Diablo III Interview

Pure bliss hits as MTV Multiplayer reveals yet another tidbit from their long-running interview with Diablo III lead Jay Wilson.
According to lead (Diablo III) designer Jay Wilson, the team has to appease an (extremely broad audience) as well as hardcore fans.

(Up until fairly recently, '˜Diablo II' was Blizzard's best-selling game,) Wilson recently told me when I asked him just who (Diablo) fans are. ('˜World of Warcraft'˜ has finally surpassed it, but it took it several years to do that. And part of the reason is how approachable the game is.)
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But in (Diablo III,) players will have to pick up health orbs after they've killed enemies, which will restore their health upon contact. Wilson saw on the forums that people were worried that this might make the game (ridiculously hard.) He said that fans shouldn't worry.

(That's only if we tuned it like '˜Diablo II,') he said. (When the player has similar downsides, it means we can make a lot more interesting monsters. We don't have to kill you to challenge you. We can make a monster that affects your mobility, we can make a monster that has different kinds of attacks that are dangerous to you and that you actually have to avoid. And so it makes the combat a lot more interesting.)

While Wilson said they'll keep the game accessible, he knows (Diablo III) has to ultimately appease their hardcore fans. He assured me that the team has kept this in mind, and is making the game progressively harder.