DiabloFans

You can't get disappointed if you aren't expecting anything.

If you were then you are the one creating disappointment

Quote from Wingless

I also think the skull and soulstone is awesome. I don't really care about D2 or the USB functioality. It just looks awesome

Yeah indeed! I actually kinda need a usb stick, the ones I have are only ~1gb each.. It'll be handy to have!
So in addition to it looking awfully sexy it'll also be useful :kitty:!

Quote from MonkManD3

Am I the only one also excited for the "208-page-art-book" and the "Behind-the-scenes-DVD/BluRay"?!?! And I'll definitely listen to the "24-piece-Diablo 3-sountrack-CD" whilst studying!

Aye, that's mainly what I'm buying the CE for. The in-game stuff is a nice bonus though.

Quote from djxt22

The conference call takes place (US Time Zone) Nov 08, 2011; 1:30 PM PT, 2:30PM MT, 3:30PM CT, 4:30PM ET--(EU Time Zone[correct me if I'm mistaken]) 9:30PM/21:30 GMT, 10:30PM/22:30 CET, 11:30PM/23:30 EET.

Source : http://investor.activision.com/

Other Time Zones

7:30PM BRST - November 8th
5:30AM CT, 6:30AM JT, 9:30AM VLAT - November 9th

Quote from Verity

Conference Call time, local timezone converted and with countdown:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Nov 8, 2011 1:30 PM PT

My take on the skill swap situation:

So, the "anywhere, anytime" skill swapping had to go. It's just too easily exploitable (I made a video back in patch 4 demonstrating this if there still is people who aren't conviced: Macro abuse demonstration).

Now the Nephalem Altar and everyone's suggestions on alternate systems... I think the altar is a decent change. It's a tad bit better than in-town only swapping since it gives them the possibility to plant altars at key locations when you might want to swap out skills. And if you have the need anywhere else it's only a 10 second SoR journey away. People's suggestions to instead have portable altars with cast time to change spells or is basically the same. I mean how is a portable altar with a 10-15 sec cast time any different from a Stone of Recall back to town? Apart from having to click the portal back and potentially replacing any existing portals I see none.

As for out-of-combat swapping I think that is a worthy contestant to the current system. I kinda liked the fluid way of swapping skills in patch 4, but as said it was too exploitable. If you could only change skills in combat that would basically solve the problem. Yea, you could probably run out of combat and swap skills, but I don't really see that as that a big problem.

Now people are saying implementing a combat system would take a lot of time etc etc, but I don't know. The in-combat hook already exists, to some degree at least. The thing I noticed was that if you are in a public game solo and having your Templar with you. When someone joins the game the templar will despawn and go back to town, but, if you are currently fighting monsters then he will stay at your side until they are dead. So while this may only be a primitive kind of combat system they at least have something that they could build upon.

Conference Call time, local timezone converted and with countdown:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Nov 8, 2011 1:30 PM PT

My prediction: "Diablo 3 Beta is running along nicely, we recently patched the beta client to introduce some of the changes we have been working on and are adding new people to the beta continually as we scale our server structure. The game is still slated for a Q1 2012 release (Possible month span.. probably not)."

Buuuut maybe we get something out of it

Opt-in on your battle.net account.
Participate in the Facebook sweepstakes.
Look for beta contests here and on other sites.

That's about it.

Quote from hawkeyenick

As someone who has put together a profit model and a potential business together based on the RMAH, this post upsets me because it reveals too much to regular joes.

If you have a good profit model I doubt this knowledge getting out to the limited amount of people reading this will make a big enough of a dent to your potential income for you to even notice.

Just sayin'

So I was watching this press interview that Jesse(OMFGcata) posted on his channel where Robert Bridenbecker, Vice President of Online Technologies at Blizzard, talk about stuff and he said some things I found interesting. I'm not sure if this was already known, but I sure haven't heard about it so here goes (Yea I saw this video has been posted in another thread, but figured some people would want this brought to light).

There are no region locks at all for servers. For example: If you buy the game in NA you can still play anywhere, the only lock is for the RMAH auction house.

Excluding certain regions where the market is quite different, such as China.


