Diablo III Undergoes Significant Skill and Rune Changes

Diablo III's game director has posted an update over on his blog to talk about some fairly significant gameplay changes that have just rolled out to Diablo III beta testers:

‘Last August we held a Diablo III press tour, and it was with a small group of fansites that I first revealed significant changes were still in store for the rune system. Since then, we’ve been hard at work on the rune and skill systems, and today we’d like to share details on the changes you’ll see in Beta patch 13. We’re confident that these changes will make Diablo III a better game, and to help illustrate why, I'll start with a high-level explanation of our goals for these systems as well as the feedback we were responding to in making these changes.’

Diablo III, originally intended for release late last year, has recently been pushed back yet again to "Q2" (April - June) of this year. As with all Blizzard games, the studio won't let it out until its ready, so it may yet be too early to be planning leave around the scheduled release date.

Given the number of changes made to the game since its initial beta release, which we previewed back in September, we're currently preparing to run through the game again and see how it plays now. Is there anything in particular you'd like us to detail? Let us know in the comments!