Zarhym posted to let us know we should be getting a nice article about the development status of Diablo 3 in the near future.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Jay Wilson just wrote up a lot of good new info on the #D3 development status which we'll be releasing in the near future.
Near future... Are you able to specify further and say that it "might" be out this week, e.g?
Not this week. (source)
What's NOT Delaying the Game
Some hot topics on what could be delaying the game have always been the possible console version of the game as well as the South Korea rating. Zarhym gave us a quick post that neither are delaying the game.
Official Blizzard Quote:
It's safe to say the potential banning of your game from one of your biggest markets has something to do with something
Is this confirmation people still believe that has anything to do with anything?
We've said it's not impacting our development process or release schedule. If you think it's a conspiracy I can't help you.
Hello sir - how will the console version of #DiabloIII impact the release date?
It won't. Actually, our console hires have been helping us with the PC/Mac version. (source)
Zarhym On "The Big Meeting" and More
You may remeber the "Big meeting" Zarhym tweeted about. A lot of rumors were going around about what this might be about. Zarhym has come and put down those rumors.
Official Blizzard Quote:
If you're looking to our personal Twitter accounts for any hints of information that might help you ascertain a release date of Diablo III, you're going to be disappointed.
I'm assuming you're referring to my tweet about a "big meeting." I have several meetings a day and just felt like being silly on my personal feed on a Monday morning. Was it really enlightening or informative? No. Was there ANY indication that meeting had anything to do with Diablo III development or release? No. (Because it didn't.) Do I sometimes tweet about the weather, cute cats, rocks on the ground, and other random stuff that won't bring you any closer to your copy of the game? Totally.
If you guys don't have anything of importance to say please do us a favor and don't say anything.
Since everything you mentioned in your OP was taken from Twitter, I'm assuming you're asking that we not use our personal social media accounts to communicate with anyone until our company announces a release date for Diablo III.
The unfortunate fact is we're human beings. We use social media to communicate with others about day-to-day affairs, whether or not what we're saying pertains to our jobs.
If you want to follow what we're saying, awesome. But if you feel like any post we make that has anything to do with our careers, yet isn't breaking news about the status of Diablo III, is just a huge tease or attempt to bait you... well, you're crazy... and almost as excited for this game as we are.
Nope, I'm not demanding anything. I'm suggesting that when it comes to a product release date they shouldn't announce a buisness meeting specifically regarding that project and through offical channels without having some actual information to present to the community.
After reading this post I'm quite confused. Do you have a link to an announcement made via one of our official channels where we said we were having a business meeting about a product release?
I'm pretty sure what you're referring to doesn't exist. It actually seems you, or someone who told you this, filled in a lot of blanks incorrectly.
So saying "WE HAVE A BIG MEETING AND YES ITS ABOUT DIABLO 3!!!1" on twitter isnt a tease?
when everyones been tearing their hair out to find out when the games released? (4 months after saying the game was in a polishing stage)
First of all, that's quite a bit of paraphrasing what was actually said. Second, I'm a community manager. I don't think you understand how many meetings I have about Diablo III which have absolutely nothing to do with a release date. We do what we can to plan out announcements and generate website content based on the timeline given to us by other departments.
There are quite a few people who work at Blizzard, many of whom do not work on Diablo III. Just the same, there are many people (like me) who do work on Diablo III in some capacity, but aren't working on things you're necessarily dying to know more about right now.
Since my post about being in a meeting seems to have been such a mean tease, I'll tell you more about it. There were six people in a room and we were discussing the functionality and layout of a few web pages, as well as what text still needed to be filled in and what the best way is to get localized versions of each piece of text generated for the site.
Please contain your excitement.
Spoiler alert: we also have a meeting tomorrow with Jay Wilson and other lead Diablo III developers (as we do every Thursday). One question which will almost certainly not be brought up is: so when are we releasing the game? Instead, we'll be asking about all of the cool things they're working on now to make the game even better.
We want the game out just as badly as you do, but we're not going to sacrifice quality or implement systems that don't feel fleshed out just to get the game in your hands. It has to be a game worthy of being in your hands.
This is what everyone is referring to. As to how legitimate of a site this is. I dunno.
diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/release-date-decided
I speculate that such blind speculation yielded a lot of page views.
So zarhym is this to mean we shouldn't expect any news in the coming weeks for diablo 3?
No, we have a post from Jay Wilson in the works that does a good job of explaining what his team is currently working on. We want to give you all a status update on the design of some of the systems we either haven't fully fleshed out yet, or are still scrutinizing. It'll likely be followed by an update to the beta servers and you can expect the post probably late next week.
