Are you eagerly anticipating the release of Diablo III? Well, Blizzard has added four new pieces of artwork and five new screenshots to the official media galleries for the game, so check them out while you patiently (or impatiently) wait to re-enter the world of Diablo.

Episode 6 of BlizzCast, the official Blizzard podcast, is now online, and it contains an hour of interviews regarding World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Diablo III.

In the sixth epic episode of BlizzCast, we spend a day with a developer and find out what life is like for World of Warcraft Lead Tools Programmer Monte Krol. Next, we take a look at StarCraft II unit design from concept to creation with Senior Art Director Samwise Didier and Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder. In our third segment, Bashiok spends some time with Anthony Rivero, senior artist for Diablo III, and discusses "bridging the gap" in the series’ character design. Bornakk wraps the episode up by answering some questions from the community.

You can download an mp3 of the show here or read the transcript here.

One of the most amazing things about Blizzard is it's success in everything they've attempted, and certainly you can attribute that to leadership as much as hard work. So when Blizzard Senior Vice President Frank Pearce talks about things the company is planning, it's always fun to listen!

Games Industry.biz had a quick chat with him a few days ago, and I found a couple parts rather interesting, I hope you do too!

Q: Is producing a World of Warcraft expansion every year still an ambition and do you feel any extra pressure to do that now that companies, such as Turbine, have said they will?

Frank Pearce: I don't think we would impose pressure on ourselves to do something like that based on what other companies are doing. Ultimately we want to do what is right for the franchise and what is right for Blizzard as an organisation. Ideally our goal would be to ship one with the regularity of 12 months or so, but we're so ambitious with the type of content that we want to put it makes a difficult challenge, especially when you mix in content patches and developers working on the content patches are the same developers working on the expansions. that's how we maintain consistent quality across that content.

Check it out! The interview covers everything from Diablo 3, WoW, to the Warhammer Online launch in Europe!

Allakhazam Editor-in-Chief Andrew "Tamat" Beegle had the opportunity at BlizzCon to speak exclusively with the cast of the hit webisode sitcom “The Guild,” which follows the lives of the group’s members both online and off.

Before you read any further, head on over to www.watchtheguild.com and watch an episode or two (or go crazy and watch all 10) of season one. That way, you’ll truly understand the cast’s excitement for season two, which, according to creator Felicia Day, is scheduled to launch in mid-November.

Are you all caught up? Good. Andrew spoke with Felicia Day (Codex, healer), Vincent Caso (Bladezz, rogue/thief), Robin Thorsen (Clara, mage), and Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo, warlock) about the upcoming season, their impressions of BlizzCon and their other projects, all while discovering that the cast has a great sense of humor.

The video of the interview can be found after the jump.

If you've played an MMO at all, you're familiar with subscription fees. It's the service cost associated with the game. If you've played MMOs for any length of time, you'll be familiar with the expansion features that many MMO companies throw at players, often faster than we can chew through the content. In contrast, one of the biggest pushes in MMO delivery in the last few years is the content update. This occurs when studios update content and features in game without making you pay extra for the content.

When MMOs first came onto the scene we had patches and hot fixes that were more emergency maintenance than updates to content offerings. Now though, few games choose not to recognize what a huge boon to their community content updates are. There are even some studios that offer updates to their games exclusively via complimentary expansions. A game such as CCP's EVE Online has offered their content updates for free to paying subscribers.

With BlizzCon coverage popping up across the net, it was excited to see the video taken by StarCraft Wire which has a few mentions of Blizzard's unannounced "4th project" which is the unnamed MMO.

The interview covers just about every project Blizzard has going on, and is worth the watch!

BlizzCon 2008 may have come to a close, but our extended coverage of the event is just beginning. Our BlizzCon wiki is already full of exclusive panel recaps, interviews and photos for you to enjoy, but that's not all! The intrepid ZAM Network staff, including our tireless Allakazham employees, went without much sleep all weekend to make sure that you get as much in-depth information as possible, and new content will be added to the wiki daily. So bookmark the page and refresh it regularly for your BlizzCon fix.

By now you've probably checked out Wordaen's class panel review and found out that the Wizard is the new Diablo III class, but there are now full articles posted on PvP, dungeons, and a free-for-all Q&A session with Blizzard. One of the best news tidbits is that mounts will no longer dismount in water outdoors!

As for interviews, our team realizes that the community aspect of WoW is incredibly important. That's why even though our wiki is full of official news from Blizzard, there's also interviews with regular players. In fact, there's even an exclusive interview with costume contest winner Amanda Hosler!

I have also heard from Tamat that he got a chance to speak personally with the cast of The Guild. Keep checking the wiki for that. In the meantime, talk about BlizzCon in our WoW general forum and keep reading below for a summary of some of the panel articles.

This morning at the BlizzCon 2008 opening ceremony, the third class for Diablo III was announced -- the Wizard! These ranged casters are "all about channeling the powers of the universe ". Blizzard has given us access to the initial gameplay video that was shown during the ceremony; check it out!

Also make sure to view all of our new Diablo III screenshots from BlizzCon, they make it pretty clear that the team is making some forward progress on the game.

To say that Diablo III is highly anticipated may be an understatement. We're all looking forward to this long-awaited sequel and pounce on any information we can find.

Blizzard has added an entry on the scavenger to its expanding bestiary. In it, Abd al-Hazir describes the beasts as "small, burrowing creatures that feed upon carrion."

Unlike most animals of this type, however, they are extremely aggressive and will not hesitate to attack those unfortunate enough to encounter them. Scavengers have powerful legs which they use for swift springing attacks, striking at vulnerable faces and throats.

Check out the full entry here or keep reading below.

Our friends Steve Spohn and Mark Bartlet over at AbleGamers.com had the opportunity to speak with Blizzard's Jay Wilson, Lead Designer and Leonard Boyarsky, Lead World Designer about the highly anticpated, upcoming title Diablo III. In the first installment of this two part interview much is unvieled about Diablo III including information about Tristram, classes and hardware requirements -- sorry folks, your Commodore 64 will not run Diablo III. Check it out.....

Steve, AbleGamers: With the characters that were announced in the invitational being the barbarian and the witch doctor... the expansion of Diablo II at seven characters. Was there any reason that two of the characters, well actually three, were left out, and can you comment on which five will be in the game?

Jay, Blizzard: We're not trying to match the number of characters that Diablo II and the expansion had, in some way as we look at that as, "that's no fair! That's two game for the content that you asking us to match, as supposed to one." We're really trying to think what we would feel would be the right number of starting archetypes for the player and in the long run we will have five classes for Diablo III. I'm sure we will expand that with expansions down the road, but were really trying to focus on making those classes each kind of a unique and good experience for Diablo III. For example, the barbarian, we brought him back because he was a class that we really thought we could improve, but other classes... the other classes that were done really well and Diablo II, we looked at it and said "well, all I would really do is repeat that class." We don't think we could make such a significant improvement that it provides new gameplay or new experience. So in those cases, we haven't focused on really have heavily and bringing them back. That being said, once we get the original game out, and we start looking at expansions, we might think about different ideas like bringing back old characters that were really popular. But in the initial game are really focused on bringing new experiences to everyone.

Click here to view the full interview at AbleGamers.com and stay tuned for the second installment on Monday, September 22nd.