With Blizzard's Saturday announcement of Diablo 3 came a veritable whirlwind of details in the form of developer interviews, panels, and gameplay demonstrations.

After becoming frustrated with the lack of consolidation, I've compiled a simple bullet-point list of all the known features, changes and additions to the series in the new sequel.

Considering the wealth of knowledge, I'm sure I've missed a thing or two. Feel free to use this as an opportunity to share tidbits of information, and to speculate on all things unknown.

Table of Contents:

1. General Overview
2. Gameplay
3. Questing
4. Interface
5. Multiplayer
6. Classes
7. Monsters
8. Story
9. Screenshots and Video

1. General Overview

• Largely follows in the style of past Diablo games.
• Controls and camera kept simple, but depth of combat enhanced.
• The story takes place 20 years after the events of Diablo II.
• Greater emphasis has been placed on a character-driven story.
• Targeting a length similar to Diablo II, which ran four acts.
• Uses a new in-house 3D engine and the Havok physics engine.
• Has been in development for four or five years. Was rebooted after Blizzard North shut down in March 2005.
• The game is "really far along," and is "really fun to play already." (Source: GameSpot)
• Dev team now up to 50-55 employees.
• Will ship simultaneously on Mac and PC.
• No plans for a console version.
• No decisions made on financial model.
• Blizzard challenged themselves to add color to the art style while maintaining the dark, gothic feel of the previous titles.

Shackvideo users can use the HD Stream.

2. Gameplay

• Heavy focus on encouraging cooperative play.
• Higher difficulty levels.
• Mixes randomized and static maps as in Diablo II.
• Hardcore mode likely to return. "Don't see why we wouldn't do it."
• Less focus on potions in order to emphasize skill use. Monsters can drop instant health regen orbs which heal anybody nearby in your party.
• Trading will be improved over the ad-hoc Diablo II experience, but nothing like an "auction house" system has been confirmed.
• Much more vertical terrain. Bridges, ladders, etc.
• Destructible environments, that can also hurt enemies via Havok physics engine.
• Town portal system will "probably" be changed to speed up gameplay.
• Mounts not seen as necessary.
• Booby traps return.
• Helper/bodyguard NPCs are back.

3. Questing

• There will be class-based quests in addition to main storyline quests.
• A new "Adventure" system will power randomly generated scripted events. An example provided was an area the player would come across, such as an old abandoned house, that may have a story behind it and enemies to dispatch.
• A new conversation system will see fully-voiced characters interacting with each other.
• Loot is now generated per player. You only see the loot that you can pick up, which Blizzard hopes will create a spirit of cooperation.
• Color-coded items, uniques, runes, and other conventions return, in addition to identifying scrolls.

4. Interface

• The user interface has been kept very similar to Diablo II.
• The new hotbar acts like an abbreviated four-slot form of a World of Warcraft hotbar, with additional slots for scrolls.
• Players will be able to quickswap between skills using the mouse wheel or tab key.
• Isometric view that can be zoomed in, but not zoomed far out.
• Item slots: helm, shoulders, gloves, body, pants, boots, belt, two rings, amulet.
• Damage-per-second variable on items.
• Items all take up one inventory slot--no more shuffling that giant spear around.
• Hit point numbers now appear above monsters after critical hits.
• Buffs are now displayed as an icon in the bottom left corner of the screen.
• Gold is now automatically picked up.

Turn the page for details on multiplayer and the game's classes.