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==Followers Availability==
Followers can only be utilized in single player playing in a game on Battle.net. If another player joins your game, your follower will return to town. [[Jay Wilson]] contributes insight to this design philosophy in an interview with Now Gamer.<refname=nowgamer>[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I7CTo2B7bmsJ:www.nowgamer.com/features/921601/diablo_iii_interview_jay_wilson_talks_followers.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Followers in Multiplayer] - Now Gamer interview with Jay Wilson, Blizzard Entertainment, 13/05/2011</ref>
<blue>Followers aren’t in [[PvP]] at all, and in cooperative Followers return to town. We found that having four players and four Followers on-screen all at once was pretty chaotic and hard to tell what’s going on. We logic’d out that a player is better than a Follower, they’re better companionship and they’re certainly more effective than a Follower. We figured any player would prefer to have another player, so at that point we decided to have the Follower return to town. You can always get him back later – if the other player leaves the Follower will return.</blue>
'''August 2008''' The development team said they hoped to include full mercenaries as a feature, and that if they do they'll be bigger and better than mercs were in D2. But they gave no details at that time.<ref>[http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/156898.Diablo-III/features/133759.20090831.BlizzCon-Diablo-III-devs-discuss-design-decisions-direction-depth-drops/ First mention of Mercenaries] - Gameplanet interview with Julian Love, Blizzard Entertainment, 31/08/2008</ref> <blue><font color="#FFFFFF">Do those NPC's provide abilities to the hero, like a proper party system?</font><br><b>Julian Love:</b> That's also not yet finalised. We're trying to make them definitely a step above the henchmen of Diablo II, but how big of a step is something I can't say yet. Hopefully next time we reveal something I can show you more.</blue> '''October 2008''' [[Leonard Boyarsky]] spoke in more detail about their plans for Mercenaries at Blizzcon in October 2008 in an interview with IncGamers.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u1R2P7Jzsag Two types of Mercenaries] - IncGamers interview with Leonard Boyarsky, Blizzard Entertainment, 10/10/2008</ref> <blue>We have two different types of mercenaries now. As you saw in the demo, if you got the quest where you could rescue the adventurers or their leader, those guys are a low level and are just along for the quest, or are cannon fodder. You can't really control them or have anything to do with them at all. When you have what we are calling followers, they are the guys you can equip, give them different weapons, you can give them different armor. They will probably have some quests that involve them. Much more than in Diablo II, you could equip them but they were more like a game mechanic in a body of an NPC. Where this time, were making them much more individuals with their own back story and their own reason for being in the world.</blue> Leonard went on to say that there would be different hireables to fill different roles, such as tanks, artillery support, etc. '''May 2011''' It was said by the Diablo 3 development team for ages that they "weren't ready" to reveal mercenaries in Diablo III, or otherwise they "didn't know" what they would do with them. However, in May 2011, the follower system was indeed revealed, but to the chagrin of Blizzard, it was leaked by the Korean Blizzard official website by accident.<ref>[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/new-follower-video/ Follower video leaked] - Blizzard Korea, 12/05/2011</ref> The Diablo community quickly picked this up and accepted it as real due to the superb quality of the presentation of the video. The day after, Blizzard unveiled the followers in an official capacity in a deluge of interviews, information, and new screen shots.<ref>[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/followers-artwork-and-interface-shots/ Blizzard reveal Diablo 3 Followers] - Blizzard Entertainment, 13/05/2011</ref> '''May 2011 - Only Viable in Normal - May 2011'''
The initial plan was that Followers would not be viable past [[Normal]] difficulty, as Bashiok explained in May 2011.<ref>[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/official-followers-page-plus-blue-answers Followers in Normal difficulty] - Blizzard CM, 13/05/2011</ref>
'''October 2011 - Now Viable in Higher Difficulties - October 2011'''
We still have some tweaking to do with the followers, including their skills and end-game balancing. We continue to discover cool little ways to improve how each follower performs and the complements the different heroes. Our intent is to ensure players who take followers along find them to be helpful additions to their single-player experiences.</blue>
===Follower AI===
The AI and pathfinding of followers in Diablo III is much improved, but it's one-size-fits-all; there are no options to set the Followers in some sort of "aggressive/defensive" mode, nor can players point to specific spots and tell the Followers to remain there.
[[Jay Wilson]] spoke about the AI challenges they faced, and what players can expect from follower AI, in an April 2011 interview with Now Gamer: <ref name=nowgamer/>
<blue>'''NowGamer''': You’ve talked in the past about improvements to enemy AI – what about NPCs?
'''Jay Wilson''': They were a bit easier because they tend to lean on the monster AI, use a lot of the same things as them. Making the Followers interesting revolved around making our monster targeting systems better. In Diablo II monsters pretty much just targeted whatever was closest to them, which meant if you played as a necromancer, it could be kind of a boring class because you almost never get attacked by anything. Your scouts always moved fast to get in front of you. So we said ‘OK, let’s have enemies that attack in different ways, or choose their targets in different ways’.
<br>Take an enemy that burrows for example – they’re really most dangerous to a ranged class, so that’s what they focus on – they burrow and make a beeline for a ranged character. Whereas a lot of enemies will go ‘I want to attack somebody, but if I can’t reach one of the guys closest to me, or he has a lot of people attacking him already, I’m just going to choose somebody else’. So the attacks get spread out a little more. It makes having a Follower a lot more interesting because they’ll pick up some of the enemies’ focus but not all of it.</blue>
