Earlier in June, we polished up the Quests, Wizard and Witch Doctor Diablo Wiki articles with everything you could possibly want to know about them. Well, we didn't forget the Barbarian!

More information that you might think is available about the Barbarians (or the Children of Bul-Kathos, as they call themselves), and some people might not know about the link with the Druid society either.

The Barbarian character is a broken man. Saving the world is not a sweet victory when your entire race's life goal is shattered in the same instant. The Barbarians have roamed the lands, some reported to have turned feral (or perhaps demonically corrupted) as "rumors of monstrous things reported to resemble the barbarians in size and ferocity" are told by Abd al-Hazir.

Perhaps this unrest can be solved by finding out what the mysterious comet really is?

For more information on Barbarian lore, skills, design and development, check out the Barbarian DiabloWiki article.


P.S.
If you have time to help out in the wiki, add more pictures to articles from the Diablo 3 gallery! We even have a nice help page for how to add all sorts of pictures. Leave a comment here, or e-mail if you need any help at all.

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Here’s the fourth and final installment in our Year in Review series. This one covers the last four months that wrapped up the first year since Diablo 3 was announced, on June 28, 2008.  You’ll note that this year has thirteen months, since this review began with June 2008, a month that was quite busy with D3 pre-announcement news. This final installment covers March, April, May, and June 2009, and you can see the first, second, and third parts if you missed them.

Now that the first year has been covered, this feature will continue on a monthly basis, recapping notable events of the previous 30 (or so) days. Not that reading them will give you any excuse to stop checking the news on a daily basis.  Click through for the full article.

 

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We have added to the Blizzard Offices gallery with some more pics from my trip to play SC2 at Blizzard last week. More SC-related pics will also be available from StarcraftWire shortly! Here are a few examples of the pics I took. You can find them all in our Blizzard's Offices gallery.



And here are three pictures of artwork from the Blizzard Offices, showing off renders of the Diablo I classes: Rogue, Sorcerer and Warrior.

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Trading is one of the most important activities in Diablo II, or any RPG. Diablo III looks to do things differently, implementing a WoW Auction House, and a gold currency more similar to WoW than Diablo I or Diablo II. How will this affect the community?

We have been promised systems that will work very well with Diablo III, and nothing will be implemented from WoW that does not fit, but fans are naturally afraid they will bollocks up something anyway. I mean it's not every decade we get a sequel!

A lot of trade-related issues are discussed in this instalment of On the Drawing Board. Click through to read the whole article.

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Bashiok offered a much welcomed thorough mind-picture of what all of us should expect in Diablo III when it comes to dungeons.  We won’t be seeing the same interiors over and over, with the same type of colors or illumination across each one.  Each dungeons will feel unique and epic.  The art team is designing a lot of detail and contrast into each dungeon separately depending on its location and lore behind it, as well as other factors.  This game will set big differences between itself and Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.

With this in mind, the Art Direction Controversy looks at this point laughable.  We only got to see one small area of a dungeon. Not the whole thing.  Many fans who went to the 2008 BlizzCon, including Flux, myself and the IncGamers staff had the opportunity to play and see others play different areas of Tristram and its Cathedral.  Each level looks different and detailed.  Not all the place is green hued, or bright.  Hope all the fans able to go to this year’s BlizzCon have the opportunity to play the new build of the Diablo III demo.  It is gorgeous.

	Blizzard Quote:
	I think there’s a nice juxtaposition between the larger more epic dungeons and the others that may be less epic but have very specific tones and themes associated with them. When you step inside one of the more epic dungeons, like the Tristram cathedral (and considering its past, shouldn’t it be epic?) you immediately know you’re somewhere important. Somewhere that looks and feels magical in its presentation and lighting, as opposed to, say… a cave. Still cool! Caves are still awesome, but you probably don’t want magical purple and green lighting in a cave, it’s probably going to have a much different and subdued feel. If it’s a natural cave it may have light streaming in from cracks above, or if it’s a mine it might have lighting from lanterns. Much earthier and natural. Then you walk into some ancient tomb of a powerful wizard, oh crap, this place clearly has something else going on. The lighting is a bit unnatural, maybe some sickly greenish hues to set a theme and mood. That type of theming adds a lot to keeping the scenery changing and interesting. If you’re just fighting demons against a grey or brown backdrop for hours and hours, days and days, maybe years and years… it gets boring. Interesting, themed, and contrasting scenery all help ensure visual longevity. I think before too long we’ll have shown a nice cross section of the dungeon types and looks. It’s been too long staring at the one dungeon. Each one has a very unique look and feel, so it’s really cool going in to each one and having a total change of scenery. It’s all very exciting and we’re all looking forward to sharing it with you and seeing the fan reactions just as soon as it’s ready.

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Joystiq.com was amongst a group of gaming sites that recently enjoyed a visit and tour of Blizzard’s offices in Irvine. This isn’t that rare a treat; we got to visit last year before Blizzcon and Leord spent most of last week there as part of a Starcraft 2 event, but the Joystiq article has an extensive photo gallery, with 99 pictures showing the offices, library, museum, wolfrider statue, maps, decorations, decorated cubicles, etc. I grabbed out the few Diablo-related images, (Do want the huge framed D3 world map!) but the whole thing is worth a look, especially if you’re a WoW fan, since artwork and props related to that game dominate the proceedings.

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Our resident lore-and-all-things-obscure-guru Medievaldragon posted about a new registration by Blizzard on BlizzPlanet.com and WorldofWar.net. It seems kinda WoW-related, so might be nothing, but it’s actually worth reposting here. Read MD’s thoughts on it after the break. Is it the new MMO, the new game, or “just” a WoW expansion? Cataclysm is a name you should remember, regardless!

