After announcing the release date just last week, Blizzard has launched Diablo 3's Rise of the Necromancer DLC. Anticipation for this DLC has been building for months, as it adds the much-loved Necromancer class from Diablo 2. The DLC went live with Diablo 3 version 2.6.0, which was patched into the game just a little while ago.
After what feels like an eternity of waiting, Blizzard has finally given a release date to Diablo 3's incoming Rise of the Necromancer DLC. The DLC, as many of you already know (or could have guessed from the title alone) adds the necromancer class to the game, reviving a popular class from Diablo 2. It also ships with a handful of other perks for those who choose to shell out Blizzard's $14.99 asking price.
In celebration of Diablo's 20th Anniversary, Blizzard has announced cross-game promotions with each of its other titles. The Lord of Terror will be featured in all Blizzard titles in one way or another, with some games getting more content than others. Blizzard hasn't revealed when, precisely, these promotions will begin, but it seems safe to assume that they'll kick off on or around December 31, which is the anniversary of the original game's release.
Blizzard's BlizzCon is being held this weekend, and the developer has announced that one of its most classic games, the original Diablo, is making a return within the newer Diablo 3. In honor of the original dungeon crawler's 20th anniversary, Blizzard is releasing a new "Darkening of Tristram" update for Diablo 3, allowing players to experience the classic graphics and gameplay, all on the engine of the latest entry.
If you've been playing Blizzard games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, and the recent Overwatch over the years, you know the name Battle.net as being synonymous with the developer's own. First introduced back in 1996 with the debut of the original Diablo, Battle.net was Blizzard's core multiplayer platform used to power every game that followed. But after 20 years of use, Blizzard announced last week that it was putting the name to rest.
Diablo III owners will be getting patch 2.4.2 very soon, and with it will come a trio of new difficulty levels — levels XI, XII, and XIII. If that’s not enough to satisfy you, the patch will update existing items and add new items, including updates to a lot of Legendary and Set goods and additions to the Legendary items and powers. The update goes on from there, including some UI tweaks and some enhanced Adventure Mode rewards.
If you were hoping to play World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, or any other Blizzard title last night, you probably had issues connecting. In fact, all of Blizzard's US servers were down for an extended period last night. There was no scheduled maintenance causing the downtime, instead the culprits were a group of Lizards.
The hacker group known as Lizard Squad decided that they needed to target Blizzard's US servers last night, and they appear to have made quick work of them. All Battle.net games were offline for an indeterminate amount of time last night and this morning. The hacker group took credit for the attack, and were sure to tweet about it just before they began their assault.
Blizzard responded to the attack by confirming that they were in fact hit with a "potential DDoS" at one of their datacenters. They then stated that they had taken actions to bring their services back up, and would continue working to mitigate the impact. A bit later they confirmed that a second attack had happened, but their "supercool internet-shield" stopped it.
Many people are wondering why Lizard Squad picked this time to focus an attack on Blizzard's service. There are a few theories floating around, though the group hasn't confirmed their motive. Personally, I think that it might have something to do with the legal action against private vanilla WoW server, Nostalrius. Perhaps some members of the Squad enjoyed playing on the server, and decided to see how Blizzard enjoyed having their servers shut down.
Regardless of the motive, Blizzard appears to be unharmed after the attack, and a large number of players were inconvenienced for a few hours. There are also reports of the team hacking one or more Blizzard staff email accounts, though Blizzard hasn't confirmed these.
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If you played Diablo II back in the day, then you remember the Cow Level. Sure, Blizzard had a good time telling everyone that it didn't exist, and still toys with the community to this day. However, despite what they say, the Cow Level exists, and there's actually a new one that you can only access during the month of March.
Two of Blizzard's most-successful IP's are of course, Warcraft and Diablo. Both universes have some great games, and the current iteration of both are still highly popular (even if WoW keeps losing subscribers). What's interesting is that Blizzard seems to be pulling popular features from one game, and porting them over to the other.
Behold, the one way in which you're going to come back to the Diablo franchise without hating yourself for dropping all those SOJs in a huff. A new camera angle! A demonstration of a new camera angle has been released to the public by innovator Monstrousd3, one in which you'll find yourself face to face with your enemies, in a way you've only ever once experienced before - back when you dropped D3 for the first time and went back to World of Warcraft.
The first time that we talked about the coming expansion pack for Diablo III called Reaper of Souls was last summer. We though that expansion would have landed last year, but that never happened. The good news is that the wait is over.
It’s time to be done with the longest-lasting experiment in real-cash trade for Diablo items in the history of the Diablo gamin franchise. It will be Tuesday, March 18th when the gold and real-money auction houses are taken down entirely, while the rest of the auction house ecosystem will remain in play. Until June 24th, players will be able to access their "completed" tabs - but we wouldn’t risk it.
