Diablo 3 Rumored

[Artega]

You can make fighter mages, priests, warrior priests, mage priests, mage thieves, it's all open ended. You get a character you want. Just the way you want it. If you spread out, you pay for it. If you specialize, you become very powerful.

Just like in Third Edition D&D.

In each of the acts, have a chance to learn special skills. Skills you can't add skill points to, skills you could only improve by paying for training. Skills that would allow you to parry, resist magic, attack with weapons or magic, powerful healing, etc. Everybody would start with basic skills, but these skills would be both hard to get, and take a great deal of difficulty and time to gather the cash and the experience to be trained in them. Skills would mean more this way. And make a skill more expensive to get for each level learned.

Sounds similar to how Morrowind did it, though you could learn ANY skill out there - how long it took was dependant on if it was a Major, Minor, or Miscellaneous skill. You could also purchase training in a specific skill from various trainers, with the cost of training being proportional to the level the skill is already at. Of course, Morrowind was horribly broken, since you leveled up by increasing your Major/Minor (or a combination of) skills - put Acrobatics and Athletics as Major skills and you'll be leveling faster than the game can keep up.

What does Hrothgar do? Does he buy more of the skill that keeps him alive or does he buy the ingredients to craft a better axe?

Well, since he's using swords, I would wager he'd buy another rank in Parry. But humor aside, I really like your line of thinking - if properly balanced, I'd be unmercilessly addicted to that game :)

@Munk and JustAGuy: There are a few Starcraft units that made it into War3 - the Zergling and Hydralisk both got the 3D treatment (but the Hydra only got a partial soundset and the Zergling got none - I suppose it'd be pretty easy to import SC sounds, though), and the Marine and Firebat (though the Firebat is now a Fel Space Orc) also made it. No Protoss units, though. I would've loved to have seen a Zealot in 3D.