Earlier today Lylirra posted up an update in the “Design a Legendary” blog with an updated piece of concept art for the one handed sword drawn by artist 
Aaron Gaines which was themed to be based on Mephisto the Lord of Hatred.
As noted, this was just the inital sketch, the first step in implementing the visual design of this particular Legendary weapon into the game. For many items in Diablo III, concepting goes through several stages, and today we’re excited to share a new piece of concept art with all of you.
Many of you had feedback for Aaron, and he was excited to incorporate your suggestions and criticisms into this updated design. Some of the most notable changes based on player feedback include:
Here are the results!
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and suggestions. We’ll have more visual progress updates and images to share in the new year.
Until then, happy holidays!
cool, looks awesome 🙂
Now they just need to fix the attributes and make interesting item choices (just like D2).
and what about demon hunters? mephisto-bow/hand crossbow?
Blizzard’s art is top-notch as always!
http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070804010654/wowwiki/images/a/ab/Frostmourne.jpg
It’s almost Frostmourne.
Thought it looked familiar….
Here was my suggestion for what the sword might do:
I remember Mephisto used to disappear and reappear all the time in combat. that sort of ‘phasing’ thing could render a cool effect for the user of the weapon and hint to the swords secret use; the ability to extends the length of class immunities.
So, I think it would be a cool effect if a player holding this sword *became Etheral (in both appearance and in body.)
(This could be done visually without having to have the art team ‘redraw or create new animation. Just use characters pre-exisiting appearance and have them fade to near transparent and back again steadily. any small slow pulsing sound could add to this effect (light sabre-ish sound)
What good would this do?
How would this work? You would slowly fade to clear “invisible to others” and back again to solid. This invisibility would only happen for .5 second every 10 seconds. but, You could not be hit during that time. However, you can still deal damage.
And how could this be used in a cool way?
*if you use your invicibility skill, clicking, for example, Spirit Walk, at the exact moment you become invisible for that .5 seconds … it can prolong your normal inviciblity (from that skill) by 2 seconds (think barbarian’s Ignore pain, Demon Hunter’s Smoke Screen, Witch Doctor’s Spirit Walk, Wizard’s Diamond Skin, Monk’s Serenity)
But, wait … there’s more!
Kill another nephalem … (think duels and brawling) Kill another player and you get to be invisible for the 20 seconds straight. So, this would be an AWESOME and desired weapon for duelers … because, if you have 3 other players dueling with you in a the arena or brawling area, and you just killed one of them, the spirit that hates rewards you to now go on killing in an unseen, unstoppable and invisible way.
so, let’s say your dueling, and you kill another player … then you’re hunting down the other two guys in the dueling area and they can’t see you … so you kill one of them and your invisibility stacks. … maybe it keeps stacking and they just freaking hate you. LOL. it would literally drive people nuts and be TONS of fun in duels
Cool idea, although I think the devs said that they want the sword to have a hatred theme and I don’t know how this semi-invisibility effect would fit that. In PvP it would certainly evoke hatred from others, that’s for sure, but it would have to work in PvE as well.
looks cool but i feel it will broken when use 🙂
Looks like a rather uncomfortable shaft to hold. Will also get stuck in penetrated flesh due to those reverse thorns.
Holding a shaft and penetrating flesh both requires good technique. 🙂
On a more serious note, while D1 had realistic looking weapons generally I don’t think it was ever a selling point of the Diablo series.
Son of a mother sword! That looks amazing. A breathtaking, flesh stripping, bare-bone sword. Now who will step up and get this tattooed down their spine? Anyone? 😛