Blizzard Quote [source]

Watch Gabe, Tycho, and Jamie from Penny Arcade team up with Scott Kurtz, creator of PvP Online, to try out the new console controls on the PS3 version of Diablo III.  

Together, they track down Leoric the Skeleton King on a four-player rampage of demon-slaying, trash-talking, and ninja-looting. We don't want to spoil the video for you, but suffice it to say shenanigans are on the rise in New Tristram.

Watch the short highlight reel of their hijinks-infused playthrough here:

Or, if you’d rather get comfortable and watch the full two-hour playthrough, it's right over here:

Blizzard Quote [source]

An exciting new contest is coming to this year’s show: the BlizzCon2013 Talent Contest! Blizzard gamers are an incredibly talented bunch, and this is your opportunity to shine a spotlight on your skills and celebrate Blizzard gaming culture along with BlizzCon attendees and viewers from around the world.

Can you play the Diablo theme on a 12-string guitar? Can you sing Lament of the Highborn? Are you the living embodiment of Sarah Kerrigan? Does your band play a Blizzard-themed song you can’t wait for everyone to hear? Well, we can’t wait to watch you act, sing, dance, and strut your stuff live on stage at BlizzCon 2013!

To be considered, you’ll need to create a 2-minute video of you (or your band, troupe, or what have you) performing your Blizzard-themed talent, post it on YouTube, and submit a link (or if you’re part of a troupe, have your troupe’s spokesperson upload it). Below are some examples of the kind of acts we have in mind.

Remember, what follows are just some ideas and guidelines. We know you have skills we haven’t even dreamed of, so surprise us! We’re eagerly looking forward to seeing you in action.

• Drama! Re-enact a scene or monologue from a Blizzard game
• Comedy! Make us laugh Blizzard-inspired stand-up or sketch comedy
• Music! Perform an instrumental or vocal cover of a Blizzard song, or write and perform your own original composition
• Dance! Come up with an original dance routine set to Blizzard music or original Blizzard-themed compositions

Please don’t limit yourself, and don’t be afraid to show us your best, because we aren’t selecting finalists based on any pre-existing categories. Instead finalists will be selected based on talent, live performance (remember, you could be performing on stage!), humor, entertainment, originality, creativity, and strong Blizzard theming.

Submissions are now open, so check out the rules, then head over to the contest page (scroll down) to sign up.

Don't delay! Sign ups close August 6!

Please feel free to email any questions you might have to BlizzConContest@blizzard.com!

See you in the limelight!

Blizzard Quote [source]

Over the past year, we've made some changes to our account rollback policy for players in the Asia, Americas, and Europe regions. These updates were an added step in protecting the in-game economy from the noted rise of false compromised account claims by players attempting to duplicate items. To date, these policy changes have been effective in helping to reduce the number of duplicated items in the game.

On August 6, we'll be further updating the policy to include a cap on gold and commodities that are restored as part of the process, adding further protections for the game economy.

[What's Changing Starting Tuesday, August 6]

All character equipment (including weapons and armor) restored via the Diablo III rollback service will continue to be bound to the restored account. The restored items cannot be traded with other players or posted on the auction house, but they can still be shared with other characters on the account and sold to merchant NPCs.

Additionally, the below changes to gold and commodities restoration will also occur:

• Gems:

  • Each gem type (Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby,Topaz) up to Perfect Square will be restored up to a total maximum count of 500 of that type (e.g. 500 Flawless Amethysts). Marquise gems will be restored in full, as they are Bind-on-Account. Higher level gems will be restored up to the following limits:
    • Radiant Square – 250
    • Star – 100
    • Flawless Star – 50
    • Perfect Star – 25
    • Radiant Star – 10

• Crafting Materials:

  • Each type of crafting material will be restored up to a total maximum count of 500 (e.g. 500 Subtle Essence).
  • Each type of training material will be restored up to a total of 500 (e.g. 500 Tomes of Blacksmithing).
  • Each type of crafting plan will be restored up to a total of 1 (e.g. 1 plan for Cain’s Fate).

• Gold:

  • Gold restored will be limited to 10 million.

