Difference between revisions of "Diablo III release date"

Revision as of 19:31, 8 January 2012

There is no Diablo III release date, and Blizzard has never given one. Not even a tentative one. Not even an estimate at one. When asked about a release date, Blizzard employees give the same reply for all their games.

"When it's done."

Diablo 3 release dates are often given/guessed at by media sources and especially by software merchants. These dates have no authority and exist solely to spur interest/pre-sales.

• News items related to Diablo 3's release date.
• Screenshot gallery of (incorrect) estimated release dates.

Beta Test Timeline

After years of offering release date estimates for various games, most of which they missed, Blizzard has grown quite conservative about offering release dates. They now give only vague release date windows, and never any specific dates or targets unless they are very sure they can meet them.

Hence Starcraft 2 and WoW:Cat did not get release dates until 2-3 months beforehand, when those titles were well into their beta tests. This makes the start of the Diablo III beta a more useful measure of the release date than any actual release date announcement, and on that front Jay Wilson has estimated that Diablo III will be released about six months after the beta test begins.[1]

Geoffkeighley (via Twitter): someone has to ask this: When is the Diablo 3 beta gonna be?

Jay Wilson: Probably about six months before we release.

Note that this is far from an exact timeline, and much more of a spur-of-the-moment estimate.

In May 2011 Blizzard confirmed that the Diablo III beta should begin in the "third quarter" of 2011. This means July 1 - September 30. That's a wide target, but the range was narrowed down a bit in mid-June, 2011, when it was revealed that a major system would be announced on August 2, 2011. Since we were previously told that the beta would not begin until after all the systems were revealed, this puts an early-August 2011 date for the earliest possible start of the Diablo III Beta.

Blizzard's Leaked Product Schedule

Diablo III projection: Fourth Quarter 2011?

The image to the right "leaked" via a Chinese MMORPG site in late 2010.[2] It's alleged to be an internal Blizzard document from April 2010, listing estimated dates for their upcoming product releases. Diablo III is listed for the fourth quarter 2011, a fact that gave lots of Diablo fans a huge burst of excitement. Despite the fact that Blizzard has time and time again proved that they never hit their own estimated release dates.

Even if the chart is authentic, the estimate of Fourth Quarter 2011 for Diablo III doesn't necessarily mean anything. Blizzard has along history of missing their projected release dates, which is why they no longer state them publicly. Even if the chart is real, and they were projecting December 2011 as of April 2010, that's no guarantee that Diablo III will be released at that time. In fact, given Blizzard's past flirtations with advance release dates, that's a pretty good guarantee Diablo III will not be ready by then.

The chart's estimates for Starcraft II and WoW:Cat proved accurate. However that's not saying too much, since both titles were in or nearly into beta testing in April 2010 (assuming the chart is legit), and SC2 was already out and WoW:Cat was imminent in September 2010 (assuming the chart was a fabrication at that time).

Is It Legit?

That's the big question. One that will probably never be answered publicly. Blizzard did not comment on it directly, and rumors about firings in their Chinese offices were just that; rumors.[3]

The dates may or may not prove accurate, but that won't prove anything. Any knowledgeable fan could have estimated release dates in the ballpark of these for WoW expansions, Stacraft 2 expansions, and Diablo III expansions. Eighteen months apart is Blizzard's stated goal (one they've not yet managed to meet.)

So what would prove the legitimacy of this chart?

1. If Blizzard admitted that it was legit, which they have not and will not do.
2. If Starcraft: Phoenix is announced, whatever it is, and is released around the estimated time.
3. If Titan is announced and released around the estimated time.

The chart got one excellent piece of supporting evidence in November 2010, when Blizzard confirmed that Titan was the codename for their unannounced but well-known secret next-gen MMORPG. [4] The project had long since been known about, but the code name "Titan" was brand new news when the chart was released.

Another piece of evidence appeared in February 2011, when Japanese and Brazilian localizations were added to Blizzard's upcoming WoW patch.[5] "WoW Brazil" is listed on the chart for mid-2011, so they seem to be right on schedule for that.

Fan Discontent

One constant with every Blizzard game is a long development cycle, a lot of eager fans, and a substantial minority of fans who are very impatient. The most hardcore fans tend not to be so impatient, since they're following the game's development very closely, and can see the progress as it moves along. The most impatient ones tend to be more casual fans, who want the game, but who only hear news about it every now and then, via general gaming news sites. They tend to also see fake release dates, usually via online retailers, which they believe, not knowing any better. And then when the game isn't ready by those dates, they blame not themselves for being gullible, or the retailer for lying, but the game developers for being slow.

Examples of this kind of fan can be seen in comments about any game on general gaming site, or in the replies to a game's social media outlets, where not very knowledgeable fans tend to show up.

A good example of this came in a post on leading fansite Diii.net, when they quoted a bunch of fan comments on Blizzard's Diablo Facebook page. A few samples from that news item:[6]

• WE WANT A RELEASE DATE!
• How much longer do we have to wait? Sacred 3 will be out before D3 at this rate….
• I WANT TO KNOW WHEN IS IT GONNA COME OUT !!!! FREAKING OUT OVER HERE !!!
• how about..just release it…
• Okay I have waited long enough! I want my diablo 3 now please
• Give me the release date and NOBODY gets hurt…seriously…
• Just release it!!! :D
• release it please !
• you guys already changed the release date a billion times now… just get it over with and stop lying about it and actually make a release date that STICKS
• How about you just progress with the game… stop wasting time tweeting.
• GET DIABLO 3 GOING ALREADY!!!!!!!!!