Your account registration details will determine where you can use the RMAH. If it's set to Britain your default RMAH will be GPB and your playzone will be Europe. Playzone is changeable to where you want to play.
It was also stated that since there may be multiple currencies within a specific region you are free to, if you so wish, use the other currencies RMAH within your region.

Blizzard doesn't expect this to be very popular though due to those purchases being subject to currency exchange fee's and such.

Also there was some additional info regarding regional clients:


Some more interesting bits can be found in the full Interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZirE9nd8ILc

Quote from time4war

The title says it all...
I'm over this bullshit they're about to release, I hope something changes.

Wow, your post is riddled with assumptions and fallacies.

Firstly, you're mad because you're waiting for the game, and that has ruined your enthusiasm? That makes no sense, haven't you every waited for anything in your life? What do you do between seasons of a series you're watching? Or a movie that get's announced only to have it's release date pushed back? Not to be a prat, but patience is a part of growing up, you learn to deal with small things like waiting. If you don't get something now, then its pointless to throw a fit, screaming 'I don't want it anymore'.

Secondly, how exactly do you know you will be hitting the level cap in two weeks, unless you plan on playing non stop for two weeks, in which case I'm happy for you, since the rest of us need to do mundane tasks such as sleep and work. Apparently the time needed to finish hell will be equivalent to the time it took to finish hell in D2, which is quite a bit.
And how are you planning on destroying inferno? At Blizzcon they stated that you will need to farm hell gear just to survive inferno. So good luck 'destroying' it. And you plan to do all of that on hardcore? Watch some of the Blizzcon videos where they get two shots, then make that claim.

Also, you plan to farm for four years? You know they will be releasing extra content in that time, right? Just checking.

Lastly, 'zero competitive play'... Are you blind, or did you fail to see the deathmatch arena's available at launch. If you call that zero, then I don't know because it's one more PvP mode than D2 had (unless you count toggling it on an 'option'). And are you deaf, or did you fail to notice them saying at Blizzcon that they intend to put in a duel system sometime after launch?

You know, people like you abolish my hope in humanity. You jump on your high horse, saying things like "they pushed the release back, that's distasteful" "we will be done with it in two weeks, then destroy the hardest difficulty" "I'm so over the bullshit they've made, they better change it". You seem like the obnoxious type who go out of their way to anger people.
And for what exactly? If that's how you get your jollies then go insult minorities with some racial slurs, at least then you'll get a good kick out of it.

My take on the controversial pillar-summoning attack.




Enjoy, comment and rate!

Well, I'm going to get out and say: When you reached the end of the game, maybe its time to put it down and let it rest. If doing it all over sounds fun then go ahead, with friends, D2 is still fun to redo.

But once you're done, you're done. I mean, D2 always had so much randomness but its still that one game that I went through completely (never farmed or anything, just played), and eventually you finish it and you move on.

In my eyes, thats just what games should be. Blizzard loves to try and suck people in the same game until forever, but that never worked for me. A game has a beginning, and it has an end. I put it down, and I come back months, if not years later.


The only reason a game lasts longer really is just because you're wasting tremendous amount of time on it. Its easy as a kid to get absorbed in a game like D2 and just keep doing it. But reality is that eventually, if a game is lasting forever, its because its wasting your time, and you're running on addiction. I'm not saying you're dangerously addicted if you keep playing 1 hour a day because it still satisfies you, but you know.

I don't see just one game. I see plenty. Some people have been waiting for D3 a long time, and some people have lived of almost nothing but Diablo. I can understand they kind of want it to last forever, but again, its not supposed to last forever.


So what could they add to the game? They could add content. Anything they had is finite, and will present the same eventual problem. We'll get expansions to freshen it up a few times. Take it for what it is. You can only eat so much chocolate.

As we all know, Diablo appears to have a female host this time.
So, what kind of New Threaths, Horrors and Challenges will the heroes have to put up with!?

I give you, Diablette!



Edit: Fixed some texts, thanks Nekrodrac!

I'm not "forum savvy" so I'm just posting a link to the page with the blue.


update:

Over the past few hours a good amount has changed around the Diablo III Community Site, some of these additions are more potent than other. Lets work our way through these updates, shall we?