As always we are committed to continuing to monitor the overall health and economy of the game and make additional tweaks if necessary.

[Protecting Your Account]

Considering that the rollback service is intended to help players whose accounts have been compromised, we obviously wish that no one ever needed to use it. The best way to help protect yourself from account compromise is to secure your PC and Battle.net account, for example by adding a Battle.net Authenticator. While no security measure is completely foolproof, we've often found that many accounts are compromised a second time simply because players do not take any action to protect themselves after being compromised the first time.

To learn more about the Battle.net Authenticator and some best practices for securing your PC against viruses and malware, check out the links below.

Blizzard Quote [source]

During tomorrow's scheduled maintenance, we will be applying a hotfix in both the Americas and European gameplay regions, increasing the maximum stack size for gold listings on the real-money auction house from 10 million to 50 million *. (As with previous changes, the minimum price per stack will remain at $0.25.)

For those who may be curious, this change is being made to ensure that the price of gold in the real-money house remains competitive compared to third-party sites. Since one of the goals of the real-money auction house is to provide players a safe place in which to both buy and sell commodities, we want to make sure it continues to be useful and that don’t players to feel forced to use third-party sites simply because it's the cheaper option. Also, for those who may be concerned, please rest assured that the bug which caused the gold dupe back in May (when we raised the stack size cap to 10 million) has indeed been resolved and should not resurface as a result of this hotfix. Even so, we will be conducting extensive testing in the live game environment during maintenance before bringing the servers up to verify that no new issues were caused as the result of raising the cap to 50 million.

Once this hotfix is live, we’ll post an update to this thread as well as on the front page of the community site so you won’t miss out. Thanks!

* Please note that this change will only apply to gold auctions created after the hotfix has gone live; any auction posted beforehand, as well as those still active when the hotfix is implemented, will continue to be valued at 10,000,000 gold per stack.

Blizzard Quote [source]

What sleek and beastly vehicle would suit the refined tastes of the Lord of Terror? Designers Lion and Pan have come together to share their Hell-forged motorcycle in this week's Artisan Showcase!

Recently Taiwanese community manager Broodlisk interviewed these two passionate designers about their Diablo-themed motorcycle. Lin WenXian (also known as Lion) and Pan WenZhong (also known as Pan) won the excellent work prize in the 2013 KYMCO Motorcycle Design Competition with their “DIABLO” design, and Broodlisk interviewed them to understand how Diablo came out from our screens to become a running motorcycle on the road.

Q. Please tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Lion: I am called Lion. Both of us are graduates of Dayeh University, and our major was Industrial Design. The reason we chose to create DIABLO was the brainstorming of us and our German teacher, Johann Geiger.

Pan: I am called Pan. The first time we made a connection with KYMCO was when we participated in the first KYMCO Design Competition last year and I was dragged into entering the game by Lion. We actually got some experience from the competition because Lion won first prize, and that gave us the motivation to enter the second Competition this year.

During the whole discussion, we tried to search for some young elements because our target group is between 18 to 25 years old. It happened that the most popular news was all about Diablo III and e-sports back then, so we made up our minds to use DIABLO.

Q. Could you explain more details about how you put DIABLO on this motorcycle?

Pan: First, we collected a lot of research about DIABLO to analyze the design language. For example, the front brake of this motorcycle must clamp the wheel, so we imagined that as Diablo’s claw and we made it look like powerful claws are clamping the front wheel. The next part was the front end of the motorcycle, and the first thing came to our minds was Diablo’s head. We also made its horns into the rear-view mirrors. We can see a lot of hard and sharp triangles on Diablo, and we used the concept of those special triangles to slowly build the whole body of the motorcycle.

Lion: Looking at the head, you can see where the triangles are used.

Can you see the claws and head of Diablo?

Pan: Well, the original design of the motorcycle was more complicated, artistic and organic, but or teacher, Geiger, thought it was too much because there were too many unnecessary designs. So, we kept simplifying the design. Also, you can see another part with lots of curves. We got that part from Diablo’s muscles. The reason we used it is so that the motorcycle doesn’t look too hard.

