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DiabloFans has posted the results of a telephone interview with Blizzard Entertainment's Jay Wilson about the company's upcoming Diablo III action RPG. The developer discussed a variety of topics related to the game including class specific quests, the role resistances might play in the new game, and the announcement that the developers are considering eliminating skill trees from Diablo III.

DiabloFans: On the topic of the Monk, can you tell us if the skill trees have been named yet? So far they're listed as "Unnamed Skill Tree 1 - 3". Can we expect to see any more of his skills unveiled soon along with his female counterpart? Also, can tell me a little bit more about the new skill system?
Jay Wilson: In regards to the female counterpart, she'll be released soon. As far as exact dates go, I really can't talk much about them. A little news about the Skill Tree system should actually go up on our Twitter page pretty soon. About that, we've decided to remove the tree-type architecture and we are moving into a purely skill-based system. This new system is still in the development stages and if it does not work, we still have plenty of options to fall back on. Right now, we're just trying different things and getting a feel for the few ideas in regards to the skill system that we have going on right now. It differs from the World of Warcraft/Diablo II type hierarchical styles and is more of a skill pool/path than a tree per se.

DiabloFans: Resistances played a huge part in Diablo II, but if you were not lucky with gear drops you would get very quickly overwhelmed in Nightmare/Hell difficulties. Can you give us any details on how the system will be changing? Will it replace the immunity system or will they go hand in hand, once again?
Jay Wilson: Well, the main reason for immunities in the game was to encourage party play. However, we have seen that some players just want to play by themselves? And that is fine, if a player wants to play single player, the player wants to play single player, we're not going to strong arm them into playing with others. Keeping this in mind, we aren't looking to have full immunities or anything of the sort; however we are considering keeping one-element immunities on enemies. Because of the way our skill system works it's almost impossible to build a character that won't have some alternate skill to attack an enemy. So then it becomes an interesting use of a skill or skills that you may not be using all the time. We think that's interesting and fun gameplay, to have to adapt to situations. The adaptation just shouldn't be realizing your character or class is broken and you have to run away or you need to get in a multiplayer game. Those are things we intend to avoid forcing the player into.

DiaboFans: Diablo III Jay Wilson Interview

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