Diablo III release date

As with all Blizzard titles, the release date is, "When it's done." They do not make estimates in advance or give hints, at least not publicly. Any listed dates, such as the ones found on software sales sites, are not official and are gross estimates, or are simply manufactured in order to boost presales.

Starcraft II First

Blizzard has repeatedly confirmed that StarCraft II will be released before Diablo III, but that D3 will be out before the first expansion of StarCraft. Since Blizzard announced they want to create one expansion a year (roughly) after release, we can expect D3 within/around a year from SC2 release.

Unfortunately we don't know more exactly how much earlier StarCraft II will hit the stores, but we have an inkling to how close to completion that game is. The game has so far gone through most of it's major changes, with all units planned for the game available and decently balanced. Minor tweaking is still in progress, but no massive changes have been done in the last few months.

As Blizzard had decided to split the SC2 single player campaigns into three different games, this naturally speeded along since nearly the entire team can dedicate themselves to working on the main game, with just the Terran SP missions and Battle.net 2.0. Right now, there's no major delay, although Battle.net was the one major issue to keep the game from entering beta back in April 2009.

Blizzard has stated StarCraft II is to be released in the first half of 2010, and beta started on 17th February 2010. A long beta test is expected for StarCraft, as the complicated multiplayer aspects of the game will need to be extensively play tested and balanced, but not longer than late June 2010. Blizzard has also said, and confirmed on several occasions, that the game will be released in the first half of 2010.

If StarCraft II is released in spring 2010 and Blizzard's original estimates were somewhat accurate, then we can expect Diablo III somewhere between autumn 2010 and winter 2011.

This, of course, assumes that the statement made back in 2008 about Diablo III being released before StarCraft II's expansions still old true. Seeing as the two development teams are both Blizzard, one could argue the "delay level" of them would be equal, and from a release point of view, it makes more sense to release their new game before an expansion anyway. Whether or not Blizzard are still aiming for "one expansion per year" for StarCraft II is unknown, however.

Diablo III

As for Diablo III, the demo was very playable and seemed well-polished when the public was first given a hands-on opportunity at BlizzCon 2008, and even more so at BlizzCon 2009. The D3 Team has repeatedly cautioned overeager speculators though; they say they have a great deal of work yet to do on it, and while what's been shown looks great, they're showing only a tiny fraction of the total game. Production was said to be well into Act 2 as of fall 2008, but with an estimated 4 acts to complete, they are nowhere near finished.

Estimated Progress?

Estimates of a % 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 % completed.

However, we can wager a guess that Act I is likely relatively close to "completion", and Act II possibly so as well. At this time, Blizzard has said this is the order of the acts, but anything can change before release. The order of the acts might very well be something completely different.

No hints have been made about Act III.

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.

Guess the Release Date

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

Rumours

There has been rumours on an off about a release date, and we're listing them as they appear here:

The Dol Rune Conspiracy - 09/09/09

Circulating on forums first in mid-September 2008, and the idea is that the Dol rune holds the truth of the Diablo II release date. Through lots of mathematical formulas and Hex code, the date is supposed to be 2009-09-09.

Besides being logically flawed all the way, it's obviously just a rouse. However, it has continuously been spread on fansites and video game sites up until today (mid January 2009).

• ~ Within Lies The True Secret Of Diablo ~
• Dol Rune Conspiracy - DiabloWiki entry.

Battle.net Trolling - Spring 2010

Shortly after BlizzCon 2009, rumours began spreading on Battle.net that Diablo III would be released around spring 2010. There was no evidence to support this, but the topic kept popping up for a period of time.

Related Information

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