View source for Diablo III: Blizzard North version

==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. 

This "total rework" turned out to be virtually a total restart in 2006, which resulted in a much longer time for development than anyone expected. The game is currently targeted for release in late 2011 at the soonest, more than 6 years after the closure of Blizzard North.


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.