---

The Official Item Page Is Up




It seems the page is still under mild construction, with some item icons repeating themselves, and others simply nonexistent. All and all though you can clearly see how the page will pan out, categorizing items by body slot, with class specifics gear being conveniently identified by class.

Through this one page, we have many significant topics to touch on.


Follower Specific Items


On top of being able to equip your Follower with standard gear, there will also be follower specific items which are only usable by the item's specified follower. These items don't have stats to them yet, so it's still unknown exactly what buffs they'll grant your follower.

• Enchantress Items

Her items seem to be based on magical trinkets, such as mirrors and amulets.

• Scoundrel Items

The Scoundrel's items suit his character very well, consisting of such things as dice and satchels.

• Templar Items

For the Templar, we find items like Tomes and Vials of Tears.


Amulets & Rings Have Sockets

Confirmed by multiple examples for either item, it's evident both amulets and rings can have sockets. Now to what extent this goes is unknown, can you add sockets to them? If so, can you add sockets to legendaries that don't already have them? Multiple sockets? These are questions without answers at the moments.


Consumables


Potion Revisions
Potions seem to have gotten a nice upgrade graphically, alongside a confirmed "Other" category of potion which grants a buff for a certain length of time.

Scrolls...
If there was any doubt that Scrolls will play a large role in Diablo III, the fact that they have their own page should alleviate any lingering doubts. There are currently three different types of scrolls. The Scroll of Companion, which summons a temporary critter who picks up gold for you, the Scroll of Identity, that identifies rare and legendary items (magic items no longer need to be identified), and the Scroll or Reforging, which re-rolls your item at the cost of negative 10% max durability (there are three ranks of these scrolls, each used for either magic, rare, or legendary items).

Tomes...
Throughout the world you will find Pages of Training, these alone do nothing. After collecting five Pages of Training, you may combine them to form a Tome of Training which is used to level up the Artisan of your choice. It takes multiple Tomes of Training to level your chosen Artisan.


Crafting Materials


As it stands, each difficulty will have four different crafting materials, one salvaged from each corresponding item class (Common, Magic, Rare, and Legendary). Gems will be broken down into Gem Dust which may have many uses, one surely being to craft higher tier gems.

Crafting Recipes..

Along your journey you will find Crafting Recipes, which may be given to the corresponding Artisan to teach him or her how to craft a new item.

• Black Smith

The Black Smith recipe pages on the Diablo 3 Community Site not only list the item stats, but also the required Black Smith level, materials needed, and gold cost. These recipes will grant the Black Smith the ability to craft new items.

• Jeweler

Recipes are also required for the Jeweler to craft high level gems. Three of one tier gem will be needed to craft the next tier gem.

• Mystic

Recipes will provide your Mystic with new Enchantments that she can imbue your items with.


Armor Dyes


Not everything about Diablo 3 is about how your gear functions. Making an item your own is very important, it helps you to feel connected with your character. Thankfully armor dyes have been granted their own page in homage of this. There is even a Vanishing Dye, in case you don't want a certain item to show at all.


Gems Get Overhauled


Gems have gone through a few public revisions over their development, most have been just graphical. Now it seems there will only be four gem types, instead of the six we've seen previously. Diamond and Sapphire didn't make the cut for one reason or another, leaving only the Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, and Topaz.

This decision may have been made a while back, as looking back on the last showing of gems there were only four types on screen.




Unattuned Rune System


A while back our own Kickin_It reported on how the Rune System could very well change from its form we've seen in the past, and indeed it has. In short, the new system adds another type of Rune drop, one that will drop blank. This Unattuned Rune would only attain a type when you place it into a skill. Furthermore, even after you've taken the Rune out of your skill, it will forever remain attributed to that skill, and may only be used in that skill, even when traded to others. There was talk that the Mystic might be able to clear a Rune, essentially returning it to an unattuned Rune, but this remains unknown. With the new system the Unattuned Runes will also roll random attributes upon attaining a type, further extending the range in which a single rune can vary. For the whole story I highly suggest you read Kickin_It's article on the matter, since it has indeed come to reality.


