The New blizzcast episode 8 is now up, it is focused on Diablo 3 this time around so anyone looking for new info have a listen.

I just finished listening to the blizzcast and it reminded me of how much stuff gets changed at Blizzard through out the development of a game. 

To break down what is said so you don't have to listen (if your one of those types that needs to have everything right away)

Jay Wilson did a little fan Q&A. 

First question:  Will shrines be making a return in Diablo 3? 
Short answer: No. 
Long answer:  There will be quests rewards that will function like a shrine, say like, after you finish the quest you get bonus XP for a short time, or as you are doing the quest you might get a buff that lets you do extra damage.  (not what he said verbatim, but the gist of what he meant)

Second question: Will buildings and towns be enterable, like Atma's Bar was from Diablo 2’s second act? 
Short answer: Yes
Long answer:   "There probably will be some buildings, my guess is not too far off from how many were enterable in Diablo 2.  Most towns we don’t make all the buildings enterable, it’s just a ton of art to create for very little reason.  Most people tear through the towns at lightning speed, so they don’t have a desire to go into the individual buildings.  But we do have some specialty buildings that I’m sure we’ll go inside of throughout the quest course of the game."

Third Question: Will there be a diverse selection of items that are viable for the end-game or will it follow the WoW-type style where there is more like one end-all-be-all set for each class?
Short answer: There will be a diverse selection.
Long answer:  Due to the shear variety of ways to customize your characters skills with runes there had to be a variety of end-game gear to fit each character build "Always something to collect right?"  " Exactly, always a new build to try out."
       
Last Question:  Have you settled on a particular color scheme for item drops?
Short answer: For the most part yes.
Long answer: At first they looked very much like WoW's color schemes, but they didn't feel they fit.  Even something as small as items name colors needed to feel more Diablo.  For the most part the colors are the same as they were in Diablo 2, only made it easier for color blind people to see them.  They got rid of gold cause they felt it was to easily mistaken for yellow.  Blue for magic, Yellow for rare, Jay couldn't remember what the new color for unique items are.  If they add set items they will be green. (They still have not made a call on set items. They are trying to find a way to make them not become obsolete.)

There was a Interview with  Julian Love (Lead Technical Artist – Diablo III), Mike Nicholson (Senior Artist- Diablo III)

They went over how Monsters live to die in many different ways, how things have changed, look wise for the UI.  They also went over how the new bag system is working,  as well as,  how the icons for skills keep changing.  Then they talked about the Thousand Pounder and it's grand entrance in the game play vid from WWI.  Finally they talked about how the new Fury system will look for the barbarian.

( made this short cause I felt I had already typed more then I should have lol sorry about that)

Here is a link to the transcript http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode8.xml#i2

o and here is the pics. 

Cool, I'll definitely check this out during the week.

After looking at the pics I thought it might be nice to point out some of the new info you can see.

Elixirs, Armor, and Health Pots

In this final pic you can see the new skill tree,  they seem to have gone back to the Diablo 2 set up.  No longer doyou need to spend 5 skill points in the tree to get to the next
teir of skills.  That way was very close to how WoW worked it. I am kind of happy to see them take the need to reach a level to open up the next tier.  This style gives you the option of taking some skills in one tree and others higher level skills in another with out having to put a lot of points in both.
In this pic you also see that Activated skills only have 5 ranks this means that  you don't have to spend all your points in one skill to make it worth using like in Diablo 2.  Lastly you can see two mystery slots under the Armor slots, not sure if that one on the right  is maybe the weapon switch button or not.  They haven't said if they were even going to have a weapon swap button.