To follow up on a couple of things that I said I would in this thread:

• We're looking into adding a toggle option for Advanced/Simplified tooltips. We don't know when or if this feature will make into the beta, but it is an option we want to include.
  
• We like Simplified tooltips being enabled by default, but agree that finding out how to view Advanced tooltips currently isn't very clear. We don't think it's a bad idea to provide instructions through some sort of hint or loading screen tip and are considering adding something to that effect in the future.
  
• Simplified tooltips have been adopted in the Game Guide. For each class, Simplified tooltips will display on in the Active Skills page. Individual skill pages, though (ex: Bash), will display the Advanced tooltip.

Contrary to popular belief we absolutely want to release games. When we say "we won't release a game until we think it's ready" that means we're going to make sure the systems are solid, and it's as bug free and stable as we can realistically expect of ourselves.
Ideas about design, our experience, player tastes and technology never stop moving forward, so when we refer to our game development process it doesn't mean we'll actually keep developing a game forever to have anything and everything we can ever imagine in it. We're going to at some point have to say "this is it" and get it into your hands.

The beta is privy to many in-process changes. If we made every beta patch perfect before releasing we'd be here for years. Part of the beta process is pushing out a build because you need X feature tested, and we don't care if Y and Z aren't done yet.

I can say with unequivocal certainty that nobody and I mean nobody picked up every gold drop in diablo 2 multiplayer. NO ONE did it. I myself left at least 98% of the gold I saw on the ground and just ran past it.
You did, everyone did, until they realized it wasn't worth anything. You left it on the ground for that reason, not because it required a click to pick it up. If it was worth something or even helpful you'd absolutely have picked it up.

You'll want to pick it up in Diablo III, and you don't even have to click on it. You just have to run sort of near it.

Sorry, but we just don't agree that this is an issue. Picking items up off the ground (especially something that's done automatically for you like gold...) is the point of the game.

Lets be honest here, that gold affix radius is a waste of space and it's only impacting other items in a negative way.
It's definitely something different, but we thought we'd at least try it out. It may not stick. (Tracker/Forums)

There should be a WIzard passive which converts a percentage amount of str to intel for the melee wizard builds. Yes/No? :P
Melee weapons can roll Int on them. Not sure that's necessary?

So...uhm... I was more eager to know if there are any changes to the gems coming after the stats revision?
We're still working on adding affixes, cutting ones that don't work, and testing. No major changes for gems, though.

Most people think that after the Mystic is gone, some enchants might transform into gem effects.
Oh right, uh, as far as I know the mystic enchants are just being put into the item affix pool, not gems. Might change. (Source)

Can we have the original TP sound effect ?
This is actually something we're looking into. :)

Bring back Exocet font for Diablo 3!
This font, while awesome, can be pretty difficult to read, especially against certain textures and colors. We've preserved its legacy in key places throughout the game, but ultimately we prefer a cleaner-looking font face for item names. (Tracker/Forums)

Diablo was released December 31, 1996. 2011 - 1996 = 15. Our company party is only a month late. :)
Diablo 15 anniversary celebration today at Blizzard. BBQ, beer, bears, beets... Battlestar Galactica.

Update: We're continuing to perform maintenance on the Diablo III test server and anticipate that it could take another hour to complete the necessary tasks. We anticipate that the game will be available again by approximately 5:00 p.m. PST, and appreciate your patience until it is.

We will be performing a small maintenance on the Diablo III test server starting at approximately 10:00 a.m. PST. This maintenance will include a variety of minor hotfixes as well as a database storage update; as a result of these changes, please note that your Friends Lists, Achievements, and "Recent Players" will be wiped.

We anticipate that downtime will last for about 4 hours, until 2:00 p.m. PST. Thank you for your patience.

There will be the North America region. No plans for a split like that.

