2012, The Year Of Diablo III
It saddens us at Diablofans to have to announce this, but bad news is best served fresh. The target release window for Diablo III has officially been pushed into 2012.
Official Blizzard Quote:
We commonly use the term “soon” when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we’re working to reach a target, we’re not going to compromise and launch a game before it’s ready. For Diablo III, we were aiming to launch by the end of 2011. As we’re announcing globally today, our new target for the game is early 2012.
While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year. We were too. However, this week we pulled together people from all of the teams involved with the game to decide whether we felt it would be ready before the end of December, and we grudgingly came to the conclusion that it would not. Ultimately, we feel that to deliver an awesome Diablo sequel that lives up to our expectations and yours as well, we should take a little more time and add further polish to a few different elements of the game.
The upside of today’s announcement is that we will be running the beta test longer than we initially planned, which will allow us to invite more of you who have opted in.
For those taking on the Diableard challenge, we salute you -- and now fear for your well-being and personal hygiene. We hereby issue an official reprieve to all Diableard participants, including Blizzard employees, if you want to trim or otherwise manage the lower half of your face. We’d still love to see your beardly achievements, and we look forward to seeing more of your efforts as we move into 2012, but not to the detriment of your workplaces and significant others.
Thank you everyone for your support and anticipation for Diablo III. We’re still moving ahead at full pace, and we’ll be keeping you fully informed of any news and developments here at Diablo3.com, including the specific release date when the time comes, so stay tuned.
-Mike Morhaime
UPDATE 2: A fellow Diablo follower from another site was able to capture the linked post in its entirety. With this as further evidence, it seems the Blue post itself was in fact legitimate. As it looks, the post was promptly taken down shortly after its publishing.
A special thanks to Soul for bringing the image to my attention.
UPDATE 3: The post is back up on the Official Site.
To quote the immortal Cave Johnson, who is apparently lead project manager for D3: "They say great science is built on the shoulders of giants. Not here. At <Blizzard> we do all our science from scratch. No hand-holding."
Blizzard/Diablo 3 is too big to care about other releases. People have been waiting this game for more than 3 years now. Who gives a shit if Skyrim and COD are released this year as well? People will still buy diablo 3 and play this game either way. Sorry but you are wrong. They are pushing back the release date cause the game is not ready. Or at least, not ready enough for them to release it this year.
That's what I'm thinking they might do. Maybe they'll even extend the testing to cover runes, gems, sockets, and the like; they're certainly important and possibly easily-bugged mechanics. I'm also thinking of transportation skills--those could get hairy, too.
release it already!
Something similar happened with StarCraft II.
I can guarantee you they won't. This is off topic tho, there's another thread on this atm.
On topic : I are sadddd
When SC2 came out WOW's subscriptions started dropping and haven't recovered since, and that is because of SC2 even if they deny it, and the same will happen when D3 comes out. The difference is that D3 and patch 4.3 would have been close, and patch 4.3 is the conclusion of Cata so they want people on there playing the end of the expansion. I mean seriously this beta could have been release 6 months ago, its almost identical to last years bs they showed at blizzcon and it only took a week to see major issues with the game and address them.
Im so pissed that I'm just venting on here, DAMN IT!! DAMN IT TO HELL!!
lmao I <3 cave johnson
jaysus, lol
You saying they are to big to care about other companies is such a closed minded statement it's not even funny. They take EVERYTHING into consideration from game play to other release dates. You obviously don't know anything about marketing strategy. That's like says James Cameron would put Titanic out at the same time as Jurassic Park. It's one thing to go against one game but to compete with about 4 or 5 other games is very poor logistics; it's doesn't matter if they are the same type of game or not.