DiabloFans

Just went up minutes ago, head over to his youtube channel for a short vid explaining the contest. I think he has 7 to give away and all you have to do is be subscribed and add a comment explaining why you should receive one. good luck guys!!


EDIT(2):

ok guys Force changed the contest. It is no longer on his youtube channel (im assuming because spamzilla is on the loose there). It is now taking place on twitter. So head there and all you do is follow his twitter , ForceStrategy, and it's a random lottery with the 7 keys

http://www.youtube.com/user/ForceSC2strategy#p/c/5C2F514ECED855CA/0/H7Y4-u_fqBg

Quote from rensuken

Quote from snared04drummer

Gems should not be a measure of wealth, just like sojs should not have been, just like HR's should not have been, especially HR's, because in and of themselves they represent only the ability to have good things, not actual uses themselves. Gold is the same way except that's exactly what it was meant to be, therefore that's not a problem.

exactly, i intend to use my gems as their function is to augment your gear and hopefully the people who instead just to hold onto for bling/wealth status will change their mind when they get a chance to play.

Well I die inside a little every time that I admit I'm wrong :P. You guys are both right. After posting my ideas and reading the responses, I have reformed my opinion and now thanks to you, think that wealth should be measured, and only measured in gold, or it will be as you all have stated, D2 all over again. Ig thats what forums are for tho huh?And by wealth I mean just that, how rich your character is, and just because gold represents one's wealth, it doesn't mean that other high end items or gems don't matter. They will just be for bragging or status symbols and will always be, nun the less, cool.

I've been wanting to write this up for a long time, but I wanted to first play through D2 again just so I can get a feel of all the faults that D2 had, even though I do think it is a great game. But D2 is no masterpiece. That's right, I'm as hard a Diablo Fan as anyone, and I said it. D2 has some serious issues, but luckily I don't think we'll see these blemishes in the new product.

Issue #1: The End Game
One of the most important aspects of any game of this type is the end game. This is where we get all our fat loot, play with our friends in Hell, and spend most of our time on our Main. For some, this is where the game actually begins. Unless you were seriously hardcore, the endgame for D2 suffered a lot and heres why:

Even if you had a great build (which we'll get to game mechanics later), if you didn't have the items to back up the build, your character was useless and you weren't viable in Hell, or it just wasn't fun to play because it was so hard (immunities and resistances were to blame here). The sorceress in particular can die in hell in one hit at lvl 90 with the right combination of hits from monsters. The solution to this? The removal of immunities will be awesome, but I also think the monsters will be better tweaked to not cause you to die in one hit, and I think it's that simple.

So when you finally, after months of playing, do get your epic armor-stat combo, you can finally run Baal (or pindleskin, diablo, or whomever) so many times your eyes bleed. But seriously, that's pretty much all you'll be doing because that's where all that fat loot is dropped (rather, that's where the highest chance of it dropping is). Now hopefully this won't be worthwhile to constantly run Diablo (or whomever the main villain is) over and over a million times. Hopefully in D3 we will be rewarded for exploring different areas of the game and throughout all the acts in Hell difficulty. Not much is known here, but there is potential to make item finding interesting by putting super rare drops in obscure places throughout Hell, and/or just to simply make boss drops not so big.

The level cap has been debated for a while now, and it won hands down. Sorry you hardcore fanbois, but the level cap of 60 is necessary if you want a game where your skills actually mean something. You can argue "it was so fun grinding to as close to level 99 as possible", but no, it wasn't fun. And it wasn't fun because there was nothing to gain but a status symbol. I'm sure the status symbol for D3 will be in other, better forms such as dyes, items, and gold. Also, there are other forms of grindy things you can do in D3 such as gems that will make up for habit.

Which brings us to another topic.

Issue #2: Gold and Economy
If all goes well, we'll have a real economy that uses gold as it's currency and not SOJs. A form of the Auction House (though by no means the same) will encourage that gold be used instead of some user-defined item. This is important. This makes items you pick up worthy of being sold. Now you don't have to get really lucky and find the one Monk on battlenet that has that one Axe you were looking for and wants that one Cestus you found (but this ONLY assumes those two items are of equal value :(. Now you can put it up for auction and use the gold you get to trade for the things you need. Problem solved.

