were a girl
• Diablo Dialogue – I’ll Give You an Error 37
• Diablo 3 world first scored by World of Warcraft raiding guild

Witch Doctor

Resource: Mana

Pros:

Cons:

Wizard

Resource: Arcane Power

Pros:

Cons:

Are you ready for Diablo III? Do you have all the resources you need to help you with the game?

I've been waiting a looong time for Diablo III — over a decade, in fact. Blizzard announced the game in 2008. That's four years since the announcement alone! Needless to say, I'm excited.

But I'm also prepared. When I start playing tonight, I'll have a bevy of online resources available to help me out, and I've compiled them for you! Well, for me. But for you, too.

• D3DB is the ZAM Network's answer to Wowhead for Diablo III — an exhaustive database of items, abilities, bad guys, and more.

• DiabloFans is the Curse Network's answer to MMO-Champion for Diablo III. Lots of datamining, blue posts, and all that jazz.

• The official Diablo III site has the fantastic Game Guide, which has everything from talent calculators to skill videos. Blizzard knocked it out of the park.

• BlizzPlanet will keep you abreast of all the latest Blizzard news, going beyond blue posts.

• ForceStrategy has you covered for Diablo video, which might become pretty necessary once you roll into higher difficulties!

• Our sister site Massively will be covering Diablo III as part of its daily online gaming coverage.

More at All of the Diablo 3 resources a player needs

More Reading

• 3 Reasons I Will Not Play Diablo 3
• Diablo III Midnight Launch: Irvine Livestream & NYC Plans
• Learn to Play World of Warcraft PVP Well

Diablo 3 is the third installment in the Diablo franchise by Blizzard Entertainment. It is full of dark fantasy themed action role playing game that everyone will surely love and enjoy. But, what to expect from this new installment?

Evil is returning in just a few days, and if you want to be ready for all the death and destruction that's out there, you'll want to be sure to read up on what the blues are saying. We've collected some of the more important posts over the last week to share with you.

Keep in mind that when Diablo 3 does finally release this Tuesday, all WoW Annual Pass subscribers will get instant access. You can upgrade your account later to the Collector's Edition if you've ordered that. Also remember that you can download the client files now so you won't have to wait around much on release night.

We're also planning on having some Diablo 3 lore material for you to enjoy on Monday, so stay tuned for that.

Hit the jump to learn about special beta titles, known issues in the D3 release, and why feeling like a total overpowered badass is a good thing.

Vasadan — 1.0.1 KNOWN ISSUES LIST – UPDATED 5/11/12

Hello everyone, and welcome to Sanctuary! Below you will find the Known Issues list for our 1.0.1 patch. Please do not report bugs that you see on this list as we already know about them, and help out other players reporting bugs by referring them to this list. Thank you!

SPOILER WARNING: If you have not yet completed Diablo III on Normal, some issues described in this list may include spoilers.

Achievements

• The description of the Feat of Strength for “One of the Chosen” does not specifically state that it was granted to Closed Beta players, not all Beta players.
• The description of the achievement “Why'd It Have To Be Snakes?” is misleading.
• The description of the achievement “Crispy Critters” implies that all critters are found in one zone, but they are not. Good luck finding them!

Auction House

• You cannot list equipped items that have been bought from a vendor.

Battle.net

• It is possible to get ERROR 37 (The servers are busy, please try again) when logging in if the servers are under heavy stress. This error literally means that the servers are busy and that you should try again, so please try again in a minute or so!
• Very quickly entering, leaving, and switching chat channels over and over can cause a player from getting locked out of chat channels.
• It is possible for a friend to be on your friend's list with no name if that friend has a BattleTag but has never logged into Diablo III and is offline.
• Changing your account's Parental Controls while you are in Diablo III can disconnect you from Diablo III. Workaround: Exit Diablo III before changing Parental Controls.

Combat

• Damage over time debuffs are not benefiting from items that grant crit chance.
• The resurrection animation speed is being calculated by the player's attack speed. It actually should be a set amount across all players.

Environment

• Act 2 – Players who cast Town Portal while standing in a tar pit will cause the tar pit slowing debuff to stay on your character until you leave the game or manually walk into and out of a tar pit.

Monsters

• The gold dropped from Treasure Goblins can be picked up by all members of the party. Items dropped by the Treasure Goblins are still individual player drops.
• It is possible for Champion-class monsters with the Waller affix to cast their walls at their location rather than at the player's location.

Followers

• The total life for Followers is rounding incorrectly and is off by 1.

Quests

• Act 1 – The Scoundrel can fail to appear if monsters are present at his spawn location at the start of the quest “The Broken Blade : Go to the Drowned Temple”.
• Workaround: Leave the game and create a new one, or don't kite monsters to Scoundrel' spawning area.

Starter Edition

• When a Starter Edition character hits level 13, the experience bar will read 0/0. If the player upgrades, they will start a 0 experience towards level 14.

Tools

• If the user has any connections configured in “Dial-up and Virtual Private Network settings” and they're set to “Dial whenever a network connection is not present,” the install won't proceed past 10%.
• It is possible for your cinematics to stutter and not play well if you begin playing Diablo III immediately when reaching Yellow Data. Workaround: Exit Diablo III and fully patch your game. Your cinematics should play fine then.

