jdodson: This is an interesting idea. Give people more levels to hit after 60 and some added benefit to that progression.

Kind of wondered given Jay Wilson's recent flap if he would say anything, looks like not :)

http://i.imgur.com/mVhWE.png

hardeyez: oki, so 1.0.4 really will get me playing again... :)

jdodson: Yep. Me too.

jdodson: Something I don't use a lot but some new UI love would be a really great thing!

jdodson: Wow. They are really addIng a lot to the game. More than I thought they would frankly. More levels beyond 60 does increase the end game but I hope it's more than just more grinding.

Travis: Yeah, they aren't technically levels, no new skills or anything like that, no stat boosts, but the extra MF/GF will be a compelling reason to want them! I'm looking forward to it.

Tungsten: I was hoping that the Diablo "always on" connection would mean more post release support. In my wildest dreams, Diablo is like Minecraft, receiving updates and major improvements years after its release. As long as they don't call it DLC and slap a $10 price tag on it, I'm happy.

jdodson: Yeah, it seems that is happening with it. No problems with that here immediately. That said, they could patch it and change it so much that it doesnt resemble what it was. Kind of sad because in that case you cant roll back to play what it was.

Kind of a loss of the 1.0, which whereas 1.0 wasn't awesome it was 1.0 and to lose that if the game goes to something different would be unfortunate in a way.

jdodson: 1.0.4.

And yeah, the Witch Doctor changes are sweet. After Normal my pets were paper. Some people had success with pet builds but after some serious gearing. Since I was more arm chair I had to find a build natural to the WD that would work and it was a fine powerful build but wasn't how I wanted to play it.

This looks pretty epic, but I wonder if the other summons will get buffs too. Having a screen full of pets would be awesome and I am really interested in checking out the full patch notes.

Travis: Yeah, 1.0.4. Doh!

A community manager chimed in on reddit an confirmed that the other pets will be getting buffs as well. Except bears apparently, but they were just one-shots right?

jdodson: Bears are pretty popular as is, so it makes sense they are not getting buffed. Havent played my WD high enough to use the ability. After 1.0.4 I will though :)

jdodson: Seems like very reasonable buffs. Is there anything in your play style/build that is getting an upgrade?

Chowda: It was nice to see them acknowledge some things, but I was hoping for more in the DH announcement. I just got my DH to 60 last night and am currently into act 2 inferno.

Hungering arrow is the only viable generator a DH has. It's damage is so far ahead of the others it would be a waste to use anything else. Another annoyance are the passives. Other classes have more viable options, but I've been using the same 3 forever and there's no reason to change. Perhaps a buff to the other generators will make some other passives viable.

I have 4 classes at 60, only my WD is back at 20. DH does the most damage by far. Without really upgrading my gear I was able to get to inferno and clear act1 inferno in about 2 hours. This has been impossible on my other classes. The DH is in a good place overall. It shall be interesting to see how the update really affects the class.

Travis: One thing to keep in mind with all of these is that there are a LOT more changes coming to every class than what they report in these blog posts. We won't k ow everything until someone parses the massive data dump in the patch notes.

jdodson: Seems like Monk(so far I haven't read DH yet) are getting some insane buffs. I want to see things explode with the 700% weapon damage!

jdodson: I agree, from the comments it seems some people have a huge problem with the Wiz nerf. But its Blizzard, im frankly surprised they are not nerfing more than they are with the Barb and Wiz both.

jdodson: Demos are a great thing. Too bad a lot of triple A games don't release them.

jdodson: Good stuff. Kind of would like to have seen other Barb skills buffed, but like you said its already pretty powerful as is.

jdodson: Good stuff. I have a few legendaries and like the post says, they just felt like bit better rare. Affixing certain abilities sounds awesome too, the Angel / Demon summon seems fun.

Travis: I really hope to get that fire chains demon summoning two-hander when I get my barb up to 60. That looks so damn cool.

Travis: One thing they didn't mention is the drop rate. I could have sworn I saw that the drop rate was increasing for Legendaries, but I could be wrong. I *hope* it increases, otherwise these new awesome items are going to be selling for hundreds of millions on the auction house.

jdodson: I hope it increases to, because I doubt ill have enough gold to pay for them, like you said.

Travis: This will make me come back. It seems that they focus too much on making it easier, rather than making it less frustrating, though. Those aren't the same. Invulnerable minions was fine, just not with some of the other crazy things.

In addition to increasing legendary drops, they're also buffing the stats on legendaries to make them more, well, legendary. Can't wait to see the further changes to legendaries.

hardeyez: Yeah, I might come back after this, if drops improve and the time spent doesn't feel like a waste (like it does now, I haven't upgraded my equipment since about 4 acts ago...) and the repair costs stop bankrupting me :)

Chowda: This is only one update of several coming from the dev team. I think we'll see 5-7 blog posts in total detailing the changes. They are definitely saying the right things! Let's hope they deliver and sooner than later.

jdodson: I agree, looking forward to the next posts about it to drop.

Tungsten: Looks good. Still really waiting for PVP. Nerfing the leet packs will make HC a little less... scary as hell.

jdodson: Agreed. Still in Nightmare act 3 though.

Travis: Hell is a lot of fun. Inferno is just brutal for my tastes though. I think they could keep the difficulty where it is, but simplify and improve item drops and elite packs (which they are doing) to make Inferno seem less of a chore. I am really looking forward to getting back into Inferno when 1.4 comes around.