Nobody knows what the future holds for D3's econ, but I can bet we'll have a nice battle.net-level UI to do trading outside of the game (this is only speculation though, don't get your hopes up).

Issue #3: Skills
Diablo 2 has major issues with skill variety. There's a reason why there are builds named after a certain skill: Meteorb Sorc, FireWall Sorc, Hammerdin, and I could go on. These builds are designed around one skill. That's because the game encourage this. Now, why is this a bad thing? Because it gets very boring mashing right-click over and over again until your hand hurts, and seeing the same frozen orb hit the same enemies over and over just gets boring after a few days. (love ya FO, but you get old)

D3 is designed to be a more tactical game where your decisions in combat influence the battle a lot, more like Zelda, as Jay Wilson continually describes. And, as such, you're encouraged to diversify your skills. This I think will be the biggest plus for D3. I hope to see some outrageously interesting builds come out of all the classes. To further diversify these skills, we have the Runestones, which will definitely bring a whole new era of awesome builds.

D3's UI changes also help to encourage skill diversity by the use of 1-4 as well as left and right click to apply your skills. F1 through F8 got tiresome quick. As with any game, UI is very important and effects the gameplay.

Issue #4: PvP Is Separate From PvE
Running along in D2 and getting ganked is no fun. While this doesn't happen much anymore, it was a big problem when there were more people on battle.net. Now we don't have to worry about this as the arena takes care of all our pvp needs. I think it will also encourage a new form entertainment on YouTube (yes, I'm looking at you, Force), which is GREAT. Whether you're into pvp or not, getting more people to play D3 is a good thing.

Issue #5: Story
Lead Content Designer Kevin Martens explained at BC 2010 that most of meat of the story will be told through what he describes as "Action Storytelling", where the story is supposed to unfold in front of you in-battle, instead of some dialog in the Rogue Encampment. Regardless of your view on this matter, whether you like good-ol' story telling or not, this will be an interesting take on the genre, of the like I don't think I've seen before, so we'll see.

We'll also be privy to bite-size stories throughout Sanctuary that will are supposed to immerse you into the world, and you can pick this up at your leisure. The reason this is so great is that it encourages two playing philosophies at once: 1. If you don't want to learn about the story, you don't have to read it, and continue hackin' and slashin'. 2. It encourages you to, if you want to, to go search for these little pockets of story within Sanctuary, providing tons of replay value.

Obviously we don't know how Diablo 3 will unfold in terms of story, but Blue has made it clear that after 20 years of relative peace, the Hells are breeding an army for war.

Issue #6: Melee Classes Were Far More Difficult to Play
As per snared04drummer's request, we'll delve into what I think to be a major design flaw of the D2. Melee classes had this really big problem in Hell and even in Nightmare. With the exception of a Hammerdin, the melee forms of the Paladin, Barb, Druid, and Assassin were not competent paradigms, especially in the later game. Yes you could build a Hammerdin, a Fireclaw Druid, or a Trap Assn, but we're talking about melee classes. A WW Barb is really risky, but I don't want to go into details. Basically, D3 will (hopefully) be rid of these problems. From the videos I've seen, all the melee classes look like they're on equal footing with all the other archetypes.

One of the sources of the problem here is Attack Rating (AR) which makes melee classes need LOTS of Dexterity, which is not really where they should be spending their points. A melee class should be spending points into their respective stat based on what they want to improve, not being forced to go Dex because of a bad mechanic. Thankfully in D3, this will be taken care of for us - the damage taken will be set for your character.

Conclusion
I could probably go on forever about the ways that D3 will be better, and by no means do I think D3 will be perfect, but so far the game looks infinitely better than it's predecessor, and that excludes graphical changes (though the ragdoll physics is super delicious in a Diablo game). This is still kindof a work in progress, so I'll update it as I see fit. In the meantime, if you guys want to chip in any more things you think will be better or worse about D3, please let us know in the comments.

