Part Three of our exhaustive Diablo 3: Year One review covers December 2008 and January-February 2009. (See also parts one and two.) There was plenty of news during these months, with rumors and intrigue galore. No re-eruptions of the damned Color Controversy, but we saw Tyrael graphical improvements, fan disapproval of seasonal bonus features, the rainbow blasting unicorn and Thousand Pound Ghostbuster, Blizzard kicking sand on E3, the unauthorized Ba’al movie poster, an official (but unintentional) guarantee that Diablo 3 would be released in 2010, black market Secret Unicorn Level t-shirts, and contraband video of the Female WD meeting a new NPC friend.

Click through to read the whole run down; there’s even a special bonus Year One wallpaper, courtesy of VioletJoker. Click to view it large; you need it that big to appreciate all of the individual images included in this great collage.

Here lies part two of our Diablo 3: Year One wrap up. This article series is covering/reliving/recapping/reanimating the milestones in Diablo 3’s development and other key and controversial events in the Diablo 3 online community. There’s far more to report on than you might think; certainly more than I expected, when I started researching what I thought would be a quick little trip down memory lane. 

Yesterday’s installment covered the first three months of Diablo 3, including the countdown to the debut at last year’s WWI event in Paris.  The next three months, September, October, and November 2008, were no less-action packed, with continuing installments in the Art Controversy, Diablo 3’s appearance at the European GDC show in Leipzig, several new bestiary updates, the debut of the official and ret-con-tastic Diablo Timeline, and the massive excitement that was Blizzcon 2008. Blizzcon featured the first public play time on Diablo III, the Wizard’s semi-expected debut, the dawn of the auto-allocated attribute controversy, and more in depth D3 write-ups than you can shake a caduceus at.

Click through to read the full piece, and check back tomorrow for part 3.

Diablo III was announced last year on June 28, 2008, at Blizzard’s World Wide Invitational in Paris, France. What’s happened since? More than you remember. Far too much to re-live it all, but I thought it would be fun to do some research and type up a month by month highlight reel, with links and references and such. Even just hitting the highlights, there’s an amazing amount of stuff to cover. So much that I had to break it up into four, three-month sections.

A few of the key events that transpired during just June, July, and August 2008: the splash screen countdown drove the community insane with anticipation and annoyed us with that purple penguin, D3 was announced at the Paris WWI event, the “too colorful” controversy began (and never ended), a few of the D2 team dared to comment on D3, Bashiok made his debut, the Activision/Blizzard merger took place, “Caption This” came to D3, Diablo 2 returned to the best selling lists, and Jay Wilson did more than a dozen interviews from GDC. All that, and I’ll venture to throw in a proverbial “there’s much, much more!”

Seriously, click through. I didn’t break these up into 3 month chunks just to get 4 articles out of it. The plan was to put the whole year into one post, but there was so much content there was no way to do the review justice with fewer words. Even these first three months took upwards of 2000 words to summarize.

We have changed the way our site subscription (DIII.Net Site Pal) service works. The previous tariff, unchanged since its inception some 75 years ago, was quite convoluted with different groups of bronze, silver, gold, platinum (why keep it simple?”!) but now we have a single group. We have also added a 12 month subscription period to the 6, 3 and 1 month of the previous tariff and also the ability to have it automatically re-subscribe (or not) which some of you have requested in the past but I didn’t know it was capable with our system. You can read about the current benefits, to which we shall add, here.  All previous Site Pals will remain unchanged until their subscriptions run out.

This is a perfect opportunity for us to thank the Site Pals for their support over the years which has and continues to help keep DIII.Net online.

We have a pair of Blizzcon 2009 tickets to give away to a DIII.Net Site Pal. The two tickets will go to one winner randomly drawn, so you can take a friend you play with, your partner or even your mum (show her how fabulous it is to be a geek. Geek is the new black darling).  Anyone who wants a chance to grab some playtime with Diablo III and mix it up with thousands of other Blizzard fans should simply reply in this thread. (You must be a site Pal to view the thread/enter the drawing.)

