Blizzard Announces Reaper of Souls Diablo 3 Expansion
Bilzzard finally announced a new expansion for Diablo 3 at GamesCom 2013. Though they didn’t announce any release date for the new content, they did talk about what would be included. Players will be treated to new areas, class content, and villains. If there was ever a reason to boot your Diablo 3 back up, then this is probably it.
New Diablo Expansion Announced
The villain of the new expansion titled Reaper of Souls is a fallen angel named Malthael. It will have a noticeably darker tone than the vanilla Diablo 3, which may be a welcome change for D2 fans. There will also be a number of new monsters, including: The Seraph, The Summoner of Death, The Executioner, The Seraph, Death Maiden. With all these new creatures looking to eat you, it might be a good idea to gook up with some friends for the new adventure.
The new content will take place in Westmarch, a yet untouched area of the Diablo series. Though, if you ever looked over the map included with Diablo 2, you could spot Westmarch on it. Lydon from D3 even remarks about having been attacked by crazy naked women in Westmarch at one point, could be worse I suppose. I bet that is the reason our champions are really heading out to Westmarch…
With a new villain and even more monsters looking to consume your flesh, it is lucky that Blizzard has added even more tools for dispatching the unholy abominations. The new Crusader class takes its cue from the ever popular Paladin class from D2. He will specialize in using flails, shields, and uses a resource known as wrath. The Crusader will even be rocking a version of the Fist of the Heavens skill that was in D2.
The Crusader isn’t the only thing that players have to look forward to on the class front. Every single class will get new runes, skills, and passive abilities. The level cap will also be increased to 70, so players will have plenty to do with their new content.
The end game for D3 will also be getting a big improvement. Loot runs will be randomly generated dungeons that take from 15 to 20 minutes to complete. They are designed to let players gear up in an efficient, but not too easy way. The paragon mechanic will also be moving to account wide, and will allow you to adjust the base stats of your characters. Nobody ever complained about characters having more customization.
Blizzard is aiming to change their philosophy in general towards loot in D3. The expansion is designed to drop better loot, but much less over all. As an example, a playthrough of the Reaper of Souls Act III expansion dropped 73 white items as opposed to 256 in the original game. The playthrough also dropped a whopping 6 legendary items, much more than the 1 a traditional run would give.
Legendary items in the game will now customize themselves based on the build of the players. Which means, hopefully less of picking up a legendary item only to get one you don’t really want. The Mystic Artisan will also be returning in order to let players customize their appearance through transmogrification.
Those gamers who were upset with the massive shift from Diablo 2, may see the Crusader as a reason to dive back into D3. With the new loot runs and skills there is even more reason to dump hours and hours into the game. While I can’t say for sure I’ll be picking it up, it is certainly tempting me. With Diablo 3 coming out on home consoles, this could mean some awesome DLC for them as well!