Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

[Sep 23, 2011, 09:30 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

The Diablo III Website has word from Blizzard's Mike Morhaime that Diablo III is not going to be released this year as they hoped, and the action/RPG sequel is now expected "early" next year, and they will be adding more players to the closed beta as a result. Here's word:

We commonly use the term “soon” when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we’re working to reach a target, we’re not going to compromise and launch a game before it’s ready. For Diablo III, we were aiming to launch by the end of 2011. As we’re announcing globally today, our new target for the game is 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. 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. Ultimately, we feel that to deliver an awesome Diablo sequel that lives up to our expectations and yours as well, we should take a little more time and add further polish to a few different elements of the game.

The upside of today’s announcement is that we will be running the beta test longer than we initially planned, which will allow us to invite more of you who have opted in.

For those taking on the Diableard challenge, we salute you -- and now fear for your well-being and personal hygiene. We hereby issue an official reprieve to all Diableard participants, including Blizzard employees, if you want to trim or otherwise manage the lower half of your face. We’d still love to see your beardly achievements, and we look forward to seeing more of your efforts as we move into 2012, but not to the detriment of your workplaces and significant others.

Thank you everyone for your support and anticipation for Diablo III. We’re still moving ahead at full pace, and we’ll be keeping you fully informed of any news and developments here at Diablo3.com, including the specific release date when the time comes, so stay tuned.

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45 Replies. 3 pages. Viewing page 1.
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45.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 24, 2011, 03:48

Cram

Guess there will be time for Skyrim now. This comment was edited on Sep 24, 2011, 12:41.

44.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 23:06

dj LiTh

I'm gonna not buy the hell out of it and prolly get fired from my job i'll be not playing it so much

43.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 19:18

HorrorScope

I'll buy it if there is an actual challenge in the game vs AI. I look at the positives for why having very closed servers can be a good thing. Because they do exist.

42.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 17:48

Fibrocyte

Cutter wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 17:01: Optional nickname wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 16:21: to the entire internet posts that claim they won't buy it: See you all in the US EAST ladder come game time! If they send me a beta invite I'll play it. I'll even try a demo if they have one. However, no, this time around they will not get my money untill they drop this stupid DRM...just like Ubisoft. Yep... I "won't buy it" either. wink

41.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 17:19

Mashiki Amiketo

Cutter wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 17:01:
If they send me a beta invite I'll play it. I'll even try a demo if they have one. However, no, this time around they will not get my money untill they drop this stupid DRM...just like Ubisoft.

Hey I'll buy it. If blizz sends a tech every week to make sure my internet connection will be stable, and will cover any extra costs to make sure.




-- "For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

40.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 17:06

PHJF

If they send me a beta invite I'll play it. I'll even try a demo if they have one. However, no, this time around they will not get my money untill they drop this stupid DRM...just like Ubisoft.

Same.




Steam + PSN: PHJF

39.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 17:04

Alamar

Optional nickname wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 16:21: to the entire internet posts that claim they won't buy it: See you all in the US EAST ladder come game time! Challenge accepted... and discarded... I will likely buy the game... Though that likelihood has dropped per announcement (used to be the opposite)... But worrying about ladders? In an action RPG? No thankie : ) -Alamar

38.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 17:01

Cutter

Optional nickname wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 16:21:
to the entire internet posts that claim they won't buy it: See you all in the US EAST ladder come game time!

If they send me a beta invite I'll play it. I'll even try a demo if they have one. However, no, this time around they will not get my money untill they drop this stupid DRM...just like Ubisoft.




"Are you crazy? Is that your problem?" - Jack Burton

37.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 16:21

Optional nickname

to the entire internet posts that claim they won't buy it: See you all in the US EAST ladder come game time!

36.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 16:20

Yakubs

Verno wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 14:47: They just went back to the drawing board with his resource system so obviously there are some kinks to work out. So far, the redesign looks worse than the original. They literally took all the super-boring skills and made them Hatred Generators and then took the (semi-)cool skills and made them Spenders. So now I can't even use the skills I want to use most of the time!

35.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 15:48

MattyC

zincthallinide wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 13:48: Warcraft, RTS lite. I could never get into Starcraft, which strikes me as a highly generic sci-fi-ish RTS game. You think WarCraft was RTS lite and you couldn't get in to the longest running RTS success ever? I think you just don't like RTS games. But yes they have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment the best known would likely be Blackthorn and Lost Vikings.

34.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 14:52

Kastagir

Not going to buy it, this year or next.

33.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 14:47

Verno

And I think the success of the current emulator projects is overstated. They're doing good work and all, laying a solid foundation, but they've accomplished virtually nothing in terms of the actual game. All their work has been around the wrappings of the game (B.net/chat/etc.).

They've literally been working on it in earnest for less than week of time. Quite the opposite, I'm amazed at how quickly it's been coming together, I stopped compiling builds due to the commits coming so quickly. We all understand the concept of needing to reverse engineer both the protocols and functions but members of that community cut their teeth working on WoW emulators which came a long way themselves. Again, my comment was aimed at the people who are upset about a lack of offline singleplayer anyway. I have no doubts some team will have a functional offline emulator in the first year if not much sooner. Whether a fully feature complete B.Net like implementation comes out is a different story.

