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.
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.
Contents
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 is not even planned in an optimistic viewpoint (it could still have be planned for and delayed) for this year.
Starcraft II First
There were some rumors in 2008[1] 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.
Diablo III
tvvvv 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. Their only public comments on the "when" question are terse official statements 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.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/no-d3-in-2010-not-even-for-playboy-bunnies/
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 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.
We can wager a guess that Act I is relatively close to "completion", and Act II is 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, we're expecting more information at BlizzCon 2010
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 was 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 shortly after the end of 2009, when it became overly apparent it could not be true.
- ~ 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.
Release Date Gallery
Images related to the Diablo III release date.
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http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/d3-release-date-rumors/
