In a post on the official Diablo III forums earlier today, Community Manager Nethaera addressed a few of the concerns that have been brought up in the game's momentous first week.

Neth first linked to an up-to-date list of hotfixes that have been implemented thus far. For the spoiler-wary among you, be warned that if you haven't completed the game on Normal difficulty, some of the hotfixes might be spoilerific. Now that you're thoroughly warned that there may be spoilers, head on over to the list of hotfixes if you dare. Neth also advised players that additional server maintenance will be required in time and that there's a game patch inbound for sometime next week.

She also took the time to address the real-money auction house. Although Neth states that the service is "coming soon," it's been delayed due to post-launch difficulties. The team apparently needs "a bit more time to iron out the existing general stability and gameplay issues" before the real-money auction house is ready for launch. Players shouldn't expect the auction house to be ready in May despite initial plans for it to go online on the 22nd, and there wasn't a solid date to look forward to.

Neth went on to assure players that neither D3 nor Battle.net servers have been compromised, despite all the hubbub about security concerns that's been filling the air the last few days.

In all of the individual Diablo III-related compromise cases we've investigated, none have occurred after a physical Battle.net Authenticator or Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app was attached to the player's account, and we have yet to find any situation where a Diablo III player's account was accessed outside of "traditional" compromise methods (i.e. someone logging using an account's login email and password).

She reminded players to exercise constant vigilance by practicing smart password management, scanning for malware and viruses regularly, and generally being savvy.

BlizzCast lives on, and the listening time doubles in length over the previous episode. Still no update on Blizzard's plans to offer a video version, but there's plenty of juicy information to mull over. My favorite part is where CM Kevin "Karune" Yui interviews Chris Metzen, Blizzard VP of Creative Development, and taps into his thoughts about story-telling and creative lore process.