Blizzard is continuing to refine their action RPG Diablo 3. Today they announced a couple cuts to the game that they hope will make the game arrive in stores faster.
The development team decided to remove Scrolls of Companion and Scrolls of Reforging from the game. Companion scrolls summoned a friendly creature that followed the character and picked up gold as it moved. Scrolls of Reforging, meanwhile, replaced the magical properties of an item with an entirely new set of properties.
"In both cases these are features we felt were underdeveloped and just not quite good enough for the game in their current state," said community manager Nethaera on the game's forums. "The companion pets felt like they were mandatory to maximize play efficiency and some of the pets were too cutesy for the gritty, dark world of Sanctuary."
"Neither of those are issues we felt like we could solve without a lot of additional work, and we’re trying to close in on a solid release date for the game, not move further away. When weighing these systems against releasing the game, we decided to cut these scrolls and stay on track for the game’s release."
It's possible, though, that these features could be added to D3 at a later date.
"We think we can make companion pets into a much cooler system (both mechanically and visually), and evolve the reforging scrolls into a more meaningful system at some point in the future. For the time being, they will not be in the initial release of the game."
Blizzard has yet to announced Diablo 3's release date. However, game director Jay Wilson said recently that a date is "nearing."
