Its now about half past ten here and so is my witch doctor. He's now past level ten and even has a few witch-doctor-only pieces of equipment (a voodoo doll and a tiki mask).

I also made a few discoveries.

1. Your gold is shared between all your characters. If you start a new character after you make a really high level one you may wind up getting a lot of nice gear at the start because your character will have the same gold as your other one.

2. Your stash is shared as well. If you find a nice wand (wizard only) but you're on, say, a barbarian just stick it in your stash and swap characters. Its also why buying additions to your stash is so ridiculously expensive. What you get for one you get for all.

3. Hirelings are back, but with a neat twist. The first one who joins you is a templar, but he's also part of the storyline (which is why I won't reveal more than that about his character). Whats neat is that as they level you get to choose what abilities they get. When I first got him I was level seven on my witch doctor and I was able to choose between two skills. I could either give him the power to heal himself and me, or I could have him set to taunt enemies when I'm low on health, forcing them to attack him instead. I don't know if there's any more (he's the only one I've found so far) but I would assume that its the case.

4. You can craft weapons after helping out the blacksmith in Tristram. How you do this is you break down magical items (anything with a +x to stat or more) and you use the materials from those to make new armor. You can also upgrade his skills by purchasing training (pricy though) and with each investment the quality and variety of goods he can make goes up.

So yeah, the storyline already has me curious too, but I won't reveal anything. After all, I'm trying to avoid spoilers myself, I wouldn't want anyone else to get too many because I had loose lips.