Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! As you probably know, Diablo III's release date is today. With over 1 million Annual Pass subscribers set to receive free digital copies of the game, chances you or a guildmate is going to playing this game. As someone who's been a huge fan of the Diablo series for over a decade, I can vouch for the series. If you need something else to keep your attention while we wait for Mists of Pandaria to go live, you could easily do worse, that's for sure.

If you're interested in checking out Diablo III, I'd suggest you look at the following articles we've published to get you up to speed.

• Here are six blue posts that you must read.
• We offer some tips on fixing common Diablo III installation issues.
• We have a quick guide to the basics of Diablo gameplay.
• Rossi gets you up to speed on the lore of the Diablo franchise.
• My basic introduction to Diablo is a few months old, but it's a good read.
• Alex explains why we're covering Diablo III on a WoW site.

If you're not into Diablo, don't worry. We still have plenty of the WoW coverage you expect. With new beta patches coming all the time, there's a lot of it, too. Downtime today is just a series of rolling restarts at 5 a.m. PDT, so that's at least enough time to read a quick article or two.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Many of you don't know about Windrider Traffic Commander Joruk Stonejaw, one of the vital members of the Orgrimmar Flight and Safety Administration. No, you can't look him up on Wowhead. I mean, you could try, but you won't find him. I made him up.

Born in Orgrimmar and working in his father's salvage shop, Joruk dreamed of the sky every spare moment he had. When the Horde went to Northrend, Joruk went with it. When he returned from battle, Garrosh Hellscream commanded Horde soldiers from the front to transition back into a state of readiness. Joruk, proven on the battlefield, was tasked with overseeing the wyvern operations and highway high above The Drag.

Eventually, Joruk made himself indispensible. Soon, every wyvern and windrider schedule was passing past his desk. Five headaches and three delegations later, Joruk's new position of Windrider Traffic Commander was instated. If you've ever flown out of Orgrimmar, be it by airship, zeppelin, windrider, or flying machine, Joruk Stonejaw has seen your name on paperwork.

Make up your own WoW character. Go.

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

I've been waiting a looong time for Diablo III -- over a decade, in fact. Blizzard announced the game in 2008. That's four years since the announcement alone! Needless to say, I'm excited.

But I'm also prepared. When I start playing tonight, I'll have a bevy of online resources available to help me out, and I've compiled them for you! Well, for me. But for you, too.

• D3DB is the ZAM Network's answer to Wowhead for Diablo III -- an exhaustive database of items, abilities, bad guys, and more.
• DiabloFans is the Curse Network's answer to MMO-Champion for Diablo III. Lots of datamining, blue posts, and all that jazz.
• The official Diablo III site has the fantastic Game Guide, which has everything from talent calculators to skill videos. Blizzard knocked it out of the park.
• BlizzPlanet will keep you abreast of all the latest Blizzard news, going beyond blue posts.
• ForceStrategy has you covered for Diablo video, which might become pretty necessary once you roll into higher difficulties!
• Our sister site Massively will be covering Diablo III as part of its daily online gaming coverage.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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Filed under: Diablo 3

GAME Australia (a large video game retailer) is entering voluntary administration, which is the same as going into bankruptcy in the United States. Included in this fact is that GAME will not be giving Diablo III to all those who preordered it. To add salt to the wound, GAME will also not be offering refunds for Diablo III preorders -- or rather, it will, but only after practically every other person under the sun is paid back, and only then if people specifically file as an unsecured creditor, of sorts.

Essentially, if you live in Australia and you bought Diablo III from GAME, you're screwed. But wait -- Blizzard to the rescue.

In what has to be one of the classiest moves I've seen from a gaming company, Blizzard is offering a solution for those who have gotten the short end of the stick. Those who preordered from GAME can buy the Diablo III digital edition tonight, submit their GAME Australia receipt to Blizzard, and get refunded from Blizzard whatever money they paid for their preorder.

It's rare that anyone gets to report news of a company going out of its way to do something like this, let alone a multinational as huge as Blizzard. Huge kudos to Blizzard. Check out the full post announcing this, along with key dates, after the break.

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Filed under: News items, Diablo 3

Since Diablo II was released 12 years ago, it's safe to say that Diablo III will be the first Diablo title many people will have ever played. When we first mentioned that we would be providing some coverage of Blizzard's point-and-click dungeoneering action title, one of the first requests we received was a guide to Diablo basics. How do you play the game? What does it have in common with WoW?

