Revision as of 02:19, 18 January 2012

There is no Diablo 3 release date, and Blizzard has never given one. When asked about a release date, Blizzard employees give the same reply for all their games.

"When it's done."

The current official line concerning a release date is "early 2012" and that's as specific as it gets.

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.

Blizzard's Leaked Product Schedule

Diablo 3 projection: Fourth Quarter 2011?

The image to the right "leaked" via a Chinese MMORPG site in late 2010. ^[1]. It's alleged to be an internal Blizzard document from April 2010, listing estimated dates for their upcoming product releases. Diablo 3 is listed for the fourth quarter 2011, a fact that gave many fans a huge burst of excitement. Despite the fact that Blizzard has time and again proved that they never hit their own estimated release dates.

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

The authenticity of the date for Diablo 3 was substantiated when in February 2011 Rob Pardo was asked if it would be released that year he replied ^[2] :

Later, in June 2011, COO Paul Sams was quoted as saying ^[3] :

The chart got another excellent piece of supporting evidence in November 2010, when Blizzard confirmed that Titan (named in the chart) 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.

The final 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.

With confirmation of those dates it's reasonable to accept the product slate image as legitimate and therefore the release schedule of the Diablo 3 expansion packs. But the slippage of Diablo 3's release date (to "early 2012) and Blizzard's history of missing planned release dates should both be factored into the chart.

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 3: 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. ^[6]

Almost since the game was announced in June 2008, the developers have said that they were well into content production. ^[7] (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 3: Release Date Through The Years

D3 in "Next Few Years"

Any official announcements concerning the release of Diablo 3 have until the latter half of 2011 been as specific as to which year it would or would not be released.

• November 2009 - The broadest came in the Activision/Blizzard quarterly shareholders conference call in November 2009 where a Powerpoint presentation slide (right image) pinned it down to 'Next Few Years' ^[8]

• November 2009 - Rob Pardo in an interview with Techland. "I think it's safe to say that, yeah, (Diablo 3) is not going to be out next year."^[9]

• February 2011 - Rob Pardo in an interview with Kotaku when asked if Diablo 3 would be released that year said "We really, really hope so. That’s our goal,” “Our goal is to get there. But you know, at the end of the day, we are going to get it right. That’s more important. We’re going to promise, we’re going to get it out there when it’s awesome. And, we’re crossing our fingers, maybe it will be this year." ^[2]

• June 2011 - Paul Sams in an interview with Inside Korea said "With Diablo 3 targeted at being launched this year, we plan on testing the game in the third quarter." ^[3]

• September 2011 - A technical glitch on Blizzard's website gave the community a premature look at a statement planned to be published at a later time from Blizzard President Mike Morhaime announcing that Diablo 3 would not be released in 2011 ^[10]. The title offered a tentative new date:

After quickly taking the statement down Blizzard put it back online later that day, probably realising it was futile to shut the barn doors once the horse had bolted.

Diablo 3 Beta Test

The Diablo 3 Team regularly referred to a future beta test, but did not absolutely confirm it until Blizzcon 2010 ^[11]. The Diablo 3 Beta test began in early September, 2011, and was initially limited to "Friends & Family" testing. The closed beta began mid September and contains the same content as the Friends and Family testers were testing.

The Diablo 3 beta test consists of the first half of Act One, with some story elements and game features removed. The beta test is largely a tech demo, with little game content open to fan feedback; it is not intended to be a full game balance playtest, like many MMORPGs.

Blizzard beta tests generally last 4-6 months, and Jay Wilson estimated that Diablo 3 would be released about six months after its beta test begins. ^[12]

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

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 3 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 3 will be released about six months after the beta test begins. ^[13]

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 3 beta should begin in the "third quarter" of 2011 ^[14]. This meant July 1 - September 30. That is a wide target, but one that they met when the Closed Beta began on 20th September 2010. ^[15]

Blizzard Games Release Dates

One commonly-cited release date prediction has been 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 3 was announced June 28, 2008.

Diablo = Late June

Diablo I was released in November 1996, but all of the games in the series since then have shown an affinity for late June:

• Diablo 1 release date: 29th of June 2000
• Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction release date: 29th of June 2001
• Diablo 3 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.)

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 3 Demo

Blizzard first confirmed a playable demo back in November 2011 ^[16]

In January 2012 they expanded on their plans ^[17]

• See the Diablo 3 Demo article for more details about playable Diablo 3 demos.

Diablo 3 Expansion Packs

Blizzard has confirmed their intention to create multiple expansion packs for Diablo 3. These are expected to be released about every 18 months, following in the pattern established by World of Warcraft and Starcraft II.

Release Date Gallery

Images related to the Diablo 3 release date.

• 

  Best Buy Midnight opening February 1 2012

• 

  Fye's very wrong January 2010 estimate.

• 

  Swedish Gameshop: December 31, 2010.

• 

  NewEgg.com: December 31, 2010.

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

• 

  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 but it's hear for posterity.

Not 2010

In Activision/Blizzard financial reports, two games are reported as being released this year: Starcraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Diablo 3 was never part of Blizzard's release schedule for 2010.

Starcraft II First

There were some rumors in 2008 ^[18] 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.

References