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After a 7 year wait from the last Diablo, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Diablo 3 was announced today at Blizzards Worldwide Invitational. Hope for another Diablo 3 release was squashed repeatedly when Blizzard North, responsible for the Diablo franchise, lost top developers on June 30, 2003, and again on August 1, 2005 when Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North.

Subtle hints have kept the hope of Diablo fans alive; on Oct 23, 2006 Richard A. Knaak, a novel writer for the Diablo series, told BlizzPlanet "I ain’t writing for a dead game." The Diablo rumor base was stirred again when Blizzard Entertainment approached Diablo3.com for their domain, even though Diablo3.com (now diablofans.com) denied that Blizzard had any intentions of announcing Diablo 3. Hints for a Diablo 3 announcement peaked last week when multiple Blizzard homepages were taken over by splash images, these splash images changed every day with new images and cracks appearing in the ice shown on it. Many Blizzard fans believed this was going to be a big announcement because of the 2007 WWI when Starcraft II was announced in the same fashion.

Late Friday on June 27th and continuing into the early morning of June 28th, the ice began to crack more and more and the picture became clearer, until finally the antagonist of the series, Diablo came crashing out of the ice and Diablo III was shown for everyone to see.

A cinematic trailer and a video showing some game play were shown at the Diablo 3 panel at WWI and now can be seen online. The cinematic trailer shows that not all is well in the world of Sanctuary. A meteor is seen crashing into the spot where a door to Hell had once emerged, and an unknown girl lets it be known that the world is no longer safe.

From the game play trailer you are able to see two classes played the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian shows of abilities such as Leap, Whirlwind and Charged, and appears to be completely redone from the old Diablo II Barbarian. Also shown, the Witch Doctor appears to be a cross between a Necromancer and a Sorcerer. The Witch Doctor is able to corrupt foes, summon ghouls, conjure a demon wall that attacks, and even cast fiery magic. Diablo 3 is being built to be more geared towards playing on multiplayer, with new features being added to Battle.net to support group play.

There will be a total of five classes playable so far, two being the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor, with many saying they see a Rogue in the game play trailer. Characters can be either male or female, but the sex of your character does not affect game play. There will be many in-game events; one is shown in the game play trailer, when a bunch of acolytes sacrifice themselves to summon a large creature. Bosses are a lot bigger, as seen in the final fight of the game play trailer. I am very excited for this game myself; hopefully more information will be released in the upcoming days.

 

Both trailers can be seen at Diablo3.com