DiabloFans

The darkness is rising, but you have many, many tools to fight it. As promised in the previous skills blog, we are revealing more videos highlighting Diablo III’s powerful class skills.

Some of these skills are previously unseen; others are familiar abilities that we’ve presented before; still others have been slightly tweaked from their original function. The videos listed below show skills that are unmodified by skill runes; they’re all depicted in their ‘basic’ form.

These videos will also find their way to the skills page. Expect more updates in the weeks to come.

Is Nightmare, Hell and Infernal privileged to hardcore players only or can we softcore players also enjoy the harder difficulties?
No, everyone gets all difficulty levels/skills/gear. Hardcore just has a separate AH and no currency AH... and you can die once. (Source)

How will the hardcore arena be handled? Seems like it might be a pretty empty place potentially..
Yeah, we're thinking arena death probably won't be permanent for hardcore characters. Not totally decided. (Source)

Does that mean joining hardcore games and going hostile and hunting through the acts looking 4 ur prey will no longer b an option?
Correct. That will not be an option. (Source)

I just don't think I have it in me to play HC. I'd be too scared that if I died, I'd quit for good.
It always had the opposite effect on me. Sure there is the initial shock and disbelief, but pretty quickly thereafter, I always want to start a new character. Because I'm so stoked for building up my banner and the things around it, I think the shock and disbelief stage will be even shorter with in Diablo III. (Blue Tracker/Official Forums)

Now, what's the point of hardcore if a disconnect (which WILL happen) kills your character?
You know, I never experienced a lag spike / disconnect threatening a D2 hardcore character. The big threats were always that I would get lazy and let my pots dwindle, or start a boss fight when I was tired and should have gone to bed, or got too overconfident with pulls and skipped full recovery. That sort of thing. (Blue Tracker/Official Forums)

Skill Fairness

The fairness comes in the trade off between taking one of the mentioned runes, and not one that allows you to deal more damage. It's really the same trade off you make with items or gems. I guess if you were really looking to stack gold find and not worrying about anything else then maybe your class of choice would be the demon hunter, but that's obviously pretty extreme.

For Grim Harvest it's not the same as magic find, it's a 5% chance to drop additional treasure of any kind. More often than not it's probably going to be a potion, white item, or maybe gold.

Of course classes are in their intense balance testing phases right now, so there's really no saying what may change before release.

Jay Wilson said whats in patch 14 is what the game intends to ship with. You troll us
You guys kill me. Here's what was actually said:

Some guy: Why changing the lvl req. for skills: for testing, or for polishing, or to silence the demanding of the release date?
Jay: we change skill levels for a variety of reasons all focused on polishing based on our playtests.
Some guy: thanks. Which order will be the final version? #Diablo3 will be awesome anyway! Grats!
Jay: what is currently in the beta is what we intend for ship, but we're still tuning and things can change.

I'd say at least get your sources and quotes right before you make stuff up, but that doesn't make much sense. Carry on. (Blue Tracker/Official Forums)

Twitter
Currently stationed overseas with a TON of D3 fans...have to know will it be available at military stores the day of release?
In theory, yes. We sell to military distribution early enough for game to be available, but after that it's out of our hands. (Source)

Since I don't currently have an active account. I just want to tell the #D3 team I appreciate all the work put in!
Thanks! They're pouring their hearts into it. Hope you enjoy. (Source)

No diablo podcast this week due to forcestrategy having to be here in Irvine, CA on Friday, March 16th. Interesting isn't it?
It's for a fansite roundtable. Not really that interesting. (Source)

WPs are gone, me so sad. You broke my heart, Bash.
lolwut? (Source)

Drops
In the final version, the treasure goblins will drop rare, legendary, set items, or only will drop low qlty items (magic)?
They can drop higher quality items. (Source)

What do you mean by "nopickup option from D2"? There isn't such a thing in D2 now.
Sure there is. Type /nopickup into chat and you won't be able to pick up items unless you're holding down Alt. (Source)

1. Are you guys going to be resetting the ladder in Diablo III like you did in D2? 2. I'm stealing your Twitter's background.
1. There is no ladder 2. IMA SUE YOU