This decision to change the core attributes and stats doesn't limit build diversity because the same stats exist on items as before. If you wanted precision, now you want +crit, if you wanted defense, now you should aim to get armor. It is the same concept for all stats, if you wanted attack, just go for your core class stat.
What this change is intended to do is increase the item pool by making more items that are clearly not for your character, and subsequently making it easier for you to be able to determine if you should be using an item or not :) If you are a Wizard and get an item with Strength on it, you know immediately that this item is not really for you. It used to be that you would be sitting there analysing an item with +attack for a good 10 seconds or more only to figure out that it's a bad item for you, but now it should only take a few moments to decide this.
We assure you though; this change will not affect the amount of build diversity in the game :)

Twitter
There's a resist stat for physical now. Same as cold, fire, poison, holy, etc. Defense became Armor. Armor became +physical resist. (source)

As things are right now, advanced tooltips becomes available when pressing down the control button. However, the request for a toggle option between advanced and simple tooltip defaults have been forwarded to the developers, so there is indeed a chance that we might see such an option in the future.

The "easy to learn, hard to master" design philosophy is one we have been happy with for quite a while, and with Diablo III we would like to maintain a strong and immediate focus on getting into the gameplay right from the start.

We feel that the best way to achieve this is to make the game quick to pick up and fun to play straight out of the box, and by offering short and clear descriptions, and not too many numbers, we hope to avoid confusion and irritation. Simplified tooltips are more helpful for the novice player to learn and play the game, and for the more experienced players, they help to quickly differentiate between abilities.

We do of course realise that there are those who prefer the advanced tooltips over the simplified ones, and we are also very much aware that there are those who simply want as much information available as possible without any filters. We acknowledge this, and we do of course want to find good ways to cater to these wishes as well.

In order to present more detailed Diablo III data and information, we are looking into the possibilities for creating a web page similar to what we see with the D2 Arreat Summit (http://classic.battl...batskills.shtml). Having such a page for Diablo III would allow us to provide more organised content, and it would also allow us to provide more timely content. For an example, if we would make a hotfix, we would be able to get that updated information up on the web page immediately, whereas the game client would require a patch before the tooltip can be updated.

A few more changes have made their way in to Diablo III beta patch 10, including the removal of Scrolls of Companion and Scrolls of Reforging, and we’ll be updating the patch notes to reflect that.

In both cases these are features we felt were underdeveloped and just not quite good enough for the game in their current state. The companion pets felt like they were mandatory to maximize play efficiency and some of the pets were too cutesy for the gritty, dark world of Sanctuary. Neither of those are issues we felt like we could solve without a lot of additional work, and we’re trying to close in on a solid release date for the game, not move further away. When weighing these systems against releasing the game, we decided to cut these scrolls and stay on track for the game’s release.

We think we can make companion pets into a much cooler system (both mechanically and visually), and evolve the reforging scrolls into a more meaningful system at some point in the future. For the time being, they will not be in the initial release of the game.

We'll have info soon. Some additional changes snuck in to Patch 10.

We'd like to thank everyone for their participation in the #DiabloBeta Sweepstakes. All messaging has been sent out; Grats to the winners!

Be sure to use the Beta Opt-in feature too! We are still giving out beta invites through that.

Hey guys!

I have some really cool news for you. Last night, we past 5000 bugs reported on the Bug Report forums! This is an incredible milestone for the Diablo III community, and one you should be proud of.

Here are some fun stats about bugs in the Beta:

• The first bug was reported on 9/6/11 and can be found here
  
• The most common bug ever reported was when the Battle.net servers were down during Thanksgiving 2011. It was reported over 200 times.
  
• 5092 bugs have been reported since 10 AM PST on 1/25/12
  
• Of the 5092 bugs reported on the forums, 856 unique bugs have been sent off to the developers to fix. (Remember, a bug reported on the forums can be a duplicate or not a bug at all).
  Thank you again for all of your hard work testing the Diablo III Beta and helping Blizzard make it the best game it can possibly be. Here's to 5000 more!
  
  Sincerely,
  Vasadan

Hey guys,

If you are getting Error_3022 when trying to use the Auction House, this is to let you know that Blizzard is working on the issue.

For now, here is the current work around to get your account working again.

1. Go to the Battle.net website and log in.
2. Go to your billing address.
3. Click Edit when at your billing address.
4. Do not edit anything and press Save.
5. Attempt to use the Auction House again.

For some reason, people with valid billing addresses are being locked out of using the Auction House, even though the Beta is not using your billing address for anything as Beta Bucks aren't real money. This work around should help you guys out.