Q. Then why did you leave so much space under the backseat?

Pan: That’s because the road conditions of Taiwan are so “smooth” (laughter), and we designed a “motocross for city” which provides great shock absorbing effects when riding in the cities in Taiwan.

Lion: From the back of the motorcycle, you can see that the whole thing tilts a little forward, like people tilt while running, which makes its orientation appear forward-leaning. We hope that people will look dominating when riding it. We also created a virtual 1 to 10 scale character we called dummy to see how “dominating” it would be.

It was designed according to the local road conditions in Taiwan and incorporated a "green" concept.

Q. What are the 2 bottles on the both sides of the motorcycle? They look like some kind of accelerators.

Lion: Those are fuel cells filled with hydrogen, and they will emit water when it is transformed into electricity, because hydrogen becomes water after combining with oxygen in the air. The chlorophyll battery we used last time was more complex because it transformed chlorophyll into electricity and we needed to refill the water to charge it.

Q. Did you learn all this in school?

Pan: Basically, you need to know a lot of different technologies, but you are required to gain more information if you want to do something different.

Lion: Well, we learned all of this information by ourselves. The range of industrial design is very wide, and includes art, design, technology, mechanism, engineering, and materials.

Q. Are you going to attend any other design competitions in addition to the motorcycle design competition?

Pan: To be honest, I just attended the“Make it Real! Aivia Esports mouse design competition” award ceremony a few days ago and I was one of the finalists.

Q. What’s your procedure for attending competitions?

Lion: Um... we have some drafts first, and discuss the concept with our teacher. Later, we draw some pictures about it, and we don’t make models until we are chosen.

Pan: Actually this procedure is not only for competitions. Whatever we do, we start with drafts and designs, and we won’t do definite models until we confirm the look or shape.

Q. When did you guys begin to play the Diablo series?

Lion: The first Diablo series I played was Diablo II, and I bought Diablo III right after it was released. I think Diablo III is fantastic! Not only the game production, but also the characters created by the American artists are marvelous! My friend bought the Diablo III collector’s edition, and an art book is included inside. I always borrow that book from my friend because I think their creative process is very cool. I think Blizzard Entertainment Taiwan can also ask our teacher to cooperate in developing some creative Diablo merchandise.

Pan: You know, I have had certain “special” ability in video games since I was a child, which is I’ve lose in games all the time. That is why playing games is rarely an option for my entertainment. However, on the artistic side, the creation of characters, and even the animated video for Diablo really appeal to me and make me stay in the game. Frankly speaking, I hope to see it on the big screen one day.

Q. It’s a nice idea to hold a competition, but can there be too many industrial design competitions for students to take part in?

Pan: There are tons of competitions, but students are all willing to attend these competitions. If a competition is related to video games, I think they will be more eager to get in because they will get a lot of responses. The award can be divided into product-oriented or design-oriented, which gives competitors different directions to consider how their works will be when designing. However much the prize is, we intend to take part in those competitions in which the themes are more interesting because we can expand our thoughts and show our abilities as much as possible to compete with students from other schools.

Ride DIABLO and dominate the night!

Q. Last, give some words to those rookies who also want to bring the concepts from games into industrial design in a fashionable style!!

Pan: By transforming virtual games into real objects through design, designers can make people feel these things are fashionable because people can really touch and use these objects in daily life. When you are using these objects, you will be like, “How cool!” and that’s where fashion comes from.

Lion: Call and meet Johann Geiger! (laughter) My major was mechanical engineering, and I was totally an amateur on these art works. I improved a lot after following him to attend competitions handle cases, and accumulate experience. His teaching is really special and he also keeps updating his thoughts all the time.

This is Lion and Pan's original DIABLO motorcycle!

Do you want to be someone like them who bravely goes forward to achieve your dreams? Do it now! Working hard and accumulating experience is the only way to become a master of your craft!

What do you think of Lion and Pan's Diablo motorcycle design? What other Diablo characters do you think could use a snazzy ride, and what do you think they would look like? Let us know in the comments below!

Are you an aspiring artist or artisan? Make sure to share your creations with us in the Community Creations forum!