Tungsten: Random Suggestion: What about a horde mode? Just stick a group in an arena and sick elite packs on 'em until they crack.

Travis: That would be loads of fun. I love the jar of souls event but thought it ended just when it was getting good. I figured it would at least end with an elite pack.

jdodson: That kind of mode would be fun. See how many rounds one could survive. Kind of like ut2004.

Tungsten: Here's mine:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Tungsten-1411/hero/24042013

Not the highest level, but it's my highest HC Character (hence the 13k HP)

hardeyez: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Hardeyez-1191/ with my 2 chars (the DH is mine, the witch dr is my daughter's)

hardeyez: oh and here's insano chowda's http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/chowda-1109/ he's spent WAY too much time on it... :)

jdodson: Tungsten: Like how many of your char names are Steaks! :)

Hardeyez: Cool. Looks like we don't create many characters either. I only have 3 and its because I didn't like the Female Barb's voice, rolled a dude.

Tungsten: I decided to name all of my HC characters after meat. Helps me get into the frame of mind that they could die at any time. Kind of macabre.

jdodson: Some cool easter eggs I found recently were the ones in Rage. I saw videos online and sort of figured out the rest.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/183

The Legend of Zelda Link to the Past I found an easter egg. Well or a bug, I don't know. I was able to do it a few times and my cousin was able to do it on his system as well.

What you did was go through the game normal and get the sword tempered. Then save the game and quit and start a new game. Go up in the rain to the left and talk to the guards blocking the exit. They will reveal mostly all the text that everyone says in the game. They will just keep feeding it to you, its kind of neat. Didn't know if that was an easter egg or a bug. Either way, it was awesome.

jdodson: Oh and is development hell in hell mode?

Tungsten: It's random, but apparently it shows up more often in the higher difficulties. I found this in nightmare.
BTW: that is not my screenshot. I tried to take some, but was unable to recover them.

Tungsten: You know when you are looking for the royal crypts? If you ever see four doors open instead of three, one of them is "Development Hell". It's really just a normal crypt but all the zombies have the names and titles of the real people that worked on the game and the Lead Designer is an Elite.

Tungsten: Were you ever able to get into the secret room in link to the past that was made for the contest? Know what I'm talking about? It's named after the kid who won the contest and you have to do some ridiculous dash to get into it. (I never was able to pull it off, so I'm no help there."

jdodson: I did find that one, yeah. I think I read about it in Nintendo Power back in the day and eventually pulled it off.

WhiteboySlim: I was able to get to the secret room in Link to the Past as well. There wasn't really anything in there but some rupees, but it was a cool easter egg. Here's some other fun easter eggs:
In Mega Man X you can learn Ryu/Ken's hadoken. :)
In Fallout 3 you can find a vault 77 jumpsuit, which is a reference to the Penny Arcade comic about the Puppet Man.
In Dungeon Siege there is a secret chicken level, which is a spoof of Diablo's cow level.
In Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, if you beat the final boss immediately after starting a new game + you get the developers ending, where you can talk to NPC's based on the developers.

jdodson: Chicken level in Dungeon Siege? Awesome, have to check that out.

Tungsten: I did the Megaman Haduken thing. That was fun. What about Max (of Sam and Max) in Star Wars Jedi... damn what was that called? Forgot it.

hardeyez: One of the games I worked on Dr. Muto had several easter eggs/secret characters. I.e. the artists had fun modelling each other, the programmers, and other fun stuff. (here's a somewhat complete list I quickly found http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/cheats/PS2/dr_muto.html although I'm pretty sure we also had MADDOG which was the initial lead programmer)

Usually there's lots of extra bits we throw into a game, but most get yanked out before shipping as they aren't appropriate to the age level of the game (another game I worked on Looney Tunes Racing had some really funny carts making fun of me that the artists created, but they were definitely not appropriate for the games rating... so they didn't ship with the game)

jdodson: Ha, thats awesome.

Travis: I never got disappointed with it until I stopped playing it for the Steam sale. Now, I can't really imagine wanting to play it. Diablo 2 was definitely a pick-up and put-down game, though. I imagine I'll be back to Sanctuary many times until D4 is released.

jdodson: I think I was starting to get weary of it when I started my second character class. Good game, I just Imagine I'll play Skyrim more. Maybe even Terraria.

hardeyez: I agree, once I started working through Hell mode (and I upgraded the craftsmen until I couldn't as there is yet another resource for them that is blocking until Inferno mode -- which happened before I got to the skeleton king... same as happened in nightmare mode), it just started to feel like work and not "fun" so I played less. Now it just doesn't seem fun enough to pick back up.

Maybe I'll feel differently after a few patches, or a few months have gone by.

jdodson: I agree. I am going to keep checking it out and playing it here and there over time.

Tungsten: Just started back up after getting back from vacation. I'm playing exclusively HardCore right now, and it's pretty fun.

jdodson: Interesting. Haven't played a Hardcore character yet.

Tungsten: The lag monster (okay, I probably would have died even without the lag) killed a level 37 two days ago. I mourned for about 3 hours and then rolled a new Demon Hunter.

Robert_Lount: I was getting pretty pumped about d3 reading your posts and the comments so then I decided to see how it'd run under Wine and found this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=1 - Bummer. I guess I'm sticking with the first 2 =)

jdodson: Yeah really. It seems they made have had some false positives they are not quite admitting yet. Happened before with WoW so... Yeah waiting it out is good.

Horrible to be banned for nothing, if it indeed is nothing.