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to announce the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, a major global eSports event featuring some of the best pro-gaming competition in the world. Slated to take place in Asia toward the end of 2012, the Battle.net World Championship will host this year’s StarCraft II and World of Warcraft Arena World Championship tournaments. Blizzard gamers and eSports fans from around the world will be invited to attend and witness some of the most skilled pro players on the planet battle it out for cash and glory.

We’re excited to be showcasing Blizzard eSports on a truly global stage this year. We're also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

More details about the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and BlizzCon 2013, including specific dates and locations, will be coming in the months ahead.

Forcing me to hold CTRL
How could we?!

Please integrate a toggle check box in the options menu for advanced/simple tooltip defaults.
While I'd argue that holding CTRL to view Advanced tooltips is only a mild inconvenience (at worst), this is a reasonable request that I'm happy to pass on to our designers. :)

As for why we made the change? We wanted to make ability selection a bit more intuitive for newer players. It's important to keep in mind that not everyone who's going to play Diablo III will be veterans of the franchise, or even similar action RPGs. Even though the game's mechanics are fairly straightforward, the detailed information provided in Advanced tooltips can sometimes be a bit overwhelming if you're not already familiar with what all the terms mean.

For example, this:

Attack a single target with a series of rapid punches

...is a little cleaner and easier to understand at a glance than:

Unleash a series of extremely fast punches that deal 100% weapon damage as Lightning. Every third hit deals damage to all enemies in front of you and knocks them back a short distance.

Damage as lightning? What does that mean? Does that mean I need to collect lightning damage? Does that mean I'm getting gear with the wrong stats on it?

Simplified tooltips are intended to make it easier for novice players to understand what each of their character's abilities do, as well as help them better and more quickly differentiate between abilities that are meant for single targets vs. groups vs. situational powers. That said, for more knowledgeable players, to whom detailed information is more useful, Advanced tooltips are still available with the push of a button.

Are there plans to update the class pages with these simplified tooltips?
Don't know off-hand, but that's a good question. I'll find out.

I think you're grossly exaggerating how confused a new player has the potential to be.
You'd be surprised at how alien some basic concepts and mechanics can be to players who've never had any experience with action RPGs before. I actually had to spend a lot of time explaining skills and abilities to my mom and grandmother when they first started playing the Diablo III beta. It wasn't about intelligence, just about familiarity -- they had little to no exposure to the terminology we use throughout the game, so there was definitely some confusion around what each of their character's skills did (or could do). I'm sure they could have eventually figured out things on their own, with the help of the Advanced tooltips, but it would have definitely taken longer and I don't know if they would have been engaged as quickly.

Of course, that's just a personal anecdote, so it's not representative of an entire population of players, but I can definitely see the value in providing tooltips that aren't as technical as the ones we currently have.
Now, that said...

I think the problem here is that some of the original tooltips were just written poorly so that they appear to be more confusing than they actually are.

I'd prefer a toggle checkbox in options somewhere, but at least add a line to the bottom of the mouseover tooltips to tell me how to see the useful information.

...these are both fair points which I'll be happy to bring up along with the request for a option for an Advanced tooltips toggle. Thanks for the good feedback. :)

And yet we're told to give feedback. Why? To have it thrown in our face?
I don't find the requests unreasonable, either. There's been a lot of great feedback in this thread.

The Mystic is gone.
We removed the mystic because she was not really adding anything spectacular to the game as she was. In her current form she was simply the gemming and sockets system named differently, as such we hope to revisit her at a later point to improve on the system. So the Mystic might not be gone for good, we will be looking at her again in the future.

Removed the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube.
The designers actually feel there is a need to break up the action in Diablo III and that there are many benefits to doing this. With how the game was in patch 9, you were in the action all the time killing enemies and you would get burnt out quite quickly from the near constant cycle of slaughtering demons.

We removed these particular items so that players would have a natural resting point to break that combat cycle, a time where little action occurs such as going back to town or even a story sequence occurring, you are then re-invigorated once again when you return back to combat the legion of hell!