Demon Hunter Resource Changes


As reported on by our own Magistrate in his recent article on the topic, it seems the Demon Hunter's resource has undergone a large revision.

There has been a consistent trend in the responses of current Beta testers regarding the Demon Hunter's Hatred resource. The complaint was that it simply runs out too quickly, leaving the class unable to use its offensive abilities. Blizzard has heard these claims, and changed the system according.

Where as the Demon Hunter's skills used to be categorized under Hatred, Discipline, and Utility, now there are both Hatred Generators, and Hatred Spenders, alongside a Discipline category. With this change the class will now be able to strategically choose both hatred generators, and spenders to keep the pain rolling at a consistent rate.


Complete Skill Damage Overhaul


While this topic doesn't have it's own page, or even a single mention on the entire site, one could say this is the most drastic change of them all.

Skills across all five classes generally were based off two types of damage, % weapon damage, or scaling damage which only changes with the rank of the skill; this posed a big problem. When a player found a decent weapon, all of the skills based off of scaling damage instantly became obsolete. In Force's recent Let's Play series he came across this issue many times, where he wouldn't use certain skills simply because the ones based off weapon damage outclassed the ones based of scaling damage.

What Blizzard has done is base almost every single offensive skill off % weapon damage. This will make nearly every skill viable, where as before it was almost always the better choice to stick with the % weapon damage based skills. This trend can be seen across all five classes. In concept, this change greatly broadens the number of viable skills, though only time will tell how it will turn out.

Artisans

A real hero doesn’t craft items! He fights! Even though you can create items in Diablo III, it’s not exactly “you” that makes them. It’s them! You meet those merchants through the game and gain their trust after a series of quests. They don’t follow you to battle, but they do follow to the nearest city or village. There are three types of artisans:

-The Blacksmith creates weapons and armor. In addition he can add sockets to items. In those you use gems, just like in Diablo II.
-The Jeweler creates… well jewelry (Rings and Amulets) and can transmute multiple lower level gems to one higher level variant. This way you can get gems of quality levels 6 to 14 that can’t be found on monsters. He can also remove used gems from sockets.
-The Mystic is responsible for enchants. Enchants add special bonuses to items. She also creates and sells staves and other magical supplies. The Mystic also identifies items for the player - Deckard Cain has retired the identifying business.

To create an item, you need to have the recipes and the crafting materials needed for them (some gold too). Crafting materials you get from equipment you salvage (there’s a special box in your inventory after you acquire it). Certain special crafting materials are drops from monsters. This can save time from going back to town to sell useless items. Every Artisan can be upgraded (there’s 5 total levels). To upgrade them you use gold and materials (the higher their level, the more the materials required). Higher level Artisans offer better items for sale and crafting. Some of which are the best in the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIob8wXaQkU

Character Classes

There will be 5 character classes for the game.
The Barbarian
The Witch Doctor
The Wizard
The Monk
Demon Hunter

Skills

The new UI reflects this change to seven skills. On the left will be your seven skill slots which will unlock as you level. To the right is a window with all the skill choices possible, broken up by when you can access them. This will help you to see directly what you have as well as what you can get and plan for future levels. All skills start off with a possible increase of five ranks but there will be a chance to increase this amount through other means. Leveling up a skill will be as simple as clicking o the skill in the UI.
For more information about the skills you can check the wiki page

Traits

Traits is a new system that will be replacing passive skills. This mechanic was added to allow players to customize their character without having to waste skill points to do so. As you level, you currently gain one trait point every other level. Traits will vary and help distinguish your particular play style. Each Trait will have ranks that will range from one to five that you can upgrade. Helping define you character as a tank, berserker, or battle master for the Barbarian, each trait also includes some flavor text to help explain and immerse your character into the world. There will be about ninety possible choices, including upgrading, but your character will only get about thirty points to distribute. Jay mentioned that right now there are actually too many possibilities and that some will probably be cut out.

* Skills and Traits quoted by Scyberdragon's post here.*


Runestones

Every active skill, no matter if it’s magic or melee attack, can have a rune attached. The rune will change the way the spell/attack works. It has been confirmed that the rune/skill combination will be about 700, all with their own effects. More info on the runes can be found here . *Update* The Diablo Wiki on Runestones has been updated with some more info and images from Blizzcon.

