Diablo III: The First Year in Review

Diii.net takes us through the events that have transpired since Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo III in Paris, France last summer. The feature is broken into three parts (here, here, and here), so prepare yourself for some reading.
The biggest news from Blizzcon was the Wizard. The third character was revealed in the opening ceremony, and we posted our first reactions as soon as we could get back to the press room and fire up a laptop. In addition to the Wizard we were just happy to get a chance to play the game (Blizzcon offered the first opportunity for non-Blizzard employees to get their hands on the game), and we eventually posted very detailed gameplay reports + full skill tree info about the Wizard, Barbarian, and Witch Doctor. There were also discussions of the event panels, short and very long chat transcripts, general info gameplay reports, and much, much more. Far too much to link it all here, which is why I'm glad it's all linked on the wiki media coverage page. You can also use this news category to see all of our Blizzcon 2008 in-house coverage here. It's hard to believe that was all last October. It's harder to believe it's almost time for this year's Blizzcon. Just a month and a half to go!

The biggest controversy from Blizzcon 2008 was the news (first reported by us after Jay Wilson revealed it in our interview) that attribute points would be automatically-assigned in D3. This was a very unpopular development, partially since Jay didn't mention (in our interview) that attribute requirements to equip items were gone. I assumed they were still in, and that this meant it would be impossible to create, for instance, a high strength/defense Wizard. When we got word that there were no dex/str reqs for items a major objection to the change was removed. Not that that stopped the debate...