You do understand that everything you guys post on twitter ends up as a thread on here right?
If you KNOW people are going to take every little bits you give them and run with it then why are you giving it to them at all?
I don't report on Twitter. I post about random things in my life and pretend people care. If I mention I'm in a meeting and confirm it has something to do with Diablo III, I'm not backing down just because a couple of bloggers decided to drum that up with crazy speculation and assumptions. THAT can more aptly be referred to as "nothing to report of importance."
If you think Bashiok deciding to shave one day is some cosmic sign Diablo III is being delayed beyond some date we never confirmed in the first place, you're in for heartache. We don't live, eat, and breathe Diablo III milestones. Sometimes we do things in life -- and post about those things -- even when they don't fit into a master puzzle which must be completed in order for you to possess a copy of the game.
Fair enough, but why is the topic of a release date "certainly not (going to be) brought up?" I mean, if it's never brought up because no one wants to rush anyone else, how can it be decided?
Believe me, there are plenty of folks within the company discussing development schedules, product release projections, and all that jazz.
It's not the community team's role to work with the developers to determine a release date. Our meetings are to talk about gameplay, systems, features, story, etc.
Actually, in this tweet we have a confirmation that what was discussed during that meeting WAS related to Diablo III (and therefore in some way related to the development of Diablo III)
No, a meeting related to Diablo III is not therefore related to Diablo III game development. We have websites and all sorts of other things surrounding the Diablo brand which we talk about in meetings.
We understand you have many meetings, in some cases more than one per day, but you have never gone out of your way before to communicate to fans about them before (aside from major meetings / quarterly reports). Which made us think that this meeting was special in some way.
I have spoken about being meetings many times before on my Twitter feed. Sometimes I've posted pictures from those meetings. The fact that people chose to care so much about these few tweets from Bashiok and me, because a couple bloggers tied them together in a pretty package to stir up hype, is ridiculous.
And as much as some people hung on every word of said tweets, they sure misinterpreted them.
Right now I see May, maybe April as being the earliest it will be released. As much as that sucks.
Just stop. Please don't take that two and put it with the other two. They don't need to be mashed together in a downward spiral where everything said is between the lines. It's not. I'm not using a language you need to decode. I'm trying to get you to stop thinking there are secret implications behind our words. Read what is being said and think about it for a least a few minutes before deciding how it is/isn't a sign of when the game will be released.
I didn't say the company isn't discussing release dates. I...
Too many people, it would seem. It's great you guys strive to make such a polished and satisfying games, but I get the feeling there is/are a lot of second-guessing/conflicting ideas.....
I understand what you said, but I want you to know you took what I said and then ran into a huge tangent. Your statements aren't really based on information I gave you, nor are they accurate. Having more staff in the company, particularly for customer support and community development, shouldn't be used as evidence to argue there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
Compared to the rest of the gaming industry, you'd probably be surprised by how small the Diablo III development team is. And the reason it's relatively small is because we do want it to be a family of highly talented individuals who have a certain synergy to challenge one another -- developers who know what they like and don't like, but at the end of the day can come together and agree on a design vision.
I just caution you not to assume that our company's growth has diluted the development teams into bland groups of programmers plugging away for a paycheck. Our weekly meetings with the Diablo III developers are amazing because of how passionate they are about their game. They know what they're doing and aren't being blocked by bureaucracy, as you seem to be suggesting.
Also, with all of these extra people with jobs like community manager and whatnot, it would be pretty great if somebody could find the time to actually tell the community what in the hell is happening.
Isn't this thread sort of about the opposite? We're being told not to saying anything unless it's really important and directly related to the release of the game.
We told you at the end of last year we wouldn't be shipping the game until 2012. That didn't mean we'd have the final details ready to announce by January of this year. We'll share with you whatever information we can whenever we can.
This is slightly unfair, because the OP's topic came from the misguided point of view that you were indeed tweeting about a realse date meeting (because of a certain fan sites spin).
Fair enough. Looking back, it's pretty unfortunate that a few unrelated postings here and there on the internet were tied together into what seemed like the start of the biggest Diablo news of the year. :\
So what really happened? I had a typical Monday meeting and Bashiok shaved. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Put yourself in our shoes, we know NOTHING about the current state of the game
It's in the polish/test phase. You know that, but you want details we can't provide. We just want it to be awesome at any cost. (source)
It wasn't because of the RMAH. How many more employee statements do you need before you'll get that?
