BlizzCast 8 is now live with a plethora of goodies from 
Jay Wilson about Diablo III. Taking a look at the screenshots, the Skill Tree UI we saw at BlizzCon 2008 has been completely overhauled. It now resembles World of Warcraft’s talent trees. The inventory changed dramatically from the small slots to bigger versions with more detailed icons for weapons and other items. Looks like there will be three types of inventory from what can be distinguished on the left side of the inventory divided into tabs: a backpack for large items such as weapons and gear; a small bag for small items such as gems, scrolls, and runes; and a stash icon exclusively for quest items.
This pretty much solves the space issues that plagued World of Warcraft classic dividing the items accordingly separating the quest items from your gear space, and so on. This decision has to be applauded in ovation.
An experience bar can be identified above the hotbar similar to World of Warcraft, and a chest item on the ground shows stats that give +base experience by 2 per kill. We get more info on how builds will differ from each other, and the answer doesn’t come from the randomized stats in gear items, and your talent tree build alone. The Rune system will keep you changing around and trying different builds, and will keep you busy collecting the different runes available throughout the world.
Now compare the screenshots above with how the Character UI and the Inventory UI looked like when we were at Blizzcon 2008.
The Mana Orb (not the Mana Globe, but the grayish-angel wraps with his arms on the right side of the Hotbar UI) has changed significantly for the Barbarian from what we saw in the gameplay video shown at WWI 2008 and BlizzCon 2008. The Barbarian now uses a Fury Orb that contains three smaller orbs within. It works very much like the Death Knight rune system. The orb will energize slowly upwards, and the bottom mini-sphere powers up. Another energize animation ticks upward, and the second mini-sphere gets powered up. Once all three mini-spheres are powered up, a special ability seems to be used. You can watch the animation at the BlizzCast 8 page.
Item colour categories are not yet written in stone but thus far magical items are blue, rare items are yellow, unique items are orange (nigh brown), set items don’t have a colour yet, and there is another unannounced type of item. Things may change during development.
Bashiok also interviewed Julian Love (Lead Technical Artist) and Mike Nicholson (Senior Artist known as the UI Guy). Mike was former UI Artist of Sanitarium, and is now creating the Diablo III UI graphics. Julian reveals each monster in Diablo III has around 35 death animations that will either randomly play depends on different factors such as the way you kill them, the weapons you use, crits, etc. Help get the word around by posting a comment here.
The transcript can be read below.
Sanctuary, as well as the latest changes to the game’s UI.Our complete transcript includes exclusive new screenshots of Diablo III and StarCraft II, as well as a short example movie from Diablo III.
Listen to BlizzCast #8 here – http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode8.xml
Jay Wilson, welcome to the show!Jay Wilson: Thank you very much.
Bornakk: We have a couple Q&A questions for you today. The first one is from Daleks on USEast. Will shrines be making a return to the world of Sanctuary in Diablo 3?
Jay Wilson: Well there are some aspects of shrines that we liked, experience shrines I think are probably the prime example everyone uses. They’re fun because they drive the player forward. Monster shrines are sometimes fun because they bring out a rare that you didn
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