VideoGamer.com: Have you copped a lot of flack over this?

JW: Yeah and we will! All the barbarian players are delighted and all the necromancers hate us. I understand, I don't begrudge them that. I would hate me too! But what I would say is that when we announce the next class, which is quite similar to a previous class, then all those players will hate us too. You can't make everybody happy, but I think when the game finally come out players will find there's a good class for them, one they will love as much as the ones that came before. And if they don't, I absolutely promise that in the expansions we'll consider bringing back old classes. We just don't want to do it with the first release. We want to establish our identity.

VideoGamer.com: So if people want D2, they should play D2, right?

JW: Well like I say, I sympathise. I understand why they want these things. But it also comes down to what inspires us as developers. Good games come out of passion, and if one of the dictates had been, "Okay, we're just going to take all the classes from D2 and re-do them," I don't think a lot of people on our team would have been that excited about it. In fact, I know they wouldn't have been. It came from the team that they didn't want to re-do the classes. So one of my jobs as lead designer is not only to steer everyone towards those choices, but also to make sure the whole team is excited by the choices we make. Sometimes that means we have to look at things and say, You know what, maybe this could be awesome, maybe the necromancer could be an awesome character for Diablo 3 - but if no-one on the team is interested in making him, he's not going to be great. He's going to be mediocre.