Overall thoughts:
We understand that you are not pleased by the fact that we are removing some of the things you were looking forward to, however this does not stop us from revisiting such concepts in the future such as the Mystic after the release of the game. Our goal is as it always has been, to create the best possible game for everyone to enjoy as much as possible 

We hope that you all look forward to the game as much as you did before and hope to get Diablo III in your hands “Soon™”.

Do Player 1 and Player 2 see the same loot drop, or the drop is individual for each player and only visible by each player...so Player 1 sees a legendary item on the ground while Player 2 sees some very useful crafting bones?
Loot drops are independent to the player viewing them. So player one might see the drop [Legendary Bow of Epic Awesomeness that Kills Things] and a few random white items, and player two sees a load of white items and a [Not so Legendary Axe with a Blunt Edge].

There is also currently no loot management in place in Diablo III. If you were player two and you wanted that legendary bow, you would need to talk with that player one and hope that they are willing to trade it to you for either a price or even for free if you are lucky :)

If these item names are not in the game ill cry :)
Somehow I have my doubts that they will be included >.<

Mandatory Breaks
These breaks are not really mandatory, if you so wish you could actually continue on without going back to town to sell or salvage the items you have found by removing lesser items and replacing them with better ones.

You could be someone who likes to grab every item that drops which means your inventory will fill up fast, or someone who only picks up very particular items meaning it will take a long time for your inventory to fill. It can also vary depending on your luck and chance of finding particular items. So unfortunately I cannot give you an exact or even approximate time for this as it is really depends on you. But these breaks in combat are something that the developers feel was needed and that is why the items were removed to allow for this.

Nah. Thirteen will still be the level cap in Beta Patch 10, and we've no plans at this time to raise the cap in future patches.

In the end, the beta is mainly intended to test server stability as well as hardware/software compatibility, and that kind of testing isn't really dependent on having a plethora of game content available (beyond Act 1, at least).

We know many of you are eager to see more of Sanctuary, though, and we can't wait to take you on that journey once the game launches. In the meantime, we really do appreciate your feedback on current systems, bugs, and the overall user experience more than you know, and definitely encourage you to keep playing (and posting!) so long as you're having fun. :)

Your chance to vote for #Diablo III as most anticipated game of 2012 is here! @GameTrailers’ Ultimate Gaming Preview.

The currency-based auction house is back up! As noted in the patch notes, all beta participants have had their Battle.net Balance reset to 50 Beta Bucks.

General

A number of significant changes have been made to key aspects of Diablo III in this patch. To learn more about these changes and why they were made, please be sure to read the "System Changes" blog, written by Jay Wilson.

• All characters have been wiped. Please note that this wipe will also affect gold, achievements, items, followers, and artisans.
  
• The Battle.net Balance for all beta participants has been reset to 50 Beta Bucks
  
• Core character attributes have been reworked significantly
  
  • Attack, Defense, and Precision have been removed
    
  • Dexterity, Intellect, Strength, and Vitality have been added:
    
    • Dexterity
      
      • +Demon Hunter damage
        
      • +Monk damage
        
      • +Dodge (for all classes)
    • Intellect
      
      • +Witch Doctor damage
        
      • +Wizard damage
        
      • +Health from globes (for all classes)
    • Strength
      
      • +Barbarian damage
        
      • +Armor (for all classes)
    • Vitality
      
      • +Health (for all classes)
  • Armor will now supplement Defense, as well as provide +Physical resist
    
  • +Chance to Crit has been added as an item affix
    
  • Player Life per Vitality has been changed:
    
    • Players will now start out with 10 Life per Vitality at level 1
• Nephalem Altars have been removed and players can now swap unlocked skills at any point during gameplay via the Skills list. This will impose a 30-second cooldown on the newly-activated skill, during which time the skill cannot be exchanged for another.
  
  • Please note that the skills system is still considered a work-in-progress and will be undergoing additional changes in future patches. This iteration of the system is not final.
• Scrolls of Identification have been removed and players can now identify an item by right-clicking on the item's icon
  
• The Nephalem Cube has been removed and the salvage ability has been added to the Blacksmith artisan
  
• The Cauldron of Jordan has been removed
  
• Stone of Recall has been renamed to "Town Portal" and can now be accessed directly via the Skill bar UI
  
• The fifth quick slot button has been moved next to the Town Portal ability in the Skill bar. This slot will eventually be to dedicated to potions, but can currently be used as a normal slot.
  
