Diablo III Delayed Until 'Early 2012'
by Craig Getting on September 23, 2011 10:16 AM ESTHolding true to their design ethos of Ship It When It’s Ready, Blizzard just changed the launch window for Diablo III from the end of 2011 to early 2012.
“While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year,” stated Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaine. “We were too. However, this week we pulled together people from all of the teams involved with the game to decide whether we felt it would be ready before the end of December, and we grudgingly came to the conclusion that it would not.”
The delay’s silver lining is the extension of Diablo III’s beta period. Blizzard began sending out invites to the closed beta earlier this week, and this could give them time to add even more players. You can still opt-in to the beta over at Battle.net.
Blizzard’s 2012 calendar is now looking packed with Diablo III, the next chapter in Starcraft II, and another World of Warcraft expansion all tentatively scheduled for release. A busy year for a company that only ships when ready.
Source: Blizzard
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tanjo - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
"We'll ship it if it can be easily ported to the consoles (after finalizing the gamepad config)"or
"We'll ship it when it's multi-platform."
BSMonitor - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Better to just accept the nature of a thing. Blizzard has always pushed back titles to ensure the highest quality. And they always seem to deliver in that.bah12 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Have you lost your marbles? Have you ever played WOW? It is by far the buggiest mess of crap after every expansion. Now I do agree that their initial product is usually pretty good, but I mainly speak from a continued support perspective, and that is a joke. Heck the last xpan they broke tab targeting! Really why the heck would you mess with that at all.Anyway as a long time wow'er my frustration mounts, in an era of VM's and true cloning there is really no reason to have the number of issues they have after being in beta so long.
As an aside from a professional IT perspective the whole Tues downtime thing annoys me too. At roughly 10 million users paying ~$15 / month there is no reason to be taking the server down during the day. Do that maintenance at 3am or whatever the lowest peak time is for the server. How do you think my boss would react if I planned an Exchange upgrade for midday because I was to lasy or cheap to do it after hours.
Zavijava - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Name the company that does better. Few even try to produce products at Blizzard's quality level.For someone with a "professional IT perspective" why do you think VM's are a solution to SOFTWARE bugs, especially as serious as tabbed browsing. I'm sure you have lots of experience supporting multi-tiered applications for a userbase in the millions ... everbody know you simply clone them and do maintenance.
erple2 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Clearly, you've NEVER played any other complex MMO before. Game breaking bugs are the name of the game when it comes to other MMO games. I'd classify all of the bugs I've seen in WoW after a release as "minor, and not that challenging to get around".That's something that I can't say for any other MMO that I've ever played.
arjuna1 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
News to all blizzard fanboys out there, blizzard died after activision took over.phantom505 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I have to study for my Step 1 boards in the Spring. Now I'll never sleep. I barely do as it is.Stoicz - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
To be honest, I've been looking forward to Torchlight 2 more than Diablo 3. I mean, $20, lan, mods... I know Diablo 3 will be good, but.... yeah.With any luck, Torchlight 2 will at least be out this year and fulfill my hack n slash loot whoring needs.
StormyParis - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
for being an ex-player of WoW, I *know* that supposed ethos is very untrue nowadays, if it has ever been. The latest WoW extensions and patches were shipped with a lot of bugs, mostly well-documented since the beta phase. Journalists shouldn't mindlessly regurgitate PR.Also, Diablo 2 was a bore. I've tried playing it again on my netbook... yawn.
Zavijava - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
News flash. Man bored with 11 year old game.