With the arrival of BlizzCon comes the announcement of a new class! As part of the opening ceremonies of this year’s BlizzCon, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime surprised us all with the announcement of the Wizard! Nice to see our spellcaster roll filled, although I’m not certain how much different this class will be from our previous sorcerer/sorceress casters. So far we have our summoner (Witch Doctor), our melee specialist (Barbarian), and our spellcaster (Wizard). Needless to say, I’m pretty excited to see what they announce next.

[Official Wizard Character Page]

Honestly I think the whole Diablo III art direction controversy is a little silly, but a lot of people seem to care about it, so the gaming community took notice when Art Director Brian Morrisroe stepped down.

Now Blizzard has a job opening for a new Art director for the game, but they say the new guy will merely be carrying forward the vision that Brian already put in motion, rather than changing the look of the game in any significant way. Morrisroe left to “for a startup technology company,” moving onto greener pastures I suppose.

[1up.com]

While fans were ecstatic to hear that Diablo III would finally be coming within the foreseeable future, many were disappointed by the change in aesthetic from the last game to this one. As of now, there’s a fan-created petition urging Blizzard to make the game darker, more gothic, gritty, and realistic. Right now it has a staggering 26,000 signatures!

Lead Producer Keith Lee says that the art direction is deliberately stylized in the Blizzard tradition (as seen in Starcraft II shots as well), and that they’re employing “cleaner textures so that you can really focus.” He also emphasized the need for contrast and color in the visuals, saying “color is your friend,” and cited The Lord of the Rings films as a visual inspiration.

Will the petition accomplish anything at all? It seems as though the number of signatures will keep growing all the more as a response to this defensive explanation on Blizzard’s part—the fans will simply fight harder. Perhaps some sort of compromise will be reached and we might see some slight changes to the graphics in the future? It’s entirely possible, since the game is still in alpha and many details have yet to be finalized.

[MTV Multiplayer / via Joystiq]

That’s right, the mysterious and seemingly ice-themed splash image on Blizzard’s site was actually teasing the incredibly long-awaited Diablo III, which has been officially announced. This image is straight from Blizzard’s main page.

The announcement is actually still underway at Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational event, and is being covered in painstaking detail on Gamespot. Some major features of this game are the new classes: Barbarian and Witch Doctor have been revealed so far. Also there are some interface tweaks, and a more interactive environment. More details as they come.

A source has alerted me to something quite interesting on Blizzard’s Battle.net forums. If you follow this link:

http://www.battle.net/forums/board.aspx?ForumName=d3-general

You are brought to a "The battle.net Forums Are Currently Down" error message. This differs from entering a nonsense forum name, which redirects the user to the Battle.net main page. Could this be related to the mysterious splash page on Blizzard.com?