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→Class Design
::''I would respond, "Yeah, you're right; the Wizard is basically a reskinned Sorceress." What we couldn't do with the Sorceress very well was break into what I'd call the old-school pen-and-paper magic user. You know the old magic user who could do a variety of things, like conjure up animals out of midair or create clouds of fog and acid or control time or [[Disintegrate|disintegrate things]] or use death spells. They had this wide variety of magic that they could use compared to the more traditional elementalist -- which is what the Sorceress is, meaning fire, ice, and lightning -- who was just more limited. What we really wanted to do is break into this area, while if we just did the Sorceress again, we'd be like, "OK, you have to do fire, ice, and lightning, but where does disintegrate fit? Where does slow time fit in?" So we decided [that we'd] just take the same class mechanics, and [that we'd] change the basic concept and name and just have a throwback to that old-school magic user to give ourselves a broader range of magic skills. But there was never a huge desire to go away from the basic gameplay of the Sorceress; there's a lot of repeated skills, and that's intentional.''
===Male Wizard's Appearance===
[[File:Wiz-male-ingame1.jpg|thumb|175px|Male Wizard.]]
The Wizard debuted with the female, and the male was not seen in-game or screenshots for some time afterwards. He was playable during the Blizzcon 2009 demo, and his appearance in the game did not excite any comment. That changed quite abruptly in early March, 2010, when an animated graphic of the male wizard, taken from the in-game version, was added to the official site. Fans reacted immediately and strongly, and while opinions were mixed, many of the negative comments were cutting and angry.
The main objection was to the look of the male wizard. His face was deemed to be too soft and effeminate, his downcast eyes made him seem submissive and weak, and his resting animation was compared to belly dancing. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/male-wizard-in-game-animation-and-ss/]
Blizzard has not yet responded to these attacks. That they released the artwork shows that they're happy with it, so it seems unlikely that they'll make any changes at this point. It's also worth noting that no one objected to the look of the male wizard in game, at Blizzcon 2009. It's only in this head-on view that he became objectionable, and since this is a view players will never have in the isometric, top-down game view, (barring some sort of "zoom in to look at your character's armor" option) this controversy may well fade to nothing fairly quickly.
==Spell Damage==