We have you covered.

The core of Diablo gameplay is the mouse click. You do everything from combat to looting to movement with your mouse, and your interactions with your keyboard are extremely minimal overall. On Twitter recently, I noticed many people mentioning they were buying a new mouse specifically to use with Diablo III -- and that's not a bad idea. No, we're not talking a brand new $80 Razer Naga; we're talking some $10 to $15 thing you can pick up off of a department store shelf. You want a mouse that you're not going to mourn when your buttons inevitably give out from the mountain of abuse you're about to unleash upon them. Grab something cheap and disposable so that when it dies, you will consider it a victory -- just another technological corpse for the bone pile.

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Filed under: Diablo 3

All podcasts and content belong to their owners. WoW Insider is not responsible for what you hear, and some of the content may not be safe for work.

• All Things Azeroth Viewing Vanilla through Rose Colored lenses
• BlizzPlanet The Week of Warcraft Episode 4
• Hunting Party Podcast Episode 127
• The Instance 10.2 and Stable
• Legendary Serverless Warcraft

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Filed under: Podcasting, Weekly Podcast Roundup

As we all sit around our Basic Campfires, caught rapt by breathless anticipation, let's take a moment and celebrate the upcoming release of Diablo III with a funny machinima.

Olibith created the Gigolo Witch Test using the the first custom machinima tool made for the game. While that might not sound like a big deal, that makes this Gigolo Witch Test the first full-blown, tooled machinima for Diablo III. (That's why we featured it on WoW Moviewatch back in the day.)

So here's hoping we won't be so sad and lonely for much longer, and we all get to enjoy the silky-smooth launch of Diablo III.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo 3 for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch, Diablo 3

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

No community wants to be known as a feeder guild. No raid team wants to see its best members leave for more progressed guilds when they have the opportunity. No guild leader wants to fall victim to poaching over and over again. It's an embarrassing place to be. How can you stop the bleeding and shake the label? Read on to find out! But first, this week's email:

Hi Scott.

I'm GM of a guild that is not a hard core raiding guild. We have been around since Ulduar and were founded at the break up of a guild that existed since vanilla. ... The founding principle of the guild was no drama and keep it casual. This has crystallised into my own rule as GM: advice for other players is fine if you ask if they want it first. Unsolicited "you are rubbish" comments are not allowed.

... One advantage of the guild is that the atmosphere of advice and support over criticism means that "OMG you Noob" players either change their tune or leave. This mean the relations between guild members generally remain good even after people move on. So on to the issue.

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Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

Dig those groovy threads, man. Being caught in the middle of a feud between the raid leader and guild leader does not require you to wear baby blue bell bottoms, but it may help.

Dear Drama Mamas,

I find myself at a loss for words about recent events in the guild I belong to. Since I can not figure out if I am being unreasonable I've decided to seek outside help.

Recently a Raid Leader and our Guild Master had a fight. The Raid Leader and his Raid Team quit the guild we belong to and settled into a level 1 guild together. They were the only people raiding in our guild and the raid leader was instrumental in helping each of them gear and I understand why they followed them. They did not have an issue with the fight between the GM and RL, they just followed the person who had helped them the most and who would see them through their raids. Our guild has a lot of followers and very few leaders so I am not surprised. This was a loss for our guild, but since drama always seemed to follow that Raid Leader its probably for the best.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas

As Diablo 3 installers start running today (even though you can install the game, you can't play until midnight PST), a host of issues have cropped up. Most of these can be solved by commonsense troubleshooting techniques, but some others are a bit more evil.

We'll keep this post updated throughout the next couple of days with the latest problems and info on how to fix them. We'll also include non-Blizzard sources when appropriate (but in general, Blizzard is pretty on top of all these).

• ATI 1.24 Catalyst graphics issue
• Compatibility mode
• Digital download yet "Disc Ejected" error
• Error 108
• New downloaders required for EU English and German
• Nothing happens when running the installer
• Overlay programs crash Diablo 3
• Removing beta files
• Tome error
• Unexpected decryption error

For more information on basic troubleshooting of the installation, check out Blizzard's thread with tips on what you can do with your computer to fix most issues.

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Filed under: Diablo 3