This entire thread is full of lengthy posts explaining exactly why this system is flawed based on nonexistent evidence and conjecture, so I'll get right to the point.

This system has been tested and iterated and retested by hundreds of people for thousands of hours already, before Alpha even started. Experienced Designers have been retooling and testing it and changing it again until it was damn near perfect, then improving it more. This is their job, and many of them have been doing it since before you put your grubby paws on Warcraft One.

To second guess them, without having even played the game, is criminally stupid.

If you wanted to keep your Follower until later in the game, that's different. Personal taste is one thing.

If you're making judgments about the specific workings of a system you haven't used created by people who thought of every single thing you have already (and more) years ago, that's another thing entirely.

Believe it or not, playing video games does not a Game Designer make.

May nineth's conference call left us with just enough beta information to drive us crazy but not enough to mark our calendars (if you missed the coverage, see May 9th Conference Call.) The aforementioned beta is being "targeted" to hit testing audiences sometime in Q3 (third quarter) of this year. But just what does "targeted" mean? Today, we'll take a look at instances in which Blizzard has not been on time, and then we'll see what these delays mean for eager Diablo III beta testers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPWoj58Xwqc

If there's any one game developing company known for delays...Well, let's just take a look at the facts. The Diablo franchise, itself, is no spring chicken. There's the ten years we've been patiently awaiting Diablo III, and the seven years we had to wait for even the announcement during the final Worldwide Invitational (see Diablo III Announced). But how far back to delays go in Diablo's history?

Did you know that Diablo II was originally slated for a 1999 release date? According to a very archaic passage from the reputed ShackNews game news network, the second installment was delayed an entire year.

But the delays don't stop there. The Starcraft franchise has had its share of shortcomings, even establishing a hallmark among ghosted games. Starcraft: Ghost has been on what Blizzard calls an "indefinite hold" since 2006, with a game announcement reaching as far back as 2002. Guess the game was dead before it even hit shelves.

For a more modern gaming audience, the delays of Starcraft II might be a source for more sorrow. In 2009, GossipGamer reported that the game was being delayed due to Battle.net conflictions (and the game still launched with Battle.net problems.) Before even that delay, it was further put off track due to the taskforce needed to push out Wrath of the Lich King.

As for the much-loved Warcraft RTS franchise, which is often differentiated by fans as being entirely separate from World of Warcraft, Warcraft III was delayed by as much as a year, with a purported release set for 2001 and later delayed to 2002.

Major game releases haven't been the only victims. The hit-or-miss Diablo II Patch 1.10 (Diablo II) faced some sluggishness from it's announcement when it finally hit the scenes in 2003. Patch 1.13 (Diablo II), which we covered extensively from inception to implementation, suffered numerous delays due to patch work on Warcraft III and other unspecified reasons (see WCIII Patch is Up- Diablo II Patch 1.13 Soon to Follow?).

How should these details factor in to our beta date hopes, if at all? To be fair, several things should be taken into consideration with regards to the past. Diablo II was, of course, being developed under a much smaller team than the more modern one led by Jay Wilson. In addition to creating an entirely new game engine from the ground up for Diablo III, Blizzard has undergone several employment revamps since Blizzard North's time, making their last ten years nothing to scoff at.

Starcraft: Ghost was being developed entirely by third-party developers until Blizzard simply bought out the latest company, Swingin' Ape Studios, in 2004. Maybe there's something to be said for it not being directly developed by Blizzard Entertainment. And perhaps to Starcraft II's credit, the game was entirely finished and ready for release, but structural details with the latest rendition of the Battle.net system caused some unforeseen problems.

Years later, Blizzard now boasts dedicated development teams for each franchise, as well as a Battle.net team and a budget that would make most developers envious. With relatively little else going on for Blizzard development-wise, perhaps we can place more faith in "targeted" dates. Let's hear what you think!

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*