there will never be a new diablo game

the D2 team was SEVERLY downsized yes, but no i doubt D3 will come out, in case u havent noticed all of the new job positions on blizzards site, most of those are either for D2 or Starcraft Ghost, obviously people don't seem to like blizzards people, because Blizzard is losin people fast. Also, why do u think Blizzard is doin patches and not d3? because d3 would be to much new coding for, COMPLETELY new items, maybe a char or 2, skill changes, quest changes, another act, all of that, and they just dont have the coders to do it

It would be a completely different game, and apparently all of the work they were doing on it was thrown out because it was shitty.

"There's a completely unsourced and unverified rumor about D3 today, and it's not good news; at least not if you wanted to play the game, someday, rather than watching your children do so. This comes from game gossip site Kotaku, and thanks to Justin for the tip:

Rumor has it that the current work on Diablo 3 was canceled and that the game is going to be completely reworked.

My tipsters tell me that Blizzard North’s work on the game was, to put it kindly, below expectations. While this is mildly disappointing, it’s nice to know that Blizzard still so zealously guards their name.

We don't have any opinion on the veracity of this item. Also keep in mind that Bliz has never confirmed that they are working on Diablo III at all, so any talk about it is just speculation. We do know that virtually everyone who had a large hand in designing D1/D2/D2X has long since left the company, and with Blizzard North closing and lots of the employees leaving the company, they had to be planning a major review of all ongoing projects.

The rumor item goes on to mention the widely-rumored June mass hiring of some of the WoW Expansion team by NCSoft, if you want to delve into more game-delay speculation tied to personnel issues. It's a shame that the business aspect is taking such precedence over the design of the games, which is all most of us really care about in the end."

From Diabloii.net

Looks like Blizzard is making a crapload of money off of World of Warcraft and just think D2 is a clinging child they need to beat down. They don't want to work on a new Diablo 3 game because that would take away profit, and they see WoW lasting awhile, so they are going to stick with that.