To get a flavour of what last year’s event was like take a look here, there is just tons to do and loads of fun to be had. We’ll all be there so you can come to dinner with us which will surely keep you awake at nights in giddy excitement.  With tickets sold out this is probably your last chance of getting to the event of the year.

A winner will be selected some time tomorrow evening so please be quick as Blizzard need details by then.

Here at DIII.Net we appreciate not everyone can get to the site throughout the day but why miss the news and site updates? Enter Daily Diablo, a daily drop of news goodness direct to your mailbox. The service is sent to you once a day as a nice neatly packaged news update of all the top stories.

To get our updates delivered direct to you simply add your email address in the box below to subscribe, and that’s it.

Enter your email address:

February’s DIII.Net Pal Giveaway is another rare drop, this time a Diablo II T-Shirt which Blizzard are no longer selling.  It comes in black (shocked much?). The backprint is the Wanderer walking out of flames, surrounded by skeletons.  The Diablo II is emblazened across them all.  The front left breast has the Blizzard Entertainment logo. With this T-shirt you’re sure to look like a Diablo vet and members of the opposite sex will be uncontrollably drawn to you because of it.

If you’re a DIII.Net subscriber and would like a chance to win this classic shirt you simply add a post to this thread.  The draw will be made at the end of the month.

IncGamers have made a video compilation of the games they’re looking forward to in 2009. Diablo 3 isn’t on the list, bu as Blizzard are very tight lipped about the release date, there isn’t much you can do about it. Some say it will come in 2009, while we just can’t be sure. In either way, this is a well made clip by the IncGamers.com crew, and you can even find me there as a guest commentator about StarCraft II. Maticus from WorldofWar.net has also a brief guest appearance. Be sure to check it out and here’s what the guys from IncGamers have to say about the games of 2009:

“If you’re not sure which games to look forward to in 2009, we think we can help.

After painstakingly shortlisting our finalists, we’ve had a chance to look at the games, speak to the publishers and come up with our list of games.

Because it’s hard to choose just one game, we’ve chosen a couple. And it’s a couple in each of the major genres.

“The genres?” you ask. Well, we’ve split it into Action Adventure, Racing Sims, Strategy, MMOs, Sport and FPSs.”

Click the link below to see the video, or go to IncGamers.

Do you enjoy writing and debating with others in the Diablo community? Do you wish your opinions could be seen by a wider audience? Do you know a lot about the Diablo games (Diablo 1, 2 & 3) and want to share your knowledge? Then this is your lucky day. We’re looking to add some more writers to the team here on The Unofficial Site. We have a wide variety of features and columns in need people to write them, and are also open to your original ideas, whether you’ll be able to contribute regularly or just once in a while. Your work will be posted blog style, appearing directly on the front page, just like the current articles and opinion pieces.

Applicants should demonstrate a reasonable command of the English language, and it will certainly help if you are knowledgeable and passionate about the games in the Diablo series. You don’t need experience running a website; if you can post in our forums you’ll be able to handle the technical aspect of things. Email Flux if you’re interested, and I’ll get back to you with more details. Don’t delay; we have space to add multiple posters, and accepted applicants will be able to start posting almost immediately.

Update: Since several people have asked: we can’t pay you guys, but like our forum mods, staff contributors will definitely be on our VIP list when/if Blizzard provides us with Diablo 3 Beta slots to hand out.

You might have read through the Diablo 3 Basics page and every single article, interview and panel in the Media Coverage Archive, but you will still find that there are so many things that Blizzard have not said about Diablo 3 yet. We could give all this information out if we just had the right question to ask Blizzard…

Are you at all interested in getting your questions through to the D3 Team? We have started an “Ask Blizzard” thread in the Diablo 3 forum, and we want your ponderings, opinions and questions!

Bookmark this link, and whenever you get a brilliant question to bring forward to Blizzard, share it with us!