• Skills will now display simplified tooltips by default
  
  • To view Advanced tooltips, press and hold the CTRL key when hovering over skill icons
• The duration of the global chill effect granted by cold damage has be increased from 0.4 seconds to 0.6 seconds
  
• Achievements have been re-enabled

Classes

• Barbarian
  
  • Active Skills
    
    • Ground Stomp
      
      • Damage increased from 70% to 110%
    • Ignore Pain
      
      • Cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
        
      • Duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
    • Leap Attack
      
      • Damage increased from 70% to 100%
    • Revenge
      
      • Damage increased from 150% to 220%
  • Passive Skills
    
    • Nerves of Steel
      
      • Now increases Armor by 25% of your Vitality
• Monk
  
  • Active Skills
    
    • Blinding Flash
      
      • No longer breaks on damage
        
      • Duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
• Wizard
  
  • Active Skills
    
    • Frost Nova
      
      • Damage reduced from 65% to 50%
    • Ice Armor
      
      • No longer increases your Armor
    • Wave of Force
      
      • Damage increased from 205% to 350%
  • Passive Skills
    
    • Temporal Flux
      
      • Slow amount increased from 24% to 30%

Crafting

• General
  
  • Leveling artisans in Normal difficulty now only requires gold
• Salvaging
  
  • Common (white) items can no longer be salvaged and common crafting materials have been removed in all difficulty levels
    
  • Salvaging a Magic (blue) item will always give you a Magic material, as well as a chance to receive a Rare (yellow) or Legendary (orange) material
    
  • Salvaging a Rare item will always give you a Rare material and a Magic material, as well as a change to receive a Legendary material
    
  • Salvaging a Legendary item will always give you a Legendary material, Rare material, and Magic material

Items

• General
  
  • Attack, Defense, and Precision random affixes have been replaced with Dexterity, Strength, and Intellect
    
  • The base damage on slower weapons has been increased. This is because we’re also increasing the potency of elemental damage properties, and elemental damage benefits faster weapons more than slower weapons.
    
  • The drop rate of Magic items between level 1 and level 20 has been lowered. Single affix-Magic items are now introduced more slowly, and double affix-Magic items won’t appear until later in the game.
• Vendors
  
  • Wandering Merchants now have a 50% change to sell a limited stock Rare item of any type
    
  • Amulets have been moved from the Collector to the Fence

Monsters

• Electrified monsters no longer spew lightning on death
  
• Arcane Enchanted monsters no longer cast an extra arcane beam on death

Bug Fixes

• Players should no longer be disconnected from Battle.net when moving a stack of 0 items to the their Skill action bar
  
• Rapidly moving around items in a character’s inventory should no longer cause those items to become unresponsive
  
• Items that display full durability, but are still considered slightly damaged should now be able to be posted on the Auction House
  
• Monsters that are killed should now always properly play their death animation rather than remain standing

We're in the process of bringing down the Diablo III test server to deploy Beta Patch 10. Maintenance should begin at approximately 11:00 a.m. PST, and we anticipate that downtime will last approximately 9 hours, until 8:00 p.m. PST

is tomorrow still looking good for #Diablo3 Patch 10?
Depends on how testing goes today.

Core attributes are important. They're your core attributes! But they have never been and continue not to be the primary driving force behind your itemization choices. At all times you're going to need to keep doing and avoiding more damage. Enemies get tougher, they hit harder, and take more hits. No matter who you are you have to counter those inevitable truths. No character would ever say "I can ignore defensive stats because I am a glass cannon!" no, you get to Inferno and you'll die. You can be a glass cannon, but it's going to be a balance between offense and defense, not an all-in decision. There is an inevitable requirement to have a variety of the core stats, offensive and defensive. It's the balance that's important.

Ok, so, core stats are super great, but they're still just four of all the bonuses that items can roll and provide your character. Four. And for most builds they're never going to be where you're focusing your attention. The other things that can roll up (which still include +armor, +dodge, +health globe, +crit chance, +crit damage, by the way) have always been the more important decision. It's your choice between doing more damage or being more defensive, but that's a forgone conclusion. That's not where true build diversity ever comes from, it's too broad a plateau.

