During a presentation in New York today, Thomas Tippl, Activision Blizzard chief financial officer, raved about the strong business done by Bliizard games. He said the division has a full pipeline of content, which he presented in the slide pictured here.

While the lineup confirms continued World of Warcraft support and a Starcraft II launch in 2010 (with expansions to follow after), Diablo III was marked to be released in 2011 at the soonest.

You just better have it done by November 11, as Blizzard will be requiring it for WoW players, not to mention future games, like StarCraft II and Diablo III. Better yet, it’s easy, free and will net World of Warcraft players a virtual penguin to pal around with in-game. There’s even a FAQ!!

Hit up the official site for a brief explanation of why Blizzard considers this switchover a good thing.

World of Warcraft Battle.net Conversion Coming [Blizzard]

The Witch Doctor, Blizzard tells us, dispatches opponents with “terrifying precision, assaulting his victim’s mind and body with elixirs and powders that evoked fires, explosions, and poisonous spirits.” They can also summon undead creatures to “rend the flesh from his enemy’s body.”

These dark shaman come from the interior of the Torajan jungles. Unknown, unseen by most, the tribes of witch doctors, we’re told, come with fanciful names, like the Clan of the Seven Stones and the Tribe of the Five Hills. They hold regular honour battles to collect the materials needed for the human sacrifice that drives both their civilisation and abilities.

The tribes also believe in gods who bestow their life force on the veiled reality in which we all live. It’s pretty heady stuff.

All of this build up: This tapestry of back story, of cultural origins, of personal strife, combines to help paint a picture of a race with a rich and intriguing heritage, but once in the actual game, playing Diablo III as this warrior mystic, I found myself happily, almost mindlessly clicking away on the mouse like a third-party gold farmer harvesting in World of Warcraft.

All thoughts of back story, of honour battles, of a veiled reality powered by life force were gone, boiled down to the chattering of my mouse and the twitching of my fingers across the keyboard.

It left me wondering how much of Diablo III’s attraction is about nostalgia and how much of it is about good game design. I’m not saying Diablo III is a bad game. It isn’t. While I probably could wait for the game to come out, I certainly don’t want to.

It’s telling how quickly I lost myself in a game so very similar to the one I played eight years ago. Within minutes I was happily guiding my witch doctor through vaguely familiar scenery, hunting for enemies to attack.

While the witch doctor has plenty of direct attack spells at his disposal, like a skull-themed fire bomb, my favourite was the class’ ability to summon zombie dogs. These undead canines roam around your character looking for creatures to attack.

I also enjoyed the horrify ability, which had my witch doctor put on a over-sized mask, causing nearby enemies to flee in terror. A useful skill when you start to become overwhelmed.

But the experience, albeit a very brief taste of the upcoming game, didn’t really change from my memories of playing Diablo, Diablo II and its expansion. I was still roaming around, clicking a ton and using my keyboard a bit.

The mechanics of play and the graphic pay-off seemed at odds with the almost euphoric enjoyment I got out of playing the game. Why was that?

For me, I think it’s because the game carefully, cleverly taps into my fond memories of the ghosts of Diablo’s past. Playing Diablo III throws me back to those late nights of Diablo II when my son was a newborn and I played the game between bouts of feeding and diaper changing. It reminds me of my days of playing the original Diablo and Hellfire when I was fresh out of college, moving from state to state, filling my nights in towns where I was a stranger with endless role-play.

I suspect that my enjoyment of Diablo III is more about reminiscence than it is dutiful gaming. Which leaves me wondering? What will gamers new to the franchise think?

It’s nearly a year later, and Diablo III game director Jay Wilson is now sporting a rather fetching bit of beardage, but the legendary shirt is nowhere to be seen. The outpouring of demand was readily evident, and third-party companies have made a tidy sum producing knock-offs of the design. Where’s the real deal?

“The shirt wasn’t produced through normal Blizzard channels,” Jay explains. “It was something the team had made on their own.” Therefore the shirts never underwent any sort of official approvals process, which explains why Blizzard didn’t immediately put them up for sale. There’s still hope though.

