Blizzard has just launched their new FAQ for the Auction House on Battle.net, and you can read it right here. Possibly the most critical part is where they outline the costs, and break down both the gold-based auction house and the real-money auction house, and explain the fees for both equipment and commodities therein. 

Diablo III's "Evil is Back" TV spot, at last on YouTube, for your viewing pleasure. Once again, Blizzard's kickass cinematics build more hype than a million news posts ever could. 

It's the end, friends, but also only the beginning. Diablo III's beta is ending in preparation for the live release on the 15th, and so the sever wipe is coming. But in the meantime, get yourself used to the Monk! He'll be your best friend when the game goes live. 

Sweet. Brand new trailer for Diablo III, this time going over the lore and abilities of the Barbarian. Featuring a fantastic voiceover and some great in-game footage, this trailer speaks for itself.

Boy that's a weird one to hear about. Runic Games, famous for their Diablo-like game Torchlight, made a statement on their developer blog about Diablo III's release date being set. And they're stoked.

It makes sense, though, especially to their fans. A big concern for them and their fans is that, with the imminent release of Diablo, suddenly Torchlight and the upcoming Torchlight II will be shoved aside. They are putting this out to let everyone know they can relax, and they're doing okay. All the same, Runic Games congratulating Blizzard - their direct competitor, a much bigger company - is pretty cool of them to do.

So it seems the decision to drop PvP for Diablo III's launch was a good choice, as Blizzard has just announced this morning that Diablo III will be launching May 15, 2012. In order to pre-purchase, all you need to do is login to your Battle.net account before heading over to their digital store to pick it up.

So the new question, now that Diablo III is finally nearing the end of its development journey, is what will players do for the next two months? Maybe Valve will release Episode 3 and the time-space continuum will collapse.

According to a new dev blog post from Diablo III Lead Designer Jay Wilson, Diablo III's PvP Arena system is just not meeting their high standards, and so will not be included at launch. In the blog post, Wilson stresses the fact that the team is "in the process of putting the finishing touches on what [they] think is a truly epic campaign and co-op experience for launch," and they did not want to delay that portion of the game because they couldn't deliver an equivalent PvP experience as well.

As such, Diablo III will be launching without its PvP Arena system in place, and Wilson notes that they be focusing much of their post-launch efforts on making sure it releases in a timely fashion an adhere's to Blizzard's standard of quality. In particular, he notes that the PvP patch will add "multiple Arena maps with themed locations and layouts, PvP-centric achievements, and a matchmaking system."

You can read the full blog post on the Diablo III website.

Diablo III Game Director Jay Wilson took to the Battle.NET forums today to clarify certain statements made by Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok. A few days ago, news spread on the internet echoing Bashiok's post that players "should temper your expectations when it comes to the next installment in the Diablo series."

Jay Wilson wanted to reassure players that D3 is currently in great shape with the latest build being tested in the office. To follow up, in true Blizzard fashion, Wilson did say "you can seriously expect a launch-date announcement from us in the near future." Fortunately, it's not the usual "soon" or "when it's ready," so we might actually be able to believe him this time!

Blizzard is well known for holding off a game's release until they feel it's ready for market, and Diablo 3 is no exception. Based on recent feeback both internally and from the beta, Diablo 3 is in for some pretty hefty changes including:

• Scrolls of Identification no longer being in the game.
• Moving the fifth quick slot bottom, which is becoming a dedicated potion button.
• Removing the Mystic artisan.
• Removing the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube.
• Allowing the Blacksmith artisan to salvage items.
• Common (white) items no longer being salvageable.
• Changing core character attributes to Strength, Dexterity, Intellect, and Vitallity.
• Displaying character stats directly on the inventory UI.

Even after all these changes they still claim there is a lot of work left to be done as they are constantly tuning and making balance changes. While it could still be some time before we see it's release, you can bet money on the fact that Diablo 3 is going to be the best game it can be once it launches.

Diablo III has been approved in Korea! We reported about a week and a half back that Diablo III was running into a wall that was the South Korean Game Rating Board (GRB) - especially ont he topic of D3's Real Money Auction House. Well, you can always trust Blizzard to find a way through, although this time their solution might not have been as elegant as they'd hoped.

The Korean Times are reporting that Blizzard, in their third submission to the South Korean Game Rating Board, had stripped out any cash-trading features in the game. Of course, the GRB was wise to Blizzard's crafty omissions, and they fired a stern warning to the developer, noting that "[t]he feature involving for-cash trades between users was not included in the presentation to the rating committee, and thereit was not subjected to scrutiny. . . If 'item trade for cash' is added to the current version in service changes, it would... open up re-rating examinations."

So I guess a world premiere is still very viable for Blizzard, but as to whether they want to completely scrap their RMT auction house in Korea remains to be seen.