Not much has been revealed about "Diablo III"'s storyline, but lead designer Jay Wilson did tell me that the game will round out the story arc set up by the previous two games.

The plot behind "Diablo III" was developed with Blizzard's VP of creative development Chris Metzen, who crafted the tales for the first two games. In the first "Diablo," the player quests to kill the Lord of Terror.

Then in "Diablo II" and its expansion, the player is an adventurer set off to discover what happened to the warrior from the first title, who became corrupted, and fight the Prime Evils, other Hell-spawned superpowers unleashed by Diablo.

Wilson also told me that in addition to fan-favorite Deckard Cain, "Diablo III" will feature other characters from "Diablo" lore.

"We also tried to focus a little more on bringing characters back, and not just from 'Diablo II' but from 'Diablo I,'" he said. "We feel like a lot of the focus is on 'Diablo II' but 'Diablo I' started it all and has a lot of really good stuff on the gameplay side and on the character side. So people can expect to see characters from 'Diablo I,' more characters from 'Diablo II,' and characters from some of the books. We're definitely going to bring a few of them in."

And while "Diablo III" ends the trilogy, fans needn't worry -- it's not the final curtain for "Diablo." "We're not saying this is the end of the 'Diablo' universe, but we are trying to bring this storyline to a close," Wilson said. "It's not just 'Diablo III' -- we've got plans beyond."

Is it too soon to start complaining about the art style of "Diablo IV"?

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The art direction and selection of character classes weren't the only topics disputed heavily among the "Diablo III" team.

Unlike the previous games, every controllable character in "Diablo III" can be male or female. Sound innocuous? Lead designer Jay Wilson told me the gender option was the result of "quite a big debate."

For those who aren't familiar with past "Diablo" titles, the character classes were either one gender or the other -- the Necromancer was male, the Amazon was female, the Barbarian was male, etc. Like the desaturated art style and the inclusion of old character classes, some "Diablo III" team members wanted to stick with the familiar one-gender archetypes.

And why was that? Read more...

If you've played "World of Warcraft" for any lengthy amount of time, you've most likely downloaded a user interface mod to help you along the way.

While many mods aren't officially sanctioned by Blizzard, lead "World of Warcraft" designer Jeffrey Kaplan said that the developers look at mods for ideas. In fact, he and many others at Blizzard use them all the time.

"I download mods like candy," he admitted in my interview with him last week. "I go through these binges where I'll download every single mod. It drives my wife crazy. She's like, 'You're just getting viruses, what are you doing?' Then I'll have these periods where I remove all the mods and just play with the vanilla 'WoW' UI because that way I can really get a feel for what I was missing after using a mod for four months straight."

He added, "We just use [mods] as players because they're really good, and we're constantly reviewing what we need to do for our interface. We've gotten a ton of ideas from the modding community."

And what kind of interface changes will we see in the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion as a result? Here are six key examples: Read more...

Blizzard has confirmed to MTV Multiplayer that "Diablo III" art director Brian Morrisroe has decided to leave the company.

A company rep says his departure won't change the look of the game.

Here's what a Blizzard representative told Multiplayer via e-mail:

Regarding Brian, he recently resigned to form a startup technology company (outside the game industry), which is why we’ve posted about the open position. This change won’t impact the game…we’re really pleased with the look and feel that Brian helped create for Diablo III, and the new person we bring onboard will work with the other artists on the team to maintain the art style moving forward.

Morrisroe's departure, which incidentally comes after much controversy surrounding the game's colorful new art style, prompted Blizzard to put up the job listing, first reported by Kotaku earlier today.

When I sat down with lead "Diablo III" designer Jay Wilson last week to talk about the team's design choices and his thoughts on fan-altered screenshots, he told me that Morrisroe was the one who spearheaded the franchise's design changes. Specifically, I asked who we should blame for the rainbows. Wilson said: Read more...

One of "Diablo" fans' favorite things about the franchise is the secret cow level from "Diablo II."

If players gathered the right combination of items, they could open a portal to a level filled entirely with weapon-wielding, bipedal bovines, with a chance to get special loot.

So I asked lead "Diablo III" designer Jay Wilson the obvious question: Will there be a cow level?

This is what he said…

Read more...

With the myriad of things to do in "World of Warcraft," it seemed inevitable that the game would include its own Achievement system.

Last week, when I spoke with lead "WoW"designer Jeffrey Kaplan, he told me the inspiration behind it was that many at Blizzard are fans of other Achievement systems.

"We found that players are always looking for bragging rights and recognition of their past accomplishments," he told me in an interview last week. "It's more to feel like you got a trophy for doing something special, but in no way would this increase your character power. We didn't want to force you into weird sorts of gameplay that you wouldn't be doing anyway; we wanted it to more be sort of a reflection of what players were already doing."

Read more...

Although many "Diablo" fans have expressed fondness for the Necromancer from "Diablo II," lead "Diablo III" designer Jay Wilson confirmed to MTV Multiplayer that the character class will not appear in the initial release of the game.

When the team was choosing which classes to include in the long-awaited sequel for Blizzard's best-selling action-RPG series, they decided to create a brand-new one -- the Witch Doctor. And with only five classes in the game, "Diablo III" just didn't have room for two curse-dealing, pet-wielding classes.

Here's Blizzard's explanation for why the Witch Doctor replaced the Necromancer:

Read more...

[UPDATE 8/7: For those who heard that the "Diablo III" art director has resigned and are wondering how that affects the game's look, check out our full report.]

For some die-hard "Diablo" fans, signing a petition protesting "Diablo III"'s decidedly new and colorful art direction wasn't enough; they went ahead and made their own mock-ups for how they think the game should look.

When I sat down with lead "Diablo III" designer Jay Wilson last week we talked about why the team chose to go with the new, brighter color palette versus the older games' dark, desaturated look.

Then I showed him some fan-altered screenshots that had all been posted on the petition to see what he thought.

So to the "Diablo" fans who aren't sold on the colorful art style of the new game, read on to see what Blizzard thinks, pros and cons, of your suggested screenshots...

Read more...

When I spoke with lead "World of Warcraft" designer Jeff Kaplan yesterday about the game's new Achievement system, he revealed that eventually players will have a Blizzard Account that shows Achievements from other Blizzard games they've played, including the upcoming titles "Diablo III" and "StarCraft II."

"Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system," he explained.

When the new Blizzard Accounts are active, a player's 'WoW' points can be added to an overall score dubbed an account holder's "Blizzard Level." "It's basically a gamerscore," Kaplan said, when I made reference to Xbox Live's Achievement system. "For now the points are just a 'WoW' character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level."

Read more...

Don't like "Diablo III"'s colorful art direction? Too bad. We were told today that it's not going anywhere.

Lead "Diablo III" designer Jay Wilson told me that even though 52,000 "Diablo" fans have signed a petition asking Blizzard to return to the darker, more gothic look of the old "Diablo" games, the new, vibrant art style is here to stay.

This is how he put it: Read more...