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.
This though... made me sad in the eye...
Such an absurd statement to make. Have YOU ever followed a Blizzard release before? Before today, they've pushed back ONE title in recent memory...WoW:BC.
Anyone who claims they aren't surprised by Blizzard missing 2011 is lying.
If anything Blizzard loves all of their projects and doesn't show them to the world until they are ready. Stop being such a spoiled baby and learn to wait for your toys. What if Blizzard just said to hell with you and took all their games and went home? Now go back to your playpen.
Oh the sadness!
This is probably the 1st rant post I've ever posted after playing mmos/rpgs for 10ish years, if you even wanna call it a rant post, to me its just blizz being greedy, and I understand its good for the business but at the same time it shouldn't take a hack and slash game that provides maybe 4-5 hours per difficulty to take from June 28, 2008 to Early 2012 to release.
And lastly it's Blizzard, taking a long ass time is their middle name.
FYI don't expect a January release either...
I'm actually glad to hear this, gives me time to save up some money for a badass rig. I also planned on playing skyrim for a month or two, so i'm feeling pretty good
Early 2012 means it's going to be at the very least in February, so if I'm lucky I'll be able to play the game for a week before I head back to full time uni, with no spare time on the side. More likely I won't be able to even play it though.
Cheers Blizzard, you just pushed this right through my entire holidays.
I would have to agree. April or May at the absolute earliest. Too bad for me that my gaming focus will be drawn to Mass Effect 3 at that point
As for some who have talked about dated graphics, I agree on some level. I have played through the beta and the atmosphere/art direction are quite good but yea character models (at least in the Beta) certainly didn't impress me.