Character Stats *New*

Attack: Increases damage
- This stat will be a universal damage increasing stat for all classes to prevent confusion about what you should increase to do more damage.
- We realize that ‘Attack’ is less flavorful than ‘Strength’ and ‘Willpower’, but we feel the pros of understanding clearly how to build your character outweigh that con.
- This stat has no secondary effects.

Precision: Increases crit chance
- This will be tuned to be comparable in power to Attack increases for the most part.
- So why have Precision? Mainly so we can play into it with affixes, runes, and traits. Linking effects to crits gives us another hook for designing skills and gives the player options to create ‘crit builds’ that play different than normal attack builds. Examples of the kind of crit effects we 'could' do (not saying we are, these are examples):
- - Cleave crits cause monsters to explode and do damage to those around them.
- - Lifesteal could be an ‘on crit only’ affix.
- This is a more finesse stat, and we’re fine with that. Most people will want Attack by default, but they won’t mind getting precision.
- This stat has no secondary effect.

Vitality: Increases health
- And it's staying that way!
- This stat has no secondary effect (seeing the pattern here?).

Defense: Decreases all damage taken
- This stat is separate from armor and resistances, each of which effects different damage types. This stat effects ‘all’ damage.
- This stat will allow players to control incoming damage rather than increasing health capacity, which is useful to reduce the need for health globes and pots, and allows players to double down on defense for survival focused builds.
- This stat is also useful for PVP, and likely will be valued in the arenas, but isn't tuned to be a 'PVP' only stat.
- This stat has no secondary effects.

Willpower: Affects resource in class-specific ways
- The effects of this stat will change from class to class. It will be our goal to make it roughly equivalently valuable across classes and versus other attributes.
- Basically this stat will give you more access to whatever restricts your resource by default: capacity, regen rate, degeneration rate, generation rate, etc.

Full article on it in the Core Attribute Changes to D3 thread.

*update*

Hit Rating: Bashiok strikes back! According to his latest posts on battle.net every melee hit has a flat 5% miss chance, meaning that hit rating is more or less out of the game. Ranged and Area of Effect attacks still have to be aimed to hit.

There's a topic about it from Jackzor in the news section here.

Followers
There has been very little information about Hirelings in Diablo III. Unfortunately, there has not been much change on this front. From what we know, in the first gameplay video, there were some archers you ran into while on a quest to rescue Deckard Cain. These archers would follow you for a short while fighting monsters until they would meet their own demise. These mercenaries were never meant to follow you for a long time and would only help you through a quest. We saw this again in the Demon Hunter gameplay video when a weapon maker needs your help. These NPC's are just to help you through a quest temporarily.

In addition to these characters, many have wondered how the hirelings, as know of them from Diablo II, will work in Diablo III. There was actually an interview with Leonard Boyarsky back in 2009 where he touched upon the subject. In the interview, he is asked about mercenaries returning in Diablo III. He first talks about the temporary mercenaries from the gameplay trailer as a smaller version of the followers. He then expands upon the newer version of the "Followers" as they are now known as.

The Mercenaries/Hirelings/Followers article was created by ScyberDragon and can be found here.

*update*

As you can find in the Follower System Unveiled article, the "Followers" system has been unveiled.

There are three follower classes in Diablo III:
The Enchantress
The Scoundrel
The Templar

Each has it's own unique abilities split in 4 tiers of 3 skills each.


Quests

Staying true to the action-rpg tradition, the quests won’t be too complicated. In the playable versions the quests were simple like “go in the desert city” and “slay the skeleton king”. In addition to the story quests, there will still be side quests that can be found while exploring.
These optional quests appear to be like quest chains. For example, you save a girl from desert cultists. She still dies, but before she does she asks you to visit the village. The mayor there informs you that some women have been taken – find and rescue them!

