DiabloFans

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

Quote from Laevus

Oh well, hopefully this means they can tweak and polish up all the things the Beta testers (and fans from watching videos) have pointed out that they never expected and saw coming.

Beta may have only been intended for a stress test, but changing the skills selection menu and overhauling the Demon Hunter seem like more involved tasks than I would have expected from a game that seemed to be saying it was nearly done.

Also hoping they'll now have chance to change and tweak some of the ways they've done their legendary and set item stats too.

Quote from Deventh

I can't wait until Guild Wars 2 comes out and rapes WoW hard. Ooooooh yes i will feel so good knowing that Blizzard is losing money.