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You may hear the word "monk" and think "pacifist," but Blizzard Entertainment apparently thinks, "brutal destroyer of all things." The latest class video for Diablo 3 delves into the company's twisted conflation of monks and David Carradine's character on Kung Fu.

Oh, you wanted new Diablo 3 gameplay? Sorry to tell you, but we've got three Blizzard project leads discussing their hopes and dreams for the game in the latest dev diary instead. Perhaps knowing that these folks are killing themselves to create Diablo 3 will help soothe your searing rage.

The thing about barbarians is they like to kill stuff and, after the events of Diablo 2, the barbarians have scattered and lost their will to fight. With Diablo's return, one has found it's never been a better time to have a dry blade. Good hunting!

Like the previous Diablo titles from Blizzard, there's totally a giant main boss named "Diablo" in Diablo 3. Surprise! And during Diablo 3 art director Christian Lichtner's GDC 2012 track keynote, attendees were offered a look at the main baddie across his entire evolution. Second surprise: he looks terrifying!

Best Buy apparently believes Diablo 3 isn't far off from launch in North America, as a Winnipeg, Canada-based Twitter user spotted a display for the game in a Rochester, Minnesota store showing a February 1 launch for the game alongside a countdown timer. Bizarrely, the tweet has since been pulled, but we snagged his image (addressed to former Joystiq previews editor Arthur Gies -- thanks Arthur!) and tracked down the Best Buy to confirm its existence.

A store employee politely assured Joystiq of the end cap's existence and noted the February 1 launch date, which will coincide with a midnight opening (at least at her location). We've reached out to Blizzard Entertainment for comment, but, well, this looks pretty legit, folks. It also doesn't hurt that Best Buy's web store is showing a February 1 launch date for the game as well.

In celebration of fifteen years of Diablo -- the original came out all the way back in 1996 (!) -- Blizzard has launched a special anniversary website. The site has all kinds of Diablo-related content, from a timeline of the entire series, cutscenes from Diablo 2, video interviews and a lengthy video retrospective.

Of particular interest is an interview with Diablo 3 director Jay Wilson, who states, "We're almost done with Diablo 3 and that's a fitting celebration of the 15 year anniversary." He adds, "We'll get it to you as soon as we can." In related news, 2014 is going to be one hell of a year.

#worldofwarcraft As of mid-2009, the creators of World of Warcraft were retaining the IP histories of its users indefinitely and was drawing the lines about what information about its players that it would—or could—reveal to law enforcement personnel, according to a document released on Friday. More »

Blizzard's Diablo 3 developers are on the main stage at BlizzCon 2011 right now, and game director Jay Wilson spoke a little bit about the potential console version of the game. Nothing has changed -- there is no officially announced console version. But Wilson did confirm that Blizzard has hired a team to work on it, and that the company has been iterating on console controls.

"The movement actually feels better on the controller," Wilson said, in response to a fan's question. "Targeting is the issue." Most of the schemes the team has come up for choosing what to attack and loot require a reticule, "which we really don't want to do," Wilson said. "Monster distribution and AI also feels a little bit different than it does on the PC version."

And Blizzard won't even say that there's a console version coming "because we don't want to announce something until we're sure." Obviously the team is working on it, and obviously Diablo 3 on a console would be extremely popular -- the first game did officially come to the original PlayStation all those years ago. But as Wilson says, the team wants to assure that "if it goes on a console, it doesn't compromise the PC game in any way, and it feels like it was built for the console."

Blizzard's internal Defense of the Ancients mod for StarCraft 2, cleverly titled Blizzard Dota, is starting over. Eurogamer reports that Blizzard Dota Senior Game Designer Jonny Ebbert said the title has been "flattened," with what the company showed at BlizzCon last year being "completely rebooted." In May, we were told that the mod had experienced "some massive overhauls."
"One of the important things to note with that space is the DOTA everyone plays on Warcraft 3 is not particularly accessible to the novice," said Blizzard Product Development and Co-Founder Frank Pearce. "One of the game development philosophies we have at Blizzard is: easy to learn and difficult to master. That mod for Warcraft 3 doesn't really fit that description."

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the lands of the massively online battle arena genre, Valve is targeting a 2012 launch for Dota 2 and League of Legends continues its ascension with a new mode, expected soon. More official details about Blizzard Dota, along with however it looks now, will likely be shared at BlizzCon in October.

Today's Activision Blizzard earnings release includes the following disclaimer: "Since Blizzard Entertainment has not confirmed a launch date for its next global release, the company's calendar year outlook at this time does not include a new game from Blizzard in 2011."

But before you go tweetbooking about how Diablo 3 is never coming out, allow Blizz prez and co-founder Mike Morhaime a chance to address your concerns. "We are still working hard to ship the game before the end of the year; however, we're not ready to commit to a release date at this time," Morhaime told investors during a call this afternoon.

While Morhaime may not be sure if the retail box will be in stores before 2012, he's more confident that you'll be playing it in some capacity. "Diablo 3 is still on track to go into external beta testing later this quarter," Morhaime said. "We are very much looking forward to getting the beta into the hands of our players and collecting their feedback for the final phase of development."