Enemies

There will be 4 different types of enemies in Diablo III (the Act bosses don’t fall into any of the categories).
-Normal enemies
-Champions
-Rare enemies
-Unique enemies

Loot

The usual item gathering will be reduced in Diablo III. Blizzard announced that the item drops will be reduced in comparison with Diablo II. There will be more useful items to be found, though, magical or better. There are also more item slots in the inventory too. In addition to the slots we had in Diablo II we get to (finally) wear pants, shoulder pads and bracers. The inventory changed again to a more tetris like one. Weapons and armor take 2 slots. Potions, crafting materials and scrolls require only one and are also stackable. We’ll also be able to change the colors of the armor through dyes.
Latest news mention 18 different armor tiers (so far), which is subject to change till the game is released. Source.

*update**update 2* - The Talisman was cut from the game
Charms are after all in the game. They don't go to the inventory, however, they get their own little place called Talisman. We start the game without it and we upgrade it until the end of the game so it can have more charms placed in it.

*update*
In our very own interview, we got information about Quivers making their way back into the game. It's most likely going to be exclusive to the Demon Hunter. So far they only mentioned it being used with pistol crossbow - the ranged weapon exclusive to the Demon Hunter.

Full interview here.

*update*
There's been several updates on items "binding" on the character after being used or earned through quests. Latest Blizzard comments, however say that the whole "binding" of items is out of the game. All items will be able to be used and transfered after they're no longer useful to any character, or even traded.

News article about it here.

Looting

Everyone will get his/her own share of the loot. Meaning that whatever you see drop, it's individually for you and nobody else can take it unless you pick up and drop again. So there's no need to rush to the loots and die trying to pick it up anymore.

Town Portals

They’re gone! Instead you get to go back to town through waypoints that will be placed better than in Diablo II. There won’t be a really big need to go back to town as often anyway because of the new “Salvage” feature that’s been explained in the Artisan section. There’s also supposed to be a “scroll of wealth” that will change items in gold directly without the need to find a merchant to sell it.

Health System

The potions are rare to find and also have a cooldown. Instead there will be health globes dropping from enemies during the fight to replenish lost hit points. There’s different kinds of health globes too that replenish different amount of health. Bosses are supposed to drop some health globes at certain percentages of their total hit points. In most cases there will be minions of them aswell to make sure we’ll have a decent amount of health globes when needed.

Death

Inevitably we’ll all die sometime (hopefully the hardcore people won’t do it often). In death you don’t appear in town but in the nearest checkpoint. You also have all of your gear so there won’t be any more corpse runs. -As of 10/7/2010 we got some news about the death mechanic. Bashiok mentioned the death penalties aren't final yet. In his latest battle.net post he talked a bit about the developer's team thoughts on death. In multiplayer there's an other option to avoid running back (even from the checkpoint nearby). Other players will be able to carry "Scrolls of Resurrection". Those scrolls existed back in Diablo 1 and made it possible for friends in coop to revive the dead players of the group. They will have the same function in Diablo III aswell.

*update*
On the death penalties, in the current build, all the character gets after death is durability loss on his items. As mentioned before, it's not final so we can't possibly tell just yet how this will end up.

Horadric Cube

As expected it’s out of the game. Most of its uses have been replaced by the artisans.

Private Stash

It’s still here. Whenever there’s items not really needed right now but still useful they can be placed in there and remain in your possession. Jay Wilson stated that from the start it will offer more room than the stash of Diablo II. It will also be possible to upgrade it so it can store more items and gold. *Update* This years Blizzcon we heared that the storage space offered with the Stash is one of the ways Blizzard plans to eliminate muling.

A shared stash has been confirmed by Jay Wilson in this years Blizzcon. The Shared Stash, will allow characters of the same account to safely and easily transfer items from one character to another.

*update*
It is confirmed that we'll get 2 stashes. One for the current character and the second for the whole account (shared stash).
Interesting article about it here.

