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The main reason for the corpses not being able to stay permanently is the potential number of them on screen at one time, and specifically that each corpse is affected by physics, allowing them to be blasted and thrown all over the place by the force of player abilities.

It's one of the trade offs when integrating new technology, you can get really awesome effects, but they do have a cost. In a 2D world, a sprite of a dead creature doesn't really cost any more (system requirement-wise) than a sprite of something that's alive. Probably less. In a 3D world where a creature dies and then needs to have physics calculations thrown onto it so it can bounce and fall and fly around, they cost substantially more.

We remember fondly those situations where you've just completely obliterated a camp of Fallen, and as you're picking up items - marvel in your destruction. That's a feeling and part of the gameplay where if we can realistically keep some of it without sacrificing features or having insane system requirements we'd definitely like to, but no promises.

We haven't announced any abilities outside of those listed on the website, so by discussing what is or isn't in the game I would be essentially making an announcement, which I'm not prepared to do.

1) Thou Shalt Play From An Isometric Perspective And Love It
2) Thou Shalt Have God-Like Power
3) Thy World Dost Change
4) Thy Avatar Shall Have A Voice
5) Co-Op Is The Natural Order
6) Thou Shall Not Use the C Word
7) Thou Shall Not Be A Degenerate Potion Huffer
8) Exploding Monsters Are Cool
9) Thou Shalt Be Top Of Your Class
10) Thou Shall Live For Loot

Kotaku: In the demo you showed during the Opening Ceremony, you gave us a glimpse at the Witch Doctor class which seems to use several spells similar to those found in World of Warcraft. Do you worry that some fans will think you’re just copying aspects of WoW?

Jay Wilson: No. Do I think people will say that? Yes, I think they will. One of the things I like to remind people is that it’s okay to steal from ourselves. A good idea is a good idea and a good skill is a good skill and so when we look across all our games we borrow from each other all of the time. But the really key and important thing is do we play like World of Warcraft? No! We don’t play anything like it, Diablo has a different feel to it and that’s fine. If we look at the history of Blizzard games, at Warcraft I and II, the spell Blizzard appeared, it also appeared in WoW and Diablo II. I almost think it’s more like a signature but as long as a game has enough original stuff that it stands on its own and plays like its own game, that’s what matters.

After watching the Diablo III gameplay footage, I was really excited. The visuals were fantastic, a lot of small improvements had been added without seeming to get in the way of what makes the series great, and by the end of the video I found myself moving my mouse around the screen as if I was playing. That's sad, but what's even sadder is that I'm not a big-time game journalist so I can't come up with a term like "gamesturbation" to describe the lonely and desparate act while making myself cool and quotable.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my positive impressions were irrational and baseless, while most of the internet saw the game for what it truly was: A personal insult to them and a serious threat to all they hold dear. If you find that you've mistakenly become mildly optimistic about the game, read on to find out where I went wrong so you can adjust accordingly.

Yeah, I think you guys hit the nail.

We’re setting out to create unique, interesting, and diverse classes that each have their own style and flavor. Most importantly this isn’t just a basic look at each individual class, but how they compare to each other and overlap (or hopefully, don’t).

When you up the number of classes more and more you’re eventually going to begin down the route of homogenization, they start to bleed into each other’s core abilities and styles which really just detracts from each individual class’ recognizability and distinction within the game.

In addition, by limiting the number - and I say limiting not because it’s a low number, it’s the number of classes in Diablo II and a good one at that, but because we’re not going crazy with it - we can focus on making each class really impressive, both visually and through the way they each feel and play.