Even as Blizzard promises that a hotfix is on the way to deal with the Wizard invincibility exploit in Diablo III that was uncovered yesterday, players have found another one related to the Barbarian class. Blizzard finally responded to news that an exploit with the Wizard class gave players savvy enough to make it work temporary invulnerability - even in multiplayer games.

Gaming Blend is reporting that the German consumer advocacy group the Federation of Consumer Organizations is giving Blizzard until July 27 to fix problems with its "always on" DRM system for Diablo III or it will seek a remedy in court. The group warned Blizzard in June that it wanted the company to change its retail packaging to reflect that the game required an Internet connection to play and that the connection must be persistent.

According to a post on the Battle.net forums a user has uncovered an exploit that supposedly gives players using the Wizard class in Diablo III temporary invulnerability. Blizzard has not confirmed that this exploit is real, for the record.

Blizzard President Mike Morhaime posted a rather lengthy open letter on Battle.net to talk about the launch of Diablo III, the problems associated with that launch, the need for the "always-on" requirement, and what the company has planned for the game in the future.

Morhaime starts by talking about how the launch was a smashing success, but noted that it is hard to predict how the number of players they would have to deal with at launch in advance.

According to a Wall Street Journal report Vivendi has tapped two investment banks to help it sell off the assets of Activision Blizzard. Vivendi wants to unload its majority stake in the company responsible for Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, which WSJ estimates is worth $8.1 billion.

According to a post on the Battle.net forums, Blizzard plans to limit the number of games a player can create within a given timeframe to combat the use of bots. The company did not detail the number of games, nor the time frame in which players would be limited - that roast is still in the proverbial oven. Whatever the parameters are, this change will happen in the "near future."

World of Warcraft players helped Blizzard raise $330,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The funds are the result of a charity auction that saw the sale of some retired WOW server hardware put up by Blizzard on eBay earlier this year.

Blizzard did not attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June and it announced that it wouldn't be hosting a BlizzCon event this year, but the company seems to be ramping up its attendance at events that allow actual fans (as opposed to just industry professionals and games journalists) to experience its games and culture first-hand. Recently it announced that it would be in full force at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany later this year, and today it revealed its plans for Comic-Con 2012 in San Diego at the end of this week (July 12 - 15).

Update: Blizzard strongly denies that it banned players using Linux in conjunction with WINE to play Diablo III. Here's what they told Ars Technica:

Blizzard Entertainment may not be hosting the BlizzCon fan event this year, and it may have opted out of E3 last month but the one event it does plan on attending this year is Gamescom. Gamescom will be held at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany from Wednesday, August 15 to Sunday, August 19. During the event European fans will be able to check out playable content from all three major of Blizzard's franchises including the next World of Warcraft expansion, the next Starcraft II expansion, and Diablo III.

In a statement released to Kotaku, Blizzard Entertainment explains why it decided to lock down digital purchases of Diablo III for 72 hours. The sum of its statement is that all of this was done after the most recent patch to ensure that the game and the auction houses are not compromised and remain pure. The company also added the delay to stop hucksters and fraudsters from perpetrating credit card fraud schemes.

Blizzard announced today that those who buy a digital version of Diablo III through its online store will have to wait 72 hours before they can play the unrestricted full version of the game. During that time period players will have access to Act I up to the Skeleton King, a level 13 cap, and matchmaking only with other Starter Edition players. Global play will also be off limits and anyone attempting to play the Starter Edition in an outside region will get an "error 12." The auction houses will also be off limits.

Blizzard revealed that it would give full refunds to South Korean gamers who suffered from various connection errors during Diablo III's launch - most notably the dreaded "error 37" message. The decision to give full refunds follows a series of complaints by South Korean gamers to the government, which ultimately led to an investigation into Blizzard's Seoul office last month.

After a little fact checking (on the part of Blizzard) and some discussion about if it was a legitimate claim, Canadian Diablo III player Kripparrian (with help from wizard friend Krippi) is officially the first person in the entire world to complete Blizzard's RPG on the Inferno difficulty level. He did this with a Hardcore character to boot, which means that the game ends if you die.

While it goes without saying, Blizzard is saying it out loud so that Diablo III players understand the ramifications of cheating or using exploits: if you do, then you will be swiftly and permanently banned. Any users found using hacks, bots, or modifications of any kind will be permanently banned from Battle.net.

