[quote name='The Blizzcast Linked To Above...']
Bashiok: Back to Mike, since people saw the game at BlizzCon – they got to play it at BlizzCon – which was exciting for everybody, the interface and the UI has actually changed pretty dramatically even since then, it’s been an iterative process … since the conception of the game really, but uh so for those that didn’t see it at BlizzCon or even those who did what are the changes that have come about since then?
Mike: Well one of the biggest things involved in Diablo are items, right? We’ve experimented with a few things and one of the big things that everyone liked from Diablo, as an entity, were the large objects right. While it was more efficient to go with a WoW style one size fits all icon, which is what most people have seen, we really wanted to see what we could do and so we went back and reevaluated the system and we’ve decided split it into large and small objects. That brings up the question of tetris inventory all over again, and a lot of people are opposed to that, some people like it, some people don’t. So what we did we ended up tabbing the inventory, so now you have your large items, and then you have a tab for small items, and there’s a third tab for quest items. That way all the items can coexist nicely with each other without the frustration, which was one of the complaints about the old system is the frustration in trying to fit everything into your pack.
Bashiok: And are we still going to see the bag system coming back, the expandable [inventory] with the bags, or is it a set inventory size for each tab?
Mike: Current design right now is to have bags. You’ll get bags and they will expand, you know kind of like in WoW, except you’re not going to open up separate windows. You’ll start off your inventory with say… you know, eight slots, right, and then you’ll get a new bag and that has ten, so two more slots will open up within that tab, but you’ll never have multiple tabs. Like you won’t have two or three “large” tabs.
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Bashiok: Right, and is that working out pretty well so far? It’s been in testing for a while.
Mike: Yeah, most people seem to really like it. I mean the feedback has been pretty good, personally I love it, because it lets you do both, it lets you have the large icons but it eliminates the frustration that people voiced about having different sized items within your inventory.
Bashiok: And you can really see the artwork as it is now with the larger icons...
Mike: Oh yeah, very much so.
Bashiok: Also, on iterative processes, a lot of BlizzCon saw the skill icons. And there’s been some talk in the community that the skill icons are definitely a departure from what we saw in Diablo II. Which were these gold runes, almost, I guess. So what was the decision there to make a change to the skill icons, and do, y’know colorful skill icons?
Mike: I am unabashedly a fan of WoW, I’ll probably catch flak “oh you’re making it look like WoW oh no!” but I love them, I love the WoW icons. And y’know what we’re trying to do is see, ok what works about the WoW icons? They’re illustrative; is there a way to try to maybe bridge the gap. You know what worked about the more symbolic DII icons, and what works with the WoW icons, and trying to find a way to put the two together. And that’s really what I’m trying to do is to try to make them more symbolic, so they’re not necessarily little murals, but they are painterly. So they are colorful because you’re going to have a lot more of them than you would in DII. So you have the hot bar at the bottom, and you want that to look colorful enough that it’s interesting, but not to the point where it’s an eyesore. And quite honestly I’ve made many iterations on the icons, and there’s still many to come. It ends up being a balancing act, you know I test them out what they look like next to each other, and if they’re too colorful – tone it down.
Bashiok: One of the things I like about them is, without even looking at your hot bar you can kind of see, oh this one looks blue and cold it’s probably an ice spell of some type. So without even mousing over it to see what it is I can tell it’s at least of a specific magic or damage type or skill use...
Mike: You know one of the best experiences I’ve had at Blizzard is the iterative process, which some artists don’t like, but I personally love it. Because it lets me test stuff out. For a while I was trying out, ok let’s do color theory… ok so all the berserker skills will be this tone, and all the battle master will be this tone. And you know on paper it looked good, sounded good, ok it’s a nice theory but what we found is when you put them on the hot bar, if you went down a certain tree now everything’s the same color at the bottom and it’s hard to tell them apart. You know, ok I get a gold star for being clever, but then I lose points because it’s not playable. So you know you go back once again, scrap it, and reevaluate it. But I love that process.[/quote]
but something in my gut just says they are shooting for a Halloween release this year.
up and realize that the colors arnt that important that the main componet of Diablo is not the Atmosphere but instead having an ending supply of mobs to click on till they pop like some overstuffed pinata spraying loot everywhere.
Diablo 1.13 content patch. 