Are you taking Attack (before) or your classes' core damage stat (now)? Are you taking Armor (now) or Defense (before)? Are you taking Precision (before) or +crit (now)? These are the same things.

For example, a Barbarian gets both "resist-all" armor and Attack-like damage from "Strength", so why would he ever choose Dexterity's dodge over that?

Barbarian's will always want Strength now just like they always wanted Attack before. Armor is a damage reduction. Dodge completely negates damage. They're extremely different in practice and your survivability, and at high difficulty play barbarians will absolutely want +dodge. And they don't have to take Dexterity to get it. Ideally a barbarian would find an item with +Stength and +Dodge on it. It would be devalued for the barb if it had +Dexterity on it. (tah dah itemization diversity)

Also, would he truly ever choose to go after a stat that increases health globe benefits, over strength?

Up to that player and their build. Would he ever want crit over flat damage increases? Would he take an increase to the damage of cleave over a crit damage increase? These are the choices you'll have to make and what makes building characters fun.

Now, obviously the class stats are the top priority, but each stat has equal value, simply because it can be used by somebody.

What this guy said.

It's also about item comparison, and that's simply not an issue in the beta. You're not getting enough drops or enough tough decisions to make item comparisons a problem for you.

What was happening for us at high levels is that the stats we had required you to think about the item for at least a couple seconds just to realize it's not a good item for your character. By having a single damage stat now you're focusing on, it reduces the number of failed comparisons that quickly add up at later levels. The tough decisions are still really tough and you'll be comparing items for a long time to try to figure out which one is better, but all of the less meaningful drops take less time to realize that the item is not for you and quickly move on. Again that's something that you just can't get a good sense of in the beta, but Diablo II players should sympathize with what this change does to resolve item comparison headaches.

Now we are going back to the mathematically correct ways of going after core attributes.

I think there may be a confusion that +dodge is tied to Dexterity now. Or +health globe is tied to Intellect. That's not the way it works, those stats are and still roll as their own affixes on items.

Also I sort of misspoke in that this change doesn't really affect build diversity, of course, all the same stats exist for people to stack or do whatever they want with. But it greatly increases item diversity.

You have your reasons for removing stat distribution, but to argue it was to prevent players for sucking in inferno is something I'll never comprehend.

I never said and it's absolutely not to help people "not suck". The same "I don't have enough defense to survive" exists now as it did before. If you're saying that a player would be playing and not realize the numbers on his items going higher was to give him more damage and/or defense then that's just not a valid assessment of what makes a player skilled.

Is there still a +attack affix or is that one actually gone?

Your damage is increased by your core class stat, but there are many other affixes that can improve your damage in various ways. It's the same. When you wanted Attack before you just want your class stat now instead. (Tracker/Official Forums)

Legendary items in the beta in patch 10
I don't think so. And less magical items actually. We're rebalancing some item distribution rates. (source)

white items(being useless) does that mean there will be a better drop rate for magic items?
I don't think so. And less magical items actually. We're rebalancing some item distribution rates. (source)

With removing the ability to salvage white items what will u do with common scrap.
Common salvaging materials are being removed and crafting recipes are being balanced. (source)

Why Include White Items?
Diablo is about loot explosions. We can't realistically have loot explosions without a bunch of confetti and glitter that makes it all look exciting, but has no value except to make the explosions more satisfying. Gold still did this to a degree, but we were missing the "arrows and bolts" of yesteryear. White items were worth something and we really didn't have any junk we could just throw out with no limit. Now we do. (Blizz Tracker/Official Forums)

Quick update for everyone! We've discovered a few issues with Beta Patch 10 which could affect player login. Instead of releasing the patch as-is and addressing those issues later, we felt it necessary to take some time to resolve them now. As a result, the soonest we'll be able to release Beta Patch 10 is next Monday, January 23.

White Items
White items will not be worth the inventory space. No one will pick them up. If people start picking them up we'll reduce the meaningless amounts of gold they already sell for even further. We can address these things if they happen.

