Is the Necromancer class about to arrive in a future Diablo 3 update? We would not close the door to the commander of the dead, taking into consideration how he has quite a loyal following in the previous game, Diablo 2. After all, running around with your own army of skeletons while using corpses as a bomb was definitely one of the best ways to clear the battlefield -- and you end up with even more corpses to blow up afterwards. Having said that, the Necromancer class was not part of Diablo 3, although there was the Witch Doctor, but things simply aren’t the same.
The latest piece of leaked art with Blizzard art director, John Mueller’s signature was located in the lower left hand corner, is the piece that has sparked rumors of the Necromancer class coming to Diablo 3 in a future update. After all, why not, right? It would be cool to see the Necromancer take up his position again in the Diablo universe, and showing just how devastating he can be when he has an army of the dead at his command.
This piece of conceptual art was not meant to be seen by the public though, it was discovered on the very same servers as that of Blizzard Gear servers, which also did carry the once secret Overwatch Sombra art in the past. This is not wishful thinking, since the leaked picture’s original URL came with the word "necromancer", and nothing else. Then again, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the word “necromancer” alone is more than enough to raise hopes among Blizzard’s Diablo 3 fans everywhere. While the piece of conceptual art was removed in double quick time, we are pleased to say that a copy was preserved on Imgur before that. Could this be done on purpose, as part of guerrilla marketing, or was it a genuine mistake that was not meant to be seen by public eyes?
In the leaked conceptual art, there are two individuals standing up -- with a pasty complexion, of course, while surrounded by the dead. And these two individuals do not look too bothered by the sight of the risen dead surrounding them, but rather, they seem as though they are recharged, with scythe in hand for one of them, while the other manipulates a skull right above the palm.
Not only that, the risen dead are surrounded by an aura of green -- and the two characters have a similarly green aura coming right out from their hands, which would be a no-brainer that these are necromancers or poorly nourished barbarians, but we would place our smart money on the former.
The thing is, could it have anything to do with Diablo, or does it have a role to play in Blizzard’s other franchises? Frankly speaking, we do not know, but we will go with the most possible situation. Starcraft definitely has nothing to do with necromancers, and the closest they had to the living dead was an infested terran and Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades. World of Warcraft just had an expansion and a new class, so it might be too soon, and the Diablo franchise clearly misses one of its favorite classes. Hopefully more details will be shown off at BlizzCon this week that will shed more light on the situation -- with Diablo’s 20th anniversary, anything is possible.
