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An Enthusiastic Diablo 3 - Hands On Preview has been published at  Eurogamer from  James Lee.

While most casting characters are based around elemental powers, the Wizard owes its dues to cosmology. Energy and time seem to be the weapons of choice, and this reflects a concerted effort on the part of Wilson and his team to create something different.

“When we dived into the source material that inspired [the Wizard], which was really old-school, pen-and-paper role-playing-game type magic users, those magic users were not the traditional elementalists that the mage and sorcerer turned into,” Wilson told us. “They really did all kinds of crazy things, like disintegrating, controlling time and conjuring things out of nothing… That’s what really inspired it.”

Levelling up these characters has been given an extra dash of visceral thrill - there is an explosion of light (nothing new) but this is followed by a shockwave that kills or seriously injures nearby enemies. The experience of climbing a level with an explosion that takes out a group of mobs is a brilliantly inspired layer of polish that only Blizzard could think of - it’s not necessary, it’s just amazingly fun.