Blizzard announces Reaper of Souls expansion pack for Diablo 3

At Gamescom last week, Blizzard officially unveiled the first expansion pack for hack-and-slash RPG Diablo 3. The expansion, titled Reaper of Souls, will be adding a bunch of new things, such as the new Crusader character class, several new enemy types, an increased level cap to 70, a new act and new big bad Malthael.

Malthael is the fallen angel of wisdom, now an angel of death. He is the leader of a legion of death angels. Malthael is working on reaping the souls of both demons and humans, hence explaining the name of the expansion pack. Check out the opening cinematic:

New monster types include Seraphs, who are ranged spell casters, Executioners and Death Maidens, among others. The new zone—Westmarch—will be randomised for each playthrough, in typical Diablo fashion. The Crusader is a melee class whose combat style revolves around shields, flails and ranged spells.

The expansion pack also aims to fix many of the complaints leveled against the game’s loot system. Blizzard refers to the new loot system as “loot 2.0”. When it comes down to numbers, the expansion pack will have fewer loot drops overall, but the quality of these drops will be much higher. On average, players will get 73 white items, 266 blue items, 83 yellow items and six legendary items.

There will also be a new artisan in the expansion pack—the mystic—who will bring in World of Warcraft’s transmogrify feature into Diablo 3. This essentially let players change the appearance of their gear. The mystic can also enchant the gear, which re-randomises the stats on the item.

Currently, there’s no word of a release date.