Being perfectly honest about the cauldron and cube, they were removed for very 'designery' reasons which makes it difficult to explain to people playing the game. Players want more freedom, more choice, almost limitlessly, but a game is defined by its limitations. It's our job to define those limitations, and enforce them to create the type and feel of the game we're attempting to produce. There are a lot of good reasons, such as breaking up combat, giving very solid and safe stopping points for groups (especially strangers), as well as ensuring players are staying acquainted with the town, its inhabitants, features, and what it offers. A player may say, well that should be my choice, I should just be able to kill demons without a break for as long as I want. It's our job to make those limitations for the betterment of the enjoyment of the game, even if it's an intangible and almost psychological improvement that on the surface appears to be a nonsensical remove of freedom. I expect this response to further confuse and enrage, unfortunately.
(Blizz Tracker/Official Forums)

Inventory and Waiting For Players
Diablo III has a larger inventory. An enormous shared stash. Items take up less space. We don't encourage carrying tons of potions. No identify scrolls/tomes. No TP scrolls/tomes. We don't have charms. And we're still evaluating some of the other inventory items, which could free up even more space.

Yes, you will need to go back to town every once in a while but I don't think it's quite as severe as some are imagining it to be.

what happened to your philosophy of,fast paced action and,Do no harm to co-op
After a lot of playing at high levels we realized returning to town and breaking up the action is actually good. There are some more designery reasons that reinforce all of this, but the bottom line is that the action is very important, and being actively engaged in the action. Being able to be out and killing for hours and hours straight was negating the fun elements. Just like a story arc has highs and lows, a game needs to promote those ups and downs through its mechanics.

As far as harming co-op, there's really no difference now. Before you'd say "WAIT UP" and everyone would have to stop while you examined each item and decided to sell, salvage, or keep it. In the best case scenario everyone would agree to stop and do this at the same time. It's no different than everyone agreeing to head back to town, and in fact it provides a more prominent, not to mention safe, pause point where everyone can take care of a few quick tasks, and then head back out.

Say your friend's inventory is full, but yours isn't, well you both decide to TP and while he's going through his bag you have time to craft a few things, or alt+tab free of fear to read reddit or something. Whatever. It's not different to the co-op game because you had to stop before, and the benefits to being in town now are actually pretty substantial.

I am not going to "wait up" for someone
Then you will die. You're going to have to stick together to survive, and that's going to force groups to stop together. It's a lot better for everyone if that stopping point is in-town, for the aforementioned reason that not everyone takes the same amount of time to complete the same tasks, and there's more things that can be accomplished in town. Not to mention it's safer if you need to grab some more Cactus Cooler or take a bio break.

Every 15 seconds or so there's a side room and you have to decide to pursue that interest in the name of picking up an item or to stay with the group.
That is absolutely the case, but you're not thinking about how that dynamic changes when the game is actually difficult. Beyond Normal if you take off to go clear that side room on your own and either you will die, the rest of your group will, or both.

So now Blizzard is intentionally interrupting my experience?
Managing your inventory is and has absolutely always been an integral part of the Diablo experience. Picking up items and deciding which ones to keep, equip, or otherwise is the game. When it comes down to it that is the entire point of the entire game. Killing demons to get item drops, and those item drops being 'dealt with' in some way.

You had to stop and manage your inventory before. You have to do the same thing now. The difference is a 2 second cast timer to head back to town and a right click on the Blacksmith. You're going to be just fine.

Will the Town Portal timer be cancelled if you're hit in combat?
Yes, even if you dodge the attack.(Blizz tracker/Official Forums)

Communication
It's weird because this is exactly how we develop every single game. You have to go all in with a system. You have to believe in it and sell it and make it absolutely certain it's the best it can be... until you figure out it's not and throw it away and go with the new better solution you just realized was better. You don't half !@# something or noodle around testing possible theories, you find the best solution you can and you go after it full force, because that's really the only way you can successfully test it and see if the electric fence has any weaknesses.

