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→The Rumor Mill
=The Rumor Mill=
==Early Work Trashed==
It's known and confirmed through private channels (though not officially by Blizzard) that the version of Diablo III the Diablo II team had been working at Blizzard North was dumped and the game's development was essentially began anew, from scratch, in late 2003 after Blizzard North was shut down. Why the new Diablo III team didn't continue on with the initial version of the game is unknown; the new team might have wanted to do their own game, the original version might have been too similar to what WoW became, or too similar to what Diablo II was, or it might not have been very good. That's what Brian Crecente reported <sup>[[#References|2]]</sup> on Kotaku on August 8, 2005:
<blockquote>
I just got an interesting update about Diablo 3. Rumor has it that the current work on Diablo 3 was canceled and that the game is going to be completely reworked. My tipsters tell me that Blizzard North's work on the game was, to put it kindly, below expectations. While this is mildly disappointing, it's nice to know that Blizzard still so zealously guards their name.
<br><br>
This news does help paint a broader picture about the closing of Blizzard North. I'm not saying the two incidents are related, but they may be.
</blockquote>
==Chris Hartgraves==
The next big rumor about ''Diablo III'' turned up about a year later. As the tale goes, a Blizzard employee named Chris Hartgraves left the company in late 2005, and promptly spilled all he knew about ongoing projects at Blizzard. In an email posted on a World of Warcraft fansite forum<sup> [[#References|1]]</sup> on October 28, 2005, Chris was quoted saying the following about ''Diablo III'':
<blockquote>
It is about Diablo 3. Last week they had a thing called "Show N Tell" which they have every 6 months to all the full time employees - Anyways Diablo 3 takes place in heaven. Hell is trying to take it over and it is AWESOME looking ... I magine the brightness of heaven being taken over by the darkness of hell ... Imagine WoW but in a Diablo world in amount of size and playability ... Also, guild housing is available in this game for those of you who know about it. They should have a gameplay demo to show at BlizzCon.
</blockquote>
There was no way to confirm this account of ''Diablo III'', since, contrary to Hartgraves' prediction, the game did not debut at the 2005 [[BlizCon]], and still hasn't made an appearance, more than 2.5 years later. That doesn't do much to argue for Hartgraves' claims, and they would be forgotten by now if not for the fact that he also said ''Starcraft II'' was under production long before it was officially announced. He also made several predictions about ''World of Warcraft'' in the same email, and most of them turned out to be accurate.
"Snowstorm" is indeed working on "Beelzebub 3". Not only are they working on it, but they have been working on this game for no less than the past four years. In fact, "Snowstorm North" nearly completed the game several years ago, but what they developed just "wasn't fun" and been quietly reworked. This was actually one of the key reasons why Snowstorm North was closed and everyone was relocated to Irvine-based Snowstorm, so that the bigwigs in Irvine could better track and follow the development of Beelzebub 3.
...It is true that Beelzebub 3 will be done in true 3D and it did indeed look freaking awesome. It is also true that Beelzebub 3 features a story between the conflicts of Heaven and Hell and contains a very cool feature where every single item in the game can change between a "light" version and a "dark" version. However this was also one of the problems with the original version of the game. Other than the ability for any item to visually change from light to dark it didn't affect the actual stats of the item or change the gameplay in any way. So the game has gone through a total rework to inject some "fun" into the gameplay and to make it feel like the Beelzebubs of old.
The core gameplay Beelzebub 3 will play pretty much like Beelzebub 1 and 2, but the game world will be much larger and provide a much deeper experience -- many more items, more levels when you go through the game for first time, more skills, more of everything. In addition, the multiplayer aspect will be greatly enhanced from the past installments and don't be surprised to see more than a couple of WoW-based concepts to leak over into the Beelzebub 3 universe ... such as two opposing factions (Alliance and Horde = Heaven and Hell), enhanced guild functionality, and maybe even mounts?!
<blockquote>
Like the leak from Hartgraves, there's no confirmation of this yet, and it's been more than two years since it was posted. The plot concept, of playing the Heavens, is only logical. After all, players descended into the Hells in Act Four of Diablo II, and the game world's mythology features numerous battles between the Angels and the Demons, along with constant interference/assistance from the archangel Tyrael. Most of the other predictions are pretty common sense too; of course the game is fully in 3D, and of course there will be expanded online play, guild housing, faction warfare, and so forth. Those features are all but mandatory in an online RPG these days.
=The Big Four Leave Blizzard North=
