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.
A 5 hour game? What are you talking about? And you seem to have a misconception of the difficulties there are 4 difficulties Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno. And yes it's the "same" game but at the same time it's not. When you're running around and suddenly the monster are immune to your attacks or have soul crushing properties yeah it plays a lot different. And if the thrill of new and better loot doesn't entice you, why are you on this forum to begin with? That's the entire heart of Diablo. If you're making the assumption of a 5 hour game based on Diablo 2 rush experience that's an unintelligent assumption. Go back and play through Diablo 1 without having someone give you way points and see how long it takes you. And seeing as this game seems to have a stronger story tie in I'd make the assumption that there's probably more quests you need to complete in order to progress in the game. And if you can't understand what is taking them so long to make the game it's simple. They want perfection, and to be honest I expect nothing less from them. I'm glad a company has the ability to look at something that is already incredible and go "...we can do better" and then instead of rushing decide to push back their release window. I'd rather have that then something that's half assed on release (which by the way is the industry standard at this point release it see how it goes and either patch or release itteration 2.0). Prime example is Marvel vs Capcom 3 I love the game and am going to be buying the UMVC3 in the coming months but they admitted that the first release wasn't what they wanted the game to be. And a new game is coming out less than a year later.
TLDR: They're gonna make the best dungeon crawler on the market, and they won't release it till they can take pride in what they did.
A part of me wish this is all a perversed teasing from Blizz or a marketing strategy...
ok, back to waiting mode, I've lot of patience...but it's not endless.
People were not excited for beta invites because it meant a 2011 release.
It is because people want to play the game. This announcement, while it sucks, doesn't change that and I'd argue actually makes people want to play it even more if they have to wait longer. Maybe you'd get bored in an hour, but a lot of us wouldn't.
The post deletion makes me scratch my head, but if I have to wait a little longer for a game with that polish/quality I can wait.
Part of me wants to blame their management for not pushing this through faster i.e longer hours, more employees, whatever it takes.
This is the thread where the 90%+ here who believed otherwise can apologize.
I love your analogy, but I don't think I would like a kick in the balls rather than no contact in real life..
I do want to play it after it releases and has a couple of patches, though I don't know if I'll want to spend $60 on it.
I'm not overwhelmed with what I've seen on videos of the beta. It is a pretty pale shadow of D2 IMO.
*may only be some, or even little. Maybe even none!
As I've said many times - this game is a loss leader on a business level. I've also mentioned that a 2012 release just makes more sense on a business level.