Lead designer Jay Wilson explained to MTV Multiplayer:

• “We’re not saying [Diablo III] is the end of the Diablo universe, but we are trying to bring this storyline to a close”
• “It’s not just Diablo III–we’ve got plans beyond.”

Jay Wilson also noted that Diablo 3 will feature numerous characters from the first two titles, including Deckard Cain.

“We also tried to focus a little more on bringing characters back, and not just from Diablo II but from Diablo I,” he revealed. “People can expect to see characters from Diablo I, more characters from Diablo II, and characters from some of the books.”

—START—

Please, don’t judge this before you read it through and think about it! I finally, after several months of extensive research have found the true secret that Diablo carries. Please bare with me.

Believe it or not but the secret of diablo 3 is within the Dol rune. By now, you are all probably thinking wtf this guy is trolling. But before you discredit me let me show to you this jaw-dropping truth. The stats of a Dol rune:

Weapons: Hit causes monster to flee 25%
Armor: Replenish Life +7
Helms: Replenish Life +7
Shield: Replenish Life +7

Dol Rune

Some simple mathematics:
25x7x7x7 = 8575

Why Is this important you ask?

Well. In diablo 1, the lord of terror had PRECISLY 8,575 hit points. Are you getting scared? There’s more

Note the stat on the dol rune that stands out the most, “Hit causes monster to flee 25%” Now, naturally this ONLY works on regular monsters but not bosses … right?

That’s were you are wrong. In diablo II “normal” difficulty has PRECISLY 34300 Hit points ( 8575 being exactly 25% of his health!)

What does this mean to us? Well, because of some glitch in the hardcoding of d2:lod this fact somehow allows you to surpasse the boundary of “hit causes monster to flee” not affecting bosses. In otherwords, because of this fault on behalf of the blizzard programmers aslong as you have a dol socketed into a weapon you can make diablo run away from you with each successfull hit. Ironic isn’t it? The lord of terror, in TERROR. ( Some argue this was initially an intentional “easter-egg” the programmers added for a twist)

Okay… okay. After making you read all of this I won’t disappoint you. There is indeed an even greater scandal revolving around the dol rune. One that will literally make you $!@% bricks after reading this. Let’s move on!

Anagrams. Guess what? An anagram of “Dol” is Lod. Coincidence? Lod stands for Lord Of Destruction which is an expansion for diablo. An anagram of Lord Of Destruction is: consider fold trout.

Consider fold trout …

For months these words echoed in my head and it wasn’t untill tonight I realised what impact these words bare and I felt compelled to type out this thread and share it with you all.

I quote Merriam websters: Quote TROUT Middle English, from Old English trūht, from Late Latin trocta, tructa, a fish with sharp teeth, from Greek trōktēs, literally, gnawer, from trōgein to gnaw Please notice the word gnaw.

I knew I had seen this very word somewhere in the game before, but where? Gnaw Fold. It was a rare ring I had left in my stash since 1.07. According to recent databases, the prefix Gnaw and the suffix Fold no longer exist, however they did in 1.07. I was one of the lucky few to recieve this ring randomly from as far as my memory serves me, from the gidbin quest. Enough about the ring, let me explain to you all how this fits together… PERFECTLY.

Gnaw Fold – Unique ring stats:
Attack rating +25
Vitality +7
Life +7
Energy +7
Mana +7

Do you see the similarities yet? Well, if you don’t than look back at are old friend the dol rune.

Quote The stats of a Dol rune:
Weapons: Hit causes monster to flee 25%
Armor: Replenish Life +7
Helms: Replenish Life +7
Shield: Replenish Life +7

Admit it, you are scared? This is where this little discovery takes a VERY, VERY awkward and interesting turn.

They’re three difficulties on d2 ‘Normal’, ‘Nightmare’ and ‘Hell’ In the “Hell” mode of diablo lod, diablo has a 0.05575% chance of dropping a Dol rune. Why Is this important? Apart from the scary number-patterns this tells us that JUST as with the dol rune glitch that allowed you to make diablo flee from you, here a very simliar glitch occurs. Once again, because of the “Sloppy Hardcoding” of D2 LOD (Mind, it was a rush job after the sky-rocketing sales of classic) whenever you kill diablo in hell with this ring in your ring slot the game crashes. I bet you all are thinking now, WOW what a waste of time! He made us read ALL of this to tell us that because of the incompetence of blizzard employee’s the game crashes if you wear some really rare ring and just HAPPEN to get a dol rune drop for you. This is wrong. As you will find out in just a sec there is something special about this error message. It returns the following value to your screen: 64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39.

At first glace 64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39 seems completly random, just some error code right? This is where you are wrong, deeply wrong.

64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39 is hex for : Diablo 3 09/09/09. Don’t believe me? Google ANY Hex translator and try it yourself.

From this ASTONISHING information I would like to conclude that based on my findings I believe (and believe all you others should acknowledge aswell) that diablo 3′s official release date is 09/09/09.

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE, BEFORE FLAMING / DISAGREEING READ THROUGH THE WHOLE THREAD! YOU WILL SEE MY FINDINGS ARE FLAWLESS.

—END—

I am almost tempted to reinstall the Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction and play my Paladin to see if that error code actually comes up!

“We had a checkpoint system in the BlizzCon demo we showed, where you would die and pop back up at the last checkpoint you came across. Some of that was for the convenience of the demo, but we do like the checkpoint system and intend to carry that forward in the same or similar form. We’re not looking toward corpse retrieval currently.

Any death system we do have needs to allow players to get back into the action quickly, but not be so meaningless that you’re just flinging your corpse against a wall of monsters over and over until you finally get through.” – Bashiok

I personally think that this system is much better than corpse retreival. What do you guys think?