DiabloFans

Everyone,

We announced today that we’re in the process of cutting a number of active positions, mostly non-development, throughout the company. I'm sure this announcement has sparked some questions from all of you, so I want take this opportunity to address those as best I can. Over the past several years, the company has grown rapidly and evolved to better serve you and the rest of our global community. Thanks to all of your support, we continue to serve by far the biggest subscription-based MMO community, as well as the most passionate eSports and online gaming communities, in the world.

In order to keep making epic game content while serving players effectively, we have to be smart about how we manage our resources. This means we sometimes have to make difficult decisions about how to best maintain the health of the company. We’re in the process of making some of those hard decisions now.

After evaluating our current organizational needs, we determined that while some areas of our business had been operating at the right levels and could benefit from further growth, other areas had become overstaffed. As a result, we need to scale down some of our departments and part with some of our colleagues and friends here at Blizzard. I know that you all understand how difficult this type of situation can be for anyone who might be affected, so I want to assure you that we'll be offering each impacted employee a severance package and other benefits.

I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today's announcement. We're continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects. We'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding Diablo III's release date, and will soon be holding a private media event to showcase the latest work on Mists of Pandaria. It goes without saying that we're working hard to get all of these games in your hands as soon as possible.

You've all come to expect Blizzard to live up to our mission statement with every game, and deliver the most epic entertainment experiences ever. You can continue to expect that and nothing less from us as we move forward.

-Mike Morhaime

Basic Attack hasn't been removed from the game, though it is currently unavailable in Beta Patch 13. The development process is all about iteration, and in the beta specifically, the result can sometimes lead to situations where certain mechanics aren't available or are implemented in a way that's not totally complete -- at least temporarily.

In later builds, we're looking at having Basic Attack as an option under "Primary" in the skill UI, which will (by default) assign it to the left mouse button. Also, as many players have already noticed, your hero will default to Basic Attack if there aren't sufficient resources to power a given spell or ability.

Just so that there aren't any misunderstandings, we are still evaluating Basic Attack and haven't yet decided on a best course of action. It's our intent that there is a way to use Basic Attack, but our exact plans may change between now and launch, or even between now and whenever we next patch. This is where we're at currently, though.

Lylirra, will they be moving the elective mode checkbox to the Skill pane?
I don't know offhand, but I'll be happy to pass on the question (and the feedback).

What about the passives that generated resources? DH melee attack with a passive generated hatred which allow some melee builds, are these passives gone for good?
Passives that had a basic attack component were either removed (like Virtuoso) or have been redesigned to work with your hero's special abilities (for example, Thrill of the Hunt). We've no plans at this time to add the passives that were removed back into the game.

Hardcore
While I realize this thread was created some time ago (hello, 2011!), I figured I'd still pop in to say that we've currently no plans to offer Hardcore mode in beta.

That said, I'm looking forward to playing (and killing) several Hardcore characters after I've tackled all the content on Normal. Given my penchant for dashing into the fray, though, I admit I'll be elated if I manage to survive past the Skeleton King. ( Blue Tracker / Official Forums )

Matt Ulman
We recorded approximately 90 minutes of Matt playing 12-string guitars for the Diablo III soundtrack. ( Blue Tracker / Official Forums )

Skill Unlocking
You get at least one skill, rune, or passive unlock every level, and for most of them (post level-13) you get three or four. ( source )

More Updates Before Release
We'll probably have a few updates we'll want to make sure we get public testing on. ( source )

Book of Cain II: Electric Boogaloo
For those that have read through the entirety of the Book of Cain:
Were we to make a follow-up to the Book of Cain, what would you like to see in it? (Blue Tracker/Official Forums)

Some expressed an interest in seeing the sample size for this poll. Pretty significant at over 12,000 votes thus far. (of course it's a pick 2 so probably somewhere around 6k voters)

Wizard 25% - 3082 votes
Barbarian 24% - 2975 votes
Monk 18% - 2231 votes
Demon Hunter 17% - 2141 votes
Witch Doctor 16% - 1978 votes