Reimagining a legend: Behind Ethereal items in Season 24

Reimagining a legend: Behind Ethereal items in Season 24

Discover how the Diablo III team created this season’s theme and sought to pay homage to the lasting legacy of Diablo II.

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[Community]: we want sets and builds balanced better so the game has good longevity and we can play whatever set we enjoy playing.

[Blizzard] <spends a ton of time designing 24 temporary items that dont affect game balance or last past the 3 month season mark>

You hit it out of the park on ethereals “freshing” up the game, but we’ll be right back where we started after the season ends. It’s great that your supporting the game till we get new Diablo franchises, but could you implement balance fixes, and open up new builds that we can play season after season?

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I’m super excited for Season 24 and the new Ethereal gear, hoping I do better this Season than last, shouldn’t be too hard lol.

Thanks for the article Blizz.

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Can we make Exploding Palm work with all the upgrades? It doesn’t work for Crudest Boots, BotLG or Rabid Strike. I can ALMOST understand the first 2, but Rabid Strike doesn’t even do anything at all for the damage.

thank you for taking the time and resources to bring ethereal items back, even if it is only for season 24. (and possible beyond). ethereal items have always been temporary (side from maybe throwing). this was par for the course (not being able to repair them d2) and the cost for having a stronger weapon type. not sure what the huff is about, having them available after season ends.

i am also looking forward to collecting the mogs. been a long LONG time since d3 offered something cool to search for and not just the standard treadmill. speed-level gems-push all the time, can get a little stale. excited for s24 and starting the hunt. though to be honest, i do understand the folks who are stressed not having the necro dlc. maybe put it on sale for the season!

again… thank you.

ps. not that filthy or anyone from the team would read this… but i would LOVE to see a craftable set, that works similar to cains (keys) and sage (db’s) that gives added drops to hellfire keys from key wardens. and emanates how bout ashera’s or born’s? pretty please. :slight_smile:

all the best.

Can we get ban waves for cheaters as well would be great… !!
Or if not that just make sure D2 resurrected is not a botters playground like d3…

Okay… Nice story… but where is the 5 - 10 sec random freeze fix? Area damage lag fix? Maybe add more ram into the D3 servers so that your customers/players can have a smoother gameplay? Any actual plans to actually reduce or completely get rid of the lag and freezes in the game?

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“Funny story,” begins Frankie Lee, one of the senior game designers on the Diablo III team,

What a shocking truth. I always thought that only one intern is handling all the D3 contents by himself all these times. :rofl:

“We want players to enjoy finding their first Ethereal and figuring out how to incorporate it into their builds after reading its numerous affixes,” Lee says. “Hopefully Ethereals can usher in new metas and give everyone an amazing experience this season.”

I am glad that you guys put a lot of effort to make S24 a tribute to D2, but it would be better had the S24 actually had more balance updates and changes instead of having a minor one and an S24 Theme alone. I mean, where is the expanded emanation lists for the followers that you guys promised in the previous season?

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Yes some of the complainers on the forum have been saying that for sometime now. Just another “big lie.”

Do you have a link for that I must have missed that statement.

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That is weird. I just reread the blog season 23 blog and I found nothing about it, but then I feel that I read that statement before from somewhere else. Maybe I just remember it wrong.

Could it have been this “The current list of items with Emanate capabilities are the following.”

  • Maybe they will add to the “current” list?

D2 always has been.

Fixed for you.

Nope not fixed but could be added cause both are correct. !!

Well at least the transmogs will last.

I won’t play S24 because aside Monk there is nothing new for other classes.
Builds, gameplay, everything remains unchanged.
This is utterly boring. I won’t spend hours for that.

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They care more about destroying the remaining “so called” OP builds more rather than focus on giving us options to create more interesting ones that are as strong as the “OP” builds, so we actually have a CHOICE and could pick whatever class set or LOD build we like to play the most.

“Forgetting” to expand the emanation list only proves it, not to mention about the lack of any changes that actually makes the game more interesting for SOLO players too, not only GROUP All The d4mn time…
No changes have been made to legendary gems in years and other like farming ubers in one game (without the need to create a new one), “faster” gem upgrades, crafting mats to be auto picked up like gold or ignorring what the community wants like for example 4th cube slot, to be added or countless of suggestions to improve each class by balancing items to be as strong as the “so called OP builds” to give us more build diversity, not just the same ONE TOP OP build for each class that dominates the leader(bot)boards all the time…

The fact that all these ethereals won’t transfer to non season is just ridiculous, not to mention about their drop rate and RNG on top RNG on them… :man_facepalming:

GL creating any good build with them if you’re not “playing” over 6-10h a day for the whole duration of season or even worse if you’re a SOLO player who prefers to play one or 2 classes only and has something called life and doesn’t have the time to “play like a bot” over 12h a day just to get the right ethereal weapon for your build…

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Is it bad that my first reaction is pleasure learning there is more than one person on the Diablo3 team? Lol.

Frankly, I was shocked too. I thought it was only Don Vu. They can’t be full time on Diablo. The changes are out-of-touch, miniscule, and sometimes flatly incompetent (referring to the MofBC Simulacrum nerf).

I know this is a touch off-topic, but I really wish people would refrain from invoking the regime of the third reich out of context. What occurred there was of a scale and represents a certain depravity and abuse of power that should not be trivialized. Many of us have family members who were affected by those events in some way. They changed the face of the world.

Gamers using hyperbolic rhetoric on a game forum is not on par with “the big lie” and should never be conflated with it. I know you meant no disrespect of course, but this is a bit of history that deserves to be treated carefully and learned from so it is not repeated.

You’re not the only one who’s shocked! I wonder if the team is full-timers or if they’re part-time on other projects.

This is an old issue with D3. The devs’ solution was never to nerf anything, just keep throwing more and more power into the game. We ended up with a never-ending power creep treadmill. That was ‘solved’ with infinitely scaling rifts. But now that they’re at the technical limit, they capped the rifts at 150. They can’t just make a higher level. Now they have to nerf. Not all of the builds that needed it got the nerf bat. That probably gets chalked up to the small size of the Classic Games team and limited time to fix everything. They spent their time on the Ethereals this round.

The only way to “pay homage” to the any lasting legacy of any of the Diablo games is to include these legacies into the next Diablo game! That way they become truly LASTING!

Having etherial weapons of D2 be used in only one of the seasons of D3 is NOT an endless LASTING legacy, it’s a few months lasting legacy that disappears afterwards. I was excited to play the 24 season, seeing how many different and unique bonuses the etherial weapons had until the wife said that they are just for the season. Well, thank you very much but NO. I’m going back to playing EvE online as this game has not made anything obsolete since it started its existence, unlike your games. You should take note and try to keep the legacies of your games live and ever lasting.