Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson has confessed that fans will "hate" Blizzard when the team announces the next player class.
Thus far, Blizzard has only revealed two classes: Barbarian and Witch Doctor. The Barbarian makes his return from Diablo II, and the developer has made it quite clear that no other classes will be taken from the previous two games. However, the new classes should remain "similar" enough for players to find their comfort zones, and former classes will be reconsidered for a comeback in future expansions:
"We've really tried to go for classes that are not your standard warrior, rogue, mage. We're not trying to provide something that's unknown to the players, but rather classes that are not what you'd typically see.... All the barbarian players are delighted and all the necromancers hate us. I understand, I don't begrudge them that. I would hate me too! But what I would say is that when we announce the next class, which is quite similar to a previous class, then all those players will hate us too. You can't make everybody happy, but I think when the game finally come out players will find there's a good class for them, one they will love as much as the ones that came before. And if they don't, I absolutely promise that in the expansions we'll consider bringing back old classes. We just don't want to do it with the first release. We want to establish our identity."
Wilson defends their decisions thus far, insisting that the changes will be for the better. When disgruntled Diablo fans tried to show the development team how to do their jobs by editing screenshots to have a darker feel, Wilson addressed the issue directly and gently put down these fan-made mock-ups.
He explains the reasoning behind each of his team's decisions and is confident fans will love Diablo III as much as the first two games:
"Good games come out of passion, and if one of the dictates had been, 'Okay, we're just going to take all the classes from D2 and re-do them,' I don't think a lot of people on our team would have been that excited about it. In fact, I know they wouldn't have been. It came from the team that they didn't want to re-do the classes. So one of my jobs as lead designer is not only to steer everyone towards those choices, but also to make sure the whole team is excited by the choices we make. Sometimes that means we have to look at things and say, You know what, maybe this could be awesome, maybe the necromancer could be an awesome character for Diablo 3 - but if no-one on the team is interested in making him, he's not going to be great. He's going to be mediocre."
