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Most of the remaining Blizzard North employees left for other studios, when Blizzard North closed. Chiefly [[Flagship Studios]], [[Castaway Entertainment]], and [[Hyboreal Games]], all founded by past Blizzard North/Diablo II developers. A few employees stayed with Blizzard and relocated to Irvine, where they joined the newly-formed Diablo III team and worked on the game, which was restarted nearly from scratch in 2006.
==Diablo III Rumors==
The first big rumor about Diablo III was leaked in mid-2005, and credited to an ex-Blizzard employee (presumably he was fired acrimoniously, given the secrets he took to spilling immediately afterward) named Chris Hartgraves. In a forum post on a World of Warcraft site, he revealed upcoming news about Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, and Diablo III.
::Last week they had a thing called "Show N Tell" which they have every 6 months to all the full time employees - Anyways Diablo 3 takes place in heaven. Hell is trying to take it over and it is AWESOME looking ... Imagine the brightness of heaven being taken over by the darkness of hell ... Imagine WoW but in a Diablo world in amount of size and playability ... Also, guild housing is available in this game for those of you who know about it.
Hartgraves' rumor was backed up shortly afterwards by an anonymous email to GamingSteve.com in February 2006. [http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2006/02/rumor_diablo_ii.php] The mailer slightly changed the names of the the games he was talking about for no apparent reason.
It is true that Beelzebub 3 will be done in true 3D and it did indeed look freaking awesome. It is also true that Beelzebub 3 features a story between the conflicts of Heaven and Hell and contains a very cool feature where every single item in the game can change between a "light" version and a "dark" version. However this was also one of the problems with the original version of the game. Other than the ability for any item to visually change from light to dark it didn't affect the actual stats of the item or change the gameplay in any way. So the game has gone through a total rework to inject some "fun" into the gameplay and to make it feel like the Beelzebubs of old.
See the coverage on the [[Diablo_3_History#Diablo_III_Takes_Place_in_Heaven Diablo III History article]] for many more details and fuller quotes from these rumors.
==Diablo III Art Assets==
[[File:D3-early-flayed-hound1.png|right|frame|Flayed Hound]]
Despite the fact that Blizzard North closed down in 2005, the official secrecy about what the developers had been working on lasted until after the 2008 reveal of the new version of Diablo III. Even then, all of the artwork and other game assets were from the new version, dating from 2006 or later.
* All images from the Blizzard North version of Diablo III can be [http://diablo.incgamers.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/600 seen in this image gallery].
===Alan Ackerman's Monsters=== The first visuals of anything from the Blizzard North version of Diablo III appeared in late 2010, but were not widely-reported until January 2011[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/the-earliest-diablo-iii-monsters/]. They were several images of two monsters from the game, [http://alanackerman.blogspot.com/ posted on the blog] of artist/animator [[Alan Ackerman]]. Alan had worked at Blizzard North for years, before leaving to join [[Castaway Entertainment]] in 2003, so his work was clearly from quite early in the project.
<gallery>
===Early Screenshots===
[[File:D3-early-bone-screenshot1.jpg|thumb|300px|Early Diablo III revealed.]]
All seventeen can be seen in [http://diablo.incgamers.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/600 the Blizzard North image gallery]. A few samples are seen on this page or included in the gallery below.
A public vote run on leading fansite Diii.net shortly after the shots were released found that [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/vote-which-d3-art-style-do-you-prefer1/ a slight majority of fans preferred] the look of the game in the early screenshots to the current version.
Interestingly, those results are from the second vote run on Diii.net, since the results of [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/vote-which-d3-art-style-do-you-prefer/ the first vote had to be tossed out] after it was hacked and thousands of duplicate votes were submitted (in favor of the earlier screenshots). The passion of fans was clearly shown by that being the first vote on that site, in the 3 years since Diablo 3's announcement, to ever be cheated in significant numbers.
<gallery>
File:D3-early-bone-screenshot2.jpg
File:D3-early-bone-screenshot3.jpg
File:D3-early-bone-screenshot5.jpg
File:D3-early-bone-screenshot6.jpg
</gallery>
==Additional Information==
No other art assets or information has been released. There is hope for much more in the future, though. As time passes the ex-Blizzard North guys are becoming more talkative. Besides the various leaked images, 2011 brought word that writer David Craddock was working on a book about Condor/Blizzard North, and that he'd spoken to numerous ex-Blizzard North employees.[http://willwrite4books.livejournal.com/19782.html]
Flux, long-time webmaster of Diabloii.net and now Diii.net has also said that he's engaging in some conversations with ex-Blizzard North employees he's known for years, and that he hopes to contribute a substantial History of Diablo III article at some point later in 2011.