Your response suggest that I'm the odd one out because people dislike change and usually resist it, even though it helps civilization out in the end. But in my post I'm defending the RMAH, saying that people should accept it because it will only drive things forward and actually aid the development of Diablo.
So, I'm rather confused now.
"They don't know who they are messing with! The Restart Family won't accept this lightly!" (by an 11 year old girl)
"They'll see. I'll curse them so much in Twitter!" (by a nerdy 12 year old kid)
So, everytime I see people talking about how Blizzard is losing fans due to the lack of respect and delays, that they are ruining their reputation with everything about D3 or that they will surely regret the way they are driving this game, I can't help thinking about those Restart fans and their spoiled empty threats.
Sorry guys, but you need to chin up and remember that this is just a game and Blizzard has its way of developing games. They've done it for a while and it has always worked fine. Almost every title they released was a ground-breaking success. They know what they are doing and they are not doing anything different than the other games, all of them were delayed, all of them had suspicions and people cursing the repetitive delays and possible new mechanics that made a sequel different from the precursor.
You are much better off waiting for the game and using your time to do something else.
Back in the day, d2jsp was HUGE. I definitely agree that, although d2jsp added to the diablo II experience, it also took a lot away from it because it wasn't official and not everyone that played diablo II was also a member of the site.
I remember browsing on the d2jsp site more than I was actually playing the game.
Then my clan opened up their own d2jsp-esque website, and then I lost interest. Blizzard is going to benefit greatly from ensuring that the economy stays completely inside of the game, through safe and secure services (PayPal).
On a side note, I realize that bots and item selling business will plague diablo III, but it may not be as bad as before.
I could be wrong, but since there aren't any hot spots for MF farming (since all areas of the game have the same drops), it seems like item selling services won't benefit nearly as much, at least until someone comes out with a build that is able to make full game runs without ever dying.
I suppose a bot could just keep doing the same area over and over again. Either way, it may not harm the economy as much as people may think.
Basically, When It's Done is a good philosophy, compared to the buggy, unfinished messes we usually see in this industry. But at some point, you're firing your third guitarist, rewriting the core engine, and adding features that were never inteded to fit into the scope of the original project. The noodling on the rune system (to me at least) appears to be at that point. Make them drops, save ranks 6 and 7 as hard to get craft recipes, and stop. There isn't anything you can add to them right this second that is worth the extra delay. If there is something awesome you can add to them (random affixes, ranged stats, unattuned gambling), add it in a patch or the expansion.
Or they're really and trully bulls---ing everyone, and they can't get their servers working, the RMAH has cracks in it, etc. Either way, SC2 development seemed much, much smoother, and definitely had a lot more concrete, under the hood stuff that the devs discussed w/ the fans.
*tin foil hat on* so blizzard is making up an elaborate story of working on game systems and even coming out next week with a big update of all the new features and changes they've been working on and of course this is all BS because the game is 100% done and its just one small country holding the global release of this game? your not thinking for yourself, your throwing all logic and reason out the window for your own delusion. lol...
Here's the issue - why isn't it done yet??? The game was announced (not started development which happened much earlier, but announced) in 2008. The overwhelming majority of the few people lucky enough to have access to the closed beta see a very polished game. People heard from Blizzard that the game was going to be released by Nov/Dec 2011. With this information in hand, the community expects that now that we are actually in the revised release date window of "early 2012" that we should have a release date given Blizzard stated lead time of 8 weeks give or take from release date announcement to release date. The community is on edge because they've already seen one release date window go by the wayside and there is no real indication from Blizzard that this one will be any different. If anything, all of the Blizzard employees conveniently dropping the “early” from “early 2012” (like Zarhym yesterday) are giving quite the opposite indication. Given where we are on the calendar, we either need Blizzard to give us something far more specfic to believe in for a release date time frame or just officially disappoint us again and delay the game further. "We will release it when it's done" is becoming a euphemism for "we're just not meeting our own expectations of being able to get our jobs done or meet realistic deadlines". People who miss deadlines (especially when they’re setting the deadlines for themselves) get criticized for it. That’s a fact of life everywhere in the real world (not just for Blizzard and Diablo 3). You can't miss the first deadline, show little indication that you're not about to miss another deadline, and expect that everyone who's anticipation you've built up will just sit, twiddle their thumbs, be patient, and quiet. This is 2012. The monster they created needs to be fed. That's the bottom line. Deal with it, Blizzard, Deal with it, Blizzard marks.
That's what a lot of the community is asking from Blizzard. We haven't had an update in a long time.
