@Diablo was busy late yesterday, coughing up some interesting tidbits on a variety of issues. Here they are, with the fan questions in white, the Bliz replies in blue, and some added Diablo Wiki links for those who wish to gain additional information on the topics.
[BLUE]
How many shrine effects will be in the game? Are there some new effects (compared to D2) or maybe negative or random (like in D1)?—Rocky3007
Diablo III [WIKI]shrine[/WIKI] effects are short term [WIKI]buffs [/WIKI]designed to push you into [WIKI]combat [/WIKI]to get the most from them. No penalties.—Diablo
The new concept art and screenshot are GREAT! What’s the green cloud, a gas potion or a skill maybe?—akumagin
Looks to me like the monk just killed a rare monster with the Plague affix.—Diablo
Will you be allowed to resurrect your team mate in Arenas? If not, are resurrection potions still in the game for regular play?—NocturneGS
Once you’re dead in the Arena you have to wait until the next round.—Diablo
No reagents for resurrecting friends in co-op, instead there’s a short window of time to click on them or they’re running back.—Diablo
Will there be any random encounters or quest that we won?t find in the Single play?—kiowa81
We’re building the game for co-op. Single player is just like playing the co-op game by yourself. So, no, no planned differences. Aside from difficulty, of course.—Diablo
is there anything hidden, like easter-eggs, or anything like that – Unfound at Diablo3.com ?——- PLZ DON’T ANSWER WITH MAYBE.—theRobhimself
POSSIBLY.—Diablo[/BLUE]
I’m sure we’ll all find the “click to resurrect” feature helpful, and it’ll seem natural after playing for a while, and it will be fun to stand back and watch the Act Bosses kill your friends over and over again, just to see all of the gruesome custom [WIKI]death[/WIKI] animations, but I sighed when I read that tweet. You don’t even need to carry a [WIKI]resurrection scroll[/WIKI] anymore? Is there a point where “fun/convenient/easy/quick” becomes conceptually ridiculous? User friendly to the point of absurdity?
It certainly seems like non-[WIKI]Hardcore [/WIKI]D3 will be a mindless and mad rush forward, with every form of sting taken out of death. No gold loss. No item loss. No experience loss. No time loss. Why even include [WIKI]health orbs[/WIKI] in [WIKI]multiplayer[/WIKI] games, if we can just die and return at the click of any other player’s button? Why have death at all? Why not just make characters freeze in place for a couple of seconds? Or would that be too inconvenient for the coming hordes of Xbox thumb-mashers?
How about this; a death counter for PvM. The [WIKI]Arena[/WIKI] mode gives us an easy way to keep track of deaths; it would be nice to have something like that in PvM, so at least players would have some way to laugh about who was playing with the most suicidally-reckless abandon.