Diablo III

Last August we held a Diablo III press tour, and it was with a small group of fansites that I first revealed significant changes were still in store for the rune system. Since then, we’ve been hard at work on the rune and skill systems, and today we’d like to share details on the changes you’ll see in Beta patch 13. We’re confident that these changes will make Diablo III a better game, and to help illustrate why, I'll start with a high-level explanation of our goals for these systems as well as the feedback we were responding to in making these changes.

We've added three special Valentine's Day pieces to the Diablo III Artwork gallery.

We understand that picking out the appropriate desktop wallpaper to fit your tastes and complement your décor can be an arduous task. To that end, we’ll be offering you help every Tuesday (...roughly) by featuring a new downloadable Diablo III, StarCraft II or World of Warcraft wallpaper image on our community sites.

The Visual Effects Society has announced the winners of its 10th Annual VES Awards, which recognizes outstanding visual effects artistry in 23 categories of film, animation, television, commercials, special venues, and video games. The Blizzard Cinematics team won the ‘Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Commercial or Video Game Trailer’ award for the Diablo III: The Black Soulstone video, which was presented to Nick Carpenter, VP of art & cinematic development; Jon Lanz, VFX supervisor; Chris Thunig, 2D art director; and Taka Yasuda, producer.

At BlizzCon 2011, the Diablo III Gameplay panel included this video from 3D Artist Kevin K. Griffith, Environment Artist Nate Bowden, Senior Artist Nick Eberle, and 3D Artist Richie Marella. In the video, they try to answer the question: “How hard is this game going to be in Nightmare difficulty (and above)?”

It’s been quite a while since we’ve shared information regarding our forum MVP program. If you frequent Blizzard forums you’ve no doubt seen jade text stamped across threads here and there. Those with the power to wield green words are regular players -- just like you -- who’ve been recognized for their contributions to the forums in one way or another.

We understand that picking out the appropriate desktop wallpaper to fit your tastes and complement your décor can be an arduous task. To that end, we’ll be offering you help every Tuesday by featuring a new downloadable Diablo III, StarCraft II or World of Warcraft wallpaper image on our community sites.

Battle.net Balance is now live! As we announced previously, Battle.net Balance is a new feature that gives players an alternate way to purchase Blizzard digital products and services directly through their Battle.net accounts. Players are now able add to their Battle.net Balance using a variety of payment methods, and then use that balance toward select Blizzard Entertainment digital products and services.

For more information, check out the Battle.net Balance FAQ, or head to the Battle.net Balance page in Account Management to manage your balance.

We understand that picking out the appropriate desktop wallpaper to fit your tastes and complement your décor can be an arduous task. To that end, we’ll be offering you help every Tuesday by featuring a new downloadable Diablo III, StarCraft II or World of Warcraft wallpaper image on our community sites.