Cisco Systems, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Activision Blizzard, Intel, and IBM, are the latest entities to send letters to the International Trade Commission asking them not to institute a ban on the Xbox 360 or various Apple products. Florian Mueller of Foss Patents has the breakdown of why Cisco and the ESA have sided with Microsoft in this particular dispute between the company behind Xbox 360 and Windows and Google-owned Motorola Mobility.

Blizzard is beefing up security ahead of the launch for the real money auction for Diablo III. In a post on the official forums over at Battle.net, Blizzard detailed some of the security changes that have taken place to ensure that people's very real money associated with their accounts will remain safe and secure.

The short explanation is that users will now have to use an authenticator before adding any funds to their balance and when sending funds to their real money auction house accounts.

According to a Bloomberg report, Vivendi SA plans to host a senior executive meeting later this month to discuss the possibility of unloading its 61 percent stake in Activision Blizzard. The report comes from several anonymous sources close to the situation, according to Bloomberg. The point of the meeting is to find ways to stop the stock from the continued state it has been in over the last year.

In the continuing saga between the Korean government and Blizzard over Diablo III's launch in the region, the Korean Federal Trade Commission raided Blizzard's Seoul office on Monday. The raid was part of an ongoing investigation into consumer complaints that Blizzard refused to give them refunds for Diablo III. Under Korean law, companies must give a refund to a customer within seven days of purchase if they ask for it. Blizzard's position is that it does not give refunds for products that are in use.

Blizzard's Seoul division is under the eye of the South Korean government, who has decided to launch an investigation into whether the company violated the country's electronic commerce law when it launched Diablo III. The investigation hopes to determine if Blizzard knowingly launched Diablo III and made it an online game while not providing the necessary servers and networks needed to handle demand. But that's is not really what the investigation is about; when South Koreans demanded a refund for the trouble they encountered at launch, Blizzard did not comply.

Blizzard has released a hotfix update to deal with a number of bugs and to tweak some classes.

Blizzard Entertainment issued a press release this morning announcing that sales of Diablo III in the first 24 hours totaled 3.5 million copies. They claim, (we assume based on NPD Group numbers), that this makes Diablo III the fastest selling PC game in history. We will not even try to refute that claim. That number does not include the more than 1.2 million players who received Diablo III as part of signing up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass promotion. Combined that puts Diablo III's first day sales at 4.7 million.

A number of Diablo III players have claimed that they have logged into their accounts and found that they have been hacked. Players claim that their gear, characters, and gold vanished without a trace. Blizzard Entertainment says that it is taking these reports "very seriously" and is looking to what exactly is going on. Other reports have indicated that this was being caused by some sort of bug.

Eurogamer has two great editorials on Diablo III - one called "Always Online: What Diablo 3's Battle.net Does Right " and another called "Always Online: What Diablo 3's Battle.net Does Wrong." Both make valid points about the game and its requirement that players always be connected to Battle.net - even when playing the single-player campaign

Blizzard has issued an apology to all the players all over the world that suffered through trying to log onto Battle.net to play Diablo III over the last few days. The company says that they have been humbled by players and by the gargantuan task of trying to keep Battle.net servers up and running as millions of people (many in vain) attempted to play the game. As of now, they say everything is stable and players should have no problems logging in.

If you want to have a good argument with someone on the Internet today comment on this story, for starters, because for as much as there is love for Diablo III today there's is an equal amount of hate. Some people who have strong opinions on Blizzard’s latest release, have decided to take it to the company by way of Metacritic where they are giving it some pretty lousy user reviews.

If you are one of the millions (?) of poor souls (Diablo III players) wondering "why can't I log on to my local Battle.net server?" or "what the f**k is an 'error 37' or 'error 3003'?" then you need only look to Battle.net's various pages designed to keep you from losing your mind. First there's the server status page which tells you if the server in your region is up, down, or downright lost in the ether.

How long does it take to complete the single player campaign in Diablo III on Normal difficulty? I have no idea, but it took Level 32 Barbarian Yoshichan 12 hours and 29 minutes to beat Blizzard's freshly released game. This NeoGAF post (thanks Eurogamer) shows off a final shot of the Barbarian character's stats.

While some people I know say that the launch of Diablo III has been pretty flawless, not everyone trying to log into Battle.net has had an easy time. With the game launching in multiple territories Blizzard had faced some serious stability challenges on the first day of Diablo III's operation.

Blizzard Entertainment issued a brief statement this afternoon announcing that it had come to a mutual agreement concerning their competing DOTA games. Valve is developing DOTA 2, but under the terms of the agreement Blizzard will preserve its right to the noncommercial use of DOTA for its community relating to player-created maps for Warcraft III and StarCraft II.