Blizzard's company PR policy never to link out to fansites or wikis does a lot to feed this sort of behavior, since their official game sites, especially pre-release, have decent game info, but virtually zero game news. If you look around the official Diablo III site you'll find lots of pretty pictures and very polished looking game features, but no links to regular news sources, no links to developer interviews, nothing about development progress, or timelines, or a release date, or a beta test, etc. Naturally the fans who rely only on Blizzard's own sites, and general gaming sites, are going to expect the game to be done soon, since all they see looks nearly release-ready, and they're not told otherwise by anyone in authority.

D3: In the Next Few Years

D3 in "Next Few Years" as of late 2009.

No one at Blizzard has ever yet given any hint of a release date, or schedule, or estimate, or anything of the kind for Diablo 3, other than to say it would not be out in 2010[7], and that as of late 2009 it was in their pipeline for the "next few years."[8]

Their only other public comments on the "when" question are terse official statements[9] that Diablo 3 does not have a release date, whenever a new rumor pops up and gains enough traction that they feel it's necessary to restate the obvious.

As of July 2010, fansite Diii.net had tagged more than twenty-five news items with the "release date rumor" keyword, showing just how often this sort of thing pops up.

Estimated Progress?

Estimates of a percentage completed are discouraged by Blizzard development teams, since there's no way to quantify the process in that fashion. They spent years working on the foundation of Diablo III: programming the game engine, trying out numerous different styles of art design, coming up with a plot and character concepts, etc. The hardware and foundational work takes as long or longer than adding in the content, which makes it impossible to estimate the overall percentage completed.

Bashiok emphasized this iterative, non-linear design style in a forum post in November 2009. [10]

Almost since the game was announced in June 2008, the developers have said that they were well into content production.[11] (Meaning that the engine and basic game functions were all locked down and working properly.) Content though, especially in Blizzard titles, is such a huge area of work that experienced Blizzard-watchers expected the content production and balancing would take years. And it has.

Diablo III Beta Test

The D3 Team regularly refered to a future beta test, but did not absolutely confirm it until Blizzcon 2010. They've not made any comments since then about what the beta might contain. Diablo II's beta was all five characters, but just Act One and the first three tiers of skills. It's likely that the Diablo III beta would follow a similar path, since the developers need to include enough game to keep players interested and to test out the early going. They do not want to reveal all of the plot and late game content though.

Blizzard beta tests generally last 4-6 months, and Jay Wilson estimated that Diablo III would be released about six months after its beta test begins. [[12]]

• See the Diablo 3 Beta article for much more on this issue.

Blizzard Games Release Dates

One commonly-cited piece of "evidence" is the fact that no Blizzard games have (yet) been released much more than three years after they were first announced.

• Starcraft: Announced spring 1996, released April 1998. (2 years later.)
• Diablo 2: Announced Sept 1997, released June 2000. (2 years, 9 months later.)
• Warcraft 3: Announced Sept 1999, released July 2002. (2 years, 10 months later.)
• World of Warcraft: September 2001, released Nov 2004. (3 years, 1 month later.)
• Starcraft 2: Announced May 2007, released July 2010 (3 years, 2 months later.)

Diablo III was announced June 28, 2008.

Diablo = Late June

Diablo I was released in January 1997, but all of the games in the series since then have shown an affinity for late June:

• Diablo II release date: 29th of June 2000
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction release date: 29th of June 2001
• Diablo III Announced at the WWI in Paris : 28th of June 2008

With this history in mind, many fans were hoping for a June 2011 release. (A date that became impossible when the calendar moved into 2011 without any sign of the beta test.) It's not out of the question that the Diablo III beta might begin around late June, 2011.

Guess the Release Date

If you're the betting type, there's a well-advanced release date prediction pool you can join in here.

Diablo III Demo

Blizzard has not said anything specifically about the upcoming demo of Diablo III, but when talking about StarCraft II, they said they had plans for a demo, and that they "use to do that after release". Most likely, we can expect a trial version of Diablo III after release.

• See the Diablo III Demo article for more details about playable Diablo III demos.

Diablo III Expansion Packs

Blizzard has confirmed their intention to create multiple expansion packs for Diablo III. These are expected to be released about every 18 months, following in the pattern established by World of Warcraft and Starcraft II.

Related Information

You can read more about the system requirements, beta testing, price/payment methods and age rating on the Diablo 3 Basics page.

Release Date Gallery

Images related to the Diablo III release date.

• 

  Best Buy Midnight opening February 1 2012

• 

  Fye's very wrong January 2010 estimate.

• 

  Swedish Gameshop: December 31, 2010.

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  NewEgg.com: December 31, 2010.

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  GameStop's in-store estimate: March 1, 2011.

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  Wal-Mart.com's estimate: March 1, 2011.

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  Fan made fake screen of a digital download page on Battle.net. June 28, 2012 date.

Archive

Past date information, now rendered obsolete by the passage of time.

Not 2010

In Activision/Blizzard financial reports, two games are reported as being released this year: Starcraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Diablo III was never part of Blizzard's release schedule for 2010.

Starcraft II First

There were some rumors in 2008[13] that Diablo 3 was further along in the development cycle than Starcraft 2. Blizzard immediately denied that, they always said Starcraft 2 would be released first, and it was, on July 27, 2010. With Diablo 3 still nowhere near beta testing at that point, that's as thorough a rumor debunking as you're ever going to see.