When we were first introduced to the Monk at last year's Blizzcon, we were given only a glimpse at the skills that will be at the his disposal. He hails from the foothills of the Sharval Wilds in a mysterious place named Ivgorod, home of the Holy Warriors of 1,001 Gods. It is here where they spend their lives strengthening their mind, body, and soul.

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The Monk's skills are a combination of hand-to-hand combos, runic spells, and holy powers. Skills like Crippling Wave, Way of a Hundred Fists, and Exploding Palm have shown us the combo system that is planned for the Monk. Inner Sanctuary and Seven Sided Strike show us the unique runic abilities that the Monk has, although is important to note that Monk's rune abilities are a separate system from the skill runes that have been added to Diablo III. Finally, Radiant Visage shows us the Monk's Holy abilities. He is also a melee-oriented character, with skills like Impenetrable Defense and Force Without Thought.

Another important detail to note from this Twitter post are the key words "nitty-gritty". The fact that they are already on to the nitty-gritty speaks volumes of where the development team is with their work. It is usually not until near-completion that the development team will worry about the details. This is not to say that they don't have loads more work to do with the Monk, such as balancing, play testing, and reiteration of his skills; however, progress is always a good sign.


Going along with info on the Monk there was another Twitter post about the Female version of the Monk. Blizzard has already said they will be revealing the Female version soon and we can all hope it will not be the typical Blizzard "soon". Get ready for the Pixie hair cut.

With the rest of his skills being worked on, one could only imagine what other skills the Monk will have. What type of skills should the Monk have?

Since the announcement of Diablo III, Blizzard has continuously reiterated that they are trying to keep Diablo an action packed game. The first evidence of this was the addition of the new dropped item, Health Globes. The aim of the health globes is to eliminate the need of going to town constantly to restock on potions. This constant back and forth situation removed the player from the action of the game and the need for Town Portal went down. Without the need to restock on potions, there was not as much of a need to go back to town as quickly.

Beyond going to town, there is also the situation of dying removing you from action. Blizzard has attempted to handle this situation by allowing the player to get right back into the thick of battle. The first way to accomplish this was the controversial check point system.
The idea is that after going so far into the game, the player would hit a check point. Upon dying, the player would begin playing again at this checkpoint. Little is known about the details of the system, such as: "Do the monsters respawn?" or "Do you keep any loot you have found?". Overall, the system unarguably keeps the player in the action compared to Diablo II, in which you were sent back to town. Blizzard also added a co-op resurrection system, which helps slain players to get back into the fight. It is still unknown how the system works, but it will keep any multiplayer games from stopping for players to meet back up with their friends.

Yesterday on both Twitter and Facebook there was an announcement of the return of yet one more way to keep players in the action;WayPoint(s) will be returning and the system will function very much like it did in Diablo II. The only change appears to be cosmetic as well as the interface that pops up when you use them. For any of you who do not know, waypoints acted as a way of quickly traveling from one area to any other area your character has been to. These allowed characters to move around the game, area to area, instantly.

So, with five different systems in Diablo III, it is safe to say that Blizzard is trying to keep the action in the Action-RPG. Are you excited for all of these new systems or do you think Blizzard is making the game too easy?


Special thanks to Chemedeiros for alerting us of the news and Kikhu for starting a thread on the return of the waypoint system. Heave them some rep for their hard work.

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Curse is proud to announce the new fansite that was pushed live today for Tera Online! The site will serve as a community and news source for Bluehole Studio's new MMO TERA Online!

We've put together everything you'll need as a new fan in the Tera Online universe:
    

• TERA Fans Wallpapers
  
• A Recap of what we Know About the Game so far.
  
• A Character Creation Guide
  
• A UI and Controls Guide
  
• A Collection of Trailers
  
• A Compilation of Official FAQ's and Q&A's
  
• Ten Zone Previews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

The word TERA is an acronym for "The Exiled Realm of Arborea". The game has been in development for around three years and it runs on the Unreal Engine 3. Thus far, the game boasts a very unique combat system (which you can preview here), six races, eight classes (both of which can be previewed here), a promised political system, and next generation graphics. Though the exact release date has not been announced, the game is planned to be released in both Korea and North America sometime in 2010. There have been two closed BETA tests so far in Korea and one FGT (Focus Group Test) in the North America region.

  To join this new community and learn more about the game visit: TeraFans.com!

After the excessive hype build-up over the last year and its release this previous December, news on the PTR's progress and possible updates on patch 1.13 have ceased. However, Bashiok made a quick mention of the direction of the patch and their hopes for it before it goes live which, as is Blizzard's tradition, is going to be "soon" ©:


Whether "not [...] includ[ing] everything requested" means that we will see some sincere, useful changes in the patch before its release or not is still up for speculation. Hopefully, in the face of the growing indifference towards the patch from long-time fans, they will take suggestions to a higher concern when reworking the patch.