Acts

It’s been confirmed that Diablo III will be about as big as Diablo II without its expansion, so it’s going to be 4 Acts. The adventure will begin near New Tristram, so the first act will remind a bit of the first game. Same for the second act that (at least mostly) will be in the desert near Caldeum. As for the third and fourth act, there hasn’t been official word yet. But if we take a look at the art section of the official site we can see an image of a harbor in Skovos Isles (the isles of the Amazons) and a monster called “Crater Assault Troops” (concept goes back to 2004 but it was in the teaser trailer with the announcement) that could make us assume that the third Act might play in the amazon jungles and the fourth in the Dreadlands, where Mount Arreat used to be (hopefully we’ll get to see footage of act 3 in the next Blizzcon).
Latest posts from Bashiok mention that the game will be longer than Diablo II, even though they'll immitate the Act length to make it more dramatic and not to delay the end-fight too much.

*update*
@Diablo recently mentioned that we have seen bits and pieces of Act 3. Only new thing (as in environments) that we've seen so far was Bastion's Keep. It should be relatively safe to assume it's act 3.

Player versus Player (PvP)

Everyone's waited for info on it and this year's Blizzcon was quite generous. Duels and Hostilities as we knew them in Diablo II are off the game. The new Battle Arenas are implemented to make sure that those who want to kill people get to kill them, while those that want to kill monsters don't have to worry about being killed by anything else but monsters! PvP balance won't be an issue, though, according to the developers since PvE is the primary focus and "nerfing PvE abilities because they're too strong on PvP" won't happen.
As a hardcore player... if you step into the Arena there's no going back. Either you die, or your opponent.

The Diablo III PvP - Battle Arenas thread offers more information on the PvP feature of Diablo III.

Achievements

Just like Starcraft 2, Diablo III will also have achievements to unlock. They won’t be pure “grinding” achievements, though (killing things is still encouraged). Instead the achievements will be rewarded for killing unique monsters, crafting and/or fully exploring the regions.

Expansions

Lead Designer Jay Wilson talked about it in an interview. Blizzard is already thinking about expansions for Diablo III. This should mean that Diablo III will be pretty open ended. Also in Gamescom he answered a question about DLCs (downloadable content as paid mini “expansions”): “I love DLCs”. We can expect some DLCs for Diablo III it seems.

Online Activation

After the launch of Starcraft II we know how it's going to be. The game will have to be attached to a battle.net account and be activated this way. Achievements will only be awarded if you play through battle.net (even for single-player, very much like the campaign achievements for Starcraft II). There will be an offline/guest play option that will require to log to a battle.net account once too.

ESRB Rating

According to a recent Bashiok post Blizzard aims for a rating of M (for mature). So we're guaranteed to see alot blood spraying during the fights.

The Story

Diablo III begins 20 years after the previous game. 20 years after the Prime Evils were defeated and the Worldstone was destroyed by the Archangel Tyrael. After a long time of peace a meteor hit the cathedral of Tristram and Evil stirs again. Heroes rise to fight against the Evil that's taking the world of Sanctuary once again... we still got nothing more...

*Update* While it's not much, what they told us was that this time, it's not just the presence of certain demons that will corrupt Sanctuary, but a full scale invasion from the Burning Hells. According to Jay Wilson, the Burning Hells decided to destroy Sanctuary since the humans are becoming a great threat should they take Heaven's side on the Great Conflict. They were strong enough to destroy the Three after all.

Beta Test

The Blizzcon closing ceremony had a surprise for all of us. 1000 attendees will be randomly selected to be given beta keys for the upcoming Diablo III beta test. What's missing is word on "when" the beta will start. At least now it's confirmed that there's going to be one.
*Update*
While Blizzard hasn't said anything about the timing of the beta start, they did talk about how much of the game it will contain. More or less they don't want many spoilers and we're going to see a full PvP mode and probably a couple Acts at maximum.

There's more about it in the article: Where's Beta?

*Update*
In the recent May 9th Conference Call there's been some info about the Beta. It's supposed to start sometime in Q3 2011. Meaning from July 1st to September 31st.

Release Date

So far there's no official word about it, other than Blizzard's usual "When it's Done™". - Wilson said that the game would be released approximately 6 months after the beta starts.
*Update*
After the last financial conference in February, Mike Morhaime said that the team aims for a 2011 release, but it's not set in stone just yet and it may have to be pushed to 2012. So it's probably going to be Q4 2011-Q1 2012.


*Post updated with news as of 5/26/2011*