That's the iterative game design we embrace. It's what we do. I think the issue is that Diablo III is really the first game, in my opinion, where the window into the design process has been open all the way from the beginning* (and boy oh boy has it been open for a long time). We didn't have BlizzCon during the development of Diablo II, Warcraft III, or even World of Warcraft. We didn't have websites that supported big in depth articles, we didn't have billions of people on the internet, we didn't have twitter and Facebook and live Q&amp;amp;A chats and all this stuff we have now that offers unparalleled access into the play by play development of a game. For us we enjoy being able to share that stuff. You all get to follow along in the process of us creating our games! We think that's awesome. But it has some pretty big cons in that sometimes it's hard to understand why we work the way we do. I'm not going to ask you to "Trust in Blizzard" or some other far fetched motto, but I do want to impress that this isn't different than the development of any of our other games.

*Sure there was StarCraft II but the design changes aren't quite as HUGE because they tend to be more about individual units and their balance, although there were some very substantial changes to StarCraft II systems very late in the development process.

I think the biggest issue with this process is that the fans who are truly super devoted become so involved in the process that they get obsessed with the game and want to play it so badly.
Personally, that's what I do. When I'm super excited about a game I completely avoid all news and information on it. I can usually tell when a game is announced if I'm going to like it or not, I'm pretty accurate with my initial assessments. After that I'll just completely avoid any and all information about it, that way when it's released it's a totally fresh experience. I sit in a dark room, quiet, and enjoy the experience. Each thing unfolds as the developer intended, good or bad.

I don't intend to tell anyone here to do the same, I'd be lonely (and potentially out of a job) if you weren't here, but I think that approach, at least for me, definitely has had a big benefit to the way I play and appreciate games.

There was a time when I was obsessed with Unreal. I followed that game day and night for... however long it took, four or five years. I sat in an IRC channel every single day waiting for news, discussing the game, raging when I found out they were scrapping it and starting over, and that was a lot of my time closely following that game. I can definitely identify with that and appreciate the ups and downs, but yeah, I totally support and now personally embrace that attitude of finding out about the game when you play it the first time.

You announced a release window, missing it, then announcing another release window, then missing it again, then you make it sound like this game still needs a ton of work? you do this for every game?
We never said we're missing our new target. But no, we generally don't tell people anything about release targets because they tend to be reduced to screaming obscenities at us when we inevitably miss them, reminding us why we used to not tell anyone anything.

Again, right now, people are begging to know a release window. And we should update them so... they can be nasty and angry when we miss it again? I don't understand who benefits from that.

tatements like this are rather alienating because even those who aren't ranting, being obscene or whatever will read into this as what the company perceives of it's fanbase as a whole.
When you're right you're right. It's late. I apologize.

I look forward to continuing the conversations with you all tomorrow and next week.(Blizz Tracker/Official Forums)

Skill Slot Reduction
1, 2, 3, 4, LMB, RMB, alt-RMB.

7 slots.

(Pro tip: press the X key to swap to your alt-RMB. The X key can be rebound to something else too.)

So no TAB swap?
No, it used to work that the alt-RMB ability would swap in when you hit TAB. Which can still be the case, you'd just rebind the X key to TAB.

You guys are basically arguing against a system that was never a problem to begin with that they have now forced and locked you into a certain system.
In play testing higher levels we just haven't found any use for normal attacks for any of the builds we've been using. There's always a skill that's zero cost and usually builds resource or is just out and out better than a normal attack. Which doesn't mean a build doesn't exist, but since you still have 7 available slots if you want to keep normal attack on your LMB, you can still do that.


Other problems that occur is that Witch Doctor are also basically forced to have 6 skills all of which drain mana as they have no regenerators. If they choose to make one of them an auto attack they miss out on having 6 skills and are stuck at 5.
Wuh? The witch doctor has a ton of mana regenerators. That's like his whole thing.

I just checked, and this option is not available. Do you promise it will be on release? :)
Eek, right, it's still on the to-do list. I refuse to make any promises. :)
(Blizz Tracker/Official Forums)

Twitter
as dev. progresses closer and closer to release, will there be more frequent "systems" updates posted by Jay? (as they're decided)?
Potentially. Depends on how much more we think we're going to change. (source)

Teleport question. If I put Alabaster on it does that 1.2 sec delay mean I can keep casting over and over before 1.2 sec?
Correct! (source)