I don’t know about you guys, but my copy of Diablo 2 has to be one of the most played titles in my collection. That massive box, with the big grinning skull staring back at me still sits proudly next to other games on my shelf, partly due to some fantastic mods that kept the action flowing, long after the main campaign was finished.
With Diablo 3 expected next year, we’re pretty certain that the world will be crawling with all manner of beasties and demons, just waiting for us to explore a dungeon and attempt to get past them.
But if you’re planning on tweaking that dungeon-crawling experience, in order to give yourself more of a challenge or some better loot, then put your coding gloves away, because Blizzard doesn’t want anyone tinkering with their product.
Speaking to GameFront during BlizzCon, Technical Artist Julian Love explained how Blizzards current goals want to “supersede modding”.
“There’s no direct intent to say that we don’t want D3 to be moddable”, Love said. “And, to be honest with you, the technology itself, on just a fundamental level, makes this the most moddable version of Diablo there’s ever been”.
“However, we have these other goals that supersede modding: we want to provide a safe and secure experience for players to play in and trade items in, and in order to do that, we had to make the game online play only”.
“Once we made that decision, that effectively eliminated the possibility of having moddable games, since you’re going to have to connect to our service in order to play. So that’s a slight consequence of our online-only decision”.
“I’ll say that there’s never really been an intention with past Diablo games to make them moddable, either; it’s just that people found a way to make it happen. It’s not necessarily something we went out of our way to support”.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and while Blizzard may be confident that Diablo 3 will be un-moddable, it’s only a matter of time before the fans find a way to get past those protective measures put in place.
Last Updated: October 26, 2011