Anyway all of that stuff aside, more thoughts on the game itself:

I loved the shared stash, they nailed what D2 has been needing for ages now. I am really disappointed with the Demon Hunter who feels like 4 different classes cobbled together and plays clumsily. They just went back to the drawing board with his resource system so obviously there are some kinks to work out. I'm pretty happy with the skill feedback in the environment, the physics especially are nice and give everything a lot of oomph. The basic Diablo formula is intact and still very enjoyable, they didn't WoWify the game or anything. I did finally encounter some odd bugs related to losing connection although I never lost 5+ mins of progress like the RPS author.

This comment was edited on Sep 23, 2011, 14:54.




Playing: Faster Than Light, Tales of Graces F, Fire Emblem 3DS Watching: Ghost in the Shell, Hannibal, Oblivion

32.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 14:19

Yakubs

Verno wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 13:26: Blizzard can only do so much obfuscation after all. It's not merely obfuscation if a lot of the game content is being governed solely by their servers. It means the emulator teams will have to basically reverse engineer the DESIGN of the game in addition to the technical aspects. And I think the success of the current emulator projects is overstated. They're doing good work and all, laying a solid foundation, but they've accomplished virtually nothing in terms of the actual game. All their work has been around the wrappings of the game (B.net/chat/etc.). The hard-coded in-game portion is basically just a throwaway effort to show people that they're not making zero progress. It's clear from playing the sandbox that they're not actually transferring any information back and forth between server and client. Nothing works except moving around the world which is already on your client.

31.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 13:48

zincthallinide

I just checked out the Rock Paper Scissors article.. I'm not buying the game as it is, then. Multiplayer D3 doesn't sound like fun to me. I can play Rift or L4D or a billion other better games for a generic multiplayer slaughterfest. And I have to believe that multiplayer D3 will be full of little kiddies typing their little kiddy internet dumbness. I've always been on the fence about these 2D-type hackers, though.. The Dungeon Siege series was sort of fun. I could never get into Titan Quest. I've played about 5 minutes worth of Torchlight. Diablo 2 was fun because it was the first game like that I'd ever really played. AND really, I've never been a big fan of Blizzard in general. WoW is cute and fun to a point, but definitely MMOG lite. Warcraft, RTS lite. I could never get into Starcraft, which strikes me as a highly generic sci-fi-ish RTS game. Have they ever made any other games? SO, in conclusion, I doubt I would have bought D3 anyway, except maybe if the reviews were glowing and when it was on sale for $20 or so. Still, this wacky DRM-ish scheme of theirs hurts the game quite a bit.

30.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012

Sep 23, 2011, 13:34

Fion

winnetou wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 10:08: I must have missed the TOR delay announcement, do you happen to have a link for that? It hasn't been delayed. But EA admitted it 'could' be delayed. But then one of the Bioware guys said there wasn't a reason to worry about a delay, that simply the fact that it could, doesn't mean it's likely to. So I'm still pretty positive it'll hit around Xmas where it's likely to sell far more initial copies than if it comes out in say the spring.

29.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 13:26

Verno

Yakubs wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 13:13:
I don't believe that we'll see a quality emulator experience until 12+ months after the game is released. It appears that a lot of the core of the game is transmitted by the server. Even when they emulate this functionality, they won't be able to easily emulate the design aspect (i.e., how Blizzard's code chooses where/how many/what type enemies spawn, how it chooses random events, how it chooses item drops, etc.).

I don't know, people were saying it would take years to see any emulator at all and there are two active projects already, one of which now has working logins and chat channel functionality along with a basic sandbox mode. Maybe the more esoteric stuff like random events will be problematic but I doubt it will take a year for them to implement spawning routines and item drops, some of that is being worked on already even. Blizzard can only do so much obfuscation after all.




Playing: Faster Than Light, Tales of Graces F, Fire Emblem 3DS Watching: Ghost in the Shell, Hannibal, Oblivion

28.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 13:13

Yakubs

Verno wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 11:04: The server emulators are coming along nicely so those who want to play singleplayer offline will have an option, albeit not an optimal "legit" one. I don't believe that we'll see a quality emulator experience until 12+ months after the game is released. It appears that a lot of the core of the game is transmitted by the server. Even when they emulate this functionality, they won't be able to easily emulate the design aspect (i.e., how Blizzard's code chooses where/how many/what type enemies spawn, how it chooses random events, how it chooses item drops, etc.).

27.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 12:37

Verno

The production values in Path of Exile are worlds worse than Diablo 3 anyway. It's alright but only compared to something like Torchlight 1.




Playing: Faster Than Light, Tales of Graces F, Fire Emblem 3DS Watching: Ghost in the Shell, Hannibal, Oblivion

26.

Re: Diablo III in Early 2012; Beta to Expand

Sep 23, 2011, 12:37

Cram

Illumin wrote on Sep 23, 2011, 11:30: Skyrim, Battlefield 3 and Lord of the rings war in the North will keep me content through the holidays. It sounds like Diablo 3 is going to be released right around the time Path of Exile is going to be released. Could be interesting. Path of Exile, afaik, is no where near close to release. They haven't even finished a lot of the actual content yet, never mind the plethora of other things they need to work on and finish.

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