Denied a forum outlet, the Blizzard CMs continue to share new tidbits via @Diablo.
[BLUE]The [WIKI]Jeweler[/WIKI] [WIKI]artisan[/WIKI] is seeing some final concepts and will move into early model and texture work soon.—Diablo[/BLUE]
Sounds like that char won’t be in the Blizzcon build, then. That’ll be consistent, at least. There weren’t any NPC merchants in the 2008 or 2009 demos either.
In fact, the only NPC with a non-generic speaking part we’ve seen so far was [WIKI]Captain Rumford[/WIKI], in [WIKI]New Tristram[/WIKI] in 2008. He’s right in the middle of the recent Caravan screens, incidentally, along with [WIKI]Cain[/WIKI] and [WIKI]Leah[/WIKI].