Diablo III: Vanishing Items, Stash Size

Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok has offered a few more tidbits of information about Blizzard Entertainment's upcoming action RPG sequel. This time the discussion covers how long items dropped in town remain on the ground in Diablo III and the possibility of increasing the stash size in the game.

Kitsunestrife (USWest):Please let us drop items in town without fear of them disappearing over time. I know there is a stash, but that’s like for items that you want to travel with you, whatever land you want to be in. But I’d like to have items stay where they are when I drop them in town.
At least have this option open in single player mode. That’s one thing I loved about Diablo 1.
Bashiok: It could potentially and probably fairly easily drag down game performance, or worse yet potentially affect server performance in online games. We’re actually using 3D items that drop to the ground, but even Diablo II sprites cost something - performance wise. If items stay forever then it’s essentially an infinite amount of storage, and if not and they disappear when you save and exit, how is that communicated to the player so they don’t lose important items. In regards to it being possible in single player, again game performance comes into it. Allowing the player to substantially degrade game performance is never a good idea, they will do it, and in essence it’s the game’s fault for allowing them to. It’s also a better approach to not change up unspoken rules in different areas of the game whenever possible. Making items disappear in multiplayer but not single player would be potentially be a very devastating piece of information not to have.
Ayynoo (USEast): Could we have a larger stash in Diablo 3? the stash in Diablo 2 is painfully small, and it requires us to make like 10 mules to carry things we want but dont have space for. i think that is one major shortcoming in Diablo 2, i would really like it if the problem was solved in Diablo 3.
Bashiok: I don’t think there could ever be enough space to keep some players from shuttling items to mules. It’s going to happen. But making it a comfortable amount of storage, as well as having ways to easily and safely get items to and from characters are definitely goals to have.
quelle:games-news.de