In this episode of “Conversations with Creators”, Sony has rounded up three Blizzard folks integral to the porting of Diablo III to PS3 and PS4, and made them gush about how awesome the PlayStation 4 is going to be. They also make frequent assertions that the PlayStation 4 and Diablo III were practically made for each other in some infernal fire pit of hell.

While it’s easy to roll your eyes and sigh in the face of this rather gaudy PS4 marketing campaign, this particular episode of what will probably be a very long-running web series for Sony, actually manages to discuss some aspects of Diablo III as well. It is actually pretty interesting to hear how much the control scheme is going to be different, and how Blizzard realises that a change of control scheme fundamentally changes the connection one has with a character. I haven’t thought about it much until now, but there is this remarkable disconnect between player and character in the Diablo games on PC. When Diablo III is played on console however, there’s far more direct control over one’s character, and this will probably lead to a greater sense of connection. I found myself not really giving a crap about my characters in Diablo III, but my character in Skyrim I find myself quite firmly attached to.

Hit the jump for the video. Maybe grab some coffee beforehand because it’s about seven minutes long, which is practically a feature film by Internet standards.

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Activision bossman Bobby Kotick has revealed that Blizzard’s action RPG Diablo III has sold (not shipped) in excess of 10 million copies worldwide. These sales figures came up during Activision’s second quarter earnings report, during which Kotick pointed out that Diablo III is Activision’s “top-selling game overall based on enough meta, digital and retail sales in North America and Europe.” The game can enjoy that accolade for the next five days until Black Ops II is released.

Diablo III launched worldwide (with the exception of some eastern territories) on 15 May this year. That means it’s been out in the wild for 177 days to date. With sales figures like the one just revealed, Activision-Blizzard shifts (on average) 56 490 copies of Diablo III A DAY across retail and digital download.

An expansion pack was also confirmed by Blizzard’s president Mike Morhaime. That being said, Morhaime was unable to confirm a timeline for the expansion so don’t expect anything any time soon.

Source: Joystiq

It’s a Barbarian called Alkaizer. The player driving Alkaizer is also the first person in the world to hit Paragon level 100, the absolute maximum character level in Diablo III. Well, until Blizzard adds another layer of character levels to grind through, I guess. Anyway, it took Alkaizer the Barbarian a whole lot of killing to reach that level; he decimated 95, 641 elites alone.  The player profile has over 1.8 million lifetime kills. I’m not sure whether this amazes me or fills me with deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.

It took around three weeks for Alkaizer to hit the new ceiling of Diablo III. The Paragon level increases have boosted his Gold Find and Magic Find by 300% which makes a severe difference, because the guy has some amazing equipment, not the least of which is the complete Immortal King’s armour set. Then there’s his sword, the Blade of the Warlord, which is a Legendary item with 1097.7 damage per second. This all contributes towards Alkaizer’s overall dps amount of 63, 905.

Yesterday I got excited about my Wizard making it half way to level 60. Yep, there’s that inadequacy again. You can check out Alkaizer’s character page with all of its glorious equipment, right over here. And in case you were wondering how much XP it takes to reach Paragon level 100, it’s over 3 billion.

Source: PC Gamer

Hands up how many of you have hit your character level cap in Diablo III. Now, hands up how many of you have done so with more than one character. That’s amazing – I’ve yet to even finish the game. The good news is that Blizzard will be adding a new gameplay mechanic to the Diablo III endgame (got to love MMO terms for a single-player game) in the form of Paragon Levels.

In Diablo III‘s current state, once your character hits level 60, all character levelling ends and any XP gained is completely meaningless. At that point, the only reason you’re playing the game with the same character is for the loot. Soon, that won’t be the case as you’ll continue to earn XP towards Paragon levels instead. In total, there are 100 Paragon levels to achieve, with each level adding to your character’s basic stats (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Vitality) as well as adding 3% to Magic Find and 3% to Gold Find, which will cap at a maximum of 300% to both.

On the purely cosmetic side of things, your character portrait will get increasingly fancy framing as you level up in Paragon levels. Every 10 levels of Paragon you gain will alter your character’s portrait frame as well as add a blue number indicating the current Paragon level.

Source: Battle.net