“It’s our intent eventually to make them. Whether we make them for public consumption I’m not sure – I don’t see why not. I’ve got other fish to fry.” I think we can all agree that working on getting the game finished is slightly more important than releasing a silly t-shirt. Slightly.

As for third-party bootlegs, Blizzard is aware, and will frown in a legal fashion at any company that seeks to make their own unauthorised versions.

In Australia and Germany, two markets where classification authorities (for varying reasons) run a tight ship, Blizzard will “have to change blood if [they're] going to sell there”. We’d presume that means either tone it down or, like other games have done recently, change its colour.

For China, though… things aren’t as easy. In fact, they’re so hard the game may never be released there, Blizzard’s Jay Wilson telling Wired “China’s going to be hard for us. Because a lot of the restrictions there are really… we may not be able to do them. It may not be possible.”

Kotaku AU Note: We’ve checked in with Blizzard’s Aussie office for further comment. Will keep you updated.

Why Designer of Gory Diablo III Lets His Daughter Play [Wired]

Diablo III’s rune system, as we explained last year, is an ambitious feature in which every skill for every character can be modified using various runes, changing the way the skill affects enemies. One rune might simply add an additional attack to a skill, while others have more profound effects.

“We can’t really do any runes for a skill until we’ve locked a skill down, and we’re notorious for redoing things. When we do finally decide to lock a skill down, that’s the point where we say, ‘Okay, now we can develop the runes for this.’ So we design out the runes for it, and we do those last.”

So the system, itself involving a massive amount of brainstorming and design work, is dependent on having skills set in stone. With four characters revealed and a fifth and final one still waiting in the wings, it feels as if a fully-realised Diablo III is a long way off, no matter how polished the demos were at the show.

Jay continued, giving us a status on each character. “The wizard and the barbarian both have runes—the wizard has the most, and the barbarian has some. The witch doctor has a few as well.”

After running into confusion with internal testers over why some powers had runes and others didn’t, the team decided to turn the feature off until they could deliver a more complete version of the rune system.

“It was a big disappointment that we couldn’t show the runes off in their entirety, but hopefully the next time we do a big unveiling of the game they’ll be there.”

Rows of computers and lines—that about sums it up. There are some statues as well, some of which we’ve seen before, and a lot of blackness. Just tons and tons of blackness. There’s a nice long wall for people to write their names, which was nice until it became illegible and a space for people to decorate their blank nOObz Space Marines, which is a fine thing. There are always plenty of places to spend your money, which is perfect for those of you allergic to not being poor, like me.

And no, I wasn’t stalking the Queen of the Blades statue.

The page dedicated for the game’s character classes showed the Barbarian, Witchdoctor, Wizard and Monk, though the final, still unconfirmed class, didn’t show any additional information when it was clicked on.

It should come as a surprise that the Monk appears to be coming to the latest iteration of Diablo. The Monk was a playable class in the original title along with the Barbarian, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer and Warrior.

I suspect we’ll be getting some sort of official confirmation on this in the coming hour or so with Blizzcon just moments from going live.

[Thanks Jason]

I see several things here I want desperately, like the vinyl nOObs StarCraft figures, the plush murlocs, and the Diablo Fresh Meat t-shirt. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough room in my suitcase for the swag I already got, so it’s either spend nothing, or ship it all home ahead of me. Hmmmmmm.

Well, I will be there representing Kotaku, but judging by my height and girth I am worth any two of them on the human meat aftermarket. Last year I shattered the very world, so what trouble could I possibly get into this year? With news expected on all fronts, from a potential World of Warcraft expansion to new details on StarCraft II and Diablo III, would you even notice me getting into trouble?

Probably not. You’d be too busy watching Ozzy Osbourne.

I understand. Either way, expect reports from BlizzCon to kick off late this evening, with the annual swag-bag breakdown, and we’ll see where things go from there.