Unlike many public(ity) betas, Morhaime insists this feedback is significant for Diablo 3. "There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to putting out a complex release like Diablo 3," Morhaime said. "We talked about the new auction house technology which has not been fully tested. We're not yet in beta and really it's just going to come down to when the game is ready for prime-time."

In fact, it sounds like Blizzard is waiting on the feedback from the beta before it makes a final decision on whether or not to release D3 this year. "We'll know more when we hit beta and we'll know more when we put some of these new systems into test. It's a brand new infrastructure, with a lot of complex moving parts." If you want Diablo 3 sooner than later, our advice is to join the beta and leave effusively positive feedback. It's a fool-proof plan!

Diablo 3 will sport a couple of in-game auction houses to sell items from player to player. One will be run entirely with in-game gold (very similar to the current WoW Auction House), and one will let players sell and buy items with actual money.

During a press event at its headquarters in Irvine, CA last week, Blizzard Entertainment showed off both the Diablo 3 beta and its associated Battle.net service. While most of the Battle.net features were pretty standard (there will be persistent friends lists, cross-game communication, and full matchmaking services for all of the game modes), the auction system stood out.

Yes, Diablo 3 players will be able to spend real money on in-game items, but rather than a traditional item store, Blizzard plans to create a system wherein players sell items to each other -- the eBay of Sanctuary, if you will. Players will be able to put items up for sale in each of the game's various regions around the world (with a different real-world currency for each), and other players will be able to spend real money to buy them, with the real-world money going back to the original item owners.

Blizzard will take fixed fees (as yet unrevealed, though they'll be "nominal") out of the sale price both when an auction goes up for sale and when it is actually sold. And when an item is sold, players will either be able to keep earned money in a Battle.net account for spending on Blizzard products and services, or cash out entirely, with another, percentage-based fee through a not-yet-announced third-party payment provider.

As you might imagine, Blizzard's been thinking about this one for quite a while. Vice President of Game Design Rob Pardo shared a lot of thoughts with us, including why they're going with a system like this, how it will all work, and what this means for the future of Diablo 3, Blizzard Entertainment, and the gaming market at large.

While all the Diablo 3 talk this week will probably center around Blizzard's announcement of the player-to-player auction system, there's plenty to say about the game itself. It's the most polished it has ever been, and while the mechanics were in and working at the last BlizzCon, this beta build featured all of the classes with both sexes, the early questlines and story in the beginning of Act 1, co-op play, and the latest implementation of the full skill and crafting systems. We didn't get to play with the skill-tweaking Runes, but we were shown them being slotted and used in a hands-off demo.

Regardless of how you feel about real-money transactions and third-party payment providers, Diablo 3 is still turning out to be one hell of a videogame.

When Blizzard announced that StarCraft 2 would be split into three different games years ago, there was quite a bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth -- lots of complaining that the new corporate entity of Activision Blizzard was triple-dipping our wallets. But time heals all wounds and in this case, the great reviews of the full-featured first title didn't hurt either.

So it may come as something of a surprise to be reminded that as much fun as StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty was, you've got two more campaigns coming your way. At a recent press event inside Blizzard HQ in Irvine, California, we got to take a look at two single-player missions from Heart of the Swarm, the first expansion pack-priced followup, focused on the popular Zerg race.

One note of warning before we begin: There are story elements revealed in these missions that will sorta, kinda spoil the plot of Wings of Liberty if you haven't finished it yet. If you aren't done with Jim Raynor's Terran campaign, play that and then come back. Otherwise, feel free to read on.

The second round of BlizzCon 2011 tickets are going on sale this evening in just a few hours at 10pm EDT / 7pm PDT. The first round went down last Saturday morning as planned, and tickets sold out in just a matter of minutes (technically, the queue for ticket sales was filled in less than a second). This demand is extra surprising, especially considering that ticket prices to the annual Irvine, CA-based fan convention went up this year to $175 a piece.

Still, if you want to try your hand at Blizzard Entertainment's least fun game ever and attempt to buy some tickets of your own, you can join the party on the Blizzard store website later on this evening. Good luck to everyone; may your F5 skills be strong.

The video embedded after the break was purportedly leaked from Blizzard Entertainment's Korean arm, and shows a longer look at Diablo 3's follower system, in which players can hire characters to help them with all of the hacking and slashing. As you can see in the video, there are a few different follower classes to choose from, including Enchantress, Scoundrel and Templar. The UI screens hint that you'll be able to equip weapons and rings on these characters, as well as choose various skills for them to use at different levels.

Their appearance will also evidently change over time, though it's not clear whether that's determined simply by level, by equipment, by skills chosen or some combination of all three. Earlier builds of the game suggested you could hire more than one follower, but this glimpse shows only one at a time.

The original poster of the video on YouTube reports that Blizzard has now "officially released" it after confirming the leak, but there's no sign of it on the official website yet, and we haven't heard anything official. If we do, we'll let you know.

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