– Fans of Blizzard’* Diablo series have waited an agonizing seven years since the last installment, but the wait could be over soon. Blizzard has devoted 40 employees to an up and coming project that is “something really awesome” according to Frank Pearce, senior vice president of Blizzard.

Pearce wouldn’t give any more specifics about the project in his interview with Gamasutra reporters, but many gamers believe it could be the long-awaited Diablo 3 game. Others think the project could be StarCraft Ghost.

Blizzard released Diablo back in 1996 and the demon-killing game became an instant hit. The sequel, Diablo 2, was released in 2000. Blizzard’* current blockbuster, World of Warcraft, uses many of the same gameplay elements from the Diablo series.

You can read Gamasutra’* article here.

Fighting chickens .

cow killers unite

eagerly awaiting reveal.

nancy and i recently had a discussion about the possibility of d3 (when we met, we spent countless hours playing d1, then d2 when it came out, we stil play a couple hours a week), i held the position that a d3 is inevitable, and she thought blizzard had given up on it.

my points: its still a hot item, even years after its release. the diablo name is a cash cow at this point. as for premise: there were three demons mentioned in the first one.

nancys points: its been a long time since anything was done with the diablo name, the target audience has aged a lot. and WoW has gone a long way to reducing diablo to obsolescence.

i still like the single player on the first one, though. a lot more than d2. the only problem is that d2 made a lot of improvements to how its played.