What if I purchase the Diablo III Collector's Edition?
If you decide to purchase the Diablo III Collector's Edition when it's available, and then choose to add your Collector's Edition license key to the Battle.net account associated with your existing World of Warcraft Annual Pass promotion, you will receive all of the benefits associated with the Collector's Edition, plus receive four months of World of Warcraft game time which is eligible towards your 12-month subscription commitment. After you purchase the Diablo III Collector's Edition you just need to input the product key into the Battle.net account associated with your World of Warcraft 12-month commitment and that account will then receive the next 4 months of World of Warcraft game time for free. For example, if you already had a month of game time on the associated World of Warcraft account when you input your Diablo III Collector's Edition product key, it would then be 5 months until your next subscription payment was due.
 
I have an active subscription already; what happens to the time I already paid for?
Any qualifying subscription time remaining on the account at the time of accepting the Annual Pass offer may be applied toward the 12-month subscription commitment.
 
For example: If you had started a 6-month subscription 2 months prior to accepting the Annual Pass offer, 4 months of your remaining subscription time would be applied toward your 12-month subscription commitment.

The Music and Sound panel was focused all around the making of the soundtrack for Diablo III. Some very interesting tidbits were shared such as the fact that Diablo III has around 12,000 - 16,000 lines of dialogue. All of which is to help tell the epic story that will unfold during the gameplay. All of the sounds in Diablo III are all focused one keyt aspect of what makes the Diablo franchise so great, randomization.

When clicking the same spell over and over again, thousands of times, it is important that the sound of this skill is not repeated exactly over and over again which would dull the experience of the hack n' slash genre. Each skill is given multiple tracks for casting, pathing, and contact. Each of these distinct elements are then also given special treatment with varying sounds, lengths, and volumes. When compiled together, they randomize five to ten different sounds that can be repeatedly randomly to help add variety to the button mashing combat.

Along with this, even the music itself can be randomized. Starting with random sounds, it was mentioned that there are areas where random sounds can be heard while other times silence is used. With the actual music, it is orchestrated in multiple levels. They then use these multiple levels to help create randomized music that blends together harmoniously so that you do not even notice that the music itself has changed and is randomized.

Bridging the gap between Blizzard North and Diablo I & II was also a key focus for the team for creating the soundtrack of Diablo III. A lot of effort went in to using what Matt Ullman created for the previous games and made iconic to help bring players into the new game seamlessly. While creating something unique for Diablo III, the team made sure to use those iconic sounds. It was even mentioned how when Diablo III was announced at the WWI in Paris, that only music was needed for the entire crowd to know that it was Diablo.

If you are interested in learning more about the music and sound of Diablo III, you can watch the panel (will be uploaded soon™) and take a listen for yourself. You can also purchase the Diablo III CE which will include the soundtrack and making of.