Compatibility

• Running programs that put an overlay over Diablo III (such as Mumble, Xfire, and MSI Afterburner) can cause Diablo III to crash. Use these overlays at your own risk.

Mac

• The Restore Hero button does not become available after deleting a hero until leaving and returning to the Select Hero page.
• Game client window becomes unresponsive when a dialog box is opened in the background.

source

Bashiok — Choose your correct region

As Global Play will be disabled until after the game launches in all regions, it's important that you choose your account's correct region when attempting to play the game. If you do not select your correct region, your login attempt will be denied, and you will not be able to connect.

To choose your correct region:

• At the log in screen click on Options
• Choose the Account tab
• Select your correct region in the Region drop down

Ensuring your correct region is selected, attempt logging in again, and watch the breaking news window for additional service information.

source

Bashiok — Feeling like a total overpowered badass

A big part of what makes Diablo for us, or maybe more specifically Diablo III, is feeling like a total overpowered badass. It's entirely possible that what makes you feel overpowered is… in fact overpowered. We're not so dumb as to think there won't be someone that will find a build or co-op comp that we just didn't expect, and is able to take down Inferno due to an oversight, bug, 'creative use of game mechanics', or just a downright overpowered set of abilities. There are just too many skills, too many builds, too many possible comps, and too many players to believe we've been able to catch everything.

Some of that is cool. Some of what makes a Diablo game is the idea (and fact) that you can kind of outsmart the game and break its mechanics. Unlike a game like World of Warcraft where the core design of the game is to create a balanced experience and every change funnels into that, Diablo III just doesn't take the same approach. We don't mind if there are some inconsistencies and emergent favorites, we'd rather have tons of customization than boil it all down for the sake of balance. With a purely co-op (and eventually non-competitive PvP environment) we have that luxury, whereas World of Warcraft does not.

What we don't want to happen, and what we will absolutely work to patch and fix as quickly as possible, are the situations we simply can't predict that could trivialize parts of the game. There could be some build we never thought of that is super effective against a specific boss in Inferno, and we'll likely want to rein those situations in.

I'm not personally worried about Inferno being too hard. People can complain all they want about that. I'm more worried about people focusing too specifically on clearing Inferno, someone beating it too quickly through cheesy tactics or bugs or broken OP builds, and everyone going nuts saying Inferno is clearly too easy (although they themselves will probably still be in Nightmare). People naturally want to focus on a competition of who can beat what first, or speed runs, or other time-based achievements, which is at odds with what the game is really all about (the item hunt).

source

Lylirra — How to claim a sigil

Here's how to claim a sigil:

• Step 1: Go to the Diablo III launch site
• Step 2: Click on the Claim Your Sigil button (far right)
• Step 3: Click on CREATE BANNER
• Step 4: Select a class to create your banner, click “Next”
• Step 5: Select your background, customize your banner, and then customize your sigil
• Step 6: Once your selections are made, click “Next”
• Step 7: Enter a nickname (any nickname will work, doesn't have to be your BattleTag), your Battle.net email address, toggle the “I agree” option, and then click “Finish”

If your submission was successful, you'll see the “You've successfully redeemed your sigil!” message and should receive a confirmation email at the address entered. To earn all five hero sigils, repeat steps 3 – 7 for each class.

Hope that helps! If the process is still kind of confusing, let me know. You may also want to check out this thread for some additional details and tips.

source

Lylirra — “One of the Chose” Feat of Strength

In celebration of a successful beta test, all players who were invited to participate in the Diablo III closed beta will receive the commemorative Feat of Strength, “One of the Chosen.” For eligible players, this feat will appear automatically in the Feat of Strength list after logging in for the first time as well as unlock a unique sigil that can be used on character banners.

In order to be eligible for “One of the Chosen,” you must have had a Diablo III closed beta license attached to your Battle.net account (it isn't necessary to have downloaded or logged into the beta itself). Please note that players who participated only in the Open Beta Weekend, but were not invited to the closed beta, will not receive this Feat of Strength.

Thank you once again to all of our beta participants. We look forward to seeing you in Sanctuary!

source

Bashiok — ATI 12.4 Catalyst – Graphic Issue

We've recently become aware that playing Diablo III with the latest Catalyst 12.4 drivers for ATI cards may cause some visual artifacts for specific hardware configurations. This issue affects users of ATI Radeon HD 2400, 2600, 2900, 3400, 3600 and 4500 graphics cards under Windows Vista and Windows 7. ATI Radeon HD 4600, 4700, 4800, 5000, 6000 and 7000 series products are unaffected, as is Windows XP.

ATI is aware and investigating. Until a solution can be provided we recommend those affected use the Catalyst 12.3 drivers.

Update
This issue has now been resolved in the AMD Catalyst 12.4a hotfix driver. Users of the ATI Radeon HD 2400, 2600, 2900, 3400, 3600 and 4500 graphics cards are the only AMD customers who need to download this hotfix driver.

source…More at All of the Diablo 3 resources a player needs