1UP: How do the "randomized scripted events" that you're adding to randomized dungeons work? Are events being procedurally generated, or do you just make a giant bank of scripted events to pull from?

JW: Option two. We do it the same way we create a lot of other randomness: We create way more assets than the average game would [need], and we pull from all those. I think if you were to pull an average random dungeon from most games, well, hold on...we have this concept of "rooms," which describes a certain size of area that gets interconnected together. They used to call them "tilecuts" in Diablo 2 -- I'm probably bastardizing the word -- but we use "rooms." So if you were to take the average dungeon from the average game, it probably would be the equivalent of 10 to 12 of our rooms, whereas our dungeons need closer to somewhere between 50 to 80 rooms. The nice thing is that while we generate a lot more content, you get a lot more time in it. So it pays off in the long run. We do the same thing with the scripted stuff; if we want you to encounter two or three scripted events, we probably make four or five times that number of events.

1UP: Can you cite some specific scripted events that might pop up during a typical playthrough?

JW: We had a lot of them in our BlizzCon build. [In one of them, there was] a series of ghosts at an altar who were seeking an object that you'd get to prove your worth. If you did get it, then they would test you by having big powerful monsters attack you -- and if you passed, you got a nice reward. Another one was coming across some fellow adventurers stranded in a dungeon who'd need your help to get out. So there are a lot of different kinds of scenarios; you'd run into people who would need to be escorted or a caravan that's been stranded. And if you stick around and protect [the caravan] for a few minutes from [an attack] that would occur, you'd get a reward. Most of these are fairly optional, where the player can decide whether he wants to do them or not, but we try to reward them well and make them pretty fun. The biggest goal we have with these is that we want to change what the player is doing. Whenever you can basically take the core game and make the player play it in a slightly different way, it makes the game a lot more interesting and keeps it from being tedious. You go from "I'm killing monsters aimlessly" to "I'm now killing monsters to protect this thing." That's easily a more interesting scenario, because it's different than what you were doing, and that's our main goal with that.