Diablo III crafting trailer is crafty, all right

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3W7V5uv_6g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

There seems to have been a subtle shift in strategy at Blizzard over the past few years. Old Blizzard, the Blizzard of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3, were the type to take some risks, but focus primarily on perfecting an existing experience. New Blizzard, of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, seem to be taking the approach of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if it is broke, make it into something as simple and logical as possible.

It’s real Occam’s razor development, going on there. The fewer completely new ideas they introduce, and the better the old ones are executed, the better the finished product will be.

As it is, the crafting system in D3 seems to take a heavy dose of inspiration from Diablo imitators like Torchlight, but injecting these ideas with a heavy dose of Blizzard. Random individuals crafting for you makes more sense than having quite a treasure there in that Horadric Cube, but wouldn’t it be better if you could level up your crafters, so they’d improve as you’d fight? And that they’d need recipes that dropped off monsters? Oh, wait, that’s exactly what they did. I’d say they added a hefty dose of WoW-like addiction to D3, but really the addiction based mechanic came whole hog from Diablo 2.

In any related event, looks nifty. I don’t know about you, but Diablo 3 is one of the few games I am truly excited about. Like, that I’d buy on launch day, guaranteed. Up there with Monaco, Pokemon Black and White, and the Nintendo platformers, it is.