What the hell are you talking about? This guys tweet got blown way the hell out of proportion because a bunch of children salivating for years over every little piece of news or information they can twist into something bigger than it is. It's like these kinds of fans won't be happy unless every detail about development is revealed to the point that the game has been spoiled before it is even released. Then they'll bitch because they already know about the whole game, so nothing "feels new".
The only thing that is going to "go down as a massive black eye for their reputation" is the relentless fickleness, selfishness, and immaturity of the D3 community.
Yup! Those stinkin employees at Blizzard are out to get you!!
The problem is that you aren't thinking for yourself. You read what Daeity puts on his website and take it as the gospel truth, for some unknown reason.
Love this conspiracy theory you keep throwing around. Good stuff.
The items aren't even finalized yet, if you recall the lackluster uniques and sets they had at a stage, and the lack thereof on the D3 site at the moment. Plus, we don't even know the state of the later acts. When the beta was released, some textures were missing, some stuff didn't work properly, and the AH was released in the meanwhile. There has also been larger changes due to feedback, like followers and the Demon Hunter.
We don't really know what's going on behind the scenes, and why would you want to know what went wrong for whatever reasons?
People heard from Blizzard that the beta will be short if everything goes smooth. The projected date was end 2011, IF they had no problems. Blizzard said that their beta periods may last up to six months, and D3 is no different. They never promised Nov/Dec 2011.
The current incarnation of Diablo 3 only started in 2005 when Blizzard North was disbanded. They announced it in 2008 and the game will come out this year, 2012. Development cycle: 7 years.
Blizzard started development on Starcrat 2 Wings of Liberty in 2003, after Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2007 and released 2010 after more than five and a half months of beta. Development cycle: 7 years.
Diablo 3 is quite in line with Blizzard development cycles.
You know, I don't think it will really matter what Jay Wilson has to report, people will still berate him for whatever reasons they can contrive. If he says they have made large sweeping changes, they'd be angry. If he explains in minute detail all of the fine tuning that they're doing, they'd be angry. If he decided to tell us nothing at all, they'd be angry. Some people just enjoys being angry at life, and gleen some form of pleasure out of hating things for no better reason that just to nitpick and hate.
I don't understand why some people would be thick enough to make comments like: 'Blizzard is intentionally holding back the finished game to spite me personally.' Why exactly would a company intentionally delay a finished product that would make them millions? Yes, it sounds that stupid when you actually think about it.
I honestly hope he helps out a lot with the project behind the scenes, because I haven't seen exactly what he contributes as a community manager. He's rather incompetant. I've mostly seen him trolling or writing walls of text like the ones above. If he knows what kind of fan base he is dealing with, he would know better and say very little in response to legitmate concerns. He should just reply with a few threads and be brief. He should stick to the point. Any of the diablo fan mods could easily do his job and do it in a more professional manner.
It's ok for celebrities to have a little fun with their twitter, but even they know better. Celebrities don't post on twitter for the sole purpose of getting their rocks off on writing pointless walls of text replying to people that want whatever they're selling. This is his actual job. The other Blizzard CM's do a pretty damn good job in comparison. Karune anyone? Remember his endless Q&A's he supplied to the starcraft 2 fanbase before it was released? He was excellent and professional. This Zarhym guy is a complete joke.
At least Bashiok has been somewhat forcoming and honest about the game not being ready yet and i'm not a big Bashiok fan in the first place. He deserves some credit for being professional.
word.... another thing people are forgetting is simply that Blizzard is no longer the "small" company that we knew. They have oodles of cash from WoW and are part of a much bigger company group. For all we know, the game is finished but someone further up the pecking order is asking them to hold off a bit to make a strategic play for the bigger company. Face it, that's the relaity of the business world out there. Only when the article comes out then (hopefully) we'll get some clarification
Most RPGs take years to create:
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - 3 years (not including all the previous work done on Copernicus)
Elder Scrolls Skyrim - 3 years+
Mass Effect 2 - 3 years+ (only counting from the date it was announced)
Borderlands - 3 years (shares many quilities with the Diablo franchise, even though it uses an FPS perspective)
And D3 took longer than 4 years to develop. But we all know Blizzard can get quite anal when it comes to release date, even Warcraft 3 was delayed like mad. SC2 took 7 years to develop and D3 is at that stage now.
1. They want to make sure they get least amount of cancellations from warcraft deal so postponing.
2. Their reaping ideas off Torchlight & Possibly Torchlight 2 forcing us to another Blizzcon announcement on the Diablo 3 surprise where we all sigh and say.... WTH release this hack n" slash already and be done with it.