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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.

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It has been a good week in the forums so far. Unfortunately we didn't see much Diablo-related news when the StarCraft fanatics talked about multiplayer and Battle.net with Blizzard over in Irvine, but at least the StarCraft II LAN discussion has thankfully not really reached the D3 community.

This is a special week, with about a year ago since the Diablo III announcement, and Flux has been busy trying to summarize the events of the past year in his first and second review (more to come). Inspired by Flux we have mixed up an interesting list of threads from the forum with varying relevance to the one-year anniversary.

As usual, if you find any threads that you feel are of extraordinary interest e-mail to inform us!


Somewhat Official Diablo 3 Release Date Pool

• Mad Mantis' (our Necromancer & Witch Doctor Moderator) ultra-classic betting thread. Many of the bets seems to have failed already, but new ones keep popping in!

I feel D3 is too much like WoW because...

• Always a hot potatoe, this massive thread/poll by Demetrium has been reincarnated. Have a go yourself!

How do you feel about monster immunities?

• A great way to balance a game, forcing players to use skills tactically, or just stupid? Intereting topic by Neltharion.

My take on a Bard class

• Technomancer, the author of the Arcane Warrior/Elemental Warrior is back with another fan class. He tries his skill on the classic D&D Bard, which immediately became a popular topic. I assume we'll see the class in DiabloWiki soon enough!

Auction Houses - No thank you.

• Kickstarting his Diii.net career, commonhumans start one of two interesting threads, and the first one is about trading. There are a lot of pros and cons between the bartering of Diablo II and the Auction house of WoW, but even if there is resistance to AHs among fans would it be enough to stop Blizzard from adding it?

Getting more serious

• The second thread by commonhumans is a more in-depth speculation post about classes. Well worth a read.

The First Year - Fan Art

• Resident fan artist VioletJoker has made a special picture and a special thread to commemorate the one year anniversary. It's a nice fan art collage that will suit any PC.

Will my computer be able to run Diablo 3?

• This extraordinarily important question is asked by WhiteNinjaHero, despite the fact there are no known minimum requirements for Diablo III yet. Fear not however, since I have called for the fabulous Kalos, who shortly will answer any and all known and unknown PC stat questions!

That's all for now, remember to report interesting threads to !

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Bashiok went on a forum tear late Tuesday night, touching on a number of issues.

A fan complained about the no-LAN support issue that’s currently gripping the SC2 community and Bashiok replied with an eye towards D3:

	Blizzard Quote:
	All removing LAN support does is hurt legitimate buyers, pirates will have LAN and their free game.It might take them a while to reverse engineer it, but they WILL have it. Bashiok: More so than overbearing/invasive anti-piracy measures that would affect everyone who buys the game regardless of how they’re going to play it instead of just those that may want a LAN feature? I would doubt it. I don’t know a lot about it, Diablo III isn’t really facing the brunt of the Battle.net 2.0 features just yet, but I think that removing LAN in an attempt to avoid more severe anti-piracy measures is pretty cool. We’re saying “Hey, we’re pretty sure you’re going to love our game. The multiplayer is really the best part though. In order to get in on that that we’d just like to make sure you bought the game. Cool?”

In a related post, someone asked if D3 would be free through Battle.net. Bashiok hints that it will be just as free as SC2 will be. A very qualified statement.

	Blizzard Quote:
	are they going to charge to play diablo 3 online? Bashiok: Mike mentioned it in an Activision Blizzard investor meeting [paraphrased] “A player that buys Starcraft 2 at retail will have the ability to play on Battle.net with no additional fee.”  I’ll point out that this is a very carefully worded statement.   So you mean you have to subscribe to the online fee in order to find the high level weapons and use all of battle.nets features right? Bashiok: No.

Elsewhere, some dude tries to get overly-clever with the game lore vs. the D3 Hammer of the Ancients skill, but falls just short of completion.

	Blizzard Quote:
	None of the Ancients use a giant two handed golden hammer. Talic wields a fiery sword and shield and uses whirlwind. Korlic wields a polearm and uses leap attack. Madawc wields dual throwing axes and uses shout. I even checked their lore backgrounds on Diablo2.diablowiki.net and none of their backgrounds suggest the use of a two handed golden hammer. Bashiok: “Those three are not ancients” Right. They were chosen as protectors of Mt. Arreat by the Ancients.

First of all, it’s a virtual hammer created magically for a short duration, not a specific item of which only one (for the purposes of lore) exists. If there were a D2 skill called “Blessed Hammer of the Protectors” it wouldn’t mean those blessed hammers were literally the same ones used by some mythological paladin lords.  More specifically in this case, the confusion comes from the fact that the D2 quest and NPC dialogues use the term a bit loosely. Madawc, Korlic, and Talic are called “The Ancients,” and they’re reached via “The Ancient’s Way,” but the actual quest is called Rite of Passage. See the lore sections on each of their monster pages for the story of how they were selected by the ancient Ancients to become the newer Ancients and stand guard over Mt. Arreat.

Finally, someone just noticed the Rainbow Level t-shirts from last year’s Blizzcon, and had some questions about them.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Two quick questions about the shirts that some Blizzard employees were wearing at Blizzcon 1. Do you plan to sell these? 2. Would you care if I made my own? Bashiok: 1. Maybe. 2. Probably not, just don’t try to profit from our artwork.

That guy should have been here back in February when we posted this news item. Before the lawyers shut them down…

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