Diablo III is a dark fantasy/horror-themed action role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment, making it the third installment in the Diablo franchise. The game, which features elements of the hack and slash and dungeon crawl genres, was first announced on June 28, 2008, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France, and is set to be released in North America, Latin America and Europe on May 15, 2012, and Russia on June 7, 2012. The game broke several presale records and became the most pre-ordered PC game of all time on Amazon.com and Blizzard.
 PLOT
 The game takes place in Sanctuary, the dark fantasy world of the Diablo series. This world was saved twenty years prior by a handful of unnamed heroes in Diablo II. Having survived the onslaught brought by the armies of the Burning Hells, Tyrael rewarded the heroes by sending them to safety. It is up to a new generation of heroes to face the forces of evil threatening the world of Sanctuary. Players will have the opportunity to explore familiar settings such as Tristram. The only confirmed NPCs are Deckard Cain,who has appeared in both of the previous games, and his niece, Leah, a new character who accompanies the hero in quests from time to time. The plot will revolve around two surviving Lesser Evils, Azmodan and Belial, and an artifact known as the Black Soulstone. Diablo's world map is composed primarily of two main continents with several small islands in the Northwest region. The world of Sanctuary has been dramatically changed by the destruction of the Worldstone in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.
 Gameplay
 The proprietary engine will incorporate Blizzard's custom in-house physics, a change from the original usage of Havok's physics engine, and feature destructible environments with an in-game damage effect. The developers are aiming to make the game run on a wide range of systems, and have said that DirectX 10 will not be required. Diablo III will use a custom 3D game engine in order to present an overhead view to the player, in a somewhat similar way to the isometric view used in previous games in the series. Enemies will utilize the 3D environment as well, in ways such as crawling up the side of a wall from the depths into the combat area. As in Diablo II, multiplayer games will be possible using Blizzard's Battle.net service,with many of the new features developed for StarCraft II also available in Diablo III. Players will be able to drop in and out of sessions of co-operative play with others. An enhanced quest system, a random level generator, and a random encounter generator are slated for use in order to ensure the game provides different experiences when replayed. Overall, the game will include both static and randomly generated levels. Additionally, there will be class-specific quests to go along with the main storyline quests.Blizzard originally planned to have in-game cutscenes,but they felt these would divert from the gameplay and ultimately decided against them. Three new armor pieces will be available: shoulder plates, arm-guards, and leggings. Unlike previous iterations, gold can be picked up merely by touching it, rather than having to manually pick it up One of the new features intended to speed gameplay is that health orbs drop from enemies, replacing the need to have a potion bar, which itself is replaced by a skill bar that allows a player to assign quick bar buttons to skills and spells; previously, players could only assign two skills (one for each mouse button) and had to swap skills with the keyboard or mousewheel. Players can still assign specific attacks to mouse buttons. Skill runes, another new feature, are skill modifiers that are unlocked as the player levels up. Unlike the socketable runes in Diablo II, skill runes are not items but options for enhancing skills, often completely changing the gameplay of each skill. For example, one skill rune for the Wizard's meteor ability reduces its arcane power cost, while another turns the meteor to ice, causing cold damage rather than fire.

Diablo III will give players the choice to make hardcore characters, similar to Diablo II.Players will be required to first level up a regular character to level 10 before they will have the option to create new Hardcore characters. Hardcore characters cannot be resurrected; instead they become permanently unplayable if they are killed. They also do not have access to the real-world money auction house. Hardcore mode is intended for experienced players who enjoy the additional thrill of having only a single virtual life. Hardcore characters are separately ranked, their names are highlighted with a different (red) color and they can only form teams with other hardcore characters. After dying, the ghost of a hardcore character can still chat, the name still shows up in rankings, but the character cannot return to the game.