Well, we're back from holidays and the new year, and back into the swing of things. Blizzard is posting news and snippets once more, and the forums are back into their regular activity.

Thus far, not much incredible news has been released into the new year, but there should be some coming along soon, or so I'd hope.

So, with my little introduction out of the way, we move to the community..

The Forums

Trying out a new colour for the spotlights, hope ya'll approve.

Anywho, first off, we've got Nektu, a shining example of what a new member should be (in my opinion, at least). He's posted up a thread for all you budding chefs out there, his cooking corner here at Diablofans. All kinds of great recipes are in there, so far we've had recipes for fish, demi glace (no idea what is it, but it sounds good), chicken fingers, spaghetti sauce, and all sorts of other recipes. If you want to impress somebody with an amazing recipe, or have a recipe to share, this is the place you should go.

Next, is Mephisto's Lament, and his fan-favorite contests. So far, he's gone through the NPC's of Diablo, to determine the fan favorite, and now he's well into the monsters. The monsters from Diablo I have already been passed by, but the thread for voting on Diablo II's monsters is still up, and still active. Keep an eye out for more voting threads, he needs all the votes he can get.

Lastly, is J/-\YK/-\Y, and the glorious return of his RTOA (Random Trivia Of Awsomeness). Basically, it's a trivia game, an awesome trivia game. Categories have ranged from Halo, to chemistry, to Mario, and over to Diablo. Mostly it's a video game trivia, but there have been other categories as well. Right now, carambolage de charogne is in the lead, by one point. Get in there and try to de-throne her.

(Also, if you didn't get the chance to read Don_guillotine's latest editorial on the in-game economies of the Diablo games, you can check it out here. It's a great read and well worth your attention!)


Forum Changes

Well, we've had several changes lately. The newest vBulletin update has been downloaded, and honestly, I'd be lying if I said that I knew what it gave us. With that update, came an update to the rules. With the rampant arguments on the reputation system, we've now got some rules to help moderate this.

Check out the updated rules if you haven't already.

Fan Creations

The fan art and fiction forums have activity once more!

For fan fiction, we've got Guasti who is continuing to write his story, Jonathan, a combination of Dungeons & Dragons, and Diablo fantasy. Seth also continues to write his story, The Veiling.

Tepes has also contributed, but with his fan art. He has created three, one of a barbarian looking for mephisto, one of the female wizard, and one of a flail weilding barbarian. Good job man, keep er' up!

Fan art by Tepes.

The Wiki

Seems to be a good year for the wiki, Skynight is already creating pages for the mod Eastern Sun. The amount of players here on our forums seems to be growing quite steadily, so it will no doubt see more use in the coming months, as well as more demand. Thus far, skill pages for each class have been created, and though there is still a lot of work to be done, the wiki team is confident that it will be completed. If you've got a knowledge of Eastern Sun, help him out and contribute in any way you can.

Eskanasi has also emerged into the wiki, and has been doing minor edits to articles that were thought to be completed. It is his attention to detail that is cleaning up many articles, bravo, I say.

As for the current direction of the wiki, Phrozendragon has begun a Lore Summary, which all users are welcome to edit at their leisure, so long as you edit it with useful, correct things. If not, the wiki sysops will crack down on you. But anyways, if you wish to discuss this within the forums, check it out here.

So much activity on the wiki already, and we're hardly half way through the month. It's looking up to be a promising year, you'd better hop on the wiki bandwagon soon, if you haven't already.

Blues Not In The News

Rejoice once more necromancer fans, this post by Bashiok clearly states that he's not down for the count yet, we may end up seeing his return in an expansion.


Speaking of expansions, Bashiok posted a rather hilarious response to a user QQ'ing about expansion classes, read it if you're needing a laugh.


And there you have it, the first spotlight of the new year, let's make it a good one for the forums.

DiabloFans will soon be encountering some down time as Rapture upgrades vBulletin for security measures. Please be patient as the upgrade ensues, as it will likely be a short while.

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Also, our forum rules have been updated. There is a new section that applies specifically to the reputation system as well as denotation for rules that apply to blog posts. As members, we are all assumed to have read over these rules and they will become effective immediately. You may read over them here.

Cloudwolf, who stunned the Diablo and Warcraft III community by creating Diablo III dungeons and functionality with WC3's tools, has announced an update in the Diablo3Warcraft forum:

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It looks like we will be seeing some amazing updates in the future! See the original thread for comments and questions here.